screened innovation. When our Elizabeth established the Protestant religion, she was called an innovatress; when Luther began the Reformation, he was called an innovator; nay, when Herod and the high priest Caiphas (and high priests of all religions are the same) heard that one had gone forth into the multitude preaching, gathering the poor like the hen under her wing; saying to the rich: Give uuto the poor, and look for treasures in Heaven, and take heed that your hearts be not overcharged with luxury, surfeit, and the cases of this life: I say, when Herod and the high priest saw the Author of the Christian religion thus giving countenance and comfort and hope to the poor, they were astonished; they felt in His rebuke of their own pomp and pride and gluttony and beastliness, great innovation: they felt in the sublimity of His morals, great innovation; they saw in the extent of His public care, great innovation; and, accordingly, they conspired against their Saviour as an innovator, and under the pretence of supporting what they called the church and state, they stigmatized the redemption of man, and crucified the Son of God!

If we were desirous to retort on the church the argument of innovation, its own history is fertile. What is the idea of property in the church but an innovation? their conversion of property from the great body of Christians to their own use?-innovation: their temporal power?-innovation: their application for donations equal to a tenth? innovation: their conversion of those donations to their own use?-innovation: their excluding the fabric of the church, as well as the poor, from the benefit of those donations ?-innovation: their various tithe bills?-innovation: their riot act ?-innovation : their compensation act?-innovation.

To judge of the objection of innovation against my plan, see what that plan does not do.

It does not affect the doctrine of our religion; it does not alter the church establishment; it does not affect the constitution of episcopacy. The modus does not even alter the mode of their provision; it only limits the quantum, and limits it on principles much less severe than that charity which they preach, or that abstinence which they inculcate. Is this innovation? As if the Protestant religion was to be propagated in Ireland, like the influence of a minister, by bribery; or, like the influence of a county candidate, by money; or, like the cause of a potwalloping canvasser, by the weight of the purse. As if Christ could not prevail over the Earth unless mammon took Him by the hand. Am I to understand that if you give the parson twelve shillings in the acre for potatoes, and

ten shillings for wheat, the Protestant religion is safe on its rock; but if you reduce him to six shillings the acre for potatoes and wheat, then Jupiter shakes the Heavens with his thunder, Neptune rakes the deep with his trident, and Pluto leaps from his throne!

See the curate. He rises at six to morning prayers; he leaves company at six for evening prayers; he baptizes, he marries, he churches, he buries, he follows with pious offices his fellow-creature from the cradle to the grave, for what immense income-what riches to reward these inestimable services? Do not depend on the penury of the laity, let his own order value his deserts; £50 a year! £50 for praying, for christening, for marrying, for churching, for burying, for following with Christian offices his fellow-creature from cradle to grave—so frugal a thing is devotion, so cheap religion, so easy the terms on which man may worship his Maker, and so small the income, in the opinion of ecclesiastics, sufficient for the duties of a clergyman, as far as he is connected at all with the Christian religion.

I think the curate has by far too little; bloated with the full tenth, I think the church would have abundantly too much.

The provision of the church is not absolute property, like an estate, but payment for a duty-it is a salary for prayer, not the gift of God independent of the duty. He did not send His Son to suffer on Earth to establish a rich priesthood, but to save mankind; it is the donation of the laity for the duty of prayer. The labourer deserves hire for doing his duty; he is paid not as a high priest, but a pastor in his evangelic, not his corporate capacity. When he desires to live by his ministry he demands his right; when he demands the tenth of your wealth he demands your right, and he presumes riches to be the right of the church, instead of supposing what he oughtthe Gospel to be the right of the people, and competency for preach ing the Gospel, not luxury, to be the right, as it is the professior, of the church. A provision for the ministers of the Gospel on its own principles, keeping clear of the two extremes-poverty on the one side, and riches on the other; both are avocations from prayer---poverty, which is a struggle how to live, and riches, which are an occupation how to spend. But of the two extremes I should dread riches, and above all, such indefinite riches as the tenth of the industry, capital, and land of 3,000,000 would heap in the kitchens of 900 clergymen—an impossible proportion, but if possible, an avocation of a very worldly kind, introducing gratifications of a very temporal nature-passions different from the precepts of the Gospelmbition, pride, and vain-glory. Add to this acquisition of the tenth; the litigation which must attend it. and the double avocation of

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luxury and law; conceive a war of citations, contempts, summouse Avil bills, proctors, attorneys, and all the voluminous train of dis tord carried on at the suit of the man of peace, by the plaintiff in the pulpit, against the defendants, his congregation. It is a strong argument against the tenth, that such claim is not only inconsistent with the nature of things, but absolutely incompatible with the exercise of the Christian religion. Had the apostles advanced among the Jews pretensions to the tenth of the produce of Judea, they would not have converted a less perverse generation; but they were humble and inspired men; they went forth in humble guise, with. naked foot, and brought to every man's door in his own tongue the true belief. Their word prevailed against the potentates of the Earth; and on the ruin of barbaric pride and pontific luxury, they placed the naked majesty of the Christian religion.

This light was soon put down by its own ministers, and on its extinction a beastly and pompous priesthood ascended-political potentates, not Christian pastors, full of false zeal, full of worldly pride, and full of gluttony, empty of the true religion; to their flock oppressive, to their inferior clergy brutal, to their king abject, and to their God impudent and familiar: they stood on the altar as a stepping-stool to the throne, glozing in the ear of princes, whom they poisoned with crooked principles and heated advice, and were a faction against their king when they were not his slaves, the dirt under his feet, or the poinard in his heart.

Their power went down-it burst of its own plethory—when a poor reformer with the Gospel in his hand, and with the inspired spirit of poverty, restored the Christian religion. The same principle which introduced Christianity guided reformation. What Luther did for us, philosophy has done in some degree for the Roman Catholics, and that religion has undergone a silent reformation; and ooth divisions of Christianity, unless they have lost their understanding, must have lost their animosity, though they have retained their distinctions, The priesthood of Europe is not now what it was. once; their religion has increased as their power has diminished. In these countries particularly, for the most part they are a mild order of men, with less dominion and more piety, therefore their character may be, for the most part, described in a few words—morality, enlightened by letters and exalted by religion. Such, many of our parochial clergy, with some exceptions however, particularly in some of the disturbed parts of the kingdom-such, some of the heads of the church-such, the very head of the church in Ireland. That comely personage who presides over a vast income, and thinks he has

great revenues, but is mistaken, being in fact nothing more than the steward of the poor, and a mere instrument in the hand of Providence, making the best possible distribution of the fruits of the Earth.

"Of all institutions", says Paley, "adverse to cultivation, none so noxious as tithe, not only a tax on industry, but the industry that feeds mankind”.

It is true, the mode of providing for the church is exceptionable, and in some parts of Ireland has been, I apprehend, attended with very considerable abuses: these are what I wish to submit to you. You will inquire whether, in some cases, the demands for tithes have not been illegal, the collection of them oppressive, the excess of demand uncharitable, and the growth of it considerable and oppressive. Whether, in all cases, the tithe-farmer has been a merciful pastor, the tithe-proctor an upright agent, and even the vicar himself an unbiassed judge.

In this inquiry, or in forming some regulations for this inquiry, you will not be withheld by the arguments of pride, bigotry, and prejudice. That argument which, reflecting on God, maintains the sacred rights of exaction; that other argument which, reflecting on Parliament, denies your capacity to give redress; that other argument which, reflecting on human nature, supposes that you inflame mankind by redressing their grievances; that other argument which traduces the landed interest of Ireland as an extortioner, and belies one part of the community to continue the miseries of the other-au argument of calumny, an argument of cruelty. Least of all should you be withheld by that idle intimation stuffed into the speech from the throne, suggesting that the church is in danger, and holding ou' from that awful seat of authority, false lights to the nation, as if we had doted back to the nonsense of Sacheveral's days, and were to be ridden once more by the fools and bigots. Parliament is not a bigot; you are no sectary, no polemic; it is your duty to unite all men, to manifest brotherly love and confidence to all men. The parental sentiment is the true principle of government. Men are ever finally disposed to be governed by the instrument of their happiness -the mystery of government, would you learn it? Look on the Gospel, and make the source of your redemption the rule of authority; and, like the hen in the Scriptures, expand your wings and cover ali your people.

Let bigotry and schism, the zealot's fire, the high priest's intolerance, through all their discordancy tremble, while an enlightened Parliament, with arms of general protection, overarches the whole community, and roots the Protestant ascendency in the sovereign

mercy of its nature. Laws of coercion, perhaps necessary, certainly severe, you have put forth already, but your great engine of power you have hitherto kept back; that engine, which the pride of the bigot, nor the spite of the zealot, nor the ambition of the high priest, nor the arsenal of the conqueror, nor the inquisition, with its jaded rack and pale criminal, never thought of; the engine which, armed with physical and moral blessing, comes forth and overlays mankind by services the engine of redress; this is government, and this the only description of government worth your ambition. Were I to raise you to a great act, I should not recur to the history of other nations; I would recite your own acts, and set you in emulation with yourselves. Do you remember that night when you gave your country a free trade, and with your own hands opened all her harbours?—that night when you gave her a free constitution, and broke the chains of a century, while England, eclipsed at your glory and your island, rose as it were from its bed, and got nearer the sun? In the arts that polish life, the inventions that accommodate, the manufactures that adorn it, you will be for many years inferior to some other parts of Europe; but to nurse a growing people, to mature a struggling though hardy community, to mould, to multiply, to consolidate, to inspire, and to exalt a young nation, be these your barbarous accomplishments!

I speak this to you, from a long knowledge of your character, and the various resources of your soil, and I confide my motion to those principles not only of justice, but of fire, which I have observed to exist in your composition, and occasionally to break out in flame of public zeal, leaving the ministers of the crown in eclipsed degradation. Therefore I have not come to you furnished merely with a cold mechanical plan, but have submitted to your consideration the living grievances, conceiving that anything in the shape of oppression made once apparent-oppression too, of a people you have set freethe evil will catch those warm, susceptible properties which abound in your mind, and qualify you for legislation.

April 14, 1788.

The next resolution relates to the sustenance of the poor, as the two others relate immediately to their industry. It is proposed to put the poor of the south on the same footing with the poor of the north, east. and west, by exempting his potato-garden from tithe.