The penal code in Ireland, in the beginning of the last century, was
justifiable, as a temporary mean of enabling government to take breath and
look about them; and if right measures had been systematically pursued in a
right spirit, there can be no doubt that all, or the greater part, of
Ireland would have become Protestant. Protestantism under the Charter
Schools was greatly on the increase in the early part of that century, and
the complaints of the Romish priests to that effect are on record. But,
unfortunately, the drenching-horn was itself substituted for the medicine.
* * * * *
There seems to me, at present, to be a curse upon the English church, and
upon the governors of all institutions connected with the orderly
advancement of national piety and knowledge; it is the curse of prudence,
as they miscall it--in fact, of fear.
Clergymen are now almost afraid to explain in their pulpits the grounds of
their being Protestants. They are completely cowed by the vulgar harassings
of the press and of our Hectoring sciolists in Parliament. There should be
no _party_ politics in the pulpit to be sure; but every church in England
ought to resound with national politics,--I mean the sacred character of
the national church, and an exposure of the base robbery from the nation
itself--for so indeed it is[1]--about to be committed by these ministers,
in order to have a sop to throw to the Irish agitators, who will, of
course, only cut the deeper, and come the oftener. You cannot buy off a
barbarous invader.
[Footnote 1:
"That the maxims of a pure morality, and those sublime truths of the divine
unity and attributes, which a Plato found it hard to learn, and more
difficult to reveal; that these should have become the almost hereditary
property of childhood and poverty, of the hovel and the workshop; that even
to the unlettered they sound as _common-place_; this is a phenomenon which
must withhold all but minds of the most vulgar cast from undervaluing the
services even of the pulpit and the reading-desk. Yet he who should confine
the efficiency of an established church to these, can hardly be placed in a
much higher rank of intellect. That to every parish throughout the kingdom
there is transplanted a germ of civilization; that in the remotest villages
there is a nucleus, round which the capabilities of the place may
crystallize and brighten; a model sufficiently superior to excite, yet
sufficiently near to encourage and facilitate imitation; _this_
unobtrusive, continuous agency of a Protestant church establishment, _this_
it is, which the patriot and the philanthropist, who would fain unite the
love of peace with the faith in the progressive amelioration of mankind,
cannot estimate at too high a price. 'It cannot be valued with the gold of
Ophir, with the precious onyx, or the sapphire. No mention shall be made of
coral or of pearls; for the price of wisdom is above rubies.'--The
clergyman is with his parishioners and among them; he is neither in the
cloistered cell, nor in the wilderness, but a neighbour and family man,
whose education and rank admit him to the mansion of the rich landholder,
while his duties make him the frequent visitor of the farm-house and the
cottage. He is, or he may become, connected with the families of his parish
or its vicinity by marriage. And among the instances of the blindness, or
at best of the short-sightedness, which it is the nature of cupidity to
inflict, I know few more striking than the clamours of the farmers against
church property. Whatever was not paid to the clergyman would inevitably at
the next lease be paid to the landholder; while, as the case at present
stands, the revenues of the church are in some sort the reversionary
property of every family that may have a member educated for the church, or
a daughter that may marry a clergyman. Instead of being _foreclosed_ and
immovable, it is, in fact, the only species of landed property that is
essentially moving and circulative. That there exist no inconveniences who
will pretend to assert?--But I have yet to expect the proof, that the
inconveniences are greater in this than in any other species; or that
either the farmers or the clergy would be benefited by forcing the latter
to become either _Trullibers_ or salaried _placemen_."--_Church and State_,
p. 90.]
_March_ 12. 1833.