_Is Good News from Ireland True? Remarks on the position and prospects
of the Irish Church Establishment._ By H. S. Cunningham, of the Inner
Temple, Barrister-at-Law. London, Longman, 1864; pp. 45.
Autumn leaves do not fall in Vallombrosa more frequent than the
invectives which, for the last thirty years, have been constantly
directed against the Irish Church Establishment. Men of views the most
unlike, have contributed their share to this hostile literature. Lord
Normanby and Count Cavour present very dissimilar types of mind and
feeling, and yet both are of accord in condemning the Establishment in
Ireland. Lord Palmerston and Mr. Disraeli see things from opposite
standpoints, and yet neither of them has praise to bestow upon it. Every
species of composition which could be employed as a weapon of offence
has been made to tell the wrath of men against the monster grievance.
This rich variety of arguments against the Establishment has its
advantage and its disadvantage. It is, no doubt, an advantage that light
should be poured in upon every side of a question so important. But it
is a disadvantage to discover the question to have so many sides, that
it becomes a task to master them all. It is not our present purpose to
increase the literature of this subject by adding another to the already
large list of attacks of which we have spoken above. Our object is
rather to set forth the one argument against the Establishment, which,
upon an analysis of that literature, is found to underlie all the
others. If we consider the various charges against the Law-Church in
Ireland mainly in reference to what they have in common, we discover
that they are, generally speaking, modifications of this one objection,
viz., that the Irish Establishment is an unjust application of state
funds. No doubt there are other and more solemn reasons to be urged
against it. No Catholic can be indifferent to the presence within it of
that poison of error which robs the Church of so many children, and
Heaven of so many souls. Judged upon grounds such as these, it is
already condemned. But the struggle is now mainly transferred to a field
other than that of religious principles. We base our objections against
the Establishment on this--that it is a political and social injustice.
We cannot expect all to agree with us in believing the Establishment to
be a fountain of erroneous doctrine; but Mr. Cunningham's little work,
named at the head of this article, is an excellent proof that
right-minded men, of whatever creed, will join us in protesting against
it as a political and social wrong. The proof that the Established
Church is an unjust application of state funds may be stated thus:--
The State has some six hundred thousand pounds to administer every year
in the religious interests of the population of Ireland. Of that
population, seventy-seven per cent. are Catholics, the remainder
belonging to various sects of Protestantism. The State, when it does not
persecute, at least completely ignores the religion of the seventy-seven
per cent., and gives that enormous sum of the public money of the
country to the religion of the remaining fraction of the population. Can
any injustice be more flagrant than this?
The force of this argument rests on two assertions: One, that the
Catholics have an immense numerical majority over the Protestants; the
other, that an enormous sum of public money is squandered upon the
Establishment. If these assertions can be once proved, the argument is
simply crushing in its conclusiveness. Now, the proof of these
assertions is easy, and cannot be too often repeated to the Catholics of
Ireland.
On the 17th of April, 1861, the resident population of Ireland were
taken as follows:--
Members of the Established Church, 11.9 per cent.
Roman Catholics, 77.7 "
Presbyterians, 9.0 "
Methodists, 0.8 "
Independents, Baptists, and Quakers, 0.1 "
All other persuasions, 0.3 "
Thus out of a total population of 5,798,900, there were in round
numbers, Catholics, four millions and a half; Protestants of all
denominations, rather more than a million and a quarter. In Connaught
the Catholics are 94.8 per cent. of the inhabitants; in Munster, 93; in
Leinster, 85; in Ulster, 50 per cent. The Presbyterians in Ulster are
26.3 per cent. of the whole population. In none of the other provinces
do they reach one per cent.
"The Established Church ranges from 38.4 per cent. in the county of
Fermanagh, its highest level, to 2 per cent. in Clare. In Armagh it
numbers 30 per cent.; in the suburbs of Dublin 35 per cent.; in the
counties of Dublin, Wicklow, Antrim, and Londonderry, between 15
and 20 per cent.; in King's and Queen's counties, Cavan, Carlow,
Kildare, Donegal, Monaghan, and the City of Cork, between 10 and
15; in the counties of Longford, Louth, Meath, Westmeath, Wexford,
Cork, Tipperary (North Riding), Leitrim, and Sligo, and in the
cities of Kilkenny, Limerick, and Waterford, members of the
Establishment are between 5 and 10 per cent.; in the counties of
Kilkenny, Limerick, the South Riding of Tipperary, Kerry,
Roscommon, and the town of Galway, the per-centage is between 3 and
5; while in the counties of Waterford, Galway, and Mayo it is
between 2 and 3, sinking at last to 2 per cent. in Clare.
"The Roman Catholic population has decreased by very nearly two
millions, from 6,430,000 to 4,500,000. The dioceses where the loss
has been greatest have been those of Tuam, Killaloe, Meath, Elphin,
and Cloyne; each of which has lost something more than one-third of
its Catholic inhabitants. Achonry has escaped with the loss of
one-thirtieth, Waterford of that of one-eleventh, while the two
Dioceses of Dublin and Connor have the rare distinction of showing
a slight increase in numbers. In nine dioceses Roman Catholics are
between 95 and 99 per cent. of the total population; in ten they
range between 90 and 95; in four, between 85 and 90; in one,
between 80 and 85; in two, between 75 and 80; while in three their
numbers fall as low as between 26 and 35 per cent....
"Turning to the classification of parishes, we find that there are
at present 199 parishes--5 less than in 1834--containing no member
of the Established Church; 575--nearly one-fourth of the entire
number--containing more than 1 and less than 20 members; 416
containing more than 20 and less than 50 members; 349 where there
are between 50 and 100; and 270 with between 100 and 200 members;
309 between 200 and 300; 141 between 500 and 1,000; 106 between
1,000 and 2,000; 53 between 2,000 and 5,000; 8 parishes only range
as high as 5,000 to 10,000, and 2 between 20,000 and 30,000.
"The Roman Catholics have 532 parishes, to set against 53
Protestant, in which their numbers range between 2,000 and 5,000;
133 parishes with from 5,000 to 10,000 members; 32 in which the
numbers lie between 10,000 to 20,000; and 3 ranging from 20,000 to
30,000. Of landed proprietors 4,000 are registered as Protestant
Episcopalians, 3,500 as Roman Catholics, which seems to prove that
a considerable area of land has now passed into the hands of
Catholic owners, who have accordingly a good right to be heard as
to the employment of state funds, with which the soil is primarily
chargeable".
In face of these statistics there can be no doubt but that the first
assertion is abundantly proved.
As to the second, all the state aid granted to Catholics is involved in
the grant to Maynooth. The Presbyterians have the "Regium Donum", first
given by Charles II., who allowed them L600 secret service money.
William III. made it L1,200 per annum. In 1752 it amounted to L5,000.
To-day it amounts very nearly to L40,000, and is capable of extension on
very easy terms.
The funds of the Established Church, in round numbers, may be stated as
follows:
Annual net income of episcopal sees, L63,000
Revenues of suppressed sees and benefices,
now held and administered by the Ecclesiastical
Commissioners, 117,000
Tithe rent-charge, payable to Ecclesiastical
persons, 400,000
________
L580,000
These figures give an inadequate idea of the real riches of the Church.
The _Dublin University Magazine_, quoted by Mr. Cunningham, says:
"We have before us a letter from a dignitary, whose statement is,
that his predecessor was twenty years in possession, that he leased
severally to one relation after another, as each dropped off, the
lands from which came the emoluments of his office; and, finally,
to his son, who for twenty years after his death is to hold the
land for one-sixth of Griffith's valuation, which, as every one
knows, is as a general rule twenty-five per cent. under the rental,
with a small renewal fine. So that though this dignitary did not
preach in any of his parishes, for he was a pluralist also, for
nearly thirty years, and died leaving a very large sum of money, he
managed to impoverish his successor for the benefit of his heirs
for twenty years after his death. _Qualis artifex pereo!_ must, we
should imagine, have been the reflection of this successor of the
Apostles, as he lay on his bed of death and reflected complacently
on his literal fulfilment of the scriptural mandate, to provide
'for them of his own household', no less than for the interests of
'the Church of God'".
Besides this pilfering on the part of the prelates, we must not forget
the enormous sums sent into this country to help the proselytising
societies in their work. Let Mr. Cunningham give us a few examples from
which we may gain a fair idea of the working of the rest.
"The Hibernian Bible Society, established for diffusing copies of
the Scriptures, of course in a Protestant interest, has, since
1806, spent L80,000 in this way, and has given away more than
3,000,000 copies. The Primitive Wesleyan Methodist Home Missionary
Society has for its object 'the propagation of the Gospel in
Ireland', and employs fifty missionary agents and upwards of fifty
circuit preachers. The Hibernian Wesleyan Methodist Missionary
Society has an income of L137,000,849 missionaries, 1,000 paid, and
15,000 unpaid agents, of whom 25 missionaries, 54 day-school
teachers, and 166 Sunday school teachers are employed in Ireland.
Besides these there are the Irish Evangelical Society, 'for
promoting the Evangelization of Ireland, by the agency of
ministers, evangelists, town missionaries, schools, etc.'; the
Parochial Visitors' Society, for enabling the clergy near Dublin to
'have the assistance of fit persons to act under their direction in
matters which the spirit and constitution of the United Church of
England and Ireland allow its clergy to depute to such agents'; the
Scripture Readers' Society for Ireland, with sixty-four readers,
each with a regular district; the Incorporated Society for
promoting English Protestant schools in Ireland; the Islands and
Coast Society, 'for promoting the scriptural education of the
inhabitants of the islands and coast'; the Irish branch of the
Evangelical Alliance, under the presidency of the Earl of Roden;
the Society for promoting the Education of the Poor in Ireland,
which has educated at its model schools in Kildare Street, 43,000
children, trained 3,000 teachers, and issued a million and a half
of cheap school books; the Church Education Society, maintained in
distinct antagonism to the national system, and to all appearance a
very formidable rival; it has fifteen hundred schools in connection
with it, and 74,000 children on its rolls, of whom, be it observed,
no less than 10,000 are Catholics, receiving 'scriptural
instruction' at the hands of Protestant teachers, and consequently
the objects of as distinct proselytism as can be well imagined.
Then, under the presidency of the Dowager Duchess of Beaufort,
there is the Ladies' Hibernian Female School Society, for
'combining a scriptural education with instruction in plain
needlework'; Gardiner's Charity for apprenticing Protestant boys;
the Sunday School Society, with 2,700 schools on its books, 21,000
gratuitous teachers, and 228,000 scholars; the Irish Society for
promoting the 'scriptural education of Irish Roman Catholics'; the
Ladies' Irish Association, with a similar object; Morgan's Endowed
School, 'for forty boys of respectable Protestant parentage';
Mercer's Endowed School, 'for forty girls of respectable Protestant
parentage'; the Protestant Society, with 430 orphans; the
Charitable Protestant Orphan Union, for 'orphans who, having had
only one Protestant parent, are therefore ineligible for the
Protestant Orphan Society'; and last, though not least, on the
imposing catalogue, the Society for Irish Church Missions to Roman
Catholics, and the West Connaught Endowment Fund Society".
In addition, then, to six hundred thousand pounds of public money, all
this enormous income is yearly spent to uphold in Ireland the religion
of a fraction of the population!
It would take us too far out of our way to follow the author in his
investigation of the results obtained by these powerful resources,
especially in the west of Ireland. Let it be enough to say that he
rejects the current stories about wholesale conversions to Protestantism
among the peasants of the West. But we cannot pass over the following
remarks made by Mr. Cunningham on the handbill method of controversy
adopted by the proselytisers.
"After politely requesting the reader not to 'be offended on
receiving this', the handbill goes on to state that the invocations
of the Madonna and saints are 'pronounced by the Bible to be the
awful sin of idolatry, and that all idolaters have their place in
the lake that burneth with fire and brimstone. Do not be hurt',
continues this agreeable mentor, 'at this strong statement, but
think! is it true?' Do not be hurt! And this, after a summary
statement that the religion of three-fourths of the Christian
world, the creed of whole generations of the best, purest, and most
devoted of mankind, the hope and joy in life and death of millions
of humble and faithful saints--is pronounced by the Bible to be
punishable with the everlasting torments of hell fire! Verily, if
this be the 'spirit and manner' of these 'true Christian pastors',
the less we hear of this new Reformation the better!"
The charge of being a political and social injustice, which we have
brought against the Establishment, is fully proved by what has hitherto
been said. Even if there were no other arguments on which to rest our
case, save the single one which we have developed above, it must be
admitted that we have made good our accusation. "I hold", said Lord
Palmerston in 1845, "that the revenues of the Church of Ireland were
destined primarily for the religious instruction of the people of
Ireland.... It is impossible, in my opinion, that the present state of
things in Ireland, in regard to the establishments of the two sects, can
be permanent". But there is more. Evil is ever the parent of evil; and
in one comprehensive injustice like the Irish Establishment are involved
a thousand minor wrongs. The effects of these wrongs in Ireland, and the
mischief wrought by them on our people, we daily see with our own eyes,
and hear with our own ears. But to Mr. Cunningham we are indebted for a
striking and rather novel view of the Establishment, as a source of
mischief to England also. The very guilt she has incurred by the
perpetration of so great an injustice, is, in Mr. Cunningham's opinion,
the greatest of misfortunes. "To do wrong is a far greater misfortune
than to endure it. No man enjoys a wrongful privilege, tramples on his
fellow-citizens, or violates fair play, without forthwith incurring a
moral loss, compared with which, any external advantage is a bauble
indeed". Noble words these: and most refreshingly do they fall upon
Catholic ears, wearied with the noisy utilitarian philosophy of the day.
Nor does the Establishment confer any external or material advantage on
England. On the contrary, it is preparing for her some grievous and
humiliating calamity. Who sows the wind must expect to reap the
whirlwind; and no other harvest but calamity can possibly be gathered
from the evil seed of disaffection on one side, and of tyranny on the
other, which the Establishment has sown in Ireland. Mr. Cunningham thus
describes how the chronic disaffection of Irishmen is produced:
"The church funds of Ireland belong, without the possibility of a
cavil, to the Irish nation; that nation has, from one reason or
another, persistently refused to follow us in deserting the general
creed of Christendom. They have clung and still cling to their
faith with that desperate tenacity which persecution best
engenders.... But the gradual abandonment of the atrocious penal
code--as one by one its provisions became revolting to the
increased humanity of the age--was a virtual confession that we
gave up all hope of driving the Irish Catholics within the pale of
our church.... Angry at resistance, the English government,
cooperating with English fanaticism, set itself deliberately to
persecute, degrade, almost destroy, those whom it could not succeed
in converting. All has been tried, and the Establishment remains,
as of old, the privilege of a powerful minority, the badge of
conquest upon a prostrate race, a perpetual source of
irritation--and nothing more. So far from being Protestantised, the
Irish are already the hottest Ultramontanes in Europe, and are
assuming more and more the triumphant air to which their numerical
ascendancy entitles them. There is not the ghost of a chance of
Ireland becoming other than she is, or of the Establishment making
such strides as might render her present position less
transparently absurd. The one question is this, whether we choose
to perpetuate a state of things condemned by all statesmen as
vicious in principle, and proved by long experience to be
productive of nothing but a tyrannising temper, on the one hand,
and chronic disaffection on the other. Every Irish peasant has
sense enough to appreciate the injustice of the arrangement which
obliges him to build his chapel, pay the priest, and gives his
landlord a church and parson for nothing. He may be excused too for
a feeling of annoyance, as he trudges past the empty parish church,
supported at the public expense, to some remote chapel crowded with
peasants, out of whose abject poverty the necessary funds for its
support have to be wrung. He may be excused if his notions of fair
play, equal rights, and political loyalty, are somewhat indistinct,
and that where the law is from the outset a manifest wrong-doer, it
should be sometimes superseded by rougher and more effective
expedients. He is naturally a rebel, because the state proclaims
herself his enemy. He naturally thinks it monstrous that any
proprietor of the soil should have it in his power to refuse the
inhabitants a spot of ground on which to celebrate their religious
rites; that men, women, and children should be obliged to walk
five, six, and even ten miles to the nearest place of worship; that
education should be constantly refused, except coupled with open
and systematic proselytism; that terrorism and coercion, the mean
contrivances of bigotry, should be suffered to do their worst,
without the strong hand of government intervening to lighten the
blow, or provide means of protection"--pages 28, 29.
All this is well said: nor is the author less happy in his description
of the tyrannising temper which it fosters on the part of the
Protestants.
"And if the Establishment works ill as regards the Catholic masses,
its effects on the privileged minority seem to us scarcely less
disastrous. It engenders a tone of arrogant, violent, uncharitable
bigotry, which happily is unknown in this country beyond the
precincts of Exeter Hall and the columns of the 'religious'
newspapers. Indeed, we have only to turn to 'Good News from
Ireland', to assure ourselves of the detestable temper in which
these modern Reformers set about the process of evangelisation, and
of the extraordinary hardihood of assertion by which their
ministrations are characterised. The creed of an Irish peasant may
be superstitious--where is the peasant whose creed is anything
else?--but religion in Ireland has at any rate, in the true spirit
of Christianity, found its way to the wretched, the degraded, the
despairing: it has refined, comforted, ennobled those whom
external circumstances seemed expressly designed to crush them into
absolute brutality. The Irish peasant is never the mere animal that
for centuries English legislators tried to make him. He is a
troublesome subject, indeed, and has a code of his own as to the
'wild justice' to which the oppressed may, in the last instance,
resort; but in the domestic virtues, chastity, kindliness,
hospitality, he stands, at least, as well as English or Scotch of
the same condition in life. As regards domestic purity, indeed,
Ireland, by universal confession, rises as much above the ordinary
standard as Scotland falls below it: and as regards intemperance,
there has been in Ireland of late years a marked improvement, for
which unhappily no counterpart is to be found in any other part of
the United Kingdom. Yet we are gravely invited to believe, on the
testimony of a few hot-brained fanatics, that the whole Catholic
system in Ireland is one vast conspiracy against piety, happiness,
and civilisation....
"That Protestants are perfectly well aware of the mortification
entailed upon their Catholic fellow-subjects by the existing state
of things, and regard it with complacent acquiescence, is not the
least painful feature of the case. The Irish Church is bad, not
only in itself, but as being the last of a long series of
oppressions which fear, passion, or necessity have at various times
led the English to inflict upon their feeble neighbour. There have
been periods when the deliberate idea of even intelligent
politicians was, that the one population should exterminate the
other; and Burke has pointed out how the religious animosities,
which seem now the great cause of dispute, are in reality only a
new phase of far earlier hostility, grounded originally on
conquest, and strengthened by the cruelties which conquest
involved. It is to some such fierce mood, traditionally familiar to
the ruling race, that an institution so unjust in principle, so
troublesome in practice, so incurably barren of all useful result,
can appeal for sanction and support. The blind and almost ferocious
bigotry of Irish Presbyterians is owing, one would fain hope, less
to personal temperament than to the tastes and convictions of a
ruder age, embodied in evil customs and a conventionally violent
phraseology. And the same is more or less true of their
Episcopalian brethren. It is from the calmer feelings and more
discriminating judgment of the English nation that any remedial
measure is expected"--pages 33-37.
We have nothing to add to this. Every Catholic will recognize the truth
of the picture thus ably drawn. Our obligations to Mr. Cunningham do
not, however, end here. There is still another lesson which, although he
does not mean to teach it, we are glad to learn from him. It is this.
Speaking of the paid clergy of the Establishment, he says:--
"So far from assisting the government in its schemes, they are
among its bitterest opponents. Dr. Cullen himself is hardly more
hostile to the National Education System than these paid officials
of the state, for whom the one possible excuse would be an
unflinching support of state measures. The Church Education
Society numbers something like two-thirds of the Established clergy
among its adherents, and is one of the most serious difficulties
with which at present the cause of National Education has to
contend. What shall be done with these spaniels that forget to
cringe, but bark and snap at the hand that feeds them? Might they
not, at any rate, be scourged and starved into a more submissive
mood?"--page 43.
These words reveal to us the position which men of the world would
expect a clergy paid by the state to assume towards the state. From
being ministers of God, they are to become paid officials of the state;
from being the stewards of things divine, they are to recommend
themselves to their masters by an unflinching support of the state
measures. And if conscience should at any time call upon them to refuse
the support demanded at their hands, the government has the power and
the will to scourge and starve them into a more submissive mood. What a
practical commentary does Mr. Cunningham here offer on the words used by
Mgr. Brancadoro,[C] in declining the pension offered by the British
Government in 1805! Better, far better, poverty with the liberty of the
sanctuary, than rich endowments with slavery. We demand the abolition of
the Establishment on the broad grounds of social equality and justice,
and not because we wish to enrich ourselves with its spoils. We are rich
enough in the love of that noble Irish race, than which none other ever
gave more blessed consolation to the ministers of Christ.