Thus it appears there are 3195 offices shared among about eight hundred and fifty individuals, whose aggregate ecclesiastical revenue amounts to £1,426,587, averaging £1678 to each person. Such proportions between numbers, offices, and revenue are certainly without parallel. There is no example any where of 850 persons possessing, in see-lands and glebes, one-eighteenth part of the soil, and claiming one-tenth of the produce of the remainder, which supports eight millions of people. No country, however debased by superstition, ever abandoned so large a portion of its real property, in addition to a tenth part of the national income, for the maintenance of a priesthood, forming less than a nine-thousandth part of the population.

It is not, however, the average income of either the Irish or English ecclesiastic that constitutes the principal abuse in their respective establishments. Although both churches might very well spare two-thirds of their aggregate revenues, and enough remain for the adequate remuneration of spiritual service, still it is not the redundancy of their united incomes that is so objectionable as the unequal and inhuman manner in which they are possessed by candidates of the same grade and pretension. We have before enlarged on this point in our exposition of the Church of England; we have there shown how masses of pay and pluralities of office are heaped on clerical sinecurists enjoying high connexions and influence; while the most useful and meritorious labourers in the ministry, divested of patronage, are kept in the most miserable poverty and dependence. Precisely the same injustice predominates in the Irish church. In the latter the grievance is more intolerable, for, in Ireland, church-patronage is chiefly in the hands of ecclesiastics, and it is invariably observed that the clergy have less regard for their brethren, and are more blindly intent on promoting their own personal and family interests than laymen.

We shall insert a tabular representation of the patronage of the Irish church; the number of parishes in Ireland is greater than appears from the subjoined statement, as is evident from the Ecclesiastical Register. But it is a point on which there is much difference of opinion, originating in the uncertain boundaries of parishes, aud the extraordinary manner they have been consolidated, to serve the purposes of clerical rapacity.

The Irish bishops have a far greater proportion of patronage than the English bishops: the former have the gift of 1392 livings out of 2168; the latter have only the gift of 1290 out of 11,598. The livings, too, in the gift of the Irish bishops are far more valuable. Those in the gift of the Archbishop of Cashel are worth £35,000 per annum; those in the gift of the Bishop of Cloyne, £50,000; of Cork, £30,000; and of Ferns, £30,000. In the see of Cloyne ONE living is worth £3000, one worth £2000, and three worth £1500 each. A living of £500, as we have seen, is but a middling one in Ireland, and any thing beneath it is considered very low.

The king's ministers nominating the bishops, and these having the disposal of all the livings, with the exception of a few belonging to the Universities, lay lords, and those that are tithe free, nearly the whole of the tithes and church revenues of Ireland are in the gift of the crown. Hence we may see how discouraging was the prospect of ecclesiastical

reform under Tory ministers. The Irish sees were almost in the exclusive possession of their thick-and-thin supporters, in the families of the Beresfords, the Clancartys, Balcarrases, Mayos, Northlands, Rodens, Hoaths, Kilkennys, Caledons, &c. among whom one looks in vain for a single scholar or celebrated divine. Indeed the Irish Protestant Establishment formed a convenient and almost inexhaustible fund for parliamentary corruption; and appointments to it, like those in the Colonies, being out of sight of the English public, were often made without any regard to decency. Thus a lieutenant in the navy has been made an archbishop; a member of the House of Commons, a dean; a proprietor, and it is said editor, of a newspaper, a chancellor; and an aide-de-camp at the Castle, a rich rector. Such men as Sir Harcourt Lees, the heroes of Skibbereen and Newtonbarry, and Warburton and Percy Jocelyn, having attained preferments in the church, are still more illustrative. All the Irish representative prelates voted against the Reform Bill on its first introduction. Lord MOUNTCASHEL stated, in the House of Lords, that he knew an archdeacon in Ireland who kept one of the best packs of fox-hounds in the country. Another clergyman, not seven miles distant from the former, had, also, a pack of fox-hounds, with which he regularly hunted; and he knew of a clergyman who, after his duties in the church had been performed, used to meet his brother-huntsmen at the communion-table, on the Sunday, and arrange with them where the hounds were to start for next day. Can these things be, when it is alleged by Sir Robert Peel, that the church has no support to depend upon but her “ own purity?"

However, the love of sporting is not confined to the clergy of the sister kingdom. The English spirituals have also a taste for rural sports, and a good pack of fox-hounds is deemed a suitable appendage to a cure of souls, as will be seen from the following notice: "To be sold, the next presentation to a vicarage, in one of the midland counties, and in the immediate neighbourhood of one or two of the first packs of fox-hounds in the kingdom. The present annual income about £580, subject to curate's salary. The incumbent in his 60th year."Morning Herald, April 15, 1830.

But it is not these matters which engage our attention; we should care little about the sporting propensities of the parsons if they would leave to the industrious the produce of their labour. So far as manners and morals are concerned, the different sects of religionists may be left to watch each other; and that they will do with the most lynx-eyed attention. Only read what Mr. Beverley has written on this subject in his "Letter to the Archbishop of York."

"It surely is not very edifying to behold a clergyman following the hounds, and though the fox-pursuing parsons are of a different opinion, and defend the practice with orthodox arguments, yet they cannot persuade the people to agree with them; in vain do they sing a song concerning manly sport-no harm,' &c.; for their parishioners will not listen to such trash, but indignant at the indecencies of their rectors,

turn away in disgust to find better examples amongst the methodists and independents.

"But indecent and unpopular as is the spectacle of a fox-hunting parson, perhaps one's bile is not a little agitated in these exhibitions, by that sort of vestiary hypocrisy with which they choose to decorate the scandal for it seems to be a received dogma of ecclesiastical decorum, that a parson is not to hunt in a red coat; provided only the scarlet does not appear, the reverend successor of the Apostles may leap over hedge and ditch without the slightest impropriety: give these successors of the Apostles a black or dark grey jacket, a pair of white corderoy breeches, and handsome top-boots, and then you save the character of the church; but if a young priest were to give the view-holloa in a red coat, all men would be shocked, and I suspect that ere long a grand and verbose epistle would come to him from Bishopthorpe.

"The same farce in clothing is kept up throughout; at balls the successors of the Apostles must appear clad in black, or any of the shades of black. Thanks, however, to the ingenuity of tailors and haberdashers, such exquisite tints have of late years been discovered in silk stockings and silk waistcoats, such delicious varieties of light black, raven black, French black, and French whites-the black has been softened into winning lavender-tints, and the white has been so dexterously made to blush a morning blush, that it requires very great ingenuity to discover a layman from a priest in a brilliant ball-room. These, however, who are more apostolical, take the bull by the horns, and venture to place black-tinted buttons on the breasts of their shirts, a mark of the priestly office not easily to be mistaken! Of such a toilet there is great hope, and it would be a shame indeed if the black-button-bearing priests did not become rich pluralists at last."

Mr. Beverley of Beverley is such a nice connoisseur in drapery, that we suspect him of being a bit of an exquisite himself: he is evidently an intense evangelical, and, for aught we know, may be a believer in Mr. Irving's new revelation of a "gift of tongues."

Non-residence of the Irish Clergy.

It is a curious fact that, during the sway of the Catholic Church, no man was permitted to hold a benefice who did not perform the duties of it upon the spot, and it was left for the Reformation, which is said to have established religion in greater perfection, to entitle a man to a large income for the cure of souls in a district which he never visited. A great proportion of the Irish Bishops, Dignitaries, and Incumbents, are absentees; many of them whiling away their time on the Continent, and others dissipating their large revenues in the fashionable circles of Brighton and London. With the single exception of the Bishop of Kildare all the archbishops and bishops have each, within their respective dioceses, an episcopal residence, or see-house, with parks, chases,

and demesne-lands attached. Yet they spend little or none of their time in Ireland in superintending the clergy. The families of some prelates reside constantly in England, and the only duty performed by the bishop is to cross the water in the summer months, take a peep at the "palace," and then return to give grand dinners, and mingle in the gaieties of the metropolis, for the remainder of the year. The late Earl of Bristol, Bishop of Derry, resided twenty years abroad, and during that time received the revenues of his rich diocese, amounting to £240,000. This Right Rev. Prelate was the intimate associate of Lady Hamilton, the kept-mistress of Lord Nelson. The bishop lived in Italy, spending his princely income, wrung from the soil and labour of Ireland, among the fiddlers and prostitutes of that debauched country. The great primate Rokeby resided at Bath, and never visited Ireland. The parochial clergy are not more exemplary. Upwards of one-third of the whole number of incumbents do not reside on their benefices. Some of them, with incomes of £5,000 or £10,000 a-year, are living in France, with their wives and families. Others live at Bath, on account of the gout. Most of them never see their parishes, deriving their incomes through the medium of agents, or of tithe-farmers, and engaging a curate at some £30 or £50 a-year to attend once on each Sunday to read prayers; often, perhaps, only to the parish clerk.

According to the Diocesan Returns, in 1819, the following was the state of the provinces, as regards parochial residence and duty :—

The province of Ulster, containing 443 parishes or unions, had 351 incumbents resident, or near enough to do duty.

The province of Leinster, 281 parishes or unions, with 189 incumbents resident, or near enough to do duty.

The province of Munster, 419 parishes or unions, with 281 incumbents resident, or near enough to do duty.

The province of Connaught, 95 parishes or unions, with 65 incumbents resident, or near enough to do duty.

Thus, in 354 parishes or unions, there was neither an incumbent resident, nor near enough to do the duty of his benefice. These returns make the number of incumbents, resident and non-resident, amount to 1240. It is unnecessary to explain, after what has been already stated, that there are not actually so many individuals. The deception results from pluralities. Every benefice with cure has an incumbent; but, as each incumbent often holds two or more benefices, or is rector and vicar of the same parish, it reduces the number of individuals to the amount previously stated, namely seven hundred,

One great excuse for the neglect of duty by the protestant clergy is that they have scarcely any duty to perform. Notwithstanding all the inducements offered by the established religion, notwithstanding its monopoly of tithes, honours, power, and emoluments, it has scarcely any followers. A protestant is as rare to be met with in Ireland, as a JEW in England. Out of a population of eight millions, there are little more than half a million communicants of the state religion. The consequence is, that the church establishment is little better than an

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