Beacon Lights of History, Volume 10 | Page 8

of Commons from the
radical members and from O'Connell and his followers. Nevertheless it
passed, with some alterations, and was at once put in force in the
county of Kilkenny, with satisfactory results. The diminution of crime
was most marked; and as the excuse for disturbances arose chiefly from
the compulsory tithes which the Catholic population were obliged to
pay in support of the Protestant Church, the ministry wisely attempted
to alleviate the grievance. It was doubtless a great injustice for
Catholics to be compelled to support the Established Church of
England; but the ministry were not prepared to go to the length which
the radicals and the Irish members demanded,--the complete
suppression of the tithe system; in other words, "the disestablishment of
the Irish Church." They were willing to sacrifice a portion of the tithes,
to reduce the number of bishops, and to apply some of the ecclesiastical
property to secular purposes. But even this concession called out a
fierce outcry from the conservatives, in and out of Parliament. A most
formidable opposition came from the House of Lords, headed by Lord
Eldon; but the ministers were at last permitted to carry out their
measure.
Nothing satisfactory, however, was accomplished in reference to the
collection of tithes, in spite of the concession of the ministers. The old
difficulty remained. Tithes could not be collected except at the point of
the bayonet, which of course was followed by crimes and disturbances
that government could not prevent. In 1833 the arrears of tithes
amounted to over a million of pounds, and the Protestant clergy were
seriously distressed. The cost of collecting tithes was enormous, from
the large coercive force which the government was obliged to maintain.
When the pay of soldiers and policemen is considered, it took £25,000
to collect £12,000. The collection of tithes became an impossibility
without a war of extermination. Every expedient failed. Even the
cabinet was divided on all the schemes proposed; for every member of
it was determined to uphold the Established Church, in some form or
other.

At last Mr. Ward, member for St. Albans, in 1834 brought forward in
the Commons a measure which had both reason and justice to
commend it. After showing that the collection of tithes was the real
cause of Irish discontents, that only a fourteenth of the population of
Ireland were in communion with the English Church, that nearly half of
the clergy were non-residents, and that there was a glaring inequality in
the salaries of clergymen,--so that some rectors received from £500 to
£1,000 in parishes where there were only ten or twelve Protestants,
while some of the resident clergy did duty for less than £20 per
annum,--he moved the following: "Resolved, that as the Protestant
Episcopal Establishment of Ireland exceeds the spiritual wants of the
Protestant population, it is the opinion of the House that the temporal
possessions of the Church of Ireland ought to be reduced." The motion
was seconded by Mr. Grote, the celebrated historian; but Lord Althorp
rose and requested the House to adjourn, in consequence of
circumstances he was not prepared to mention. All understood that
there was trouble in the cabinet itself; and when the House reassembled,
it was found that the Duke of Richmond, Earl Ripon, Lord Stanley
(colonial secretary), and Sir James Graham, being opposed to the
appropriation of the funds of the Irish Church to other than
ecclesiastical purposes, had resigned. The king himself was strongly
opposed to the motion, to say nothing of the peers; and the conservative
part of the nation, from the long-inherited jealousy of the Catholic
Church, stood upon the same ground.
While ministers were tinkering on the affairs of Ireland, without lofty
purpose or sense of justice or enlightened reason even, the gigantic
figure of O'Connell appeared in striking contrast with the statesmen
who opposed him and tried in vain to intimidate him. The great agitator
had made his power felt long before the stormy debates in favor of
reform took place, which called out the energies of Brougham,--the
only man in England to be compared with O'Connell in genius, in
eloquence, in intellect, and in wrath, but inferior to him in the power of
moving the passions of an audience, yet again vastly superior to him in
learning. While Brougham was thundering in the senate in behalf of
reform,--the most influential and the most feared of all its members,
without whose aid nothing could be done,--O'Connell was haranguing

the whole Catholic population of Ireland in favor of a repeal of the
Union, looking upon the evils which ground down his countrymen as
beyond a remedy under the English government. He also made his
voice ring with startling vehemence in the English Parliament, as soon
as the Catholic Emancipation bill enabled him to enter it as