Chapter XXII, of Cassells Illustrated History of England, Volume 7 page 3

These disorders appealed with irresistible force to the government and the legislature to put an end to a system fraught with so much evil, and threatening the utter disruption of society in Ireland. In the first place something must be done to meet the wants of the destitute clergy and their families. Accordingly, Mr# Stanley brought in a bill in May, 1832, authorising the lord lieutenant of Ireland to advance £60,000 as a fund for the payment of the clergy, who were unable to collect their tithes for the year 1831. This measure was designed to meet the present necessity, and was only a preliminary to the promised settlement of the tithe question. It was therefore passed quickly through both houses, and became law on the 1st of June. But the money thus advanced was not placed on the consolidated fund. The government took upon itself the collection of the arrears of tithes for that one year. It was a maxim with Mr. Stanley that the people should be made to respect the law; that they should not be allowed to trample upon it with impunity. The odious task thus assumed produced a state of unparalleled excitement. The people were driven to frenzy, instead of being frightened by the chief secretary becoming tithe- collector general, and the army being employed in its collection. They knew that the king's speech had recommended the settlement of the tithe question. They had heard of the evidence of bishop Doyle and other champions, exposing what they believed to be the iniquity of the tithe system. They had seen the condemnation of it in the testimony of the protestant archbishop of Dublin, who declared his conviction that it could not be collected except at the point of the bayonet, and by keeping up a chronic war between the government and the Roman catholic people. They had been told that parliamentary committees had recommended the complete extinction of tithes, and their commutation into a rent-charge. Their own leaders had everywhere resolved, " That it was a glaring wrong to compel an impoverished catholic people to support in pampered luxury the richest clergy in the world - a clergy from whom the catholics do not experience even the return of common gratitude - a clergy who, in times past, opposed to the last the political freedom of the Irish people, and at the present day are opposed to reform, and a liberal scheme of education for their countrymen. The ministers of the God of charity should not, by misapplication of all the tithes to their own private uses, thus deprive the poor of their patrimony; nor should ministers of peace adhere with such desperate tenacity to a system fraught with dissension, hatred, and ill-will." The first proceeding of the government to recover the tithes under the act of the 1st of June was, therefore, the signal for general war. Bonfires blazed upon the hills, the rallying sounds of horns were heard along the valleys, and the mustering tread of thousands upon the roads, hurrying to the scene of a seizure or an auction. It was a bloody campaign; there was considerable loss of life, and the church and the government thus became more obnoxious to the people than ever. Mr. Stanley being the commander-in-chief on one side, and Mr. O'Connell on the other, the contest was embittered by their personal antipathies. It was found that the amount of the arrears for the year 1831 was £104,285, and that the whole amount which the government was able to levy, after putting forth its strength in every possible way, was £12,000, the cost of collection being £15,000, so that the government was not able to raise as much money as would pay the expenses of the campaign. This was how Mr. Stanley illustrated his favourite sentiment that the people should be made to respect the law. But the liberal party among the protestants fully sympathised with the anti-tithe recusants.

Of course, the government did not persevere in prosecutions from which no parties but the lawyer? reaped any advantage; consequently, all processes under the existing law were abandoned. It was found that, after paying to the clergy the arrears of 1831 and 1832, and what would be due in 1833, about a million sterling would be required, and this sum was provided by an issue of exchequer bills. The reimbursement of the advance was to be effected by a land-tax. Together with these temporary arrangements to meet the exigency of the case, for the payment of the clergy and the pacification of Ireland, an act was passed to render tithe composition in Ireland compulsory and permanent. But Ireland was not yet pacified, and at the opening of the session for 1833, the royal speech recommended that parliament should take into their consideration measures for a final adjustment of tithes in Ireland. The duke of Wellington took occasion to state in the debate on the address that that most deserving class of men, the Irish, clergy, were in as wretched a state as ever. And in the house of commons, Mr. Littleton, the new chief secretary who succeeded Mr. Stanley, deplored the failure of all legislative efforts to make the tithe system work well in Ireland. The statute-book, he said, had been loaded with enactments by the legislatures of both countries, for the purpose of giving the proprietors of tithes effectual means to enforce the law. The whole of those enactments had proved ineffectual; many of them, of the most severe description, extending even to capital punishment, had proved utterly useless. The difficulty of collecting tithes was, indeed, rendered quite insuperable by the minute subdivision of tilled land, which was alone liable. It was stated " that a return of the actual number of defaulters, whose debts were under a farthing, and rose by farthings up to a shilling, would exhibit a very large proportion of the gross number. In some instances the charge upon the land amounted to only seven-eighths of a farthing. When he informed the committee that many of the smaller sums were payable by three or four persons, some idea might be formed of the difficulty of collecting tithes in Ireland. The highest aggregate charge was against those who owed individually about twopence; and he would then beg to remind the committee that it was not so much the sum as the situation of the individual, that rendered these charges oppressive. Twopence to one might be as great an impost as £2 to another. There was another great severity connected with the question of tithes. They were not simple. One proprietor alone did not come to the poor man to demand his tithes; but many, whose interests were irreconcileable and adverse, fastened upon him. There were different kinds of tithes - the vicarial, rectorial, and impropriate - all often fastening on the same individual, who was bound to meet the separate demands of each tithe- owner. The opposition to tithes, then, though it might receive an impulse from agitation, was not to be wholly traced to that source. There was a deeper source in the severity of the impost itself."

It appears from a parliamentary return that, at the lowest calculation, the land belonging to the Irish sees is as follows: -

Sees. - No. of Irish Acres.
Derry - 94,836
Armagh - 63,470
Kilmore - 51,350
Dublin - 28,781
Meatn - 18,374
Ossory - 13,391
Tuam - 49,281
Elphin - 31,017
Clogher - 32,817
Cork and Ross - 22,755
Cashel - 12,800
Killaloe - 11,081
Tithes - £555,000
Ministers' Monoy - 10,300
Total - £565,300

The incomes of the parochial clergy in Ireland were subject to some deductions, as payments towards diocesan and parochial schools, repairs of certain parts of churches, and repairs of glebe-houses. Diocesan schools ought to be maintained by annual contributions from the bishop and the beneficed clergy; but the levy drawn from this source was little more than nominal. The parochial schools were supposed to be maintained by an annual stipend from the incumbent, which was estimated by custom at £2 per ###um; in many cases this had not been paid. The ###-fruits have been abolished. They were designed to be the amount of the first year's income of every benefice, which was to be employed in the building and repairing of churches and glebe-houses, and the purchase of glebe-land; but the assessment was made on the value of benefices in the reigns of Henry VIII., Elizabeth, and James I., and yielded only a trifling sum.

It may be well to anticipate a little here, in order to state the result of a special census of the Irish population which was taken in 1834, with the object of ascertaining the religious persuasions of the people, when it was found that the total population of 7,954,760 was divided among the several denominations as follows: -

In the appendix to the first report of the commissioners of public instruction, issued in 1834, it was stated that of the 1,387 benefices in Ireland, there were 41 which did not contain any protestants; 20 where there were less than or not more than 5; in 23 the number was under 10; in 31 under 15; in 23 under 20; and in 27 benefices, the number of protestants was not above 25. There were 425 benefices in which the number of protestants was below 100. There were 157 benefices in which the incumbent was non-resident, and no service was performed. The number of parishes or ecclesiastical districts was 2,408, and of this number 2,351 possess a provision for the cure of souls; but the total number of benefices was only 1,387, as before mentioned, of which 908 were single parishes, and 479 were unions of two or more parishes. Parishes were permanently united by act of parliament, by act of council, or by prescription, and they might be temporarily united by the authority of the bishop of the diocese. Latterly, perpetual curates, a new order in the Irish church, had been appointed to a portion of a parish specially allotted to them, the tithe of which they received, and were not subject to the incumbent of the remaining portion of the parish, but held their situations for life.

Such was the state of things in Ireland when the government of lord Grey undertook the work of church reform. There was a great deal of discussion in parliament and throughout the country on what was termed " the appropriation clause," which formed a part of the first bill introduced on the subject. Dr. Doyle had laboured hard to prove that tithes were originally designed, not only to support the clergy, but to feed and educate the poor; and that there should be for these objects a tripartite division of the Irish tithes. Many protestants, who did not go that length, contended that the income of the Irish clergy was excessive, and that the surplus should be devoted to the support of schools; but the great point of difference on which the cabinet ultimately split was this: whether the property of the church should be devoted to any other than strictly church purposes - whether any portion of the ecclesiastical revenues could be lawfully secularised. In the first Church Temporalities Bill there was a clause affirming the principle that the surplus ought to be devoted to other purposes, to which Mr. Stanley, Sir James Graham, the duke of Richmond, and others, strenuously objected, and it was withdrawn.

When Mr. Stanley was transferred from the office of Irish chief secretary to the colonial office, Sir John Cam Hobhouse was appointed to succeed him. But he resigned the post before he had any opportunity of leaving his mark in Ireland. The post was then taken by Mr. Littleton, and on him devolved the task of introducing the Irish Tithe Adjustment Bill. When the bill was in committee on the 30th of July, Mr. O'Connell moved an amendment, to the effect that the tithes should be made payable by the landlords to the clergy after being reduced 40 per cent. This amendment was carried - the numbers being, for the motion, 82; against it, 33. The ministers determined, notwithstanding to go on with the bill, and brought it up to the house of lords. There, on the motion of lord Ellenborough, it was thrown out by a majority of 67; two archbishops and nineteen bishops voting against it, and only three - Derry, Chichester, and Norwich - in its favour. The religious census of 1834 strengthened the party which favoured the appropriation of surprised church revenues. Lord Althorp, who was now one of the most influential members of the government, and the leader of the house of commons, in introducing the Irish Church Temporalities Bill, avowed his conviction that any surplus funds resulting from the state management of ecclesiastical revenues should be devoted to state- purposes. On the 27th of May Mr. Ward brought forward a motion upon this subject. In an 'able speech he reviewed the state of Ireland, and remarked that, since 1819, it had been necessary to maintain there an army of 22,000 men, at a cost of a million sterling per annum, exclusive of a police force that cost £300,000 a-year. All this enormous expense and trouble in governing Ireland he ascribed to the existence of a religious establishment hostile to the majority of the people; he therefore moved that " the protestant episcopal establishment in Ireland exceeds the spiritual wants of the protestant population; and that, it being the right of the state to regulate the distribution of church property in such a manner as parliament may determine, it is the opinion of this house that the temporal possessions of the church of Ireland, as now established by law, ought to be reduced."

The motion was seconded by Mr. Grote. When he had concluded, lord Althorp rose and moved that the house should be adjourned until the 2nd of June. The differences in the cabinet had now reached their crisis. It was fully expected that Mr. Ward's motion would be carried, and ministers differed as to whether the principle involved in it should be rejected or accepted; the majority were for accepting it, whereupon Mr. Stanley, Sir James Graham, lord Ripon, and the duke of Richmond resigned their offices. They were succeeded by Mr. Spring Rice, as colonial secretary; lord Auckland, as first lord of the admiralty -, the earl of Carlisle, as lord privy seal; Mr. Abercrombie, as master of the Mint. Mr. Poulet Thompson became president of the board of trade, and the marquis of Conyngham postmaster-general.

On the following day, which was the anniversary of the king's birthday, the Irish prelates, headed by the arch» bishop of Armagh, presented an address to his majesty, complaining of the attacks on the Irish church, deprecating the threatened innovations, and imploring his protection. The king was greatly moved by this appeal. Breaking through the usual restraints, he delivered an extemporaneous answer, in which, among other things, he said, " I now remember you have a right to require of me to be resolute in defence of the church." He assured the bishops that their rights should be preserved unimpaired, and that if the inferior arrangements of the Irish church required any amendment - which, however, he greatly doubted - he hoped it would be left to the bishops to correct them, without the interference of other parties. He was now completing his 69th year, and he must prepare to leave the world with a conscience clear in regard to the maintenance of the church. Tears ran down his cheeks while, in conclusion, he said, "I have spoken more strongly than usual, because of the un- happy circumstances that have forced themselves upon the observation of all. The threats of those who are the enemies of the church make it the more necessary for those who feel their duty to that church to speak out. The words which you hear from me are, indeed, spoken by my mouth, but they flow from my heart."