I could name certain gentlemen of the gown, whose awkward, spruce, prim, sneering, and smirking countenances, the very tone of their voices, and an ungainly strut in their walk, without one single talent for any one office, having contrived to get good preferment by the mere force of flattery and cringing: for which two virtues (the only two virtues they pretend to) they were, however, utterly unqualified; and whom, If I were in power, although they were my nephews, or had married my nieces, I could never, in point of good conscience or honor, have recommended to a curacy in Connaught.

The honorable house of commons may likewise perhaps consider that the gentry of this kingdom differ from all others upon earth, being less capable of employments in their own country than any others who come from abroad; and that most of them have little expectation of providing for their younger children otherwise than by the church, in which there might be some hopes of getting a tolerable maintenance. For, after the patrons should have settled their sons, their nephews, their nieces, their dependants, and their followers invited over from the other side, there would still remain an overplus of smaller church preferments, to be given to such clergy of the nation who shall have their quantum of whatever merit may be then in fashion. But by these bills they will be all as absolutely excluded as if they had passed under the denomination of Tories, unless they can be contented at the utmost with 507. a-year; which, by the difficulties of collecting tithes in Ireland and the daily increasing miseries of the people, will hardly rise to half that sum.

It is observed that the divines sent over hither to govern this church have not seemed to consider the difference between both kingdoms with respect to the inferior clergy. As to themselves, indeed, they find a large revenue in lands, let at one quarter value, which consequently must be paid while there is a penny left among us; and the public distress so little affects their interests, that their fines are now higher than ever: they content themselves to suppose that whatever a parish is said to be worth comes all into the parson's pocket.

The poverty of great numbers among the clergy of England has been the continual complaint of all men who wish well to the church, and many schemes have been thought of to redress it; yet an English vicar of 407. a-year lives much more comfortably than one of double the value in Ireland. His farmers, generally speaking, are able and willing to pay him his full dues: he has a decent

church of ancient standing, filled every Lord's-day with a large congregation of plain people, well clad, and behaving themselves as if they believed in God and Christ. He has a house and barn in repair, a field or two to graze his cows, with a garden and orchard. No guest expects more from him than a pot of ale; he lives like an honest, plain farmer, as his wife is dressed but little better than Goody. He is sometimes graciously invited by the squire, where he sits at a humble distance: if he gets the love of his people, they often make him little useful presents; he is happy by being born to no higher expectation; for he is usually the son of some ordinary tradesman or middling farmer. His learning is much of a size with his birth and education; no more of either than what a poor hungry servitor can be expected to bring with him from his college. It would be tedious to show the reverse of all this in our distant poorer parishes through most parts of Ireland, wherein every reader may make the comparison.

Lastly, the honorable house of commons may consider whether the scheme of multiplying beggarly clergymen through the whole kingdom, who must all have votes for choosing parliament-men, (provided they can prove their freeholds to be worth 40s. per annum, ultra repirsas,) may not, by their numbers, have great influence upon elections, being entirely under the dependence of their bishops. For, by a moderate computation, after all the divisions and subdivisions of parishes that my lords the bishops have power to make by their new laws, there will, as soon as the present set of clergy goes off, be raised an army of ecclesiastical militants, able enough for any kind of service except that of the altar.

I am indeed in some concern about a fund for building a thousand or two churches, wherein these probationers may read their wall. lectures; and begin to doubt they must be contented with barns, which barns will be one great advancing step toward an accommodation with our true Protestant brethren the dissenters.

The scheme of encouraging clergymen to build houses, by dividing a living of 5007. a year into ten parts, is a contrivance the meaning whereof has got on the wrong side of my comprehension; unless it may be argued that bishops build no houses because they are so rich, and therefore the inferior clergy will certainly build if you reduce them to beggary. But I knew a very rich man of quality in England who could never be persuaded to keep a servant out of livery, because such servants would be expensive, and apt in time to look like gentlemen; whereas the others were ready to submit to

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the basest offices, and at a cheaper pennyworth might increase his retinue.

I hear it is the opinion of many wise men that of these bills pass both houses they should be sent back to England with the following clauses inserted:

First, that whereas there may be about a dozen double bishoprics in Ireland, those bishoprics should be split, and given to different persons; and those of a single denomination be also divided into two, three, or four parts, as occasion shall require; otherwise there may be a question started whether twenty-two prelates can effectually extend their paternal care and unlimited power for the protection and correction of so great a number of spiritual subjects. But this proposal will meet with such furious objections that I shall not insist upon it; for I well remember to have read what a terrible fright the frogs were in upon a report that the sun was going to marry.

Another clause should be, that none of these twenty, thirty, forty, or fifty pounders may be suffered to marry, under the penalty of immediate deprivation, their marriages declared null, and their children bastards; for some desponding people take the kingdom to be in no condition of encouraging so numerous a breed of beggars.

A third clause will be necessary, that these humble gentry should be absolutely disqualified from giving votes in elections for parlia

ment-men.

Others add a fourth; which is, a clause of indulgence, that these reduced divines may be permitted to follow any lawful ways of living, which will not call them too often or too far from their spiritual offices; for, unless I misapprehend, they are supposed to have episcopal ordination. For example: they may be lappers of linen, bailiffs of the manor; they may let blood or apply plasters for three miles round; they may get a dispensation to hold the clerkship and sextonship of their own parish in commendam. Their wives and daughters may make shirts for the neighborhood; or, if a barrack be near, for the soldiers: in linen countries they may card and spin, and keep a few looms in the house; they may let lodgings, and sell a pot of ale without doors, but not at home, unless to sober company and at regular hours. It is by some thought a little hard that in an affair of the last consequence to the very being of the clergy in the points of liberty and property, as well as in their abilities to perform their duty, this whole reverend body, who are the established instructors of the nation in Christianity and moral virtues, and are the only persons concerned, shonld be the sole persons not consulted.

Let any scholar show the like precedent in Christendom for twelve hundred years past. An act of parliament for settling or selling an estate in a private family is never passed until all parties give consent. But in the present case the whole body of the clergy is, as themselves apprehend, determined to utter ruin, without once expecting or asking their opinion; and' this by a scheme contrived only by one part of the convocation, while the other part, which has been chosen in the usual forms, wants only the regal permission to assemble and consult about the affairs of the church, as their predecessors have always done in former ages; where it is presumed the lower house has a power of proposing canons, and a negative voice, as well as the upper. And God forbid (say these objectors) that there should be a real separate interest between the bishops and clergy, any more than there is between a man and his wife, a king and his people, or Christ and his church.

It seems there is a provision in the bill that no parish shall be cut into scraps without the consent of several persons, who can be no sufferers in the matter; but I cannot find that the clergy lay much weight on this caution; because they argue that the very persons from whom these bills took their rise will have the greatest share in the decision.

I do not by any means conceive the crying sin of the clergy in this kingdom to be that of non-residence. I am sure it is many degrees less so here than in England, unless the possession of pluralities may pass under that name; and if this be a fault, it is well known to whom it must be imputed: I believe upon a fair inquiry (and I hear an inquiry is to be made) they will appear to be most pardonably few; especially considering how many parishes have not an inch of globe, and how difficult it is upon any reasonable terms to find a place of habitation. And therefore God knows whether my lords the bishops will be soon able to convince the clergy, or those who have any regard for that venerable body, that the chief motive in their lordships' minds by procuring these bills was to prevent the sin of non-residence; while the universal opinion of almost every clergyman in the kingdom, without distinction of party, taking in even those who are not likely to be sufferers, stands directly against them.

If some livings in the north may be justly thought too large a compass of land, which makes it inconvenient for the remotest inhabitants to attend the service of the church, which in some instances may be true, no reasonable clergyman would oppose a proper remedy by particular acts of parliament.

Thus, for instance, the deanery of Down, a country deanery I think without a cathedral, depending wholly upon a union of parishes joined together in a time when the land lay waste and thinly inhabited, since those circumstances are so prodigiously changed for the better, may properly be lessened, leaving a decent competency to the dean, and placing rectories in the remaining churches, which are now served only by stipendiary curates.

The case may be probably the same in other parts and such a proceeding, discreetly managed, would be truly for the good of the church.

For it is to be observed that the dean and chapter lands, which in England were all seized under the fanatic usurpation, are things unknown in Ireland, having been long ravished from the church by a succession of confusions, and tithes applied in their stead to support that ecclesiastical dignity.

The late archbishop of Dublin [Dr. Wm. King] had a very different way of encouraging the clergy of his diocese to residence: when a lease had run out seven years or more, he stipulated with the tenant to resign up twenty or thirty acres to the minister of the parish where it lay convenient, without lessening his former rent, and with no great abatement of the fine; and this he did in the parts near Dublin, where land is at the highest rates, leaving a small chiefry for the minister to pay, hardly a sixth part of the value. I doubt not that almost every bishop in the kingdom may do the same generous act, with less damage to their sees than his late grace of Dublin, much of whose lands were out in fee-farms, or leases for lives; and I am sorry that the good example of such a prelate has not been followed.

But a great majority of the clergy's friends cannot hitherto reconcile themselves to this project, which they call a levelling principle, that must inevitably root out the seeds of all honest emulation, the legal parent of the greatest virtue and most generous actions among men; but which, in the general opinion (for I do not pretend to offer my own), will never more have room to exert itself in the breast of any clergyman whom this kingdom shall produce.

But whether the consequences of these bills may, by the virtues and frailties of future bishops sent over hither to rule the church, terminate in good or evil, I shall not presume to determine, since God can work the former out of the latter. However, one thing I can venture to assert, that from the earliest ages of Christianity to