SIR-A strong feeling of indignation seems to be entertained by many of the laity, respecting the apathy with which the Protestant Clergy appear to view the Church Reform Bill lately introduced by Lord Althorp, the provisions of which seem so injurious, if not destructive, to the property and existence of the establishment. What! (say they,) will the clergy submit without a murmur to this unparallelled spoliation, and thereby justify the allegations, and (as far as they are concerned) aid in carrying into effect the menaces of their enemies? Does not even the silence they have observed, since the announcement of the bill, give some colour to the charge-that the wretched condition of the peasantry of Ireland is mainly attributable to their exactions, and that to compel them to disgorge part of their unjust gains is but an act of strict, though tardy justice? Now, nothing can be more unreasonable than this remonstrance; and (though meant in a spirit of friendship) it but adds insult to injury. What can the clergy do? During the last ten or fifteen years, the press has teemed with the most unanswerable statements respecting the real facts of the case; arguments have been refuted; mistakes corrected; falsehoods exposed, all to no purpose. In reply to the unfounded statement, that it is to the Protestant Establishment the disturbances in Ireland are to be attributed; those disturbances have been traced up to the first period of their commencement. viz.: about the middle of the last century-for Captain Rock, (though he may not have arrived at the age of discretion,) is no stripling; and though he may acknowledge, in the words of the Patriarch, that "the days of the years of his life have been evil," he certainly cannot say that they "have been few." Those disturbances have been proved, never to have originated from the exorbitant demands of the clergy, but from causes more deeply

affecting the comforts and condition of the peasantry, viz.: the enclosing of commons, turning out the old tenantry in order to throw many small farms into one; abuses about road making; exorbitant cess and rents; wages of labour; charges for potato ground; rent for bog, &c. &c. It is true, that in the progress of outrage, the clergy (from the very defenceless nature of their property, and the thousand inroads of fraud and violence to which it was exposed,) suffered considerably, but that their demands were either the originating cause of those disturbances or the principal means of their continuance has been over and over disproved. But what good has resulted from all this? "Who shames a scribbler,"

"Destroy his fib, or sophistry in vain,

The creature's at his dirty work again."

There are persons who still affect to believe, that the misery of the peasantry is chiefly attributable to the exactions of the clergy. The income of that body has been lately submitted to the most rigorous parliamentary enquiry, and the result has been a very proud, but (as it now appears) a very useless triumph to the clergy. It has been not merely an acquittal of such charges, but a generally expressed astonishment at the audacity that could have advanced them. Still, all to no purpose. The very mover of this bill of pains and penalties, ushers in his propositions by an acknowledgment of the monstrous exaggerations that have prevailed with regard to the income of the clergy, and then (by way of a sophisma fallacis consequentia) tacks to this very acknowledgment a proposition for inflicting upon them an amount of taxation, quite unequalled by any thing we have hitherto witnessed, even in the most frightful period of the late war. What then are the clergy to do in such a case? There was a time when appealing to a British House of Com

mons, they could have relied fearlessly on the principle "Magna est veritas et prævalebit," but those days (if we are to judge from the manner in which his Lordship's speech was received) seem to have passed away. Their enemies seem to know well the nature and constitution of the assembly they are now addressing. They think (and events hitherto seem to justify them in so thinking) that "they shall be heard for their much speaking." This is a species of contest into which the clergy cannot enter. "It is not for them to bandy hasty words," they must leave the field to their enemies, and confess that (whatever truth may be in them) at least "the words of the men of Judah are fiercer than those of the men of Israel." It is a strange fact, that at such a period of the world as the present, undeniable truth should be borne down by clamour; but is it not the fact? Look at the Irish newspapers during the last two or three years, the first which have elapsed of that halcyon æra, which was, (according to the sworn evidence of the O'Connells and the Doyles) to bless our land, and of which the bill of 1829 was to be the glad harbinger. In one column you will probably see an account of a clergyman waylaid and assassinated under circumstances, which one would have thought quite sufficient to palsy the assassin's arm, returning from administering the comforts of religion to some sick or dying member of his flock; a second murdered in the broad light of heaven, the calumniated peasantry resuming their rural occupations, after the bloody deed, with as much unconcern as if they had been despatching a mad-dog. A third, also murdered at noon-day in his own lawn; the wretched widow imploring some help in bearing in the body of her mangled husband-her application received with brutal derision-the humane peasantry (who had been previously taught to touch a Protestant

Bible with a pair of tongs) doubtless dreading defilement from the dead body of the heretic, and with a ferocity incredible in any creature that ever bore a trace of the primal image of his God, refusing to aid the wretched and bereft mourner in performing the last sad offices of humanity. Or again, if disgusted with the assassinations of solitary individuals, you wish for an affair of spirit, you will be regaled with a massacre of a whole body of police, guilty, it is true, of the unpardonable offence of putting the SAXON laws into execution. You will probably be indignant at those outrages, and think that it is the bounden duty of every man who has influence over the peasantry to join in repressing them. Don't be too sure of that however. Side by side with the statements I have just mentioned, you will probably see an address directed to the people of Ireland, headed by some of those sweet and sedative appeals to their angry passions such as "There's blood upon the earth," "The cry has gone up to Heaven," &c. &c. You will naturally expect that this address should contain some allusion to the atrocious scenes decribed in the adjoining column. But no. Poor Partridge was never more astonished (after the fracas with his tender spouse) at seeing his own blood rise up in judgment against him, than the unfortunate clergy and police are to find that THEY are the murderers, and that the death-howl (which is set up with as much loudness, and just as much sincerity as the keening at an Irish wake) has been raised over some riotous and lawless ruffian, who was prevented from despatching his victim. This is, you will say, very audacious buffoonery

true-but unfortunately it is very successful. Such is the temper of the times, that this buffoonery which might be deemed farcical, if it were not too 'tragical mirth" is well received even in England ?* Indeed, the prediction

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