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NOTES AND EVENTS OF THE MONTH. 



THE LORDS AND THE IRISH CHURCH. The rejection of the two 

 great measures which have occupied the commons house of parlia- 

 ment the whole session to the discussion of which they have devoted 

 their best ability, and with the most strict and searching enquiry 

 after truth have shown the House of Lords in a more unenviable 

 position to the people than any one of their lordships' acts since their 

 celebrated opposition to the Reform Bill. The Municipal Corpora- 

 tions' Bill has been met with evasion ; but the Irish Church has been 

 more summarily treated. Here has been a fine field for indignant 

 eloquence. The mantle of prophecy has descended upon divers of 

 their lordships, who behold the extinction of the true faith in the 

 mulcting of some scores of Irish sinecure parsons. May not this 

 goodly gift of second sight be somewhat sharpened by the anticipa- 

 tion of relatives unendowed by pluralities of tutors and clerical 

 dependents eating other bread than that extorted from the poor of 

 catholic Ireland ? This is the true touchstone of their lordships' 

 feeling for the church. Their opposition to church reform is not 

 from ignorance of the merits of the case. They are quite aware 

 that Ireland has hitherto been treated as a conquered country the 

 prayers of its people received with contempt their remonstrances 

 with menace ; and, when goaded by wrong into rebellion, that it has 

 been made an excuse for robbery and extermination. And their 

 lordships are perfectly aware that, of all the evils inflicted upon this 

 unhappy people, none has been so bloody a scourge as forcing upon 

 them the Protestant church. It has paralized their industry it has 

 forced them into crime, it has fattened while all around have 

 starved. Backed by the state, it has monopolized all the blessings 

 of fulness, as if in mockery of the wretched creatures who have been 

 made to toil for it. For centuries has this unjust but profitable mockery 

 been pursued, until, at last, the nation has arisen and appealed to its 

 task-masters in a voice not to be mistaken. And do the lords fancy 

 that their calculations on clerical jobbing will stand between th6 

 people and justice? No ; though the fate of half the unmitred and 

 unbeneficed of the aristocracy were to be endangered, the Irish soil 

 must be freed from its foreign impost repugnant to the religious 

 feelings of the people, and hateful to them from its injustice. And 

 yet the lords dare to insult common sense by holding up that Pro- 

 testant creed as a blessing to a people who have regularly refused it. 

 Why have they refused it? And why has that church, which we in 

 England respect so highly, never made its way to the affections of 

 the Irish people ? Ask the poor man whose last morsel it has 

 clutched whose all has been sold for its support! Ask the heart- 

 broken widow who mourns over the blood of her dearest, that dyes 



