NOTES OF THE MONTH. 221 



success, that nothing may be .left of each but his tail ! Most earnest- 

 ly do we hope that the time may arrive when Westminster Hall may 

 be the scene of such a conflict, and that we may live to see the floor 

 of that venerable edifice strewed with tails, and neither wigs nor law- 

 yers hanging to them. 



BISHOPS AND THEIR BENEFITS. Pious reader ! prepare yourself 

 for the worst ; for that great champion of prelacy, the pamphleteering 

 Phillpotts, has announced that spoliation having commenced, ruin 

 and anarchy will follow ; that things will then resolve themselves 

 into their original elements, and chaos resume its empire. We are 

 therefore utterly undone such is the result of the Irish church bill 

 having been read a second time in the House of Lords. 



How such serious consequences can arise from such unimportant 

 premises, we leave such conjurors as the dignitary of Exeter to ex- 

 plain ; but, of this we are certain, that the passing of such a beggarly 

 mutilated measure should have the effect of scaring churchmen from 

 their propriety, is a much more significant sign than passing a dozen 

 bills similar to that which so excites their pious wrath. The senti- 

 ments which this discussion have elicited, shew more plainly than 

 one could expect, the determined hostility of the clergy to their 

 own reformation, their clinging to mammon, their proverbial in- 

 tolerance and worldly pride. The unabated continuance of such 

 unamiable characteristics of prelacy in the present dignitaries argue 

 a consummation that no legislature can provide against the moral 

 degradation of the hierachy in the opinion of the people. What may 

 be the effect of such a crisis requires no Phillpotts to prognosticate. 

 It must end in a thorough regeneration of the church. The pam- 

 pered prelate must be shorn of his unwieldy fleece that the humble 

 and pious may have food. 



We hope to see the day when spoliation if such is to be the term 

 will be carried to a much greater extent than the present paltry 

 little measure of justice to a suffering people when palace and park, 

 with lands, freehold and copyhold estates, houses and tenements, with 

 all the pomp and circumstance of prelacy, will be made available to 

 the real wants of the nation when Bishop Phillpotts himself will 

 find exercise for his Christian charities they will not ruin him and 

 time to edify the world with pamphlets through the medium of a 

 comfortable though modest episcopal salary from government. 



The collection of a vestry cess, the arbitrary imposition of a pro- 

 testant tax upon a catholic people, is admitted on all sides to be in- 

 iquitous ; yet, at the bare mention of the clergy subscribing it from 

 their enormous funds, the whole clerical body scream with religious 

 indignation : take it from the landlord, squeeze it from the tenant 

 they will bear a little more squeezing; but spare the pious. Yet 

 when we consider for whom this cess is raised and for what purpose, 

 when we see it handed over to our grasping priesthood for the object 

 of continuing their solemn farce of maintaining a church without a 

 congregation, we cannot for our lives see any class of men on whom 

 it should more justly fall. 



The indignation with which the proposal to reduce the number of 



