180 The English and Irish Church Establishment. [FEB. 



council, an assemblage of interests which naturally prevented any per- 

 sonal unfairness in the transaction. The second order was the Episcopal 

 union, which being made for the life of the incumbent, and at the will 

 of the bishop, was of course liable to be turned into a source of corrupt 

 patronage to the bishop's friends or relatives. Both unions, however, 

 generally originated in the smallness of the livings, which, from their 

 poverty, were singly unable to sustain the clergyman. The connexion of 

 the parishes thus became frequently indispensable for the decent per- 

 formance of the rites of religion. 



Swift was no lover of the bishops, nor of the Church, nor of Ireland, 

 nor of any thing existing, yet he vindicated the principle of those 

 unions, by the necessity of the case. " The clergy," says he, " having 

 been stripped of the greatest part of their revenues, the glebes being 

 generally lost, the tithes in the hands of laymen, the churches 

 demolished, and the country depopulated; in order to preserve a face 

 of Christianity, it was necessary to unite small vicarages, sufficient to 

 make a tolerable maintenance for a minister." 



The term " union" sounds large. But it is fully known that in a 

 multitude of instances those unions of parishes are but aggregates of 

 poverty; they frequently producing less than a couple of hundred 

 pounds yearly, and sometimes not half the sum; obviously a very ina- 

 dequate provision for a man expected to support the decencies of his 

 station, and utterly inferior to the average produce of the same education 

 or general ability exercised in any other persuit of life. 



As to the numbers of the Protestant and Popish population, the 

 usual popish rant about the " seven millions," is rant and no 

 more. Omitting Mr. Leslie Foster's census, as a Protestant authority, 

 (which has, however, never been impeached), the return made by the 

 Popish bishops to Parliament, in 1824, was, Papists, 4,980,209 ; Pro- 

 testants, 1,963,487- It is a remarkable circumstance too, that notwith- 

 standing the advantages of the Papist population for increase, they being 

 chiefly peasantry, and in that state of life in which men are not restrained 

 from marrying by any fear of the want of provision for their offspring, 

 or of lowering their own condition circumstances which materially 

 impede marriage among the classes above them the Protestant popu- 

 lation has actually advanced more than the Papist; the Papists in 

 1792, having been reckoned to the Protestant, by the Catholic Conven- 

 tion, as three millions to one, which, if continued, would make the 

 Papists now nearly six millions, the Protestant population having 

 unquestionably doubled in the last thirty years. The increase has been 

 Papist, as five to three ; Protestant, as six to three. The general 

 proportion laid down by Mr. Foster is, Papist to Protestant, as 2| to 1. 

 Thus recovering nearly the same proportion at which the Protestants 

 stood a century and a half ago. By Sir William Petty's statement in the 

 year 1672,* " The Roman Catholics were to the Protestants as eight 

 to three, or as 2| to 1. 



It is further remarkable, that this proportion has been maintained in 

 the teeth of a host of difficulties ; the first grand difficulty being the 

 frequent or continued absence of the great Protestant landlords : many 

 of them living almost constantly in England, some being English peers, 

 and almost all exhibiting the most perpetual and most culpable eagerness 



* Political Anatomy, page 8. 



