The proposition which we shall next notice is one of great importance; and in order that it may be properly understood, it will be necessary that the attention of the reader be directed to one or two preliminary details. It has been already intimated that the principal part of the incomes of the Irish bishops is derived from the lands attached to their sees. The revenue, however, which they draw from this source does not all come to them in the shape of rents. A bishop is prohibited by law from granting a lease of any land belonging to his see for a longer period than twenty-one years; but he may at any time gran a lease for the whole of that period. Suppose a bishop to be a very old man, or to be on the point of translation from the see which he occupies to another; he has no connexion with, or natural interest in, his successor; he looks, and considers himself entitled to look, to his own advantage alone; how, then, is it natural that he should act in regard to his lands? If he could alienate, or sell them, it is plain that he would do so; but this, as we have said, the law does not allow. He will, however, do that which is the nearest to selling them that the law will allow; he will let them on the longest lease which it is in his power to grant, and he will anticipate as much as possible of the fair rental for that period by taking it from the tenant in the shape of what is called a premium or fine. The higher the fine, indeed, the lower must be the rent. But in the circumstances supposed, it is the former payment chiefly, or perhaps exclusively, in which he who makes the bargain has any interest; of the profits of the transaction, the fine is to be his own share, the rents the share of his successor. Or suppose even that he has no immediate expectation either of death or translation, still he will naturally act in the same manner. The fine is still a present and certain gain; the rent is exposed to all the chances of the future. He may live to the end of the lease, or he may not live to the end of its first twelvemonth. From what has been said, it will be obvious how unavoidably it has happened that all these lands are in fact held upon leases of twenty-one years, or for the longest term which the law permits.

But not only are the leases originally for twenty-one years. They are constantly kept up of that length, or as nearly as possible of that length, by the operation of the same cause which made them be granted for so long a term at first. At the end of every year, or at least of every two years, the tenant resigns his old lease, having now only a period of twenty or of nineteen years to run, and receives from his landlord another for twenty-one years from that time as before, on paying another fine for the extension. And thus it happens that the actual income of the bishop is in almost all cases made up partly of his rents, and partly also of those annual or biennial fines.

But the system which has thus been acted upon, while it has been, as we have just shown, the one most profitable and natural for each individual bishop to follow, has affected the productive value to the church of its landed property to a most material extent. Or rather, we ought to say that property thus peculiarly circumstanced is necessarily of very much less value to its nominal owners than if it were held in the ordinary mode of possession. The farmer, in bargaining with the bishop for a new lease, has the latter in a manner in his own hands. It is the bishop's interest to grant the renewal for the sake of the fine; and at the same time the actual tenant is the only person existing with whom he can enter into such a covenant. There is no competition -nobody else to bid against the individual in possession of the current lease. The fine, therefore, which the latter will consent to pay will be the very smallest that will suffice to tempt his landlord to grant him the renewal rather than run his life, as it is expressed, against the lease,—that is, take his chance of surviving it, and forego the yearly fines altogether, for the sake of at last having the land, unincumbered by an actual lessee, to offer to free competition. This latter plan is, in point of fact, sometimes followed by a bishop who comes early in life to his see; but it is evidently a hazardous speculation in any circumstances; and even when it succeeds, it does not permanently release the land from the conditions which so greatly depreciate its value to the landlord; the old process, of the long lease, and its natural consequences, immediately begins again. The consequence of this state of things is, that the tenants of these church lands are really more their proprietors than the bishops. The interest which the former possess in them is more valuable than that possessed by the latter. And the bishops,

it is evident, are in this respect placed in a predicament in which they cannot help themselves. It is not in their power, by any contrivance or mode of management, to secure to themselves a greater share of the produce of their lands than they at present enjoy.

In reality it appears, that while the estimated value of these lands is about 600,000l. per annum, the bishops, by means of fines and rents together, do not derive from them more than a revenue of 100,000l. It is calculated that the value of his lease to the tenant, supposing him to pay a fixed corn-rent equivalent to what he now pays partly in the form of rent and partly in that of fine, is not less than twelve years and a half's purchase, that is, than twelve and a half times the remainder of the estimated yearly value of the land. If his lease, instead of being only for twenty-one years, were to be made perpetual, his interest would be thereby increased only by about seven and a half year's purchase, or that number of times the estimated yearly value. Now, it is proposed to give to every tenant the power of converting his present lease into a perpetual one, by paying for the additional benefit a sum of money somewhat less than it has thus been calculated to be worth, or six years of the estimated value instead of seven and a half. Taking this yearly value upon the whole church lands, according to the statement given above, at 500,9007. the sum thus raised will be about three millions sterling. Government propose that this money should be applied in any manner that may to parliament seem expedient. And clearly, it cannot in fairness be said to belong to the church. It is raised by the state without in the smallest degree infringing upon the revenues of the church. The incomes of the bishops will remain the same as they are at present; only, they will not be received partly in rents and partly in fines, but altogether in a corn- rent, equivalent to the real value of the rent, and the privilege of renewing the lease at present enjoyed.

Such are the parts of the plan which it is proposed to carry into immediate operation. But it also contemplates certain prospective reforms of a very important character. On the death of the present Archbishop of Armagh, the primate, it is proposed to reduce the income of that see from its present amount of about 14,500l. to 10,000l. As the actual possessors also of the different sees die out or are removed, the archbishoprics of Tuam and Cashel are to be converted into bishoprics, and the following ten sees are to be entirely abolished, namely, Dromore, Clogher, Raphoe, Elphin, Clonfert, Killala, Kildare, Cork, and Waterford, (which last is at present vacant, and will not be filled up). The saving arising from these reductions will be 60,000l. a year, with which it is proposed that the legislature shall deal as it may think fit. Finally, all deans and chapters, where they have no duties to perform, are to be abolished altogether, or to be attached to cures; and in regard to parochial charges, the Board of Commissioners already mentioned are to have the power of suspending the appointment of ministers in all cases in which no duty has been performed for the space of three years past.

IRELAND.

66 a

ONE of the subjects to which the attention of Parliament was most emphatically called in the King's Speech, was the state of Ireland, where, as his Majesty declared, spirit of insubordination and violence had risen to the most fearful height, rendering life and property insecure, defying the authority of the law, and threatening the most fatal consequences, if not promptly and effectually repressed." In conformity with this recommendation a bill was, on the 15th of February, brought into the House of Lords, by Earl Grey, described to be "for the more effectual suppression of local disturbances and dangerous associations in Ireland." It is no part of our present object to go over in detail the clauses of this bill, which, while we write, is undergoing the minutest examination of their lordships in committee, and may possibly be considerably modified before it passes through both houses, and becomes a law. But in the course of the discussions that have already taken place on it, frequent references have been made to certain former acts and measures which it embodies, or on which it is partly founded; and we propose, therefore, after a few words on the general question, to append a short notice of these previous attempts to meet a state of things similar to that which the government has now to contend with.

Lord Grey has not deemed it necessary or advisable, before introducing this bill, to call upon the legislature to

At the Revolution, in 1689, it was

£.

064,263

16,394.702

54,145,363

52,092,238

Excess of Income over Expenditure for the Year 614,758 The several sources of income and objects of expenditure will be better understood by the following description:

The customs are duties charged upon imports and exports. They existed in England before the conquest-were collected, for the first time, into a book of rates in the reign of Charles II.-and were finally consolidated, and the statutes relating to them compressed, in 1825. In the reign of Elizabeth they amounted to no more than 50,000l.; at the revolution of 1688 they produced 781,9877.; in 1792 they were 4,407,000l.; and they now average upwards of 16,000,000l. annually. The charges of collection of this branch of revenue, including the Preventive Service, were, in 1830, for Great Britain, 1,024,3967. and for Ireland, 270,7927., exclusive of the charges of the Coast-Blockade, which are under the department of the Admiralty. They are under the management of a Board of Commissioners in London.

The excise duties are laid on articles produced and consumed at home, and were first imposed by the Long Parliament in 1643. For a long time a considerable prejudice existed against them in the public mind, which arose probably more from the regulations connected with their imposition than the extent to which they have been carried. The charge of collection, in Great Britain, during the year 1829, amounted to 1,003,4717., being after the rate of 4 per cent. upon the gross receipt; and in Ireland to 222,588, being at the rate of nearly 11 per cent. They are also managed by a board in London.

The public are sufficiently familiar with the nature of the stamp duties, the postage duties, and the assessed and other miscellaneous taxes. In regard to the efforts that have been made from time to time to procure a repeal of the assessed taxes, it should be stated that it is the opinion of very experienced persons in matters of finance, that such efforts are founded on a misconception of the comparative effect of different kinds of taxes upon the interest of the people in general; and that the repeal of the taxes on raw materials and manufactures, and the reduction of the high duties on tobacco and foreign spirits, would be productive of considerable benefit to the consumer, would put an end to smuggling, and increase the employment of capital, the demand for labour, and foreign commerce. Upon this and other questions of taxation, Sir Henry Parnell's work on Financial Reform' may be consulted with advantage. From the above statement of the public expenditure, it will be seen that considerably more than one-half of it consists of the interest of the national debt. The amount of the funded debt of the United Kingdom, on the 5th of January, 1832, was 755,543,8447., being 722,616,456/. for Great Britain, and 32,927,4287. for Ireland; and the amount of the unfunded debt, or exchequer bills, at the same period, was 27,123,350. The practice of borrowing money, in order to defray a part of the war expenditure, began in the reign of William III. In the beginning of the funding system, the term fund meant the taxes appropriated to the discharge of the principal and interest of loans; those who held government securities and sold them to others, selling, of course, a corresponding claim upon some fund. But after the debt increased, and the practice of borrowing upon interminable annuities had been introduced, the meaning attached to the term fund was gradually changed; and instead of signifying the security upon which loans were advanced, it has for a long time signified the principal of the loans themselves. The following statement will show the progress of the national debt:

The total charge of collecting the revenue may be taken at about four millions a year, adding which to the net revenue, as above stated, for 1832, the gross revenue collected may, in round numbers, be called 50,000,000l. The total population of the United Kingdom is now something more than twenty-four millions, so that the average amount of taxation upon each individual is about two pounds sterling a year. This is a very high ratio in comparison with the rate of taxation in other countries, but it would be unfair to complain of it, without taking into account the very high degree of security, comfort, and civilization, which the British nation enjoys. In making an estimate of the comparative well-being of our population, we ought to put the good and bad together, and although there may be much room for amendment in our financial condition, we must not calculate the ratio of our national happiness merely by the nominal ratio of our taxation.

Anciently, it appears from this paper, the greater number of petitions presented to parliament related to private griev ances. Probably ninety-nine in a hundred were of that description. Receivers and Triers, as they were called, used to be appointed for arranging and classifying petitions, Chancery, and the latter, committees of prelates, peers, and -the former being commonly the clerks of the Court of judges, whose business it was to examine the petitions, and to refer the petitioners either to the proper regular tribunal for redressing their complaints, or, if they were not such as could be taken cognizance of by the ordinary courts of law, to the High Court of Parliament. The form of appointing Receivers and Triers is still observed in the House of Lords at the opening of every new parliament.

The only private petitions now received by parliament are such as relate to matters not coming within the jurisdiction of the courts of law. The number of such petitions now bears a small proportion to that of those that refer to questions of public or general interest. The extent to which the latter have increased of late years, appears from the following statement given in the Report:

The number of public petitions presented to the House of Com

mons amounted

time demanded for the other business of parliament. The presentation of a single petition frequently consumes a considerable space of time. According to what was the practice up to the commencement of the present session, although the petition itself is rarely read at length, but only its prayer stated by the clerk, its presentation often occasioned no fewer than four successive motions or questions, on each of which a new debate might arise. There was first the motion that the petition be brought up; then, another, that it be read; then, a third, that it be laid on the table; and, lastly, a fourth, that it be printed. A resolution, proposed by Lord Althorp and agreed to by the House, on the 6th February, limited this right of speaking to the two questions -that the petition be laid on the table, and that it be printed; but still this does not get rid of the principal part of the difficulty. Were there to be only one opportunity of debate upon each petition, it would still be almost impracticable for the House, upon the plan that has been hitherto followed, to get through the reception of the vast numbers that are every session put into the hands of members. The order of precedence in the right of presenting petitions has been of late years a matter of constant contest. Formerly the practice was for those members who wished to secure an opportunity of presenting the petitions with which they had been entrusted to strive who should be first at the House in the morning, when, by putting down their names on a paper, they entitled themselves to precedence over those who did not make their appearance so early. Under this system, as one of the witnesses examined before the Committee states, a few members were in the habit of getting the priority in a great number of cases; those who lived near the House constantly took advantage of their proximity to win the race from their competitors, frequently presenting themselves at six o'clock in the morning. Of late the matter has been arranged by allowing members having petitions to present to ballot for precedence; but although, on the average of the session, about twelve members have been in the habit of attending daily at the ballot, it is stated that only the first five whose names were drawn, have in general had any chance of getting their petitions presented in the evening before the public business came A member has often attended regularly for many days, and even weeks, without being fortunate enough to attain a sufficiently high place on the list. Soon after the commencement of the present session, Lord Althorp proposed a new plan of proceeding in regard to this important subject, namely, that there should be no ballot, but that members wishing to present petitions should put down their names upon a paper from which they should be called upon by the Speaker in their order, day after day, till the whole list should be gone over. And in order to afford time both for private business and for the reception and discussion of petitions without encroaching upon the time necessary for public business, his lordship further proposed that the House should, for the former purposes, assemble every day (except Saturday), with the Speaker in the chair, at noon, and sit till three o'clock, when it should adjourn till five, at which hour it should again meet and proceed at once with the business set down in the order-book. This plan has since been agreed to by the House.

on.

In addition to the embarrassment occasioned by petitions, on account of their consumption of the time of the House, the printing of those of them that are ordered to be printed has been a source of considerable expense. From 1789 down to 1817 the practice was to print all public petitions, either at length or in the form of a short abstract, in what is called the Votes, that is the record of those proceedings of the House which properly come under the description of business done, but not including resolutions which are merely proposed without being determined upon, and some other matters which are only inserted in the larger record, called the Journals. In 1817 the plan was adopted of printing and distributing the Votes every day; and since then, only those petitions have been printed respecting which the House has thought proper to give an order to that effect. They are printed in the form of an appendix to the votes. The proportion of petitions ordered to be printed to the whole number submitted to the notice of the House, appears, since the commencement of the new system, to have varied considerably in different years. Of 4074 petitions, for instance, presented in 1828, only 1579 were ordered to be printed; whereas of 4041, presented in 1829, the number ordered to be printed was 3394. Of the whole number of 24,492 presented in the

five years ending 1831, 10,685 were ordered to be printed. And the expense thus occasioned amounted for these five years to upwards of 12,000%., or between 2000l. and 3000/ a year. Moreover it appears that the mass of matter thus laid before the House and the public excites comparatively but little interest even among those who are most in the habit of attending to parliamentary proceedings. The Report states that some members decline receiving the appendix, considering it as an incumbrance, and that during the year 1831, while there were sold to the public 400 copies of the votes, there were not sold more than 150 copies of the appendix. The appendix for the year 1829, in which Parlia ment sat from the 6th February to the 24th June, formed a volume of 1535 folio pages, consisting entirely of public and election petitions. It is suggested in the Report that a select committee might be appointed at the commencement of each session to arrange and classify the petitions presented, and having a discretionary power to decide as to the printing at length of any containing facts or reasoning of which, in their judgment, the House ought to be apprised. A resolution to this effect was, on the motion of Lord Althorp, passed by the House on the 20th February, and the Committee appointed.

QUAKERS AFFIRMATION.

THE House of Commons came to a gratifying decision on the 14th of February in the case of Joseph Pease, Esq. returned one of the members for the southern division of the county of Durham, by resolving that this gentleman was entitled to take his seat upon making his solemn affirmation and declaration, instead of taking the usual oaths. This is the first decision that has admitted any member of the society of Friends to the British legislature. In consequence of the claim advanced by Mr. Pease, a select committee was appointed by the House, on the 8th, to report such precedents as they could discover bearing upon the subject. Their Report, which was brought up on the 11th, presents a full detail of the various enactments which the statute-book contains in reference to the Quakers since they originally attracted the notice of the legislature. The first which they quote is an act passed in 1674, (the 13 and 14 Car. II. c. 1). by which it was declared that any person refusing to take an oath when lawfully tendered, should, for the first offence, be fined 57., and if three times convicted, should suffer the penalty of banishment. By a subsequent act, (the 16 Car. II. c. 4, § 16,) the further penalty of transportation was affixed to the offence. It was not till the year 1689, that by the statute 1 William and Mary, cap. 18, (commonly called the Toleration Act,) the affirmation of Dissenters from the Church of England who scrupled to take an oath was legally recognized. This act, however, only exempts such persons from the pains and penalties of the statutes against Papists and Non-conformists, and that only on their subscribing a certain declaration of allegiance, and a profession of their faith in the Trinity. It was by the act, 7 and 8 Will. III. cap. 34, passed in 1697, that Quakers were first permitted to substitute their solemn affirmation instead of the usual oath, in civil causes, in the courts of justice. The act, which was to be in force only for seven years, was by a subsequent enactment, (13 Will. III. cap. 4,) passed in 1702, continued for the further period of eleven years; and in 1714, (by the 1 Geo. I. § 2. c. 6,) it was made perpetual. The next statute in order was the 8 Geo. I. cap. 6, passed in 1722, by which the forms of the declaration of allegiance and of the solemn affirmation were altered. But the most decisive enactment bearing upon the subject, appears to be the statute 22 Geo. II. c. 46, passed in 1749, by which it is declared, "that in all cases wherein by any act or acts of parliament now in force, or hereafter to be made, an oath is or shall be allowed, authorized, directed, or required, the solemn affirmation or declaration of any of the people called Quakers, in the form prescribed, &c. shall be allowed and taken instead of such oath, although no particular or express provision be made for that purpose in such act or acts." It is, however, at the same time provided, that no Quaker shall, by virtue of this act, be qualified or permitted to give evidence in any criminal cases, or to serve on juries*, or to bear any office or place of profit in the government. It was only by the act (9 Geo. IV. cap. 32,) passed in 1829, that Quakers and Moravians were, for the first time, allowed to make their solemn affirmation

* A capital conviction by the Court of Admiralty was recently set aside because a Quaker, having been on the jury, had affirmed, instead of taking the usual oath.