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They are the phenomena that regularly attend a certain stage of human development, the absorption of power by an aristocracy. The clergy's rule was rigid, and met with resistance, which was crushed with an iron hand.
On any question, therefore, which affected the welfare of the lower clergy, it will at once be seen, that the Lords Spiritual, sitting in the Irish Upper House, would find little difficulty in coming to a solution. That the solution should also be one which only increased the clergy's difficulties, might be expected from a body which aimed chiefly at acquiring wealth and power for itself.
It must needs be, therefore, a great addition to the Clergy's grief, that such an assembly as the present House of Commons; should now, with an expedition more than usual, agree to a bill for encouraging the linen manufacture; with a clause, whereby the Church is to lose two parts in three, of the legal tithe in flax and hemp.
While the people are so jealous of the clergy's ambition, as to abhor all thoughts of the return of ecclesiastic discipline among them, I do not see any other method left for men of that function to take, in order to reform the world, than by using all honest arts to make themselves acceptable to the laity.
As a result of the lack of control of these plagues there are in the world at the present moment thousands of children suffering from congenital syphilis who would never have been born but for the desire of Christians to see sinners punished. With regard to the spread of sex knowledge, the clergy's attitude is dangerous to human welfare.
Justly or unjustly, the indictment was brought against the priests of being the agents of every evil influence among the people, the soldiers of an army of which the true head was not God, but Belial. In earlier days the Church had known how to compensate the people for the secular clergy's neglect, or imperfect performance, of its duties.
If the estates of some bishops and cathedrals were exorbitant before the Reformation, I believe the present clergy's wishes reach no further than that some reasonable temper had been used, instead of paring them to the quick: But as to the tithes, without examining whether they be of divine institution, I conceive there is hardly one of that sacred order in England, and very few even among the laity that love the Church, who will not allow the misapplying of those revenues to secular persons, to have been at first a most flagrant act of injustice and oppression: Though at the same time, God forbid they should be restored any other way than by gradual purchase, by the consent of those who are now the lawful possessors, or by the piety and generosity of such worthy spirits as this nation sometimes produceth.
In that way he cut off an important source of the pope's revenue, for the church of France could obviously no longer send anything to Rome. The pope was forced to give up his extreme claims. He explained the following year that he had not meant to interfere with the payment on the clergy's part of customary feudal dues nor with their loans of money to the king.
Patriotism, accordingly, regrets that his zeal seems to be getting cool. A man stout of heart, enigmatic, difficult to unmask! Meanwhile, finances give trouble enough. To appease the deficit we venture on a hazardous step, sale of the clergy's lands; a paper-money of assignats, bonds secured on that property is decreed; and young Sansculottism thrives bravely, growing by hunger.
The same reservation was made with respect to the parochial clergy's tithes. On the 10th of February, 1763, by the Treaty of Paris, France ceded to Great Britain Canada, with all its dependencies, the island of Cape Breton, and the Laurentian Isles.
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