TWO:The first Reform Parliament was dissolved by proclamation on the 30th of December, after an existence of only one year and eleven months. This proceeding was regarded by the Reformers as a sort of political sacrilege; a manifest flying in the face of the people; a clear declaration of an intention to destroy popular rights. But the care bestowed on the registries told strongly in favour of the Conservatives at the English elections. The exertions they made to secure a majority were immense. It was believed at the time that the Carlton Club had expended nearly a million sterling in securing the success of their candidates in every possible way in which money could be made available. In the counties and boroughs the Whigs and Radicals lost about 100 seats, but after all the Conservatives could muster only 302 members; against 356. The contests were unusually numerous and severe, but the Reform Act machinery worked so well that the elections were for the most part conducted in a very orderly manner. In many places the closeness of the poll was remarkable. It was a neck and neck race between the rival candidates. In the metropolitan boroughs the Ministerialists were everywhere defeated. Not one of the sixteen seats in this vast centre of influence could the Government, with all its lavish expenditure, obtain. In some of the provincial towns, howeverBristol, Exeter, Newcastle, Hull, York, Leeds, Halifax, and Warringtona Tory supplanted a Whig. At Liverpool the contest was intensely exciting. During the last hour of polling were seen in every direction vans, gigs, and flies in rapid motion, and the price of a vote rose from 15 to 25. The result was the return of Lord Sandon, a moderate Tory; Sir Howard Douglas, the other Conservative candidate, being defeated by Mr. Ewart. In Lancashire and Hampshire both the Liberal candidates were defeated. Manchester, Birmingham, Bolton, Sheffield, Preston, and most of the manufacturing towns, returned Liberals. On the whole, the Government had a small majority of the five hundred English members. In Scotland, however, the Reform Act had wrought a complete revolution, and the mass of the electors so long excluded from political power used the privileges they had obtained with great zeal in favour of the party to which they were indebted for their enfranchisement. The whole of the burghs, twenty in number, returned Liberal members. Five of the counties were gained by the Tories and three by the Whigs, where respectively they had formerly failed. Glasgow, whose voice had been neutralised by returning one representative of each party, now returned two Liberals. Serious disturbances took place at Jedburgh when Lord John Scott, the Tory candidate, made his appearance. At Hawick, in the same county, the rioting was still worse. The persons who came to vote for him were spit upon, pelted with stones, and severely struck. In some cases they were thrown into the stream that runs through the town, and subjected to the most shocking indignities, which the judges who afterwards tried the cases declared to be "worse than death itself."The Church Temporalities Bill, with some alterations, passed the Lower House; it encountered strong opposition in the Lords, who defeated the Ministry on one important amendment, but it ultimately passed, on the 30th of July, by a majority of fifty-four, several peers having recorded their protests against it, among whom the Duke of Cumberland was conspicuous. The Commissioners appointed under the Bill were the Lord Primate, the Archbishop of Dublin, the Lord Chancellor and Chief Justice of Ireland, and four of the bishops, and some time afterwards three laymen were added. The following were the principal features of this great measure of Church Reform: Church Cess to be immediately abolishedthis was a direct pecuniary relief to the amount of about 80,000 per annum, which had been levied in the most vexatious mannerand a reduction of the number of archbishops and bishops prospectively, from four archbishops and eighteen bishops to two archbishops and ten bishops, the revenues of the suppressed sees to be appropriated to general Church purposes. The archbishoprics of Cashel and Tuam were reduced to bishoprics, ten sees were abolished, the duties connected with them being transferred to other seesDromore to Down, Raphoe to Derry, Clogher to Armagh, Elphin to Kilmore, Killala to Tuam, Clonfer to Killaloe, Cork to Cloyne, Waterford to Cashel, Ferns to Ossory, Kildare to Dublin. The whole of Ireland was divided into two provinces by a line drawn from the north of Dublin county to the south of Galway Bay, and the bishoprics were reduced to ten. The revenues of the suppressed bishoprics, together with those of suspended dignities and benefices and disappropriated tithes, were vested by the Church Temporalities Act in the Board of Ecclesiastical Commissioners, to be applied by them to the erection and repairs of churches, to the providing for Church expenses hitherto defrayed by vestry rates, and to other ecclesiastical purposes. The sales which were made of perpetuities of Church estates, vested in the Ecclesiastical Commissioners, produced upwards of 631,353; the value of the whole perpetuities, if sold, was estimated at 1,200,000. The total receipts of the Ecclesiastical Commissioners in 1834 were 68,729; in 1835 they amounted to 168,027; and in 1836 they reached 181,045. The cost of the official establishment was at one time 15,000; during the later years, however, it averaged less than 6,000. Its total receipts, up to July, 1861, were 3,310,999. The Church Temporalities Act imposed a tax on all benefices and dignities whose net annual value exceeded 300, graduated according to their amount, from two and a half to five per cent., the rate of charge increasing by 2s. 6d. per cent. on every additional 10 above 405. All benefices exceeding 1,195 were taxed at the rate of fifteen per cent. The yearly tax imposed on all bishoprics was graduated as follows:Where the yearly value did not exceed 4,000 five per cent.; not exceeding 6,000, seven per cent.; not exceeding 8,000, ten per cent.; and not exceeding 10,000, twelve per cent. In lieu of tax the Archbishopric of Armagh was to pay to the Ecclesiastical Commissioners an annual sum of 4,500, and the see of Derry to pay 6,160. The exact net incomes of the Irish bishops were as follows:Armagh, 14,634; Meath, 3,764;[361] Derry, 6,022; Down, 3,658; Kilmore, 5,248; Tuam, 3,898; Dublin, 7,636; Ossory, 3,874; Cashel, 4,691; Cork, 2,310; Killaloe, 3,310; Limerick, 3,987total, 63,032. The total amount of tithe rent-charge payable to ecclesiastical personsbishops, deans, chapters, incumbents of benefices, and the Ecclesiastical Commissioners was 401,114. The rental of Ireland was estimated, by the valuators under the Poor Law Act, at about 12,000,000this rental being about a third part of the estimated value of the annual produce of the land.
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ONE:In 1831 there were in England and Wales 56 parishes containing less than 10 persons; 14 parishes containing but from 10 to 20 persons, the largest of these, on the average, containing 5 adult males; and there were 533 parishes, containing from 20 to 50 persons, the largest of which would give 12 adult males per parish. It was absurd to expect that such parishes could supply proper machinery for the levying and collecting of rates, or for the distribution of relief. It was found that a large number of overseers could only certify their accounts by signing with a mark, attested by the justice's clerk. The size of the parishes influenced materially the amount of the poor-ratethe smallest giving the greatest cost per head. For example, the hundred absolutely largest parishes, containing a population of 3,196,064, gave 6s. 7d. per head; the hundred intermediate parishes, containing a population of 19,841, gave 15s. a head; while the hundred smallest parishes from which poor-rate returns were made, with a population of 1,708, gave 1 12s. a head. The moral effects were still more remarkable. In the large parishes 1 in 13 was relieved; in the intermediate, 1 in 12?; and in the smallest, 1 in 4, or 25 per cent. of the population, were paupers. Hence arose the necessity of a union of parishes with a common workhouse and a common machinery, and with paid permanent officers for the administration of relief."More than 100 workhouse officers fell victims to the famine fever during this fatal year, which also decimated the ranks of the Catholic clergy of the country. Mr. Trevelyan gives names of thirty English and Scottish priests who sacrificed their lives to their zealous attendance on the immigrant Irish, who carried the pestilence with them in their flight to other portions of the United Kingdom. Pestilence likewise slew its victims in the[542] fetid hold of the emigrant ship, and, following them across the ocean, immolated them in thousands in the lazar houses that fringed the shores of Canada and the United States. The principal business of the time was in meal, and coffins, and passenger ships. A fact may be mentioned which renders further description of the state of the country needless. The Cork Patent Saw Mills had been at full work from December, 1846, to May, 1847, with twenty pairs of saws, constantly going from morning till night, cutting planks for coffins, and planks and scantlings for fever sheds, and for the framework of berths for emigrant ships."
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