FORE:Gustavus Adolphus IV. of Swedenwith all the military ardour of Charles XII., but without his military talent; with all the chivalry of an ancient knight, but at the head of a kingdom diminished and impoverishedhad resisted Buonaparte as proudly as if he were monarch of a nation of the first magnitude. He refused to fawn on Napoleon; he did not hesitate to denounce him as the curse of all Europe. He was the only king in Europe, except that of Great Britain, who withstood the marauder. He was at peace with Great Britain, but Alexander of Russia, who had for his own purposes made an alliance with Napoleon, called on him to shut out the British vessels from the Baltic. Gustavus indignantly refused, though he was at the same time threatened with invasion by France, whose troops, under Bernadotte, already occupied Denmark. At once he found Finland invaded by sixty thousand Russians, without any previous declaration of war. Finland was lost, and Alexander saw his treachery rewarded with the possession of a country larger than Great Britain, and with the whole eastern coast of the Baltic, from Tornea to Memel; the ?land Isles were also conquered and appropriated at this time. The unfortunate Gustavus, whose high honour and integrity of principle stood in noble contrast to those of most of the crowned heads of Europe, was not only deposed for his misfortunes, but his line deprived of the crown for ever. This took place in March, 1809. The unfortunate monarch was long confined in the castle of Gripsholm, where he was said to have been visited by the apparition of King Eric XIV. He was then permitted to retire into Germany, where, disdainfully refusing a pension, he divorced his wife, the sister of the Empress of Russia, assumed the name of Colonel Gustavson, and went, in proud poverty, to live in Switzerland. These events led to the last of Sweden's great transactions on the field of Europe, and by far the most extraordinary of all.The case of the Irish Church was stated by Sir Robert Peel, Lord Stanley, and Sir James Graham, who argued that its revenues were greatly exaggerated, subjected to heavy drawbacks and deductions. The vestry cess had been abolished. A tax exclusively borne by the clergy of three to fifteen per cent. had been laid upon all livings, and the Church Temporalities Act provided that in all parishes in which service had not been performed from 1830 to 1833, when a vacancy occurred, there should be no reappointment, and the revenues of that living, after paying a curate, should be destined to other parishes differently situated, but for purposes strictly Protestant. Here was a provision already made for the[384] progressive diminution or extinction of the Episcopal Church in those districts where it was not called for, and could be of no utility. Whence, then, the anxiety to take away a surplus, which probably would not exceed 100,000 a year, from a Church already subjected to such heavy and exclusive burdens? It was not pretended that the object of this appropriation was to apply the income seized to the payment of the National Debt, or that it was justified by State necessity. They argued that if the appropriation clause, as now shaped, once passed into law, not only would the Protestant faith cease to be the established religion in Ireland, but the measure would be fatal to the Established Church in England also. In fact, the Conservatives contended that this was only the first of a series of measures avowedly intended to annihilate the Protestant Establishment. O'Connell proposed to confiscate the property of the Church, in order to relieve the land from its appropriate burdens, and to exempt it from the support of the poor. They argued, therefore, that on no reasonable ground could it be maintained that this concession to Irish agitation could have any other effect than stimulating the agitators to make fresh demands.
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