e what I have already said,
will easily answer the bold "Queries" in the pamphlet I mentioned: He
will be convinced, that "the reason still strongly exists, for which"
that limiting law was enacted. A reasonable man will wonder, where can
be the insufferable grievance, that an ecclesiastical landlord should
expect a moderate, or third part value in rent for his lands, when his
title is, _at least_, as ancient and as legal as that of a layman; who
is yet but seldom guilty of giving such beneficial bargains. Has "the
nation been thrown into confusion"? And have "many poor families been
ruined" by rack-rents paid for the lands of the church? Does "the nation
cry out" to have a law that must, in time, send their bishops a-begging?
But, God be thanked, the clamour of enemies to the Church is not yet the
cry, and, I hope, will never prove the voice of the nation. The clergy,
I conceive, will hardly allow that "the people maintain them," any more
than in the sense, that all landlords whatsoever are maintained by the
people. Such assertions as these, and the insinuations they carry along
with them, proceed from principles which cannot be avowed by those who
are for preserving the happy constitution in Church and State. Whoever
were the proposers of such "queries," it might have provoked a bold
writer to retaliate, perhaps with more justice than prudence, by shewing
at whose door the grievance lies, and that the bishops, _at least_, are
not to answer for the poverty of tenants.

To gratify this great reformer, who enlarges the episcopal rent-roll
almost one half; let me suppose that all the Church lands in the kingdom
were thrown up to the laity; would the tenants, in such a case, sit
easier in their rents than they do now? Or, would the money be equally
spent in the kingdom? No: The farmer would be screwed up to the utmost
penny, by the agents and stewards of absentees, and the revenues
employed in making a figure at London; to which city a full third part
of the whole income of Ireland is annually returned, to answer that
single article of maintenance for Irish landlords.

Another of his quarrels is against pluralities and non-residence: As to
the former, it is a word of ill name, but not well understood. The
clergy 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