eve the tithe-payer immediately to the extent of forty
per cent.; and in consequence of the accommodating language and coy
resistance of ministers, it was carried by a majority of eighty-two to
thirty-three. Additional concessions were also made in the committee;
and even Mr. Shiel remarked that Ireland ought to be grateful. Such,
indeed, was the departure from the original principles and arrangements
of the bill that one hundred and eleven out of one hundred and
seventy-two clauses were expunged. Thus altered, the bill was read a
third time, and passed on the 5th of August.

On the second reading of the bill in the lords, the peers were given
to understand by Lord Melbourne that, if it was lost, government would
propose no other grant to relieve the Irish clergy. He admitted, he
said, that there might be reason for viewing with jealousy and distrust
the quarter whence certain alterations made in the bill, subsequently to
this introduction, proceeded; but, at the same time he did not think
the arrangement bad for the church. The tithe for the future was to be
received by the crown, and paid by the landlord, who, in return for the
burden thus imposed on him, was to have a deduction of two-fifths or
forty per cent, of the original composition. The incomes of the clergy,
however, were not to bear the whole deduction, which was only to be
twenty-two and a half per cent, on them; that is, twenty per cent, for
increased security, and two and a half per cent, for the expenses of
collection. The incumbents would, in fact, receive L79 10s. for every
L100 without trouble, without the risk of bad debts, and without the
odium which had hitherto attended the collection of tithe property.
Another consequence was that the clergy would be relieved from the
payment of sums already advanced to them from the treasury, as that
charge would be laid on the landlord. In conclusion, he said that he
thought the revision of existing compositions, made under the acts of
1823 and '32, was also a proper enactment. The bill underwent a complete
discussion--the Conservatives seeing no security for the rights and
interests of the Irish clergy in its provisions as now altered; while
their opponents thought that it would be much more advantageous to the
clerical body to obtain the sum proposed without risk, than to recover
a smaller--if they recovered any at all--through scenes of blood and
slaughter. The Earl of Ripon and the Duke of Richmond pursued a