commissioners.
With respect to other parishes, if it should appear, after deducting
thirty per cent, from the existing tithe-composition and the payment
of that tax on ecclesiastical benefices, that the income of any parish
should exceed L300 per annum, the commissioners would be required
to report the circumstance on the voidance of the benefice to the
lord-lieutenant, who would be empowered to make any reduction he might
deem proper. The incomes, however, were in no case to be reduced below
L300 per annum. In cases of livings in the gift of the crown and the
bishops, he thought that it would be acknowledged there should be no
delay in carrying these provisions into effect; but power would be
given to indemnify the owners of lay advowsons, and to charge that
indemnification on the fund which would be created from the various
sources which he had mentioned, and which it was proposed to call "the
reserved fund;" a fund which would be applicable to pay the salaries of
the neighbouring ministers or separate curates--to pay all charges which
might accrue on the suspended parishes, and to pay for the erection
of places of public worship. These purposes having been satisfied,
the surplus fund accruing from year to year was to be applied by the
commissioners of national education in Ireland to the religious and
moral instruction of all classes of the people, without reference to
creeds or sects. The total number of parishes, he continued, that would
come under the operation of the bill, would be eight hundred and sixty.
He had computed the salaries of the curates at L65 each, and after the
existing interests were provided for, there would accrue to the reserved
fund, 47,898, to which there was to be added, on account of indemnified
patronage, L10,178, making the whole amount L58,076. Lord Morpeth added,
that in the report of the committee on public instruction, it was stated
that the Protestants of the church of England were on the increase.
Government was not inattentive to this; and it was proposed that where
it should appear to the ecclesiastical commissioners that the number of
the members of the established church in any of the suspended parishes
had increased to such a degree as to make the provisions of the bill
inadequate to the religious wants of the place, they would be required
to report the circumstance to the lord-lieutenant, and to submit a
proposition to meet the exigency. If the lord-lieutenant approved of
it,