present afflicts their country, and still they will refuse it under the new fangled title quite as systematically and as firmly as they have refused it under the old. The consequence will be, that the clergy must abandon the Catholic counties of Ireland; and that undoubtedly would be the wisest resolution they could take. They are not wanted in those counties; on the contrary, they are all looked upon as intruders, and the sooner they quit the better. Mr. Stanley read in the House a communication from another clergyman, Dr. Butler, vicar of Burnchurch, in the county of Kilkenny, from which it appears that the life of a vicar at Burnchurch is anything but enviable.

"You are aware that a meeting of hurlers, persons unconnected with the parish, assembled at my house, and that I would not submit to their intimidation. Since that day one of my proctors was most cruelly murdered. The other has been obliged, privately, to leave the country. An unfortunate server of latitats was taken by force from 25 police, and by a miracle escaped death. The most foul and false calumnies have been published concerning me in the Kilkenny Journal, and myself and two of my sons have finally been obliged to fly the country. And after a residence of more than 36 years, during which time my sole endeavour was to benefit my parishioners, I have been banished from my home and my duty, a starving exile. The income of the parish is above 20007. a year. The sums payable out of that income amount to more than 6007. a year, to wit, interest on money borrowed for building the glebe-house; quit rent; crown rent; instalment to the Board of First Fruits; rent of glebe; school-masters' salary; rent of school-house; four curates' proxies, and exhibits; insurance of house and offices which the law requires to be paid, and the charge for management. The money to pay these demands must be provided and paid. I have sold my horses, advertised my carriage, parted with all my ĺabourers and servants, and broken up my entire establishment. I have now but one woman servant; and I believe that I am not the ouly clergyman in the same situation, reduced from comfort to absolute poverty. No remuneration could tempt any person to view the parish-no processserver appointed by the Assistant Barrister will serve a tithe process-no bailiff dare make his appearance; and if legal decrees were obtained, they could not be executed. The farmers say that they have completely abolished tithes; and that they never will pay until they know what Parliament will do."

There are many other clergymen of the establishment, it is well known, in the other Catholic counties of Ireland similarly situated; and we are not at all surprised at it. The people of Ireland are beginning to know their rights, and determined, we hope, to assert them. The grievance of being compelled to pay tithe to a church which is an alien to all their religious habits, a scorner of their tenets, is perhaps the most intolerable which a man can be called upon to suffer. But this grievance, odious as it is in its most simple and mitigated form, becomes a wicked tyranny as it exists in Ireland. There, it seems, a poor man, whose whole tithes annually do not amount to more than 1s. 8d., "is yet subject to have his VOL. I. (1832.) No. II.

N

cow, sheep, pig, or horse, taken and driven to the pound six times in the year for tithes, and liable upon each and every driving to a charge of 2s. 6d., driver's fees, besides expense of impounding, and waste of time from his labour in seeking the person duly authorised to give him a receipt. He is liable to be summoned, moreover, and decreed for vestry cess once in the year, making annually seven calls on account of the church to his little plot of one acre! A fact of this description, stated, as it is, upon the authority of a Protestant clergyman, is too revolting to that spirit of justice which exists in every man's heart, to need one word of commentary. Every person in whom the feelings of humanity are not utterly extinguished, will at once agree, that such a system of exaction as this ought not to be permitted in a free country.

Mr. Stanley flatters himself with the hope that he can commute the tithe for an adequate portion of land in Ireland. It is not very easy to see by what process this object can be effected, without the outlay of a large sum of money by the Treasury; an outlay to which we much doubt whether a Reformed Parliament will ever consent. But supposing that this plan be accomplished, and that the clergy obtain a tenth or twelfth part of all the productive land in Ireland in lieu of the tithe, will their lot be in any degree ameliorated? Far from it. They must either cultivate the land themselves, or let it out to tenants. If the former, they must cease to be clergymen; for the business of their farms will occupy all their time. If the latter, they must still be dependent on Catholic tenants for the payment of their rents; and these ecclesiastical rents would very soon become as odious as the tithes, and would either cease to be paid, or the lands would be uncultivated. Put it in what shape you will, it will still return to its old objectionable form, a payment for the support of an intrusive church; and until that church be confined within the narrow limits in which its doctrines are received, the people of Ireland never will know contentment, and can make no progress in the career of commercial enterprize.

ART. II. Some Memorials of John Hampden, his Party, and his Times. By Lord Nugent. In 2 vols., 8vo. London: Murray. 1832. LORD NUGENT sets out with an acknowledgment, which very favourably distinguishes him from almost all the modern biographers with whose works we are acquainted; for it argues in his lordship's mind the existence of a very just estimate of the duties which he thus voluntarily undertakes. He observes, that it would have been idle and presumptuous in him to attempt an enterprise such as the Life of Hampden, unless that attempt were justified by a consciousness on the author's part, that he was able to contribute some material addition to what is generally known of the conduct and character of that great man. The noble author accordingly pre

sents us with a specification of those sources of information to which, for the purposes now professed, he has had the advantage of exclusive access. These sources consist, for the most part, of private historical collections, belonging to the representatives of eminent families, most of whom shared in the scenes in which Hampden was a principal actor. The fruits of Lord Nugent's researches amongst those interesting cabinets, added to the results. of a careful reference to contemporary history, but particularly to the parliamentary journals and sessional papers of the time, constitute the chief materials of the present work.

We are not prepared, however, to promise that any very important or striking addition to the well-known history of Hampden has been supplied in these volumes. Indeed, Lord Nugent himself seems disposed to forbear from offering any grounds for a contrary anticipation, and he produces as his proximate motive for embarking in this work, the recent publication of "certain imputations" against the political integrity of Hampden. If then we regard the volumes before us not merely in the light of a biography, but chiefly in the nature of a defence of the public conduct of John Hampden, we shall perhaps be better prepared to comprehend the plan and objects of the author. The great design of Lord Nugent appears to be, not by an elaborate and highly finished portrait, to exhibit a perfect resemblance of the original; but, by repairing those traces of beauty in the picture, which calumnious hands have nearly erased from the historical canvas, and by vindicating for his hero the possession of those high virtues, of which a hostile faction would seek to plunder his reputation, to restore the character of Hampden to that unlimited veneration of his countrymen, which it once enjoyed, and will ever continue to deserve.

No one can be acquainted even partially with history, who can hear with surprise that such a patriot as Hampden has been accused of corrupt and interested motives. Inculpations of such a nature as this, are the sad conditions upon which some portion of mankind consents to uphold the memory of even its greatest benefactors. But those who are beyond the reach of the petty passions which lead to such ingratitude, will at once see the useful policy of a people exhibiting a solicitude for the fame and credit of men who have, at any time, eminently advanced the interests of their country. How often has it occurred, that patriots, who have conferred benefits of inestimable price upon the land of their birth, have retired out of life, unrequited, and with no other consolation to cheer their dying hour, but the hope that some more impartial generation, in future times, would grant to the memory of the good, that justice which was refused to them when living! The certainty that such a hope of ultimate justice will always be realized, it is useful and politic as often as possible to exemplify. If, at any time, it will happen, that a distant and otherwise discerning pos

terity shall blindly confirm the iniquitous decree, which, in a passionate and prejudiced age, their forefathers had pronounced against a contemporary of extraordinary merit, then will be destroyed one of the most forcible inducements that have yet impelled men to the execution of virtuous and heroic deeds.

It is only by reflecting on considerations like these, that the reader will be able duly to appreciate, or even relish, these Memorials of Hampden.' His attention will be constantly directed throughout these pages, to the diversified counts of that protracted indictment against the celebrated patriot, which was commenced by the great Clarendon, and concluded by-Mr. D'Israeli! He will find that every accusation, however trivial, against one of the brightest, and, at the same time, one of the most rational champions of popular rights, of whom our annals make mention, is met with a degree of candour and indulgence, of which our literary controversies, unfortunately, show but few parallels. In exposing the misrepresentations by which Clarendon sought to blacken the memory of Hampden, Lord Nugent exhibits a consummate acquaintance with the whole of the authentic testimony on which the true history of the period rests: he pursues the noble historian through all the intricacies of his most ingenious sophistry, and traces, with a masterly hand, the various exaggerations and insinuations against Hampden contained in Clarendon's work, to that hatred of the popular cause, which has done so much to impede the salutary influence of one of the finest and most philosophical spirits that adorned the seventeenth century. Laden with the trophies of victory over such an adversary as Lord Clarendon, it is the unhappy fortune of our author to be compelled to enter the lists with such a foe as Mr. D'Israeli, the latest, but by no means the least acrimonious-and certainly the weakest-of the calumniators of Hampden. The consciousness of superior strength over an antagonist was never more nobly displayed, than in the extreme tone of moderation with which Lord Nugent enumerates the offences of Mr. D'Israeli's recent work against historical truth. We fear that the noble writer has too irresistibly proved, that the false criminations of Hampden, and some of the best of Hampden's colleagues, contained in the Commentaries on the Life and Reign of Charles the First," are not to be attributed altogether to that precipitancy of conclusion, to which men of frail judgment are always so prone. Before the publication of the volumes before us, we had ourselves set down Mr. D'israeli as worthy of being ranked amongst the gossiping minions of a court. We held him to be a man of extreme simplicity, following the innocent occupation of a collector of literary vertu-one who, with all his little political malice, could in no quarter excite the slightest apprehension of mischief. This is our opinion still, although we confess that Lord Nugent has afforded us some new materials for estimating the moral principles by which Mr. D'Israeli seems to be actuated in his historical labours.

"

It is not only in particular instances, that the spirit of candour and temperate discussion is maintained by Lord Nugent: every page of his lordship's book is animated by it, and so uniformly and so unaffectedly is it preserved throughout, that we feel not less inclined to yield implicit confidence to his authority, than to submit our judgments to the force of his arguments. To every Briton, then, who can take pride in the exaltation of his native country, it must be a subject of the greatest satisfaction to find that an enquiry, conducted upon the principles which we have just described, and so obviously calculated to elicit the truth, has terminated in results which place the honour of the illustrious Hampden out of the reach of all future impeachment. I find,' observes Lord Nugent, upon a full review of the whole of the evidence touching the conduct of Hampden, of which he could obtain a sight, I find that the motives of Hampden are unstained by any trace of meanness, uninfluenced by any ambitious or vindictive impulse; and his course, throughout, calm, lofty, and undeviating, among the indirect practises of many who surrounded him, and the violent counsels of many more, though himself under the greatest and most varied provocations of any.'-preface, p. xix.

Though John Hampden may be considered as one of the most familiarly known characters of British history, yet the fame which he acquired is entirely founded on the transactions of the last seven years of his life. Little, indeed, is known of his previous history, except that, being of a very ancient family, and of large estate, he was looked up to in his county with a respect, which was considerably enhanced by the occasional display of superior talents and judgment in the management of local business. At the age of twentysix he took his seat in the House of Commons, for the borough of Grampound. He seems to have made no figure at this time in Parliament, and his mother was extremely anxious that he should be raised to the peerage. She writes, in a letter which is still preserved among the manuscripts in the British Museum-" If ever my sonn will seek for his honor, tell him nowe to come; for heare is multitudes of lords a makinge-I am ambitious of my sonn's honor, which I wish were now conferred upon hime, that he might not come after so many new creations." Although the calumniators of Hampden have laboured to shew, that the mortification which the denial of a peerage inflicted on his mind, produced that determined hostility to regal power by which his life was rendered so eminent, yet Lord Nugent shows that a thought of the kind never entered into his imagination; and, indeed, when we consider the sort of claims that were in James the First's time admitted as constituting a title to the honours of the state, we must feel that they could not be objects of much ambition to such men as Hampden.

A considerable portion of the first volume of Lord Nugent's work, is devoted to a retrospective view of the various causes, which contributed to place the affairs of the kingdom in the position that