Ch. 10: The Bill for the Clergy - Page 2

knew what it was to make a shift of living on an insufficient income; and it may have been, this experience as much as "personal disappointment" which gave pungency to his criticism. It is easy enough to find questionable motives for a satirist, especially when that satirist is Swift; let us not, however, forget that in his case the personal element was never permitted to overweight the impersonal purpose. Other men when they reach prosperity often forget or ignore the hard conditions of their previous state; to Swift these conditions were always existing factors in his considerations for the amelioration of his fellow-men. This it is which gives to his writings so much of the "tone of aigreur."

In his letter to John Stearne, Bishop of Clogher, dated July, 1733, which is one of Swift's most characteristic epistles--characteristic, because the embodiment of truthful candour--he gives no equivocal expression of opinion on these two bills. He calls them, "abominable bills, for enslaving and beggaring the clergy, (which took their birth from hell)." "I call God to witness," he adds, "that I did then, and do now, and shall for ever, firmly believe, that every Bishop who gave his vote for either of these bills, did it with no other view (bating further promotion), than a premeditated design, from the spirit of ambition, and love of arbitrary power, to make the whole body of the clergy their slaves and vassals until the day of judgment, under the load of poverty and contempt."

About the same time, 1732, appeared another pamphlet entitled, "The Reconciler ... shewing how all the good ends proposed by either of those bills, may, by a more gentle and easy method, be attained, without injury to the rights of my lords the bishops; or rigour and violence to the inferior clergy." In the main, the writer agrees with Swift; but the tract is valuable as showing that the controversy was no small one, and it furnishes also what is, apparently, an impartial history of the whole affair. Three Irish prelates voted against the bills on a division--Theophilus Bolton, Archbishop of Cashel, Charles Carr, Bishop of Killaloe, and Robert Howard, Bishop of Elphin.

The text of this tract is based on that which appeared in a volume of "Miscellanies in Prose and Verse" in the year 1789. It has been collated with those given by Scott, Hawkesworth, and other editors.

[T.S.]

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ON THE BILL FOR THE CLERGY'S RESIDING ON THEIR LIVINGS.

Those gentlemen who have been promoted to bishoprics in this kingdom for several years past, are of two sorts: first, certain private clergymen from England, who, by the force of friends, industry, solicitation, or other means and merits to me unknown, have been raised to that character by the mero motu of the crown.

Of the other sort, are some clergymen born in this kingdom, who have