of dignity and emolument were bestowed upon Englishmen; upon men who lived here with reluctance, and but seldom—­who had no sympathy with the country or its inhabitants—­nay, who looked upon us, in general, with feeling of hostility and contempt; and who, by example or precept, rendered no earthly equivalent for the enormous sums that were drawn from a poor and struggling people.  It is idle to say that these prodigious ecclesiastical revenues were not paid by the people, but by the landlord, who, if the people had not paid them, would have added them to the rent.  But even so—­the straggling peasant reasoned naturally, for he felt it to be one thing to pay even a high rent to the landlord, whose rights, as such, he acknowledged, but a very different thing to pay forth out of his own pocket a tenth of his produce to the pastor of a hostile creed, which had little sympathy with him, for which he received no spiritual equivalent, and on which, besides, he was taught to look as a gross and ungodly heresy.

But this was not the worst of it.  In the discussion of this subject, it is rather hazardous for the champion of our former Establishment to make any allusion to the landlord at all; the fact unfortunately being, that in the management and disposal of land, the landlords, in general, were gifted with a very convenient forgetfulness that such a demand as tithe was to come upon the tenant at all.  The land in general was let as if it had been tithe-free, whilst, at the same time, and in precisely the same grasping spirit, it so happened, that wherever it was tithe-free the rents exacted were also enormous, and seen as—­supposing tithe had not an existence—­no country ever could suffer to become the basis of valuation, or to settle down into a system.  In fact, such was the spirit, and so profligate the condition of the Established Church for a long lapse of time, both before and after the Union, that we may lay it down as a general principle, that everything was rewarded in it but piety and learning.

If there were anything wanting to prove the truth and accuracy of our statements, it would be found in the bitter and relentless spirit with which the Established Church and her pastors were assailed, at the period of which we write.  And let it be observed here, that even then, the Church in this country, in spirit, in learning, in zeal, and piety, was an angel of purity compared to what she had been twenty or thirty years before.  The course of clerical education had been defined, established, and extended; young profligates could not enter the Church, as in the good old times, without any earthly preparation, either in learning or morals.  They were obliged to read, and thoroughly to understand, an extensive and enlightened course of divinity—­to attend lectures and entitle themselves, both by attendance and answering, to a certain number of certificates, without which they had no chance for orders.  In point of fact, they were forced to become serious;