and the consequences soon began to appear in the general character of the Church.  Much piety, activity, learning, and earnest labor were to be found in it; and indeed, we may venture to say, that, with the exception of her carnal and debasing wealth, she had been purified and reformed to a very considerable extent, even then.  Still, however, the bloated mass of mammon hung about her, prostrating her energies, secularizing her spirit, and, we must add, oppressing the people, out of whose pockets it was forced to come.  When the calamity, therefore, which the reader may perceive is partly upon and impending over, the Protestant clergy, actually occurred, it did not find them unprepared, nor without the sympathy of many of the very people who were forced by the tyrannical influence of party feeling to oppose them publicly.  To their sufferings and unexampled patience, however, we shall be obliged to refer, at a subsequent period of our narrative; and for that reason, we dismiss it for the present.

Such, then, was the state of the Protestant Established Church for a considerable length of time before the tithe agitation, and also immediately preceding it; and we deemed it necessary to make the reader acquainted with both, in order that he may the better understand the nature and spirit of the almost universal assault which was, by at least one party—­the Roman Catholic—­so furiously made upon it.  At the present period of our narrative, then, the population of the country, especially of the South and West, had arrived at that state of agitation, which, whether its object be legitimate or not, is certain, in a short time, to brutalize the public mind and debauch the public morals, by removing all the conscientious impediments which religion places against crime, and consequently all scruple in committing it.  Heretofore, those vile societies of a secret nature, that disgrace the country and debase the character of her people, existed frequently under separate denominations, and for distinct objects.  Now, however, they all consented to abandon these peculiar purposes, and to coalesce into one great conspiracy against the destruction of the Establishment.  We do not mean to assert, however, that this general outcry against the Church, and its accompanying onslaught on her property, originated directly with the people.  No such thing; the people, as they always are, and, we fear, ever will be, were mere instruments in the hands of a host of lay and clerical agitators; and no argument was left unattempted or unurged to hound them on to the destruction of the Establishment.  From the Corn Exchange down to the meanest and most obscure tribunal of agitation throughout the kingdom, the virtues of passive resistance were inculcated and preached, and the great champion of popular rights told the people publicly and repeatedly that they might not be afraid to follow his advice, for that it mattered little how oppressive or stringent any act of parliament in defence of the Established