Law to King William IV., he remarked, benevolently and sagaciously, that the bringing together Protestants and Roman Catholics as members of the Boards of Guardians, would, he hoped, have a tendency to soften religious animosities, and teach the members of different creeds to act together in harmony for a work of charity.
A measure passed about the same time related to a grievance which was at once a material and a political wrong.—I speak of the law for the commutation of tithes.
The measure adopted dealt only with the material mischief. The collection of tithes in Ireland before the Union is thus described by Mr. Grattan:—
The use of the tithe farmer is to get from the parishioners what the parson would be ashamed to demand, and to enable the parson to absent himself from his duty. The powers of the tithe farmer are summary laws and ecclesiastical courts; his livelihood is extortion; his rank in society is generally the lowest, and his occupation is to pounce on the poor in the name of the Lord! He is a species of wolf left by the shepherd to take care of the flock in his absence.
In another speech Mr. Grattan calls the tithe collectors 'a subordination of vultures.'
Mr. Wakefield, in his elaborate and impartial volumes upon Ireland, describes the consternation of a village when a half-famished cottier had his cow seized for tithes:—
I have heard, with emotions I can scarcely describe, deep curses repeated from village to village as the cavalcade proceeded; I have beheld at night houses in flames, and for a
