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conduct favorable to the happiness of human creatures...the great mass of the people. Good government cannot be formed on the basis of falshood and chicanery. Let the government of England ever stand on the square, solid, upright pedestals of truth and justice, and it must defy every shock, but the convulsion of the world's dissolution.

SECTION XXXIII.

On trafficking with the CUPE OF SOULS (Cura Animarum,) for the Purpose of political, i. e. moral Corruption.

THE parish priests of a protestant

country, when they are what they ought to be, and what they would usually be, if it were not for political influence, CHRISTIAN ORATORS and CHRISTIAN PHILOSOPHERS, are the most useful body of men, considering their numbers and their power, in the whole community. The good they are able to do is beyond all estimate; but unfortunately, it is a sort of good not always taken into the account of those who are in pursuit of more palpable advantages, SOLID GOLD, high station, and dominion over their fellow-creatures. The proper business of the clergy B b

is to mortify this very pride, the indulgence of which is to their courtly patrons, the summum bonum,the chief good of existence.

These persons, not having time or inclination to attend to religion, or any thing but the pomp and vanity of the world, idolizing themselves, and unwilling to acknowledge any other Deity, consider religion and the church merely as state engines; powerful engines, in conjunction with military force, to press down the elastic spirit of the people. They think, indeed, the emoluments attending ecclesiastical functions too much, if considered as recompences for religious services, which, in their minds, are no services at all, but scarcely enough, when converted into douceurs for the business of corruption, the grand object of modern ministers.

Ambitious noblemen, therefore, buy boroughs, and, like Lord Melcombe, send their myrmidons to the senate; and ministers pay the expence of the purchase, by conferring the highest ecclesiastical dignities, with sti pends of many thousands a-year, designed originally to be spent in charity, on the younger brothers, the cousins, the tutors, or the agents of these partician borough. mongers. It is indeed deemed politic, now and then, to raise a very ingenious, learned, and pious man to the MITRE; but seldom without contriving to promote, at the same time, the grand business of corruption....

This ingenious, learned, and pious man, un eveque de la fortune, is highly satisfied with the dignity and emolument of his office..... What need has he of the patronage appendant to it? In this age, it were a childish weakness, something similar to the simplicity recommended in the gospel, to give away good things to modest merit. But, though he has no need of the patronage, there are those, to whom he is bound by every tie of gratitude, who want it all. He therefore understands that the CURE OF SOULS is to be given to persons whom the prime minister may recommend; as the Duke of Newcastle recommended Burroughs and Franklin whom he had never seen or known, to the patronage of the lord chancellor. A translation may be impeded, if scruples of conscience should prevent an obsequious compliance with a minister's conge d'elire. "As to fitness or unfitness," (cries the friend of corruption), any man that can read is sufficient, for both prayers and sermons are ready made; and even if it were supposable that a man could not read, a parish, that pays the rector a thousand ayear, may be supplied with an ingenious curate for forty."

Formerly learning was scarce among the laity. The clergy engrossed what little there was in the world, and made themselves necessary to the state, not only in ec

clesiastical, but political offices and employments. "Before the Reformation," (says a learned writer), "the canon law was in great use and esteem, and of great use; and while the laity were in general unlettered, or employed in a military life, the king made use of clergymen, skilled in this law, in the offices of the chancery,privy seal, secretary of state, in the courts of justice, and in embas. sies. The king rewarded men thus qualified to do him service, with benefices and other ecclesiastical preferments; and the LORD CHANCELLOR or Lord Keeper, in particular, was furnished with many advowsons, to which, as they became vacant, he might present worthy masters and clerks in Chancery, who were then all clergymen; which advowsons still continue in his gift, though the reason thereof hath long ceased." But one reason having ceased, others may have risen still more weighty. We have already remarked, more than once, how that prime minister, the Duke of Newcastle, used the advowsons in the gift of the Chancellor. We know how preferment is bestowed in Ireland as well as England. We remember the old manner of appointment to the provostship of Trinity-college, Dublin.

The excellent divine from whom the last quotation was taken, speaking of clergymen honored and enriched with two cures

of souls, proceeds thus: "I do not deny but there are pluralists of great ecclesiastical merit; but I do deny that in general pluralists have greater merit than unalists, or than many in orders who have no living at all; or that pluralists in general, become pluralists for their ecclesiastical merit.

"Read over the list of pluralists in England, and see whether this sort of merit be universally, or generally, or COMMONLY, regarded in the dispensations granted them to hold pluralities. See whether the judge of this sort of merit hath power, if he were ever so well inclined, to regard it universally, or generally, or commonly see whether the motive of a patron to present a clerk to a second living, hath, in one instance out of twenty, been his eminent ecclesiastical merit; whether the same favor would not have been bestowed on the same person, had his merit been inferior; nay, in many cases, upon the same person, although instead of merit there had been demerit; and very often also, if not the more likely, if instead of want ca competence, there had been affluence. See whether the MERIT, which hath been sometimes considered in this case, hath not, instead of ecclesiastical merit, been political opinions, serviceableness in elections, private treaties, domestic negociations, and other mean offices, below the consideration and interposition of ecclesias

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