[ 448 ] SELECT POETRY. [May, VERSES Recited at the thirty-fifth Anniversary of the Literary Fund Society, in honour of his most gracious Majesty King George the Fourth. BY SIR WILLIAM ASHBURNHAM, BART. SAY, shall no Bard in animating strains Proclaim to Britain's Sons a Brunswick reigns? 'Shall we, who feel his mild paternal sway, No joy evince, no thankfulness display? Shall Erin deem herself supremely biest, Allowed to clasp her Monarch to her breast? Shall Scotia greet her chief with loud acclaim, And blend her blessings with his honour'd name; And yet shall England pour no votive strain Shall apathy still slumber o'er the lyre, Forbid it, gratitude! forbid it, zeal! Let British Bards a bright example show, Of the just tribute we our Sovereign owe. Fir'd at the thought, my ardent voice I'll raise, And with the trumpet's clangor sound his praise. Waft it, ye winds, Oh! waft the glorious strain To every clime that boasts our Sovereign's reign; To Erin's emerald Isle, to India's bowers, Think how he acted in his Father's name; When did I turn my face from the distress'd? If e'er coercion's oords I'm forc'd to draw, His arms victorious bade war to cease, To other scenes now let us turn our eyes, To humbler valleys, and to milder skies. Philanthrophy, that Heaven-descended guest, Has fix'd her mansion in a George's breast, To misery he gives unask'd relief; His joy it is to stop the source of grief; And bid pale indigence to smile again; On Arts and Science beams of favour shed, And place the laurel-wreath on Learning's head. Such, such are deeds that Christian Virtue Here the sacred stillness of the night, When her fair Queen leads forth the host of Heaven; Then all is peace-the soul's unclouded light Thoughts that refine the spirit, and excite them here, Nor Doria's triglyph-nor Ionia's frieze- Spread, far and wide, a fairer, happier birth, we see And many a knoll around of verdant green Point where the combats of those days have been. Others, and gifted with poetic mindSouls by no common bounds of thought confined GENT. MAG. May, 1824. 449 Her open court, and here her zealots kneeled, prayer, [air, Ere yet the day-star breathed its freshening Stained the curved stone, and sealed the vic- And shadowy grove, the Druid elders come, TO LORD BYRON. H. B. On reading his Stanza on the Silver Foot This once gay peopled palace of the soul? Is this, thou feverish man, thy festal bowl? Is this the cup wherein thou seek'st the balm, Each brighter chalice to thy lip denies ? Is this, the oblivious bowl whose floods becalm, The worm that will not sleep and never dies? Woe to the lip to which this cup is held! The lip that's palled with every purer draught; For which alone the rifled grave can yield Restore the relic to its tomb again; The blessed bowl that never flowed in vain! [ 450 ] HISTORICAL CHRONICLE. [May, PROCEEDINGS IN PARLIAMENT. HOUSE OF LORDS, May 4. The Marquis of Lansdowne moved the committal of the UNITARIAN'S MARRIAGE BILL.-The Bishop of Chester (Law) opposed the law, upon the ground that it would amount to a surrender of the doctrines and discipline of the Established Church. The Rt. Rev. Prelate concluded by proposing as an amendment, that the Bill should be read that day six months. The Bishop of Exeter supported the motion. The Bill he thought but a reasonable concession to the scruples of the Unitarians. The Bishop of St. David's expressed a doubt whether opinions, repugnant to the doctrines of Christianity, were entitled to so much consideration. So pernicious to society, his Lordship observed, were the opinions of Unitarians once declared to be by the Legislature, that persous professing them were not, till within these few years, even a tolerated party in the State. But being tolerated, their conscience is now made a plea for privilege. And yet we are told by a very high authority, that dissent, seeking for more than toleration, is not conscience but ambition. If conscience had any share in the objections which Unitarians make to the language of the Marriage Service, they must equally object to the Scriptures themselves; for the obnoxious terms are the express words of the New Testament, and are retained by the Unitarians in their translation of that Testament; and, incredible as such inconsistency may appear, they are the very words of their own baptismal office, and are there introduced as the foundation of the Christian faith. Whatever meaning therefore they may be accustomed to attach to the words in one service, they may equally retain in the other. For the words, which the Marriage Service requires them to use, contain no declaration of faith, but are simply the conclusion of a mutual contract, by which the contracting parties engage to ful fil their promise as Christians,-on the faith of a Christian,-that faith, into which they were introduced by baptism. They call themselves Christians, and cannot reasonably object to the terms of their own baptism. But, continued his Lordship, the objections which Unitarians make to the doctrines of the Trinity, are objections to doctrines, which are essential to Christianity. They deny the divinity of Christ, and the personality of the Holy Spirit. They hold, therefore, no other belief of the Deity, than what is professed by Deists and Mahometans. Their Lordships, therefore, could not con sent to the proposed indulgence to conscientious scruples respecting the doctrine of the Trinity, without being prepared to grant the same or any other indulgence to conscientious scruples respecting the truth of Christianity. If Unitarians would at once publicly declare themselves to be what they are, not Christians, they have the remedy in their own hands, as well as the Jews, and need not come to Parliament for the proposed relief. The Archbishop of Canterbury supported the motion. He professed to set no value upon the insincere and reluctant conformity extorted from Dissenters by the existing Marriage laws. The Marquess of Lansdowne defended the Bill at great length. He asserted it professed nothing more than to restore the Unitarians to the privileges which they enjoyed before Lord Hardwicke's Marriage Act; which Dissenters still enjoy in Ireland, and which are now freely indulged to Quakers and Jews in this kingdom. The Lord Chancellor opposed the Bill, as inimical to the supremacy of the Established Church, which Church he venerated not only as the purest in her doctrine, but as the great bulwark of civil liberty, and the only security for a permanent toleration. The details of the Bill, he said, went to degrade the Church to the condition of handmaid to the Dissenters; and therefore he should oppose it. Lord Holland supported the Bill, and ridiculed the exaggerated strain which he said had been used in canvassing a measure so limited in its operation and probable influence. The Earl of Liverpool, professing the most devoted attachment to the Church of England, nevertheless supported the motion, which he thought only a reasonable con cession. The House then divided on the amendment-Contents 105;-Non-Contents 66. The Bill was consequently lost. HOUSE OF COMMONS, May 6. Mr. Hume brought forward a motion to institute an inquiry, whether the Irish Church establishment was not unnecessarily numerous and expensive, with relation to the amount of the population! The hon. member introduced his motion with a speech of vast extent. He declared that the change which the church of Ireland demanded would come by some means; there was a point beyond which it was not given to human nature to endure; and much as he should regret to see that 1924.] Proceedings in the present Session of Parliament. that change brought about by violence, yet this would arrive if it were not prevented by more conciliatory measures. The increase which had taken place in the population of Ireland (and which, in the time of Bishop Boulter, had been as four catholics to one protestant) had gone on increasing, although it had had no assistance. The Protestant Establishment, protected as it was by all the advantages of wealth and power, seemed to consist of 1,289 benefices, as appeared by the last returns. By the returns in "The Clerical Guide," the numbers appeared to be 4 archbishops, and 18 bishops, 33 deans, 108 dignitaries, 178 prebends, 52 vicars choral, 107 rural deans, and 512 minor canous, &c. Here was a staff (a laugh) for so small an army. The population of Ireland consisted of seven millions, one million of which was Protestant, half of that number being Dissenters, and the other six millions Catholics. According to the best calculation which could be made, the valuation of church property in Ireland was stated at 3,200,000l. The hon. Member estimated, that the number of benefices with cure of souls was 1270; churches, 140; benefices without churches, 192; unions, 453; glebe-houses, 717; benefices, without glebe-houses, 529; benefices, without glebe-lands, 343; incumbents resident, 763; incumbents absent, 507. He would ask, why did not the Bishops of the Irish Church do their duty? Why were they not obliged to be more attentive to it? He would assert, and he could prove it, that they neglected it. The hon. Gentleman concluded by observing, that his object was not to injure the Established Church in IreJand, or its possessions, but to pledge the House to an inquiry.—Mr. Stanley opposed the motion in an extremely eloquent argument, in which he exposed the exaggerations of the wealth of the Irish Church, upon which all the hon. Mover's arguments rested. Mr. Grattan and Mr. Dominick Browne supported the motion.--Mr. Robertson suggested the possibility that, by mutual concessions, it might be found practicable to adopt the Roman Catholic clergy into the Established Church; and cited the examples of Prussia and some other German states, in which it had been found easy to unite Lutherans and Calvinists, sects as repugnant as the Protestants and Catholics of Ireland.-Mr. Plunkelt spoke at some length against the motion. Mr. L. Foster and Mr. Dawson also opposed it. Sir F. Burdett warmly supported the proposition for inquiry.-The House then divided, when the motion was rejected by a majority of 152 to 79. May 10. Sir G. Hill moved the second reading of the Bill for the repairs of Derry Cathedral. He proceeded to justify its provisions by analogy to other Bills which had received the sanction of the House. Dr. Lushington disputed the fairness of 451 this analogy. He warmly opposed the Bill, which, he said, was merely a scheme to tax the people of Derry for purposes which were amply provided for by the funds in the hands of the Dean and Chapter; he concluded by moving, as an amendment, that the Bill should be read a second time on that day six months.—Mr. S. Bourne opposed the Bill; the Dean and Chapter were bound to keep their cathedral in repair.-Mr. Plunkett pronounced a panegyric upon the Bishop of Derry, and suggested that it might be prudent to withdraw the Bill.-Mr. Hume and Mr. W. Smith took the opportunity to repeat their demands of an inquiry into the state of the Established Church. The motion was then withdrawn. Mr. Manning moved the second reading of the WEST INDIA COMPANY BILL.-Mr. Sykes, Mr. W. Williams, Mr. Whitmore, Mr. Smith, and Mr. F. Buxton opposed the Bill, as likely to raise the price of sugar, by giving a monopoly to the company to be incorporated, as holding out a temptation to delusive speculation, and as threatening to procrastinate the period at which the Negroes might be emancipated.-Mr. Huskisson, protesting that he saw nothing in the Bill to take it out of the class of legislative incorporations, to which he had a general dislike, proceeded to answer the particular objections to its provisions. He denied that the bill would give any monopoly of the sugar-trade, that it was likely to lead to any delusion, or that it could affect the condition of the Negroes otherwise than favourably.On a division, the motion for the second reading of the Bill was carried by a majority of 102 to 30. Mr. Maberly brought forward his motion for the REPEAL OF THE HOUSE, WINDOW, SERVANT, HORSE and CARRIAGE TAXES, amounting, in the whole, to three millions and a half. The general purpose of his speech was to shew that the Sinking Fund might be abandoned without injury, in order to set the surplus revenue free for the reduction of taxes.-The Chancellor of the Exchequer defended the Sinking Fund, by which, he said, thirty-nine millions of debt had been redeemed since 1816; he professed an unwillingness to indulge in anticipations of any kind.-The House divided, Ayes 78; Noes 171. May 11. Lord Althorp introduced a motion for the appointment of a Committee to inquire into the STATE OF IRELAND generally, with relation to population, employment, commerce, the church, tithes, rents, the military establishment, the insurrection act, the state of education, and the Catholic question.-Mr. Goulburn, at some length, vindicated the conduct pursued towards Ireland, by Parliament and by Ministers; he deprecated engaging in so wide a field of inquiry as that suggested by the noble mover, aud 452 Proceedings in Parliament.-Foreign News." and proposed as an amendment, "That the FRANCE. [May, ficially bestowed for the people, than it would FOREIGN NEWS. The French Ministry are now proceeding in the execution of three measures of great importance. The first, a law introduced to the Peers, is for raising 60,000 men yearly, instead of 40,000, as at present, and extending their time of service to eight years instead of four by this measure France will have an immense standing army in time of peace. The second project relates to education; by it all professors and masters of schools are required to provide themselves with licences from Government to carry on their establishments. The third measure is that extending the duration of the Chambers to seven years, like that of England. The great financial operation of reducing the interest on the whole debt of France one per cent. has created a vast sensation in Paris, and, as a matter of course, excited considerable opposition. This measure is intended to "close the last wounds of the Revolution," by enabling the Ministry, without apparently entering into new or additional engagements, to give the emigrants a certain property in the public funds, as an equivalent for the claims which they still assert to the estates wrested from them during the French Revolution, and which have been so long in the possession of other persons. SPAIN. The King of Spain issued a declaration on the 6th of May, setting forth that he never would consent to the independence of his former Colonies, but that he would appeal to the judgment of a Congress of European Monarchs, and that he would use all the means in his power again to reduce them to subjection. makes the following exceptions :-The chiefs The amnesty which has been published of the insurrection of the isle of Leon; the members of the Cortes who proclaimed the deposition of the King at Seville; the chiefs of the military insurrections in the different the judges of Elio, and the authors of the parts of Spain; the assassins of Venuesa, will be seen that the above exceptions com massacres in the prisons of Grenada.—It prise every person of eminence connected with the late Constitutional Government, or who may be supposed inimical to the present state of things. PORTUGAL. Lisbon has been the scene of some extraordinary events, and which have caused an unusual sensation. On the 30th of April, there suddenly appeared the following proclamation by the Infant Don Miguel: :-"Soldiers! if the day of May 27th 1823 shone with memorable glory, that of April 30, 1824. will not obtain less celebrity. These two days will occupy a glorious place in the history of Lusitania. At the first of these epochs I left the capital to put down a disorganizing faction; I saved the Throne, the King, the Royal Family, the whole nationand also set an example of attachment to the holy religion which we profess, as the best support of royalty and justice. This day I shall complete the great work which I have begun, by assuring its stability, and by exterminating the pestiferous sect of Freemasons, who, in the silence of treason, were planning the destruction and extinction of the |