this Church, though it includes only a tenth
part of the population, has more than half the wealth of Ireland. But
is that an argument in favour of the present system? Is it not the
strongest argument that can be urged in favour of an entire change?
It is true that there are many cases in which it is fit that property
should prevail over number. Those cases may, I think, be all arranged in
two classes. One class consists of those cases in which the preservation
or improvement of property is the object in view. Thus, in a railway
company, nothing can be more reasonable than that one proprietor who
holds five hundred shares should have more power than five proprietors
who hold one share each. The other class of cases in which property may
justly confer privileges is where superior intelligence is required.
Property is indeed but a very imperfect test of intelligence. But, when
we are legislating on a large scale, it is perhaps the best which we
can apply. For where there is no property, there can very seldom be any
mental cultivation. It is on this principle that special jurors, who
have to try causes of peculiar nicety, are taken from a wealthier order
than that which furnishes common jurors. But there cannot be a more
false analogy than to reason from these cases to the case of an
Established Church. So far is it from being true that, in establishing
a Church, we ought to pay more regard to one rich man than to five poor
men, that the direct reverse is the sound rule. We ought to pay more
regard to one poor man than to five rich men. For, in the first place,
the public ordinances of religion are of far more importance to the poor
man than to the rich man. I do not mean to say that a rich man may not
be the better for hearing sermons and joining in public prayers. But
these things are not indispensable to him; and, if he is so situated
that he cannot have them, he may find substitutes. He has money to buy
books, time to study them, understanding to comprehend them. Every
day he may commune with the minds of Hooker, Leighton, and Barrow. He
therefore stands less in need of the oral instruction of a divine than a
peasant who cannot read, or who, if he can read, has no money to procure
books, or leisure to peruse them. Such a peasant, unless instructed by
word of mouth, can know no more of Christianity than a wild Hottentot.
Nor is this all. The poor man not only needs the help of a minister of
religion more than the rich ma