Page:The Works of the Rev. Jonathan Swift, Volume 9.djvu/266

256 to prevent the sin of non-residence; while the universal opinion of almost every clergyman in the kingdom, without distinction of party, taking in even those who are not likely to be sufferers, stands directly against them.

If some livings in the north may be justly thought too large a compass of land, which makes it inconvenient for the remotest inhabitants to attend the service of the church, which in some instances may be true, no reasonable clergyman would oppose a proper remedy by particular acts of parliament.

Thus, for instance, the deanery of Down, a country deanery I think without a cathedral, depending wholly upon a union of parishes joined together in a time when the land lay waste and thinly inhabited, since those circumstances are so prodigiously changed for the better, may properly be lessened, leaving a decent competency to the dean, and placing rectories in the remaining churches, which are now served only by stipendiary curates.

The case may be probably the same in other parts: and such a proceeding, discreetly managed, would be truly for the good of the church.

For it is to be observed, that the dean and chapter lands, which in England were all seized under the fanatick usurpation, are things unknown in Ireland, having been long ravished from the church by a succession of confusions, and tithes applied in their stead to support that ecclesiastical dignity.

The late archbishop of Dublin had a very different way of encouraging the clergy of his diocese to residence: when a lease had run out seven years or