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The union between the churches of England and Ireland was to be formally dissolved, all the Irish ecclesiastical courts to be abolished, and the ecclesiastical law to remain provisionally in force as a voluntary compact, until it should be altered by the church itself.

These were the principal provisions of the bill. There were many others, relating to vested interests, to the fulfilment of duties, the principles on which the property of the church should be divided, the administration of it for the future, the disposal of the churches, and the management and appropriation of the revenues which would remain after all claims had been satisfied. Mr. Gladstone thus concluded the speech by which the measure was introduced to the House of Commons.

'I believe I have now gone through the chief of these almost endless arrangements; and I have laid, as well as I am able, the plans of the government before the committee. I will not venture to anticipate the judgment of the committee; but I trust it will be of opinion that it is at any rate a plan loyal to the expectations we held out on a former occasion, and loyal to the people of England who believed our promises. I hope also that the members of the committee may think that the best pains we could give have been applied in order to develop and mature the measure; and I say that with great submission to the judgment of gentlemen on this and on the other side of the House. It is a subject of legislation so exceedingly complex and varied, that I have no doubt there must be errors, omissions, and many possible improvements; and we shall welcome from every side, quite irrespective of differences of opinion on the outlines of the measure, suggestions which, when those outlines are decided on, may tend to secure a more beneficial application of those funds to the welfare of the people of Ireland.

'I trust, sir, that although its operation should be stringent, and although we have not thought it either politic or allowable to attempt to diminish its stringency by making it incomplete, the spirit towards the church of Ireland as a religious communion in which this measure has been considered and prepared by my colleagues and myself has not been a spirit of unkindness. Perhaps at this time it is too much to expect to obtain full credit for any declaration

1869.]

MR. GLADSTONE'S SPEECH.

861

of that kind. We are undoubtedly asking an educated, highly respected, and generally pious and zealous body of clergymen to undergo a great transition; we are asking a powerful and intelligent minority of the laity of Ireland in connection with the established church to abate a good part of the exceptional privileges they have enjoyed; but I do not feel that in making this demand on them we are seeking to inflict an injury. I do not believe that they are exclusively or even mainly responsible for the errors of English policy towards Ireland: 1 am quite certain that in many vital respects they have suffered by it. I believe that the free air they will breathe under a system of equality and justice, giving scope for the development of their great energies with all the powers of property and intelligence they will bring to bear, will make that Ireland they love a country for them not less enviable and less beloved in the future than it has been in the past. As respects the church, I admit that, almost without exception, I do not know any country in which so great a change, so great a transition, has been proposed for the ministers of a religious communion who have enjoyed for many ages the preferred position of an established church. I can well understand that to many in the Irish establishment such a change appears to be nothing less than ruin and destruction. From the height on which they now stand the future is to them an abyss, and their fears recall the words used in King Lear when Edgar endeavours to persuade Gloucester that he has fallen over the cliffs of Dover, and says:

"Ten masts at each make not the altitude

Which thou hast perpendicularly fell;
Thy life's a miracle."

And yet but a little while after, the old man is relieved from the delusion, and finds that he has not fallen at all. So, I trust that, when the fictitious and adventitious aid on which we have too long taught the Irish establishment to lean is removed, it will place its trust in its own resources, in its own GREAT MISSION, in all that it can draw from the energy of its ministers and members, and the high hopes and promises of the gospel that it teaches, and will find that it has entered upon a new era of existence-an era bright with hope and potent for good.

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At any rate, I think the day has certainly come when an end is finally to be put to that union, not between the church and religious association, but between the establishment and the state, which was commenced under circumstances little auspicious, and has endured to be a source of unhappiness to Ireland and of scandal and discredit to England. This measure is in every sense a GREAT measure; great in its principles, great in the multitude of its dry technical but nevertheless interesting details, and great as a testing measure, for it will show for one and all of us of what mettle we are made. Upon us all it brings a great responsibility. We upon this bench are especially chargeable-nay, deeply guilty, if we have either dishonestly, or even prematurely or unwisely challenged so gigantic an issue. I know well the punishments that follow rashness in public affairs, and that ought to fall on those menthose Phaetons in politics-that, with hands unequal to the task, attempt to guide the chariot of the Sun. the responsibility passes beyond us, and rests on every man who has to take part in the discussion and the decision on this bill. Every man approaches the discussion under the most solemn obligation to raise the level of his vision and extend its scope in proportion to the greatness of the matter in hand. The working of our constitutional government is itself on its trial; for I do not believe there ever was a time when the wheels of legislative machinery were set in motion under conditions of peace and order and constitutional regularity, to deal with a question greater and more profound. And more especially, sir, is the credit and fame of this great assembly involved; this assembly, which has inherited through many ages the accumulated honours of brilliant triumphs, of peaceful but courageous legislation, is now called upon to address itself to a task which would indeed have demanded all the best energies of the very best among your fathers and ancestors. I believe it will prove to be worthy of the task. Should it fail, even the fame of the House of Commons will suffer disparagement; should it succeed, even that fame, I venture to say, will receive no small, no insensible addition

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Mr. Disraeli emphatically declared that the opinion of the opposition remained unchanged; they still believed that disestablishment was a political error, and that disen

1869.]

DEBATE ON THE SECOND READING.

363

dowment, especially when accompanied by secularisation, was mere and sheer confiscation. He said that under ordinary circumstances he should have opposed the introduction of the bill; but that looking to the verdict of the country at the general election, which he interpreted to mean that Mr. Gladstone should have an opportunity of dealing with the question of the Irish church, he thought that the premier ought not to be precluded from submitting his policy to the House, and he therefore advised his friends not to oppose the motion for the introduction of the measure; but he asked for a delay of three weeks before the second reading. This delay Mr. Gladstone declined to concede; and it was ultimately agreed, as has already been mentioned, that the second reading should be proposed on the 18th of March.

Perhaps an abler and more eloquent debate never was carried on in the House of Commons than that on the second reading of this measure. Not to mention speakers of less importance who took part in it, there was Mr. Disraeli, who moved that the bill should be read that day six months, and who, though of course aware that he was playing a losing game, delivered one of the most forcible speeches he ever pronounced in the House of Commons. On the same side Dr. Ball spoke with the volubility for which his countrymen are remarkable, and with an ability which threw into the shade all the able efforts he had previously made. Mr. Miall delivered his views on the other side with the authority which his long and consistent advocacy of the change now about to be effected gave him, and who was listened to by all parties with a respectful attention seldom accorded by the House to one known as a strong partisan. Mr. Bright gave the measure the support of his high reputation and splendid eloquence. The interest he took in the question made him surpass himself, and the conclusion of his speech, in which he claimed for the bill before the House the support of the Supreme Being, as to a measure which was in accordance with His glorious attributes of truth, justice, and mercy, was delivered with a manifest earnestness and sincerity which made perhaps as profound an impression as anything that ever was uttered within the walls of parliament. He was followed by an antagonist in every way worthy of him-Sir Roundell

Palmer, whose conscientious conviction on this question had prevented him from joining a ministry whose political views were in other respects in harmony with his own opinions, and who had declined the chancellorship and a peerage, to which the services he had rendered to the liberal party had given him an undeniable claim, rather than consent to a measure which he disapproved. He commanded the attention to which his high character and the noble sacrifice he had made entitled him no less than the force and eloquence with which he urged his opinions. Admitting the existence of the discontent, he denied that the remedy proposed for it by the government was the right one. Admitting that the existence of the established church in Ireland was a grievance, he argued that the grievance might be removed without a confiscation of the property of the Irish church. He was answered with not unequal eloquence by the solicitor-general, Sir J. Coleridge, who, however, after a brief and respectful reply to the argument of Sir R.Palmer, applied himself to the evidently moro congenial task of pointing out the necessity that existed for the measure, and the advantages it was calculated to produce. The case for the bill was ingeniously and ably put by Mr. Lowe, the chancellor of the exchequer, who met the powerful argument of Sir R. Palmer by asking the House if they would consent to disestablish the Irish church and to leave it in possession of 16,000,000l. worth of property without connection with the state, and without check even from the ecclesiastical courts. He urged that the effect of such a settlement would be to found a theocracy of tremendous power-a fresh element of anarchy in Ireland. Replying to some arguments which Dr. Ball had urged against voluntaryism, he said that if they wanted to see the voluntary system in operation, it might be seen working most effectually in Ireland. There was to be seen the spectacle of the state church on the one side, and the nation on the other. There the state church was not the national church, and the national church not the state church. Whatever religious life existed in Ireland was to be found where the voluntary system prevailed, while coldness and apathy existed in the richly-endowed districts of Ireland. It was said that the question at issue was a religious one, and that the church was 'a bulwark against

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