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1869.] DEBATE ON THE SECOND READING.

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popery.' But it was no part of the duty of the government to raise bulwarks against any religion. Mr. Walpole spoke amidst the attention that a high and just reputation combined with great amiability is sure to command in the House of Commons, and thus summed up his objections to the measure: 'It will, for the first time in our history, destroy the securities hitherto taken by the state for the extension of the ordinances of religion to all parts of the country, and divert the funds devoted to that purpose to other purposes for which they were never intended. It will be the first step towards ecclesiastical communism. It will unsettle the laws of ecclesiastical property in England and Scotland, and perhaps too of all other kinds of property, but especially of corporation property. It will overthrow a solemn compact between two independent legislatures. It will impede religious progress and stir up endless discord in Ireland.' But of all the speeches against the bill, decidedly the ablest and the most eloquent was that which was delivered by Mr. Gathorne Hardy towards the close of the long debate, and it was received by the party which he represented with applauses far louder and more rapturous than had been bestowed on the colder and more argumentative address of their leader. He could discover no reason for this attack on the Irish church but jealousy like that which animated Haman. He denied that the church was a badge of conquest; he rather regarded it as an imperial light, as a recognition by the executive of the superior tenderness of the Almighty, as a token of the Protestantism of the sovereign, as a keeping alive in the dark places of Ireland the lamp of the reformation. He maintained that the bill instead of restoring peace and concord in Ireland would revive agitation and increase discontent. He ran rapidly over the chief features of the disendowment scheme, in order to show that they would fail to soften the irritation of those who would feel themselves specially aggrieved by the measure. He said that the gift of churches and glebes called for no gratitude. The purchase of the tithe rent-charge was a puzzle, the treatment of Maynooth a mockery, the church body a delusion, the proposed disposal of the surplus for the foundation of new religious endowments, and their seizure for imperial purposes, both violations of the pledges of last

year. He ended by drawing a highly-coloured picture of the condition of Ireland, in which he represented the institutions of the country as satisfactory, freedom complete, law as justly administered as in England; but the people discontented without any real cause, sympathising with crime, and influenced, not for good, by the priesthood. He concluded, amidst the loud cheering of the opposition, by insisting that an interval of peace and industry, and not a destructive measure such as that which was now

brought forward- -a measure wrong in the sight of God and opposed to the interests of the empirewas the real panacea for the evils under which Ireland was suffering.

It was close on one o'clock on the fourth evening of the debate that Mr. Gladstone at length rose to make his reply. He began it by remarking that Mr. Hardy had shown his fitness for a task which Burke had disclaimed-that of drawing an indictment against a whole nation. Yet even in a picture of the Irish people so unjust as to amount to a libel, serious evils were admitted, for which Mr. Hardy had no remedy. But the government, recognising the existence of an Irish question, the result of years of previous misgovernment, had a remedy which they proposed of necessity piecemeal. He passed over the comments that had been made on the details of the bill as being irrelevant to the question of the second reading. Only he intimated that the payment of the Maynooth grant and the regium donum out of the church property were open questions. Running over the four nights' debate he failed to discover any rival plan that had been proposed in the place of that brought forward by the government. The proposals of the commission had been entirely thrown aside, and the opposition had either no plan at all, or else the old plan of levelling up. The only plan that had been put forward was that of Sir Roundell Palmer, of disestablishment with little or no disendowment. This plan Mr. Gladstone discussed at considerable length. He said, in the course of his argument on it, that he differed altogether from the ideas of church property on which it was founded. When property had been given for purposes that had not been attained and could not be attained, it was the duty of the legislature to see that it was not wasted, and when it became

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mischievous, to take it away. But he took a much larger view of church trusts, holding that this property had been given for the general benefit of the nation.

The House divided about twenty minutes past two o'clock, when the numbers were:

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These numbers showed conclusively, what indeed had been known before, how signal was the victory which the new administration had won on the appeal that had been made to the country. But the numerical superiority only indicated very imperfectly the gain on the liberal side. The introduction of a great measure had restored its party discipline, and had changed Mr. Bouverie's 'rabble' into a disciplined army.

A late commencement of the session, and an early Easter, somewhat retarded the general legislation of the House of Commons. There were a great number of bills, but they were only in the bud. Many of these were government measures, multitudinous poor-law bills, which Mr. Goschen was trying to pass; an endowed-schools bill, which Mr. Forster was striving with all his might to push forward; the mutiny bills urgently demanding renewal; a university-tests bill, promoted with small chance of success during this session by Mr. Coleridge; the bankruptcy bill, so often brought forward by different administrations, and still likely to be deferred; the army and navy estimates all in arrear. In addition to this, notwithstanding the majority of 118 on the second reading of the Irish-church bill, it was likely that the discussion on that measure in committee would be so prolonged as almost to monopolise the government nights of the session; and withal there was Ireland still so agitated by Fenianism as to render it not improbable that another coercion bill would have to be passed. Such were the prospects with which the houses of parliament returned to their work after the Easter vacation.

The reception of Mr. Lowe's budget on the 8th of April formed a very striking contrast to that which had been

accorded to those of Messrs. Gladstone and Disraeli when those gentlemen filled the office of chancellor of the exchequer. There was no stir, no crowding either in the House, or the galleries, or the approaches; no eager curiosity to hear the financial statement. Nevertheless, seldom has a chancellor of the exchequer produced a more satisfactory budget. Considerable reductions, chiefly in the military and naval departments, enabled the chancellor of the exchequer to pay all the expenses of the past year, including the balance of the amount due on account of the Abyssinian war-which it now appeared had cost the country from first to last 9,000,000l.—and to retain a surplus of 32,000l. By improvements in the manner of collecting the taxes and by changes in the time of collecting them this year, he hoped to add 3,350,000l., thus raising the surplus to 3,382,000l. The change in the time of collecting the taxes caused some discontent, which was allayed by the removal of a penny from the income tax, the abolition of a shilling duty left on corn when the protective duties were taken off, the abolition of the fire insurance duty, and the repeal of some of the assessed taxes. It was announced that these financial operations would produce an ultimate remission of taxation to the amount of 3,060,000l., of which 2,940,000l. would be taken during the present year.

It does not fall within the province of this work to follow the fortunes of the Irish-church bill through committee, or to relate the attempts, successful or unsuccessful, that were made to amend it. The bill went forward more rapidly than could have been expected considering the magnitude of the changes it wrought, and the hostility with which it was regarded both in and out of parliament. This was partly due to the circumstance that the word of command had been given to the members of the ministeria side to leave the task of answering the speeches against the bill to ministers. The consequence was that the attempts made to talk against time were foiled as much by the silence of the ministerialists as by the hopelessness of defeating the measure, and the manifest inutility of prolonging the resistance made to it. There was little reason to wish for delay, and those who wished for it without reason soon talked themselves out. Thus on the last day of May the question of the third reading of the measure was brought

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forward, and after a dreary debate the House divided at one o'clock, when the numbers were:

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And now came the question, what will the lords do with the bill? It was well known that if the members of tho upper house had felt themselves fully at liberty to vote according to their wishes, it would have been rejected in that assembly by a majority almost as great as that by which it was carried in the lower House. But the peers had so often experienced the evil results of setting themselves against the clearly-pronounced wishes of the people, that it was commonly expected that the more prudent of them would yield at once with a good grace instead of yielding to compulsion at some future time, and would pass a bill which had come up from the commons by a majority that rendered resistance to the popular will evidently hopeless. Nevertheless there was a strong party in the upper house who were determined at any risk to vote against a measure which they regarded as a destructive inroad on the constitution; and it was known that they would be encouraged in their resistance to it by the veteran leader of the conservative party, who, though enfeebled by age and illness, was ready to employ the influence which his reputation, his talents, and his position gave him, in making a last fight against a measure which he regarded with abhorrence. The debate in the House of Lords was sure to derive additional interest and animation from the circumstance that the Irish prelates who had seats in the House, were likely to take an earnest part in the debates on a measure which involved their political extinction. The English prelates, too, could hardly be silent with regard to a change which so strongly affected the sister church, and must be very displeasing to their most reverend and right reverend brethren, whose status it lowered, and whose interests it affected in various ways. The bill was read a first time as a matter of course. The question of the second reading was proposed in a very full house on Monday June the 14th. The ministers themselves seemed to bring forward with reluctance a measure excluding some of their

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