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remain a surplus of between 7,000,0007. or 8,000,0007.; and Mr. Gladstone roused the keen attention of the House by the interesting question, What shall we do with it? The indispensable conditions he held to be that the purposes to which the surplus was applied should be Irish, that they should not be religious, that they should be final, and open the door to no new controversy. He discussed at length the various suggestions which had been made, dismissing them all as impossible or radically wrong; and, after keeping the House some time in suspense, he announced, quoting the words of the Preamble of the Bill, that the Government had concluded to apply the surplus to the relief of "unavoidable calamities and suffering" not provided for by the Poor Law. Proceeding to details, he allocated 185,000l. to lunatic asylums, 20,000l. a year to idiot asylums, 30,000l. to training schools for the deaf, dumb, and blind, 15,000l. a year to the training of nurses, 10,000l. to reformatories, and 51,000l. to county infirmaries—in all 311,000l. a year. Mr. Gladstone concluded his speech with an eloquent peroration, in which he summed up the conclusions, and declared the principles on which the Ministerial scheme had been framed. "I believe," said the right hon. gentleman, "I have now gone through the chief of the 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 the Committee will be of opinion it is a plan at any rate 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 the members of the Committee may think that the best pains we could give have been applied in order to develope 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, there must be omissions, and there may be 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 upon, may tend to secure a more beneficial application of these funds to the welfare of the people of Ireland. I trust, Sir, that although its operation 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 would be too much to expect to obtain full credit for any declaration 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 in Ireland, in connexion with the Established Church, to abate a great part of the

exceptional privileges they have enjoyed; but I do not feel that in making this demand upon them we are seeking to inflict an injury. I do not believe they are exclusively or even mainly responsible for the errors of English policy towards Ireland; I 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 which they love a country for them not less enviable and not less beloved in the future than it has been in th past. As respects the Church, I admit it is a case almost without exception. I don't know in what country 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 Gloster 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!"

-an era

And yet but a little while after the old man is relieved from his delusion, and finds he has not fallen at all. So I trust that when, instead of the fictitious and adventitious aid on which we have too long taught the Irish Establishment to lean, it should come to 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 its members, and the high hopes and promises of the Gospel that it teaches, it will find that it has entered upon a new era of existencebright with hope and potent for good. 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 discredit and scandal to England. This measure is in every sense a great measure-great in its principles, great in the multitude of its dry, technical, but interesting detail, and great as a testing measure; for it will show for one and all of us of what metal 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 upon those men, those Phaetons of politics, who, with hands unequal to the task, attempt to guide the chariot of the sun. But the responsibility passes beyond us, and rests

on every man who has to take part in the discussion and decision upon this Bill. Every man approaches the discussion under the most solemn obligations to raise the level of his vision and expand its scope in proportion with the greatness of the matter in hand. The working of our Constitutional Government itself is upon 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 or 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 your 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. I must not ask gentlemen opposite to concur in this view, emboldened as I am by the kindness they have shown me in listening with patience to a statement which could not have been other than tedious; but I pray them to bear with me for a moment while, for myself and my colleagues, I say we are sanguine of the issue. We believe, and for my part I am deeply convinced, that when the final consummation shall arrive, and when the words are spoken that shall give the force of law to the work embodied in this measure -the work of peace and justice-those words will be echoed upon every shore where the name of Ireland or the name of Great Britain has been heard, and the answer to them will come back in the approving shout of civilized mankind." The right hon. gentleman concluded by moving for leave to bring in a Bill.

Mr. Gladstone's speech occupied rather more than three hours in the delivery, and however much opinions might differ as to the merits of his scheme, there was but one opinion as to the ability displayed in its exposition. A more masterly or luminous statement of a very complicated case has rarely been made. The arrangement was so skilful, and the order of the various topics so admirably marshalled, that the scheme of the Ministry was made intelligible without any painful effort of attention to all who heard it. It was received with vehement acclamations of applause by his supporters on the Ministerial side of the House.

Upon his resuming his seat, Mr. Disraeli immediately rose, and after passing a warm eulogy on the speech just delivered, not one word of which could be spared, said his opinion, and the opinion of those who acted with him, remained unchanged, that disestablishment was a political error, and disendowment-especially when accompanied by secularization-mere and sheer confiscation. Under ordinary circumstances he should have opposed the introduction of the Bill, but, 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, and to the action of the late Government on that verdict, Mr. Gladstone ought not, in fairness, to be precluded from submitting his policy to the House. He advised his friends, therefore, not to oppose the motion, but he pressed for a delay of three weeks before the second reading.

To so long a postponement the Prime Minister expressed his objection, but after a short discussion it was agreed that the 18th of March should be fixed for the second reading. Previously to that day a notice was given in the House that Mr. Disraeli would move an amendment negativing in the usual form the further progress of the Bill. The debate on the second reading commenced on the 18th, and was continued by successive adjournments until the 23rd, the day on which it had been proposed that the adjournment for the Easter holidays should take place. During the four evenings devoted to this debate many powerful and brilliant speeches were delivered, from some of which we shall make such selections as will show the nature of the arguments employed on either side, and the chief grounds relied upon for or against the Bill. Mr. Disraeli opened the case for the Opposition in a long and elaborate speech. He commenced by reminding the House of Mr. Gladstone's description of his measure as involving a "gigantic issue," and, agreeing with this appreciation of its magnitude, he drew the inference that it merited the utmost judgment, self-control, and mutual forbearance in its discussion, and that the country had a right to require from Parliament the most mature deliberation in its settlement. This conclusion he enforced by an historical retrospect of the mistakes made from want of this deliberation the last time Parliament had to deal with a gigantic issue, more than 200 years ago, at the time of the great Rebellion. The Bill, he said, proposed two objects -to sever the union between Church and State, and to enable the State to seize on the property of a corporation (for convenience of debate termed Disestablishment and Disendowment), two operations very often confounded, but widely differing in their nature and results. Before dealing with the Bill, he asked leave to make some general remarks on these two points. To Disestablishment he objected because he was in favour of the union of Church and State, by which he understood an arrangement which armed the State with the highest influence, and prevented the Church from sinking into a sacerdotal corporation. On the possible evil consequences of divorcing authority from religion he dilated with much earnestness, and, believing that we were tending towards a time when the influence of religion would be predominant in public affairs, he warned the House against establishing an independent religious power in the country, which might be stronger than the civil power, and not always in agreement with it. Among other advantages of an Establishment was the security of religious freedom, and this was not confined to persons belonging to its community. As to Disendow

ment, if a State seized on the property of a Church without assigning a reason, he held it to be spoliation, but with a reason, valid or not, it was a confiscation. Mr. Disraeli did not share in the delusion that there was no difference between private and corporate property; towards the first the State occupied the position of a guardian, to the latter of a trustee; but whatever rights a trustee might have, under no circumstances was he justified in taking the property to himself. Of all species of confiscation, however, he objected most strongly to confiscation of Church property, which usually ended in the sole benefit of the landlords. "În objecting most strongly against the confiscation of Church property," said the right hon. gentleman, " I do so because Church property is to a certain degree an intellectual tenure, and in a very great degree a moral and spiritual tenure. It is the patrimony of the great body of the people. It is, I won't say the only, but it is the easiest, and even now, with our much developed civilization, it is by far the largest method by which the sons of the middle classes, or even of the working classes, can become landed proprietors, and more than landed proprietors, can become resident landed proprietors, fulfilling all the duties. But, Sir, there is another reason why I am greatly opposed to the confiscation of Church property, and it is this because I invariably observe that when Church property has been confiscated, it always goes to the proprietors of the land. Well, Sir, I hope that in this House I shall never be accused of being opposed to the interests of those connected with the land. I look upon the landed tenure of this country as, upon the whole, one of the most beneficial and most successful institutions that has been created out of the feudal system. It is a tenure which, by fixing to the soil a number of residents deeply interested in it, has secured local government, which is the best safeguard of political liberty. And, on the other hand, it is a tenure which, while it has obtained for us those great social and political advantages, has been consistent with making the soil of this country on the whole the most productive in the world. Therefore, I think I am justified in saying that is a tenure which, both on account of social and political recommendations and great material consequences which it has secured for this country, may be described as of a most satisfactory kind." The right hon. gentleman proceeded to say that this measure of disestablishment would set up three Churches unconnected with the State, which, whenever any other grievance—such as the land question-came to be discussed, would agree in one dogma at least, that the clergy had been ill-treated. As to disendowment, why, he asked, was the property of the Church to be taken away? Her title was stronger than that of any other landlord, and was sanctioned by the prescription of three centuries. It was not pretended that the objects for which the property had been given were not excellent, or that they had not been carried out. Nor had Mr. Gladstone made up his mind in favour of some other Church which would better discharge the duty for which the property was given. The

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