By the first were secured a parochial organization through which the ordinances of religion were carried to every part of the country; ecclesiastical corporations by which these ordinances were made permanent; a rule of doctrine and form of worship which clergy and laity had agreed to; and the supremacy of the Crown, which was a guarantee against ecclesiastical usurpation. But these points were not all inseparable from civil superiority and political ascendancy. Therefore, while ready with Sir Roundell Palmer to sweep away political ascendancy, he did not, with him, hold it necessary for that purpose to sacrifice the Establishment. But the moment this Bill passed the advantages he had enumerated would be lost, and of these he laid the chief stress on the supremacy of the Crown. The new governing body was too shadowy to inspire much trust, nor did he believe it possible to constitute such a body as would preserve to the laity all the advantages they now possessed. The voluntary principle had failed in education, as was shown by the demand for compulsory attendance, and it would fail in religion also when left alone. Passing to disendowment, Mr. Walpole protested against Mr. Lowe's startling dictum that the Bill only made a new ecclesiastical arrangement, without injuring any one. And this led him to complain of the hard conditions on which the churches and the glebe houses were to be given back to the Church, the neglect to provide for the wants of future congregations, and the disposal of the surplus. The State, he insisted, had never been allowed to have the right to deal with this kind of property; it was its guardian and regulator, but not its proprietor, and had no right to touch it except on proof that it had been abused. And that the Church property had not been misused he showed by a review of its recent history and the activity it had shown in every part of its mission. To Mr. Bright's eloquent plea for the application of the surplus as of the essence of Christianity, he retorted felicitously by reminding him of another Divine ordinance-" the poor shall have the Gospel preached to them." Finally, he summed up his objections to the Bill thus:-It would, 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 for that purpose to purposes for which they never were intended. It would be the first step towards ecclesiastical communism, and would unsettle the laws of ecclesiastical property in England and Scotland, perhaps of all other kinds of property, and certainly of corporation property. It overthrew a solemn compact between two independent legislatures; it would impede religious progress, and would stir up endless discord in Ireland.

Mr. W. Verner treated the question as a struggle between Protestantism and Popery, predicting that Ultramontanism, notwithstanding its present professions, would never brook the presence of Protestantism in Ireland. Deprecating the repeated references to the penal laws, he pointed out that they were passed not against Roman Catholics but traitors. The counter policy which he

recommended for Ireland was an abolition of the Lord-Lieutenancy, and the settlement of a royal prince in the country.

The O'Donoghue, after pointing out that the arguments of the other side in favour of an Establishment were applicable only to a country where something like religious unanimity prevailed, spoke at some length in favour of the Bill, principally because it would establish religious equality. He accepted it as a satisfactory settlement of the Church question, and deprecated interference with its provisions by bigots on either side. The Catholic who claimed. a restoration of the revenues was as strong an enemy to the settlement of Ireland as the Protestant who objected to the compensation to Maynooth.

Lord George Hamilton made a spirited attack on the Bill, which he characterized as a specious excuse for transferring a large part of the Church revenues to the aggrandizement of the Roman Catholic Church. He argued that the surplus would go almost entirely into the hands of the monastic institutions, contrasting this with the parsimony with which the Protestant clergy-particularly the curates-were treated, and the injury which it would inflict on the Protestant farmers and artisans scattered over the country.

The speech on the Conservative side which was received with the heartiest applause, and elicited, more than any other, the sympathy of the Opposition party, was that of Mr. Gathorne Hardy. It was delivered with much spirit and earnestness, and, as a frank and vigorous expression of Conservative sentiment, well deserved the enthusiasm which it called forth. Mr. Hardy began with a skilful vindication of the right of those who thought with him to oppose the Bill of the Government, notwithstanding the verdict of the constituencies; and he went on to analyze the measure, giving Mr. Gladstone full credit for having redeemed his pledges to sweep away all that he once deemed precious. Considering all that had been done of late years to raise the position of the Roman Catholics, both of priesthood and laity, and their practical equality, he could discover no reason for this attack on the Irish Church but jealousy, such as animated Haman. He denied that the Church was a badge of conquest; he looked at it rather in an imperial light, as a recognition by the executive of the Almighty superintendence -a token of the Protestantism of the Sovereign. What had the Church done to deserve destruction? For the penal laws she was not answerable, and, without defending them, Mr. Hardy pointed out, by a quotation from Lord Russell, that Liberal statesmen had seen some justification of them. He objected to the extent of the Church's work being judged by the census, for her ministrations of charity were not confined to her own denomination, and he maintainedfortifying himself by numerous quotations-that she had practically made many converts; and, to use his own words of last had kept alight in the dark places of Ireland the lamp of the Reformation. The Irish Question," on which Mr. Bright based the Bill,

year,

was not the creation of the Church, but of the English State. But the State, though responsible for the establishment of the Church, had nothing to say to her endowments, and had no right to suppress them; and Mr. Hardy showed that a large portion of the endowments had disappeared into the hands of the laity, and that a still larger portion had been given since the Reformation. That the Act of Union was violated by the destruction of the Church, even if not absolutely repealed, was shown by the 62nd clause of the Bill; and, in continuing this line of argument, he asserted that it would be necessary to alter the Coronation Oath. Touching upon the supposed disinterestedness of the Roman Catholics, he read extracts from letters of Bishops Moriarty and Goss, which led to the suspicion that if some portion of the Church's property were offered to them, it would not be refused; and he warned the Roman Catholics, that in aiding to overthrow an Establishment, they were setting a precedent more dangerous, perhaps, to themselves than to any one else. Having touched lightly on other provisions of the Bill, Mr. Hardy passed on to discuss its effects, laughing to scorn the suggestion that it would restore peace and concord to Ireland. Its success in that respect was foreshadowed by the recent Fenian receptions. Moreover, it was admitted that this Bill by itself would not be a perfect cure; and the language used by Mr. Bright and others as to ulterior measures, must raise hopes in Ireland which never could be realized. Consequently, this new policy would fail in every thing, but to create disappointment and renew discontent. For those who would feel themselves specially aggrieved, there was nothing in the Bill to soften their irritation; they were treated worse than any other parties dealt with, and more severely than was promised last year; and to enforce this, Mr. Hardy ran rapidly over the main features of the disendowment scheme. The gift of churches and glebes called for no gratitude; the purchase of the tithe rentcharge he pronounced a puzzle; the treatment of Maynooth a mockery; the Church Body a delusion; and the disposition of the surplus, the foundation of new religious endowments (which would save the landlords' pockets), and a seizure for Imperial purposesboth violations of the pledges of last year. Finally, he drew a picture of the condition of Ireland, in which he painted the institutions of the country as satisfactory, freedom as complete, law as justly administered as in England, but the people discontented without a real cause, sympathizing with crime, and influenced not for good by the priesthood. The moral he drew was, that an interval of peace and industry-not a destructive measure, which he denounced as wrong in the sight of God, and opposed to the interests of the empire was the real panacea for Ireland.

Mr. Gladstone rose at a late hour on the last night of the debate, loudly cheered by his supporters, and first he remarked of the latter portion of Mr. Hardy's speech, that it showed his fitness for the task which Burke disclaimed, "to draw 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, recognizing the existence of an Irish question, the result of years of previous misgovernment, had a remedy which they proposed of necessity piecemeal. Assuming that the issue of that night would not depend on the details of the Bill, Mr. Gladstone passed over most of the comments on them, though he intimated that the payment of the Maynooth Grant and the Regium Donum out of the Church property was an open question, which was not absolutely insisted on; and, before discussing the plan of the Government, he ran through the four nights' debate to discover what rival plan had been proposed in its place. The proposals of the Commission had been entirely thrown aside, and the Opposition had either no plan at all, or else it was the old plan of levelling up. Sir Roundell Palmer's plan Mr. Gladstone discussed at greater length, and he differed altogether from the ideas of Church property on which it was founded. When property had been given for purposes which were not attained, and could not be attained, it was the duty of the Legislature to see that it was not wasted, and, when it became mischievous, to take it over. But he took a much larger view of the Church trusts, holding that this property had been given for the general benefit of the nation. In giving up Establishment, however, Sir Roundell Palmer had abandoned the worthier part of the whole argument; and here Mr. Gladstone incidentally remarked that the Bill would in no way touch the royal supremacy. The most serious objection, he urged, was, that Sir Roundell Palmer would sacrifice the small parishes, where endowments were needed, for the benefit of the large and wealthier parishes, and thus, instead of conciliating, would irritate public feeling. Of the scheme for disposing of the surplus, he claimed that it was the most perfect which could be devised for spreading the benefits of these funds into every part of the country; and he showed that there was no danger of the funds falling into the hands of the monastic institutions, as had been predicted. The hard words, "robbery," "sacrilege," "bribery," &c., he accepted as proofs that the Government had carried out their pledges completely, though without harshness.

Mr. Gladstone concluded his speech in these terms:-" Sir, I wish to release this House, and I will therefore conclude by thanking them for the patience with which they have listened to me at this advanced hour of the night, or of the morning (2.15 a.m.), whichever we may think fit to call it. As the clock points rapidly towards the dawn, so are rapidly flowing out the years, the months, the days that remain to the existence of the Irish Established Church. An hon. member assured us, speaking, I have no doubt, his own honest conviction, that we were but at the beginning of this question. I believe that not only every man who sits on this side of the House, but every man who sits on that, carries within his breast a silent monitor, which tells him that this controversy is fast moving to a close. It is for the interest of us all

that we should not keep this Establishment of religion in a prolonged agony. Nothing can come from that prolongation but an increase of pain, an increase of exasperation, and a diminution of that temper which now happily prevails-a temper which is disposed to mitigate the adjustment of this great question in its details. There may also come from that prolongation the very evil which the right hon. gentleman opposite made it a charge against us that we were labouring to produce, but which we think likely to be rather the probable consequence of his line of argument-namely, the drawing into this controversy of that English question which we conceive to be wholly different. We think so, because, although in the two countries there may be and there are Establishments of religions, we never can admit that an Establishment which we think, in the main, good and efficient for its purposes, is to be regarded as being endangered by the course which we may adopt in reference to an Establishment which we look upon as being inefficient and bad. The day, therefore, it seems to me, is rapidly approaching when this controversy will come to an end, and I feel that I am not wrong in appealing to that silent witness to the justice of my anticipations which I am satisfied exists on both sides of the House. Not now are we opening this great question. Opened, perhaps, it was, when the Parliament which expired last year pronounced upon it that emphatic judgment which can never be recalled. Opened, it was, further, when in the months of autumn the discussions which were held in every quarter of the country turned mainly on the subject of the Irish Church. Prosecuted another stage it was, when the completed elections discovered to us a manifestation of the national verdict more emphatic than, with the rarest exceptions, has been witnessed during the whole of our Parliamentary history. The good cause was further advanced towards its triumphant issue when the silent acknowledgment of the late Government that they declined to contest the question was given by their retirement from office, and their choosing a less responsible position from which to carry on a desultory warfare against the policy which they had in the previous Session unsuccessfully attempted to resist. Another blow will soon be struck in the same good cause, and I will not intercept it one single moment more."

A division then took place amidst great excitement; the result was as follows:

Majority

The composition of this important division was much discussed and carefully analyzed. As will be perceived, the number that voted, including the four tellers, was 622, of whom 370 followed Mr. Gladstone, and 252 went with his opponents. There were at the time 15 vacant seats, to which may be added that of the Speaker. Fourteen mem