THE REIGN OF VICTORIA (_continued_).
England in 1869--The Irish Church Difficulty--The Bishops
in Debate--The Queen's Speech--Mr. Gladstone unfolds his
Scheme--Provisions relating to Persons and Property--Private
Endowments--Churches and Glebe-Houses--Conversion of the Church
Property into Money--Disposal of the Surplus--The Maynooth Grant and
the _Regium Donum_--Mr. Gladstone's Peroration--Debate on the Second
Reading--A Bumper Majority--The Bill passes through the House of
Commons--Lord Redesdale and the Coronation Oath--The Opposition in
the Lords--Dr. Magee's Speech--Amendments in Committee--Concurrent
Endowment--Mr. Gladstone rejects the Lords' Amendments--Lord
Salisbury's Vigour of Language--Danger of a Collision between the
Houses--The Queen and Archbishop Tait--Conference between Lord
Cairns and Lord Granville--Their Compromise--Its Terms accepted by
Mr. Gladstone--The Bill becomes Law--Its Neutral Results.
The condition of the British empire at the beginning of 1869 was
externally far from unsatisfactory. The successful and complete
accomplishment of the objects for which the Abyssinian expedition
had been undertaken was considered to reflect credit on the military
administration; the state of Ireland was so much improved that the renewal
of the Act suspending the Habeas Corpus in that country was deemed no
longer necessary; above all, trade and finance were beginning to show
signs of substantial recovery from the effects of the collapse of 1866,
and to hold forth the promise of a new and vigorous expansion. With
regard to the new Ministry which the deliberate preference of a large
majority of the constituencies had just installed in power, confidence
in Mr. Gladstone, and in his power to deal adequately with the great
question of the day, was widely felt and freely expressed. Yet the
difficulty of carrying a just and adequate measure of disestablishment,
which should carefully unravel the thousand threads that in the course of
three centuries had variously linked the ecclesiastical with the civil
establishment of Ireland--a measure that should satisfy the just claims
of individuals, and wisely dispose of the portion of the expropriated
property not required for the purposes of compensation--was felt to be
so great that few expected it to be overcome in the present Session. A
succession of contests--a slow and painful adjustment--the attainment
of a practical equilibrium after many trials, spread over two or three
years--such seemed to be the prospect before the country. That the result
was different and that this great work of demolition was accomplished in
a single Session, was due to the thoroughness with which Mr. Gladstone
laboured at the preparation of the necessary measure and to his genius for
the perfecting of details.
There was considerable doubt as to the course that would be adopted by the
Bishops. Wilberforce early made up his mind that some sort of surrender
was inevitable and, as soon as the election returns left no doubt as to
the country's answer to Mr. Gladstone's appeal, wrote to the Archbishop
of Dublin, Dr. Trench--"The time seems now absolutely come, of which we
have so often spoken, when you and we should consider whether any and
what compromise is possible." The Primate, however, looked rather to a
defeat of the Bill in Committee owing to a defection among Mr. Gladstone's
following, when he considered that the Prime Minister, to get out of his
difficulties, would offer terms that might be accepted. The Bishop of
Oxford in a semi-public letter pointed out that such resistance would only
aggravate the situation, and that disestablishment might be considered a
matter determined. "Some believe that the measure may be resisted a little
shorter, some a little longer time, but all are secretly convinced, or
are ready openly to avow their opinion, that it is a question practically
settled. Wholly unprincipled men like Disraeli are content to use
religion, as they would use any other precious thing, as an instrument of
obtaining ever so short a tenure of place at the cost of ever so entire a
sacrifice of what they so use." He thought, however, that a stand might be
made on the question of disendowment and that the following claims must be
advanced: (1) entire freedom from State interference, (2) that the Irish
Church should be constituted a corporation capable of self-government and
of holding property, (3) that the satisfaction-money for vested interests
should be in a common fund under common management. This middle course,
embodied by Bishop Wilberforce in a pamphlet in the form of a letter to
Lord Lyttelton, which, however, he was dissuaded from publishing, was by
no means favoured by the Episcopal majority. Indeed, after two private
debates, on the 10th of February and the 6th of May, they separated
without coming to any conclusion. Though the accuracy of his notes on
these discussions, which are reproduced in the third volume of his
biography, was afterwards disputed, it is clear that many agreed with the
Bishop of Rochester, who abruptly remarked, "I think the Bill iniquitous,
and that it ought not to pass."
The formal business involved in the opening of a new Parliament had been
despatched in the month of December, 1868. On the 16th of February, 1869,
the real Session began. On this unique occasion, the like of which had not
occurred since the assembling of the first Parliament elected after the
passing of the Reform Bill of 1832, it might have been expected that the
Queen would be present and deliver the Royal Speech; that duty, however,
was, as on so many previous occasions, discharged by the Lord Chancellor.
Mr. Gladstone afterwards explained that it had been her Majesty's earnest
wish to meet her Parliament, but that her health, impaired by the severe
nervous headaches to which her Majesty was subject, was found unequal to
the effort; should, however, the House agree to the Address, her Majesty
was desirous of coming to London and receiving it in person from both
Houses of Parliament. This proposal was warmly received on both sides of
the House; but the serious illness of the youngest son of her Majesty,
Prince Leopold, occurring just about this time, prevented the execution
of the design. In the Royal Speech, after allusion had been made to the
settlement lately effected in the Conference at Paris of the rupture
between Greece and Turkey, and to some insignificant disturbances that had
broken out in New Zealand, the great legislative project of the year was
thus vaguely shadowed forth:--"The ecclesiastical arrangements of Ireland
will be brought under your consideration at a very early date, and the
legislation which will be necessary in order to their final adjustment
will make the largest demands upon the wisdom of Parliament." The Address
was agreed to in both Houses without difficulty, Lord Cairns observing
that he could not go into the subject of the Irish Church without more
light than was afforded by the "rather fortuitous collocation of nouns
and adjectives in which the Speech alluded to it." In the Commons Mr.
Gladstone, the new Premier, lost no time in giving notice that, on the
1st of March, he should move that the Acts relating to the Irish Church
Establishment and the grant to Maynooth College, and also the Resolutions
of the House of Commons in 1868, be read; and that the House should
then resolve itself into a committee to consider of the said Acts and
Resolutions.
The appointed day arrived, and Mr. Gladstone, after causing the Clerk
to read the titles of the Acts and the Commons' Resolutions of 1868,
proceeded, in a speech of three hours' duration, to unfold to a crowded
and expectant House the particulars of the scheme by which he proposed to
redeem the pledge of disestablishing the Church of Ireland which he had
induced the House to take in the preceding year. So perfect a mastery of
all the details of a very complicated measure, joined to so rare a gift
for marshalling and harmonising his matter, was perhaps never before
found in an English statesman. There were facts to be told, explanatory
narratives to be given, reasons to be unfolded, objections to be met,
changes to be proposed, and arrangements necessitated by those changes
to be precisely defined, as to times, places, and persons; and all these
various requirements were to be satisfied in a single speech, and in such
a manner that the thread of the exposition should never be broken, nor the
interest of the hearer suffered to flag. All this was accomplished by Mr.
Gladstone in this memorable speech.
Certain dates were first of all named, by keeping which in memory it
became more easy to grasp the general bearing of the scheme. On the 1st
of January, 1871 (this, however, was a date which the speaker did not
regard as unalterable), the disestablishment of the Irish Church was
to take legal effect. At that date the union between the Churches of
England and Ireland would be dissolved, all ecclesiastical corporations
would be abolished, the ecclesiastical courts would be closed, and the
ecclesiastical laws would no longer be binding as laws, although they
would still be understood to exist as part of the terms of a voluntary
contract subsisting between clergy and laity till they were altered by the
governing body of the disestablished Church. Secondly, from the date of
the passing of the Act, the Irish Ecclesiastical Commission would cease
and determine, and would be replaced by a temporary Commission, appointed
for ten years, in which the property of the Irish Church would immediately
vest. Thirdly, after a date which it was impossible exactly to define, but
which would give time for the complete execution of all those complicated
arrangements to which the satisfaction of vested interests under the Act
would lead, the residue of the funds of the disendowed Church would be
available for employment in such manners and on such objects as should be
specified in a later portion of his statement.
From this point, since we cannot follow Mr. Gladstone into the extended
exposition of every portion of his plan with which he favoured the House,
we propose to describe the contents of the Bill on a different principle,
and to consider the leading features of the scheme--(1) in its application
to persons; (2) in its application to property.
The persons to whom the provisions of the new measure were to be
primarily applied, who from the official clergy of a State Church were
to be converted into the ministers of a voluntary association, were
these following--two archbishops, ten bishops, and about 2,380 parochial
clergy and curates. Before considering and guarding the rights of these
persons, it was necessary to provide for the case of those who should, by
nomination or election, be added to their number, in the interval between
the passing of the Act and the date fixed for the legal disestablishment
of the Church. It was provided that during this transition period the
patronage exercised in favour of such persons should confer no freehold,
and create for them no vested rights of any kind. In the case of episcopal
vacancies, the Crown would still appoint, but only at the prayer of the
bishops of the province in which the vacancy occurred for the consecration
of an individual to be named by them. These _interim_ appointments would
carry with them no vested interest and no rights of peerage. With regard
to the existing prelates and clergy, the former, as has been already
stated, would lose their right to seats in the House of Lords from the
date of the legal disestablishment. Before the 1st of January, 1871,
the clergy and laity of the Church were invited to meet together and
re-organise the institution on a voluntary basis, appointing at the same
time a "governing body," through which it might communicate with the
Government of the day by the intervention of the Ecclesiastical Commission
nominated in the Act. The Irish Convocation had not met, Mr. Gladstone
said, for a period of fully a century and a half, if not of two centuries;
and not only were there great technical difficulties in the way of its
revival, but there also existed a special statute called the Convention
Act, certain clauses of which rendered it doubtful whether the Convocation
could be legally convoked at all. One of the earliest enactments in the
Bill was, accordingly, the repeal of the Convention Act, so far as it
affected the Irish Church, and the removal of all disabilities of whatever
kind that might hinder the clergy and laity from meeting in synod and
reorganising the Church as a voluntary society. The Government would take
no power for the Crown to interfere in the election of the governing
body, but would merely require that it should be truly representative,
as resulting from the joint action of bishops, clergy, and laity. The
governing body so appointed would be recognised by the Government, and it
would become incorporated under the present Act.
When the 1st of January, 1871, the date fixed for disestablishment, had
arrived, the provisions of the Act for satisfying the vested interests,
not only of the Protestant clergy, but also of the students and professors
of Maynooth, and of the ministers of the Presbyterian Church, would begin
to take effect. What is a vested interest? Mr. Gladstone defined it thus,
after stating that the "expectation of promotion" could not possibly be
comprehended in the definition:--"The vested interest of the incumbent
[whether of a see or a benefice] is this--it is a title to receive a
certain net income from the property of the Church, in consideration of
the discharge of certain duties, to which he is bound as the equivalent
he gives for that income and subject to the laws by which he and the
religious body to which he belongs are bound." In the possession of such
net income, subject only to deductions for the curates whom he might have
permanently employed, every incumbent was secured by the Act for the term
of his natural life, so long as he continued to discharge the equivalent
duties. He might, however, if he chose, commute his right to receive his
net income annually from the State for a capital sum to be calculated
at a rate of interest of three and a half per cent. This commutation
could only be made upon the application of the incumbent, and the sum
of money would then be paid to the Church body, "subject to the legal
trust of discharging the obligation or covenant which we had ourselves to
discharge to the incumbent--namely, to give him the annuity in full so
long as he discharged the duties." This commutation would be voluntary;
but as it would be greatly to the interest of the State to relieve itself
as quickly as possible from the task of maintaining relations of payment
with the individual clergymen, the scale on which it was computed would
be a liberal one; and Mr. Gladstone hoped that it would be very largely
resorted to. The various incidents of the freehold tenure on which the
existing incumbents now held their benefices or lands would be allowed
to subsist during their lifetime, with two exceptions. The Tithe Rent
charge (which, for various important reasons, it was desirable to have
the power of dealing with immediately after disestablishment) would,
from the date of the passing of the Act, vest in the new Commissioners
without any intervening life-interest, the faith of Parliament being, of
course, pledged to the payment of the whole proceeds that the clergymen
could derive from it. The other exception related to ruined churches,
the freehold of which might be in the incumbent; in these cases it
would be taken from him and vested in the Irish Board of Works, with an
allocation of funds necessary to preserve the churches from desecration or
further injury. The vested interest of all incumbents, whether bishops or
presbyters, was thus provided for. With regard to curates, Mr. Gladstone
distinguished between those who were permanently and those who were
temporarily employed. The Act left it to the Commissioners to determine
in each case whether a curate applying for compensation had really been
in permanent employment, stipulating only that, in order to be entitled
to that character, he should have been employed on the 1st of January,
1869; and that he should continue to be so employed on the 1st of January
1871; or that, if he had ceased to be so employed, the cessation should
be due to some cause other than his own free choice or misconduct. Such
curates were to be held entitled to receive their stipends for life or
to commute them, exactly on the same principles as the Act applied to
incumbents. Curates of the transitory class were to be compensated by
simple gratuities, on the principle recognised in the Civil Service
Superannuation Acts.
We now proceed to the consideration of the manner in which the Act
proposed to deal with the property of the Irish Church. The annual value
of that property, roughly stated, came to about £670,000, and was derived
from the following sources of income:--
Income of Ecclesiastical Commissioners £93,950
Revenues of Episcopal Sees 85,879
Tithe Rent charge 404,660
Glebe and Chapter lands let to Tenants 80,812
Other sources 5,199
--------
£670,500
To this must be added the annual value of glebelands farmed by incumbents,
which was not, however, very considerable.
An important and difficult question immediately presented itself, to the
solution of which Mr. Gladstone devoted all his powers of analysis and all
his resources of expression. It was this: among the various endowments
enjoyed by the Irish Church, which of them were of a public nature, and
had accrued to it as the representative of the ancient endowed Church of
the country? which of them were, on the other hand, of a private nature,
and were made with the full knowledge and intention of the donors that
they were assisting by their benefactions the Protestant Episcopal Church
of Ireland, bound by such and such Articles, and using such and such
a liturgy? In the adjustment of so complicated a matter mathematical
accuracy was out of the question; but Mr. Gladstone considered that
substantial justice would be done by fixing a date, all endowments
anterior to which should be deemed public, and those posterior to it
private. This date he proposed to fix at the epoch of the Restoration,
1660, on the ground that the Irish Establishment did not attain its
regular organisation and definite Protestant character much before that
date. On the whole, he thought that the value of the private endowments,
so limited, did not exceed half a million sterling; and this sum the Act
awarded in compensation for them to the disestablished Church.
[Illustration: ARCHBISHOP TRENCH.
(_From a Photograph by Elliott and Fry._)]
By drawing the line at the year 1660, Mr. Gladstone excluded from the
category of private endowments the grants of land in Ulster, which James
I., after having planted large numbers of his Scottish countrymen in the
room of the exterminated native proprietors, assigned to the dominant
Church. These lands were commonly known as the Ulster glebes. A strenuous
effort was made in the House of Lords to effect their retention for
the Church, on the ground that they partook rather of the nature of
private than of public benefactions. But Mr. Gladstone stood firm, and
refused to allow these royal grants, the original motive for which was
unquestionably in large measure political, to be treated differently from
the general mass of the Church property.
An important item of the material belongings of the Establishment, yet
one that could not easily be made to enter into any financial estimate,
consisted in the churches themselves. As to these, the Act provided
that, wherever the "governing body" made an application, accompanied by
a declaration that they meant either to maintain the church for public
worship, or to remove it to some more convenient position, it would be
handed over to them. In the case of St. Patrick's Cathedral, and about a
dozen other churches partaking of the character of national monuments,
the Commissioners were empowered to allot a moderate sum for their
maintenance. Churches not in use, or in ruins, were to be handed over to
the custody of the Board of Works.
With regard to glebe-houses, Mr. Gladstone announced that he had changed
the opinion that he had expressed in the preceding year. Then he was
inclined to consider them as "marketable property," like lands or tithes,
and as such to withhold them from the disestablished Church, and allow
only a life interest in them to their present possessors. But having
investigated the matter more closely, and discovered that although an
expenditure of £1,200,000 upon them could be distinctly traced, their
annual value could not be rated above £18,600, while there was a quarter
of a million of building charges upon them, which the State would have
to pay on coming into possession, he had come to the conclusion that the
glebe-houses were not, in the strict sense of the words, "marketable
property." The Act therefore proposed to hand over the glebe-houses to the
Church body, on their paying the building charges; and they would also
be allowed to purchase a certain amount of glebe-land round the houses
at a fair valuation. The burial-grounds adjacent to churches went with
the churches; all burial-grounds were to be reserved: and other existing
rights to be handed over to the Poor Law Guardians.
The scheme being thus far developed, the aspect of affairs at the end of
two years promised to be this--the churches and glebe-houses, together
with strips of land around the latter, would then be the permanent
property of the disestablished Church, while the tithes and Church lands,
subject to various life-interests, would be vested in the State through
its organ the "Commissioners of Irish Church Temporalities." But that the
State should long retain all this mass of real property in its own hands
was most undesirable. Mr. Gladstone therefore propounded an elaborate
scheme for the final extinction of the tithe rent charge within forty-five
years, and for the conversion of the lands into money. Landlords would be
allowed, if they chose, to purchase the rent charge, so far as it affected
their own properties, at twenty-two and a half years' purchase paid down;
but if they declined to avail themselves of this option, power was taken
for disposing of it to them by a compulsory sale, at a rate which would
yield 4-1/2 per cent. interest, they being at the same time credited with
a loan at 3-1/2, payable in instalments in forty-five years. Thus, if a
landlord's property were burdened with the tithe rent charge to the extent
of £90 a year, the State would compel him to buy it out and out for the
sum of £2,000; which sum, however, he would not have to pay immediately,
but only by instalments coming in the shape of an annual rent of £70, and
terminating at the end of forty-five years. How greatly the landlords were
gainers by this transaction is obvious. With regard to the Church lands,
the tenants on them were to have a right of pre-emption, and three-fourths
of the purchase money might be left on the security of the land; one
way or other, they were to be converted into money with all practicable
despatch.
When by these sales the property of the Irish Church should all have been
realised, and its affairs wound up, Mr. Gladstone calculated that the
balance sheet would stand as follows. The Tithe rent charge would have
yielded £9,000,000; the lands and perpetuity rents would have been sold
for about £6,250,000; these sums, together with a balance of £750,000 in
money, would make a grand total of £16,000,000. Of this, the Bill would
dispose of £7,350,000--viz.: Vested interests of incumbents, £4,900,000;
ditto of curates, £800,000; lay compensation, £900,000; private
endowments, £500,000; building charges, £250,000. To these would have to
be added the sums required for the commutation of the _Regium Donum_ and
the Maynooth Grant, the particulars of which will be given presently,
amounting to £1,100,000; and finally the expenses of the Commission,
£200,000. Consequently there would remain, after the satisfaction of all
claims, a surplus of between £7,000,000 and £8,000,000. After discussing
various suggestions for the disposal of this surplus, and giving his
reasons for not devoting any part of it to the endowment of any religious
body or institution, Mr. Gladstone stated that, in the opinion of
Government, it would be most fitly and profitably applied to the relief
of "unavoidable calamities and suffering," not provided for by the Poor
Law. Assuming that the surplus fund would produce an annual return of
about £311,000 a year, the Act would allot £185,000 of this revenue to
lunatic asylums, £20,000 to idiot asylums, £30,000 to institutions for
the harbouring and training of the blind, and of deaf mutes, £15,000 to
training-schools for nurses, £10,000 to reformatories, and £51,000 to
county infirmaries; thus disposing of the whole revenue.
The arrangements for the extinction of the _Regium Donum_ and the Maynooth
Grant have still to be considered. The sum to be dealt with amounted to
about £70,000, of which £26,000 was the Maynooth Grant, and the remainder
was distributed among the various denominations of Presbyterians. The
expectation of life among the clergy being known to be between thirteen
and fourteen years, Mr. Gladstone had fixed fourteen years' purchase
as the basis of commutation in the case of the incumbents of the Irish
Church, and he now adopted the same scale for the Presbyterian Churches
and for Maynooth. A sum amounting to fourteen times the annual grant in
each case was to be set aside out of the Irish Church Fund, and devoted
to the satisfaction of life-interests, or to their commutation, on
conditions substantially agreeing with those already explained in the case
of the Establishment. About £1,100,000 would be required for the purpose,
two-thirds of which would go to the Presbyterians.
At the conclusion of his speech, Mr. Gladstone invited criticisms and
suggestions as to the details of the Bill, which it was the desire of its
framers to render as little harsh and onerous as possible, consistently
with the complete and final execution of the task which they had
undertaken. "I trust, Sir," he said, "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 connection
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
the 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!'
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
on a new era--an era bright with hope and potent for good.... This measure
is in every sense a great measure--great in its principles, great in the
multitude of its dry, technical, but interesting details, 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 on 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." The right honourable gentleman concluded by
moving for leave to bring in the Bill.
The leader of the Opposition, Mr. Disraeli, said that his own opinion,
and that of his party, remained unaltered; they thought disestablishment
was a political blunder, and disendowment a legalised robbery; but as
the sense of the country had been clearly expressed in favour of dealing
with the question, he should not object to the introduction of the Bill,
but should offer it a determined opposition on the second reading. The
Bill was then introduced, and read a first time, and the 18th of March
was fixed for the second reading. On that day Mr. Disraeli moved in the
usual form that the Bill be read a second time that day six months. In
his speech there was little that was remarkable except where he protested
against the confiscation of the Church property on the ground that it
would probably end in the sole benefit of the landlords. He ridiculed
in particular the project for the extinction of the tithe rent charge,
predicting that the end of the whole operation would be that the property
of the Church would go into the pockets of the landlords; and the
consequence of these sacrilegious proceedings must be such deep discontent
that either there must be restitution, or the same principles must be
applied to the English Church,--and this, he declared, Mr. Gladstone by
his language clearly contemplated. Experience of the absorption of commons
and forests by the large landowners justified, it must be owned, a jealous
and rigorous examination of this part of the measure; which on the very
face of it, as above explained, made a present to the landlords of full
twenty-two per cent. of the tithe rent charge to which their properties
were previously liable. Mr. Bright made a telling speech in favour of the
measure; and the same may be said of Mr. Lowe. On the other side, Sir
Roundell Palmer, who had braved the loss, or, to speak more correctly,
the postponement of high professional promotion, because he could not
go with Mr. Gladstone on this question, disputed the doctrine that the
State had the power absolutely to strip the Church of its property,
though he admitted its right to restrict or reapportion it. Mr. Gathorne
Hardy, who, among the abler opponents of the Bill, was perhaps the only
one who spoke with absolute and entire conviction, delivered a bold and
trenchant philippic, based on the old _dicta_ of the superiority of the
Protestant religion, and the right and duty of England to govern Ireland,
not according to the wishes of the Irish, but upon principles approved by
the majority of Englishmen. After a four nights' debate, the House divided
on the second reading, with the following--for Government--triumphant
result: for the second reading, 368; against it, 250; majority, 118. With
so compact a majority against them, in a very full House, it was useless
for the Conservatives to attempt to make considerable alterations in the
Bill in committee. Substantially unchanged it emerged from the ordeal of
committee, and the third reading was carried by a majority of 114 votes.
[Illustration: WILLIAM EWART GLADSTONE.
FROM THE PAINTING BY SIR J. E. MILLAIS, BART., P.R.A., IN THE NATIONAL
GALLERY.]
When the Bill reached the House of Lords, it found a tribunal disposed to
view it with unfriendly eyes, and to subject it to a searching criticism.
A question put to Government by a noble lord before the Easter recess
indicated the temper that largely prevailed in the Upper House. Lord
Redesdale asked whether the Ministry intended to propose any alteration
in the Coronation Oath, since according to the present form, as taken by
her Majesty at her accession, the Sovereign undertook to maintain "to
the utmost of his power," not merely the Church, but the Churches of his
dominions in all their rights, the oath having been so modified at the
date of the Union that the Sovereign thenceforward was obliged to swear
to maintain the United Church in the possession of all its rights
and privileges. Lord Granville replied, on the part of Government, that
he entered with reluctance into the line of inquiry started by the noble
lord. He conceived, however, that the Coronation Oath was somewhat in the
nature of a compact between Sovereign and people, and that if the people,
through Parliament, expressed its wish and determination to modify the
terms of the compact, the Sovereign was thereby constitutionally released
from the obligation of observing it more strictly than the altered mind of
Parliament desired. Legislation would be ridiculous, whether the principle
of the noble lord or that adopted by the Government were preferred. If
Government were right that the Sovereign was released by the voice of the
people, as shown by the votes of Parliament, then the passing of a Bill in
both Houses on the particular point in question, and its presentation to
her Majesty for her assent, relieved her _ipso facto_ from the obligations
of the oath. But if, as the noble lord seemed to think, there were some
abstract obligation on the Sovereign, something between her and her God,
which no arrangement or compromise between her and her subjects could
alter, it was clear that any Bill altering the oath would be utterly
inefficacious.
[Illustration: DR. MAGEE, BISHOP OF PETERBOROUGH, ADDRESSING THE HOUSE OF
LORDS. (_See p._ 502.)]
The chief brunt of the opposition to the Bill in the House of Lords fell
on Lord Cairns. Warned, however, by the large majorities that had carried
the Bill through every stage in the Commons, the party of resistance
eventually renounced the idea of opposing the second reading, but indulged
the hope that they would be able so to cut up and refashion the Bill in
Committee, in the direction of granting more favourable terms to the
Irish Church, that the disendowing clauses of the Act at any rate would
become little more than nominal. Of course, there were many Tory lords who
hoisted the flag of "No surrender" and would not yield an inch; nor could
the Irish representative bishops be expected to be parties to their own
political annihilation. An eloquent, and in every way remarkable, speech
against the Bill was made by the Bishop of Peterborough (Dr. Magee),
who had been recently translated to that see from an Irish deanery by
the Government of Mr. Disraeli. The bishop probed the sores of Ireland
deeply, and told Government that they would get no thanks from the Irish
people unless they carried the expropriation of land much farther than the
present Bill proposed to carry it. "How stands the case?" he argued. "At
the time of the Rebellion, England confiscated large estates belonging
to the Celtic rebels. On nine-tenths of those estates England planted
laymen; on the remaining tenth she planted Anglican pastors. Now I ask
this one question: Was the confiscation of the land of the rebels just or
unjust? If it was unjust, then undo it all. If, in the name of justice,
you are to trace back so far the roots of things in Irish history; if you
are to make your resolutions in the sacred name of justice, then, in the
name of that justice, give back to the descendants of those owners the
confiscated estates that you took from them. But do not mock them--for it
is mocking them--by telling them that Protestant ascendency is an evil
thing. And then, how do you propose to deal with it? By telling them their
land is divided into nine-tenths and one-tenth--the nine-tenths in the
hands of the Protestant landlords, and the one-tenth in the hands of the
Protestant clergy--and we propose to satisfy their demand for justice by
ousting from the land the one proprietor, who is the most popular, most
constantly resident, and least offensive, while you retain, in all the
bitter injustice of their original tenure, the proprietors who are the
most detested, and whose possessions they most covet. Do your lordships
imagine that the Irish people will be satisfied with that? Do not forget
that you have to deal with the most quick-witted people in Europe--people
whose eyes are intently fixed on this question--and do you think that they
will feel other than the most bitter disappointment when you tell them
that you are about to tear down the hateful flag of Protestant ascendency,
and they find that you only tear off a single corner of it--or about the
fortieth part of the whole? The Irish peasant has already given his answer
to your offer of pacification--your pacification consisting in refusing
him the land which he does want, and giving him the destruction of the
Church, which he does not--the Irish peasant writes his answer, and a
terrible answer it is, in that dread handwriting which it needs no Daniel
to interpret, and which so often makes English statesmen tremble; and
in that answer he tells you that he will be satisfied with nothing else
than the possession of the land--which I do the members of her Majesty's
Government the justice to believe they have no intention to give."
After having laboured to prove that the Bill was unjust and impolitic,
the Bishop denounced it with withering sarcasm as ungenerous. "What a
magnanimous sight! The first thing that this magnanimous British nation
does in the performance of this act of justice and penitence, is to put
into her pocket the annual sum she has been in the habit of paying to
Maynooth and to compensate Maynooth out of the funds of the Irish Church.
The Presbyterian members for Scotland, while joining in this exercise
of magnanimity, forgot the horror of Popery which was so largely relied
on, and so loudly expressed, at the last elections in Scotland. They
have changed their mind, on the theory that a bribe to Popery is nothing
if preceded by plunder of the Protestant Episcopacy. Putting two sins
together, they make one good action. Throughout its provisions this Bill
is characterised by a hard and niggardly spirit. I am surprised by the
injustice and impolicy of the measure, but I am still more astonished
at its intense shabbiness. It is a small and pitiful Bill. It is not
worthy of a great nation. This great nation in its act of magnanimity and
penitence has done the talking, but has put the sackcloth and ashes on the
Irish Church, and made the fasting be performed by the poor vergers and
organists."
The opponents of the measure were not sufficiently numerous to prevent
the second reading, which was carried (June 19th) by a majority of 33,
chiefly owing to a large number of abstentions. But now the real work of
the adversaries of the Bill began. The Archbishop of Canterbury moved that
the Ulster glebes be regarded in the light of private endowments, and made
over to the disestablished Church; and this was carried. The same prelate
moved that the preamble be altered by the insertion of 1872 as the legal
date of disestablishment, instead of 1871. This amendment also was carried
by a large majority. Lord Carnarvon moved and carried an amendment to the
clause respecting the redemption of life annuities, giving considerably
more favourable terms to the Church. Lord Salisbury proposed and carried
an amendment, by which the delivery of the glebe-houses to the Church
would be made free of the building charges resting upon them. On the
motion of Lord Cairns, the House made an important alteration in the
preamble of the Bill, wherein it was stated that no part of the surplus
was to be devoted to religious or denominational purposes, but that it
should be wholly applied to the relief of unavoidable calamities and
infirmities. Lord Cairns moved, and successfully, that the whole question
as to the disposal of the surplus should be reserved for the decision of
a future Parliament. The question of the date was then again brought up,
it being understood that the Irish clergy were themselves opposed to the
postponement of the date of disestablishment as proposed by the Archbishop
of Canterbury. On the motion of Lord Cairns, the 1st of May, 1871, was
finally agreed to.
The object and effect of all the amendments hitherto described was to
secure for the Church, after disestablishment, a large portion of its
property, in addition to the sums required for the satisfaction of
life-interests. Many peers saw clearly that if passed in this way, the
Bill, besides causing dissatisfaction among English Dissenters, would
arouse feelings of disappointment and indignation among Irish Roman
Catholics, who had been led to expect that the disendowment would be
real and _bonâ fide_, no less than the disestablishment. Attempts were
therefore made to keep the balance even by applying a portion of the
surplus to the use and benefit of the Roman Catholic and Presbyterian
Churches in Ireland. A proposal of the Duke of Cleveland tending in
this direction was rejected; but just before the Bill was read a third
time, Earl Stanhope moved and carried an amendment, authorising a
certain measure of "concurrent endowment." By this amendment, the clause
conveying the glebe-houses to the disestablished clergy received an
enlarged scope, so that it should be in the power of the Commissioners
to make provision for residences, in cases where they were wanting,
for Roman Catholic priests and Presbyterian ministers, as well as for
Protestant Episcopalian bishops and clergy. Government, bound by their
election pledges to the Dissenters, strenuously opposed this amendment;
Lord Granard also, professing to speak for his Catholic countrymen in
Ireland, refused his consent to it. On the other hand, Lord Dunraven,
a Catholic peer, supported it; and Earl Russell expressed an opinion
in its favour, drily remarking, that he doubted whether there would be
much feeling of religious equality in Ireland so long as the Protestant
clergy were comfortably housed, and the Roman Catholic priests lived in
hovels. Lord Stanhope's amendment was carried by a narrow majority, and
the Bill was then read a third time and passed, a protest being first
signed by Lord Derby and forty-three temporal and two spiritual peers.
Lord Derby had previously denounced the Bill with the impressive solemnity
of a dying man. "My lords," he said, "I am an old man, and, like many of
your lordships, past the allotted span of three score years and ten. My
official life is at an end, my political life is nearly closed, and in the
course of nature my natural life cannot be long.... If it be for the last
time that I have the honour of addressing your lordships, I declare that
it will be to my dying day a satisfaction that I have been able to lift
up my voice against the adoption of a measure, the political impolicy of
which is equalled only by its moral iniquity."
The Bill, as amended by the Lords, came back to the House of Commons; and
it became the duty of Government to consider how far they could give way,
in order not to imperil the safety of the Bill. In the main it was deemed
impossible to accept the measure in the altered form in which it came
from the hands of the Lords. Mr. Gladstone announced (July 15th) that he
should propose to disagree from all the more important amendments, with
the exception that, in the case of Lord Carnarvon's proposal, Government
would consent to a modification of the original clause, so as to make
it slightly more favourable to the clergy. A few amendments of minor
importance he was willing to accept. The course proposed by the Prime
Minister was approved by the House, and all the more important of the
Lords' amendments were rejected by large majorities.
Violent language was heard in the House of Lords when the Bill, restored
nearly to its original shape, came back to them from the House of Commons.
The Marquis of Salisbury said that "his reason for opposing the Government
project for appropriating the surplus was that it was false and that it
was foolish. In the first place, it implied a partial application of the
fund for spiritual teaching; and, in the second place, it was a vain
attempt of the House of Commons, which distrusted its own resolution
against concurrent endowment, to bind itself, like a drunkard taking
the pledge, against changing its mind in the future. In truth, the only
argument for it was, that the House of Commons had passed it; and the only
reason why that House had done so was, that the Prime Minister had bidden
it. Why the Prime Minister bade it, he could not search deep enough into
the labyrinthine recesses of that mind to detect, unless it were that
Mr. Gladstone had desired to give this House a slap on the face. So far
from agreeing with the Earl of Shaftesbury's appeal to the House to waive
its amendments in deference to the Commons, he believed this was just
an occasion on which it was the duty of this House to interfere between
the country and the arrogant will of one man." The motion that the House
should insist on its amendment, altering the preamble in relation to the
surplus, was carried by a large majority.
The state of things was now very serious. A collision between the two
Houses seemed to be on the point of taking place which would have
strained the Constitution to the last point of tension. Plans for
overcoming the resistance of the Lords were openly propounded and
generally discussed. It was said that the Ministry would advise her
Majesty to bring the Session immediately to a close, that Parliament would
be summoned to meet again for the despatch of business in the autumn, that
Mr. Gladstone's Bill for disestablishing the Irish Church would then be
passed again by the House of Commons in its original shape, and again be
sent up to the House of Lords; and that this process must and would be
repeated until that House agreed to pass it. Fortunately the new Primate,
Archbishop Tait, whose recommendation had been one of Mr. Disraeli's
last efforts, was a man peculiarly fitted to mediate between contending
parties. Despite his deep sympathies with the cause of Episcopacy in
Ireland, which found expression on May 6th, 1869, in a strongly worded
resolution against disestablishment and disendowment moved by him in St.
James's Hall, he, like Bishop Wilberforce, promptly perceived that the
unmistakable declaration of the constituencies had rendered futile any
further resistance. The Queen was of similar mind, and under her Majesty's
wise command the archbishop had placed himself in communication with Mr.
Gladstone early in February. He found the Prime Minister far more moderate
than some of his lieutenants, and was able to report to the Queen that
the proposed safeguards were admitted in principle, though some of Mr.
Gladstone's intentions, particularly for dealing with post-Reformation
grants and bequests, did not go as far as he wished. On the 8th of May he
held a private conference at Lambeth with eight lay peers, representing
the various parties, and in vain endeavoured to persuade them to consent
to the second reading of the Bill. On the 3rd of June he again received
the Queen's commands to put himself in communication with Mr. Gladstone,
but without much success, nor did a letter to Earl Cairns, asking him
to persuade his followers to consent to the second reading, produce
the desired effect. On the contrary Lord Cairns informed him that at a
meeting held at the Duke of Marlborough's house the Conservative peers
had authorised Lord Harrowby to move the rejection of the Bill. The Queen
wrote in alarm, saying that, though her objections against the measure
still existed in full force, she considered that "the rejection of the
Bill on the second reading would only serve to bring the two Houses into
collision, and to prolong a dangerous agitation of the subject, while it
would further tend to increase the difficulty of ultimately obtaining a
measure so modified as to remove, or at least to mitigate, the fears of
those who are conscientiously opposed to the present Bill as it stands."
Accordingly the archbishop not only advised Lord Granville to introduce
the Bill in a conciliatory speech, but himself spoke in such a moderate
tone as greatly to influence the issue of the debate. After the second
reading had been carried--as we have already mentioned--and the Bill had
been amended in committee, Archbishop Tait received a further despatch
from her Majesty, which ran--"The Queen must say that she cannot view
without alarm the possible consequences of another year of agitation on
the Irish Church, and she would ask the archbishop seriously to consider,
in case the concessions to which the Government may agree should not go
so far as he himself may wish, whether the postponement of the settlement
for another year would not be likely to result in worse rather than in
better terms for the Church." The archbishop accordingly set himself to
mediate between the contending parties as represented by Earl Cairns and
Mr. Gladstone, and his diary, as published in his biography by Dr. Randall
Davidson and Dr. Benham, gives a vivid expression of his hopes and fears.
On Tuesday evening he records "a violent and apparently hopeless quarrel
between Cairns and Gladstone"; on Thursday, after negotiations with all
parties--Irish bishops, Conservative peers, Mr. Gladstone, Lord Salisbury,
and Earl Cairns--he could write that "by five o'clock all was settled." On
the 22nd of July Lord Cairns announced the result of these negotiations
to the House. The point about the date he was willing to waive, so that
the legal disestablishment would take place, as originally fixed, on the
1st of January, 1871. Government had made various concessions which,
while still thinking them inadequate to the justice of the case, he was
willing to accept, rather than run the hazard of a collision between the
two branches of the Legislature. They consented that the liabilities
of incumbents for the salaries of curates should be confined to the
case where a curate had been employed for five years. As to diocesan
commutation, Government--who had already added seven per cent. to the
amount of the annuities obtainable by commuting incumbents--now agreed to
grant five per cent. more; this involved a diminution of the surplus by
upwards of £700,000. Better terms for curates had been already conceded.
The acceptance of commutation by three-fourths, instead of four-fifths,
of the clergy of a diocese was to be held sufficient. Government had
also agreed to exempt from the commutation any residence and land in an
incumbent's own occupation if the incumbent should so desire. Lastly,
there was the question of the disposal of the surplus. Government on this
point had consented to amend the 68th clause, so that it would provide for
the employment of the surplus for the relief of unavoidable calamity and
in such manner as Parliament should hereafter direct.
[Illustration: NEW PALACE YARD, WESTMINSTER.
(_From a Photograph by G. W. Wilson and Co., Aberdeen._)]
A general sense of relief, mingled with admiration for the consummate
ability and discretion with which Lord Cairns had managed his case,
pervaded the House at this announcement. That he deserved less credit for
the arrangement than the Queen and Archbishop Tait must now be conceded,
but the workings of their wise diplomacy were not revealed until many
years had passed. The compromise which the earl had agreed to on his own
responsibility was adopted with hardly a dissentient voice, and the Bill
was then returned to the House of Commons, where (July 23rd) it received a
final consideration. Mr. Gladstone did not conceal that he deemed the last
grant of five per cent. in augmentation of the commutation fund to be a
matter of great importance, and a concession against the principle of the
Bill. But looking to the mischief of leaving the controversy open, and in
deference to the opinion of the House of Lords, and wishing to preserve
the harmony between the two Houses (which had never been so severely
tried, but which, he thanked God, had withstood the trial), Government had
not felt justified in refusing the overtures made to them on the point.
The Lords' amendments were then agreed to; and the Bill received the Royal
Assent on the 26th of July.
This important measure accordingly passed into law. Those who
declaimed against the disendowment of the Church as an act of
spoliation--confiscation--sacrilege, and predicted that the disregard for
the rights of property shown by Government in this instance would fatally
weaken the respect for property in the minds of the general community,
forgot the fact, of which Mr. Chichester Fortescue took care to remind
them, that "the Bill was no more confiscation than the original transfer
of the Church property from Roman Catholic to Protestant hands had been;
and Parliament, which made that change, might now convert the property to
other Irish purposes." On the other hand, the brilliant anticipations of
concord and contentment which Mr. Bright indulged in were not realised.
He said the Bill was put forward by Government as the means of creating
a true and solid union, and of removing Irish discontent, not only in
Ireland, but across the Atlantic. Archbishop Trench could not conceal
his chagrin. The proposal to disestablish the Irish Church was made, he
thought, with levity and precipitation; the Roman Catholics would be but
feebly and languidly pleased, whilst the Protestants would entertain
the liveliest and most enduring resentment for the wrong inflicted upon
them. The former saw that all the changes which the Bill underwent in its
progress through Parliament were in the direction of making fresh inroads
upon the surplus in favour of the disestablished clergy. Even before
the Lords' amendments had so greatly swelled the amounts to be given in
commutation and compensation, the O'Donoghue observed, on behalf of his
Roman Catholic fellow-countrymen, that the compensation clauses went much
farther than was the due of the Irish Protestants, and that to increase
them would be an injustice to the Irish people. And while the disendowed
Church was thus being, to a large extent, re-endowed, Lord Stanhope's
clause--the one solitary indication of a friendly feeling towards the
religion of the majority which the Bill would have contained--was
summarily and inexorably rejected. It is true that this rejection was
promoted by the Irish members themselves. A compact had been entered
into between the Irish Liberals and those English and Scottish members
who viewed with uncompromising hostility all national establishment
or endowment of religion, by which, on condition of the Irish members
renouncing everything in the nature of an endowment for the Roman Catholic
Church in Ireland, the English and Scottish Liberals agreed to support
the Irish Land Bill when it should be brought forward. Among politicians
this was well understood; but to the masses of the Irish people the
disestablishment of the Church must have seemed to be carried out in such
a way as to establish little claim on their gratitude.