=Source.=--_Speeches of John Bright_, edited by J. E. Thorold Rogers,
pp. 219, 220. (Macmillan and Co., 1869.)
SPEECH ON MR. GLADSTONE’S RESOLUTIONS FOR DISESTABLISHING THE IRISH
CHURCH.
Now I challenge any hon. gentleman on the other side to deny this:
that out of half a million Episcopalians in Ireland there are
many--there are some in the Irish nobility, some landed proprietors,
some magistrates, even some of the clergy, a great many Irishmen--who
believe at this moment that it is of the very first importance that
the proposition of the right hon. gentleman, the Member for South
Lancashire, should be carried. I am not going to overstate my case. I
do not say that all of them are of that opinion. Of that half-million
say that one-fourth--I will state no number--but of this I am quite
certain, that there is an influential, a considerable, and, as I
believe, a wise minority, who are in favour of distinct and decided
action on the part of Parliament with regard to this question. But if
you ask the whole Roman Catholic population of Ireland, be they nobles,
or landed proprietors, or merchants, or farmers, or labourers--the
whole number of the Catholic population in Ireland being, I suppose,
eight or nine times the number of Episcopalians--these are probably,
without exception, of opinion that it would be greatly advantageous
and just to their country if the proposition submitted on this side
of the House should receive the sanction of Parliament. Now, if some
Protestants and all Catholics are agreed that we should remove this
Church, what would happen if Ireland were 1,000 miles away and we were
discussing it as we might discuss the same state of affairs in Canada?
If we were to have in Canada and in Australia all this disloyalty among
the Roman Catholic population owing to the existence of a State Church
there, the House would be unanimous that the State Church in those
Colonies should be abolished, and that perfect freedom in religion
should be given.
But there is a fear in the mind of the right hon. gentleman the Home
Secretary that the malady which would exist in Ireland might cross
the Channel and appear in England; that, in fact, the disorder of
Voluntaryism, as he deems it, in Ireland, like any other contagious
disorder, might cross the Channel by force of the west wind, lodging
first in Scotland, and then crossing the Tweed and coming south to
England. I think the right hon. gentleman went so far as to say that
he was so much in favour of religious equality that if you went so
far as to disestablish the Church in Ireland, he would recommend the
same policy for England. Now, with regard to that, I will give you
an anecdote which has reference to Scotland. Some years ago I had
the pleasure of spending some days in Scotland at the house of the
late Earl of Aberdeen after he had ceased to be Prime Minister. He
was talking of the disruption of the Church of Scotland, and he said
that nothing in the course of his public life had given him so much
pain as the disruption and the establishment of the Free Church in
that country; but he said he had lived long enough to discover that
it was one of the greatest blessings that had ever come to Scotland.
He said that they had a vast increase in the number of churches, a
corresponding increase in the number of manses or ministers’ houses,
and that schools had increased, also, to an extraordinary extent;
that there had been imparted to the Established Church a vitality and
energy which it had not known for a long period; and that education,
morality, and religion had received a great advancement in Scotland in
consequence of that change. Therefore, after all, it is not the most
dreadful thing in the world--not so bad as a great earthquake--or as
many other things that have happened. I am not quite sure that the
Scottish people themselves may not some day ask you--if you do not
yourselves introduce and pass it without their asking--to allow their
State Church to be disestablished.
I met only the other day a most intelligent gentleman from the north of
Scotland, and he told me that the minister of the church he frequented
had £250 a year from the Establishment Funds, which he thought very
much too little, and he felt certain that if the Establishment were
abolished and the Church made into a Free Church, the salary of the
minister would be immediately advanced to at least £500 a year. That is
a very good argument for the ministers, and we shall see, by-and-by, if
the conversion of Scotland proceeds much further, that you may be asked
to disestablish their Church.