present advisers. I have no personal hostility to any of them; and that
political hostility which I do not disavow has never prevented me from
doing justice to their abilities and virtues. I have always admitted,
and I now most willingly admit, that the right honourable Baronet at the
head of the Government possesses many of the qualities of an excellent
minister, eminent talents for debate, eminent talents for business,
great experience, great information, great skill in the management of
this House. I will go further, and say that I give him full credit for
a sincere desire to promote the welfare of his country. Nevertheless,
it is impossible for me to deny that there is too much ground for the
reproaches of those who, having, in spite of a bitter experience, a
second time trusted him, now find themselves a second time deluded.
I cannot but see that it has been too much his practice, when in
opposition, to make use of passions with which he has not the slightest
sympathy, and of prejudices which he regards with profound contempt. As
soon as he is in power a change takes place. The instruments which have
done his work are flung aside. The ladder by which he has climbed is
kicked down. I am forced to say that the right honourable Baronet acts
thus habitually and on system. The instance before us is not a solitary
instance. I do not wish to dwell on the events which took place
seventeen or eighteen years ago, on the language which the right
honourable Baronet held about the Catholic question when he was out of
power in 1827, and on the change which twelve months of power produced.
I will only say that one such change was quite enough for one life.
Again the right honourable Baronet was in opposition; and again he
employed his old tactics. I will not minutely relate the history of the
manoeuvres by which the Whig Government was overthrown. It is enough
to say that many powerful interests were united against that Government
under the leading of the right honourable Baronet, and that of
those interests there is not one which is not now disappointed and
complaining. To confine my remarks to the subject immediately before
us--can any man deny that, of all the many cries which were raised
against the late administration, that which most strongly stirred the
public mind was the cry of No Popery? Is there a single gentleman in the
House who doubts that, if, four years ago, my noble friend the Member
for the City of London had proposed this bill, he would have been
withstood by every member of the present Cabinet? Four years ago, Sir,
we were discussing a very different bill. The party which was then in
opposition, and which is now in place, was attempting to force through
Parliament a law, which bore indeed a specious name, but of which the
effect would have been to disfranchise the Roman Catholic electors of
Ireland by tens of thousands. It was in vain that we argued, that we
protested, that we asked for the delay of a single session, for delay
till an inquiry could be made, for delay till a Committee should report.
We were told that the case was one of extreme urgency, that every hour
was precious, that the House must, without loss of time, be purged of
the minions of Popery. These arts succeeded. A change of administration
took place. The right honourable Baronet came into power. He has now
been near four years in power. He has had a Parliament which would,
beyond all doubt, have passed eagerly and gladly that Registration
Bill which he and his colleagues had pretended that they thought
indispensable to the welfare of the State. And where is that bill now?
Flung away; condemned by its own authors; pronounced by them to be so
oppressive, so inconsistent with all the principles of representative
government, that, though they had vehemently supported it when they
were on your left hand, they could not think of proposing it from the
Treasury Bench. And what substitute does the honourable Baronet give his
followers to console them for the loss of their favourite Registration
Bill? Even this bill for the endowment of Maynooth College. Was such a
feat of legerdemain ever seen? And can we wonder that the eager, honest,
hotheaded Protestants, who raised you to power in the confident hope
that you would curtail the privileges of the Roman Catholics, should
stare and grumble when you propose to give public money to the Roman
Catholics? Can we wonder that, from one end of the country to the other,
everything should be ferment and uproar, that petitions should, night
after night, whiten all our benches like a snowstorm? Can we wonder that
the people out of doors should be exasperated by seeing the very men
who, when we were in office, voted against the old grant to Maynooth,
now pushed and pulled into the House by your whippers-in to vote for
an increased grant? The natural consequences follow. All those fierce
spirits, whom you hallooed on to harass us, now turn round and begin to
worry you. The Orangeman raises his war-whoop: Exeter Hall sets up its
bray: Mr Macneile shudders to see more costly cheer than ever provided
for the priests of Baal at the table of the Queen; and the Protestant
operatives of Dublin call for impeachments in exceedingly bad English.
But what did you expect? Did you think, when, to serve your turn, you
called the Devil up, that it was as easy to lay him as to raise him?
Did you think, when you went on, session after session, thwarting and
reviling those whom you knew to be in the right, and flattering all the
worst passions of those whom you knew to be in the wrong, that the day
of reckoning would never come? It has come. There you sit, doing penance
for the disingenuousness of years. If it be not so, stand up manfully
and clear your fame before the House and the country. Show us that some
steady principle has guided your conduct with respect to Irish affairs.
Show us how, if you are honest in 1845, you can have been honest in
1841. Explain to us why, after having goaded Ireland to madness for the
purpose of ingratiating yourselves with the English, you are now setting
England on fire for the purpose of ingratiating yourselves with the
Irish. Give us some reason which shall prove that the policy which you
are following, as Ministers, is entitled to support, and which shall
not equally prove you to have been the most factious and unprincipled
opposition that ever this country saw.
But, Sir, am I, because I think thus of the conduct of Her Majesty's
Ministers, to take the counsel of the honourable member for Shrewsbury
and to vote against their bill? Not so. I know well that the fate of
this bill and the fate of the administration are in our hands. But
far be it from us to imitate the arts by which we were overthrown. The
spectacle exhibited on the bench opposite will do quite mischief enough.
That mischief will not be lessened, but doubled, if there should be an
answering display of inconsistency on this side of the House. If this
bill, having been introduced by Tories, shall be rejected by Whigs, both
the great parties in the State will be alike discredited. There will
be one vast shipwreck of all the public character in the country.
Therefore, making up my mind to sacrifices which are not unattended with
pain, and repressing some feelings which stir strongly within me, I have
determined to give my strenuous support to this bill. Yes, Sir, to this
bill, and to every bill which shall seem to me likely to promote
the real Union of Great Britain and Ireland, I will give my support,
regardless of obloquy, regardless of the risk which I may run of losing
my seat in Parliament. For such obloquy I have learned to consider as
true glory; and as to my seat I am determined that it never shall be
held by an ignominious tenure; and I am sure that it can never be lost
in a more honourable cause.
*****
THE CHURCH OF IRELAND. (APRIL 23, 1845.) A SPEECH DELIVERED IN THE HOUSE
OF COMMONS ON THE 23RD OF APRIL 1845.
On the twenty-third of April 1845, the order of the day for going into
Committee on the Maynooth College Bill was read. On the motion that the
Speaker should leave the chair, Mr Ward, Member for Sheffield, proposed
the following amendment:--
"That it is the opinion of this House that any provision to be made
for the purposes of the present Bill ought to be taken from the funds
already applicable to ecclesiastical purposes in Ireland."
After a debate of two nights the amendment was rejected by 322 votes to
148. On the first night the following Speech was made.
I was desirous, Sir, to catch your eye this evening, because it happens
that I have never yet found an opportunity of fully explaining my views
on the important subject of the Irish Church. Indeed, I was not in this
country when that subject for a time threw every other into the
shade, disturbed the whole political world, produced a schism in the
Administration of Lord Grey, and overthrew the short Administration of
the right honourable Baronet opposite. The motion now before us opens,
I conceive, the whole question. My honourable friend the Member for
Sheffield, indeed, asks us only to transfer twenty-six thousand pounds a
year from the Established Church of Ireland to the College of Maynooth.
But this motion, I think, resembles an action of ejectment brought for
a single farm, with the view of trying the title to a large estate.
Whoever refuses to assent to what is now proposed must be considered as
holding the opinion that the property of the Irish Church ought to be
held inviolate: and I can scarcely think that any person will vote for
what is now proposed, who is not prepared to go very much farther. The
point at issue, I take, therefore, to be this; whether the Irish Church,
as now constituted, shall be maintained or not?
Now, Sir, when a legislator is called up to decide whether an
institution shall be maintained or not, it seems to me that he ought in
the first place to examine whether it be a good or a bad institution.
This may sound like a truism; but if I am to judge by the speeches
which, on this and former occasions, have been made by gentlemen
opposite, it is no truism, but an exceedingly recondite truth. I, Sir,
think the Established Church of Ireland a bad institution. I will go
farther. I am not speaking in anger, or with any wish to excite anger in
others; I am not speaking with rhetorical exaggeration: I am calmly and
deliberately expressing, in the only appropriate terms, an opinion which
I formed many years ago, which all my observations and reflections have
confirmed, and which I am prepared to support by reasons, when I say
that, of all the institutions now existing in the civilised world, the
Established Church of Ireland seems to me the most absurd.
I cannot help thinking that the speeches of those who defend this Church
suffice of themselves to prove that my views are just. For who ever
heard anybody defend it on its merits? Has any gentleman to-night
defended it on its merits? We are told of the Roman Catholic oath; as
if that oath, whatever be its meaning, whatever be the extent of the
obligation which it lays on the consciences of those who take it, could
possibly prove this Church to be a good thing. We are told that Roman
Catholics of note, both laymen and divines, fifty years ago, declared
that, if they were relieved from the disabilities under which they then
lay, they should willingly see the Church of Ireland in possession of
all its endowments: as if anything that anybody said fifty years ago
could absolve us from the plain duty of doing what is now best for the
country. We are told of the Fifth Article of Union; as if the Fifth
Article of Union were more sacred than the Fourth. Surely, if there be
any article of the Union which ought to be regarded as inviolable, it is
the Fourth, which settles the number of members whom Great Britain and
Ireland respectively are to send to Parliament. Yet the provisions of
the Fourth Article have been altered with the almost unanimous assent of
all parties in the State. The change was proposed by the noble lord
who is now Secretary for the Colonies. It was supported by the right
honourable Baronet the Secretary for the Home Department, and by other
members of the present Administration. And so far were the opponents of
the Reform Bill from objecting to this infraction of the Treaty of Union
that they were disposed to go still farther. I well remember the night
on which we debated the question, whether Members should be given to
Finsbury, Marylebone, Lambeth, and the Tower Hamlets. On that occasion,
the Tories attempted to seduce the Irish Reformers from us by promising
that Ireland should have a share of the plunder of the metropolitan
districts. After this, Sir, I must think it childish in gentlemen
opposite to appeal to the Fifth Article of the Union. With still greater
surprise, did I hear the right honourable gentleman the Secretary for
Ireland say that, if we adopt this amendment, we shall make all landed
and funded property insecure. I am really ashamed to answer such an
argument. Nobody proposes to touch any vested interest; and surely
it cannot be necessary for me to point out to the right honourable
gentleman the distinction between property in which some person has a
vested interest, and property in which no person has a vested interest.
That distinction is part of the very rudiments of political science.
Then the right honourable gentleman quarrels with the form of the
amendment. Why, Sir, perhaps a more convenient form might have been
adopted. But is it by cavils like these that a great institution should
be defended? And who ever heard the Established Church of Ireland
defended except by cavils like these? Who ever heard any of her
advocates speak a manly and statesmanlike language? Who ever heard any
of her advocates say, "I defend this institution because it is a good
institution: the ends for which an Established Church exists are such
and such: and I will show you that this Church attains those ends?"
Nobody says this. Nobody has the hardihood to say it. What divine,
what political speculator who has written in defence of ecclesiastical
establishments, ever defended such establishments on grounds which will
support the Church of Ireland? What panegyric has ever been pronounced
on the Churches of England and Scotland, which is not a satire on the
Church of Ireland? What traveller comes among us who is not moved to
wonder and derision by the Church of Ireland? What foreign writer on
British affairs, whether European or American, whether Protestant or
Catholic, whether Conservative or Liberal, whether partial to England or
prejudiced against England, ever mentions the Church of Ireland without
expressing his amazement that such an establishment should exist among
reasonable men?
And those who speak thus of this Church speak justly. Is there anything
else like it? Was there ever anything else like it? The world is full
of ecclesiastical establishments: but such a portent as this Church
of Ireland is nowhere to be found. Look round the Continent of Europe.
Ecclesiastical establishments from the White Sea to the Mediterranean:
ecclesiastical establishments from the Wolga to the Atlantic: but
nowhere the Church of a small minority enjoying exclusive establishment.
Look at America. There you have all forms of Christianity, from
Mormonism, if you call Mormonism Christianity, to Romanism. In some
places you have the voluntary system. In some you have several religions
connected with the state. In some you have the solitary ascendency of a
single Church. But nowhere, from the Arctic Circle to Cape Horn, do you
find the Church of a small minority exclusively established. Look round
our own empire. We have an Established Church in England; it is the
Church of the majority. There is an Established Church in Scotland. When
it was set up, it was the Church of the majority. A few months ago, it
was the Church of the majority. I am not quite sure that, even after
the late unhappy disruption, it is the Church of the minority. In our
colonies the State does much for the support of religion; but in no
colony, I believe, do we give exclusive support to the religion of the
minority. Nay, even in those parts of empire where the great body of the
population is attached to absurd and immoral superstitions, you have not
been guilty of the folly and injustice of calling on them to pay for a
Church which they do not want. We have not portioned out Bengal and the
Carnatic into parishes, and scattered Christian rectors, with stipends
and glebes, among millions of Pagans and Mahometans. We keep, indeed,
a small Christian establishment, or rather three small Christian
establishments, Anglican, Presbyterian, and Catholic. But we keep them
only for the Christians in our civil and military services; and we leave
untouched the revenues of the mosques and temples. In one country alone
is to be seen the spectacle of a community of eight millions of
human beings, with a Church which is the Church of only eight hundred
thousand.
It has been often said, and has been repeated to-night by the honourable
Member for Radnor, that this Church, though it includes only a tenth
part of the population, has more than half the wealth of Ireland. But
is that an argument in favour of the present system? Is it not the
strongest argument that can be urged in favour of an entire change?
It is true that there are many cases in which it is fit that property
should prevail over number. Those cases may, I think, be all arranged in
two classes. One class consists of those cases in which the preservation
or improvement of property is the object in view. Thus, in a railway
company, nothing can be more reasonable than that one proprietor who
holds five hundred shares should have more power than five proprietors
who hold one share each. The other class of cases in which property may
justly confer privileges is where superior intelligence is required.
Property is indeed but a very imperfect test of intelligence. But, when
we are legislating on a large scale, it is perhaps the best which we
can apply. For where there is no property, there can very seldom be any
mental cultivation. It is on this principle that special jurors, who
have to try causes of peculiar nicety, are taken from a wealthier order
than that which furnishes common jurors. But there cannot be a more
false analogy than to reason from these cases to the case of an
Established Church. So far is it from being true that, in establishing
a Church, we ought to pay more regard to one rich man than to five poor
men, that the direct reverse is the sound rule. We ought to pay more
regard to one poor man than to five rich men. For, in the first place,
the public ordinances of religion are of far more importance to the poor
man than to the rich man. I do not mean to say that a rich man may not
be the better for hearing sermons and joining in public prayers. But
these things are not indispensable to him; and, if he is so situated
that he cannot have them, he may find substitutes. He has money to buy
books, time to study them, understanding to comprehend them. Every
day he may commune with the minds of Hooker, Leighton, and Barrow. He
therefore stands less in need of the oral instruction of a divine than a
peasant who cannot read, or who, if he can read, has no money to procure
books, or leisure to peruse them. Such a peasant, unless instructed by
word of mouth, can know no more of Christianity than a wild Hottentot.
Nor is this all. The poor man not only needs the help of a minister of
religion more than the rich man, but is also less able to procure it.
If there were no Established Church, people in our rank of life would
always be provided with preachers to their mind at an expense which
they would scarcely feel. But when a poor man, who can hardly give his
children their fill of potatoes, has to sell his pig in order to pay
something to his priest, the burden is a heavy one. This is, in fact,
the strongest reason for having an established church in any country. It
is the one reason which prevents me from joining with the partisans of
the voluntary system. I should think their arguments unanswerable if the
question regarded the upper and middle classes only. If I would keep up
the Established Church of England, it is not for the sake of lords, and
baronets, and country gentlemen of five thousand pounds a-year, and rich
bankers in the city. I know that such people will always have churches,
aye, and cathedrals, and organs, and rich communion plate. The person
about whom I am uneasy is the working man; the man who would find it
difficult to pay even five shillings or ten shillings a-year out of his
small earnings for the ministrations of religion. What is to become
of him under the voluntary system? Is he to go without religious
instruction altogether? That we should all think a great evil to
himself, and a great evil to society. Is he to pay for it out of his
slender means? That would be a heavy tax. Is he to be dependent on
the liberality of others? That is a somewhat precarious and a somewhat
humiliating dependence. I prefer, I own, that system under which there
is, in the rudest and most secluded district, a house of God, where
public worship is performed after a fashion acceptable to the great
majority of the community, and where the poorest may partake of the
ordinances of religion, not as an alms, but as a right. But does
this argument apply to a Church like the Church of Ireland? It is not
necessary on this occasion to decide whether the arguments in favour
of the ecclesiastical establishments, or the arguments in favour of the
voluntary system, be the stronger. There are weighty considerations on
both sides. Balancing them as well as I can, I think that, as respects
England, the preponderance is on the side of the Establishment. But,
as respects Ireland, there is no balancing. All the weights are in one
scale. All the arguments which incline us against the Church of England,
and all the arguments which incline us in favour of the Church of
England, are alike arguments against the Church of Ireland; against the
Church of the few; against the Church of the wealthy; against the Church
which, reversing every principle on which a Christian Church should be
founded, fills the rich with its good things, and sends the hungry empty
away.
One view which has repeatedly, both in this House and out of it, been
taken of the Church of Ireland, seems to deserve notice. It is admitted,
as indeed it could not well be denied, that this Church does not
perform the functions which are everywhere else expected from similar
institutions; that it does not instruct the body of the people; that
it does not administer religious consolation to the body of the people.
But, it is said, we must regard this Church as an aggressive Church,
a proselytising Church, a Church militant among spiritual enemies. Its
office is to spread Protestantism over Munster and Connaught. I remember
well that, eleven years ago, when Lord Grey's Government proposed to
reduce the number of Irish bishoprics, this language was held. It was
acknowledged that there were more bishops than the number of persons
then in communion with the Established Church required. But that number,
we were assured, would not be stationary; and the hierarchy, therefore,
ought to be constituted with a view to the millions of converts who
would soon require the care of Protestant pastors. I well remember
the strong expression which was then used by my honourable friend, the
Member for the University of Oxford. We must, he said, make allowance
for the expansive force of Protestantism. A few nights ago a noble lord
for whom I, in common with the whole House, feel the greatest respect,
the Member for Dorsetshire (Lord Ashley.), spoke of the missionary
character of the Church of Ireland. Now, Sir, if such language had been
held at the Council Board of Queen Elizabeth when the constitution of
this Church was first debated there, there would have been no cause for
wonder. Sir William Cecil or Sir Nicholas Bacon might very naturally
have said, "There are few Protestants now in Ireland, it is true. But
when we consider how rapidly the Protestant theology has spread, when
we remember that it is little more than forty years since Martin Luther
began to preach against indulgences, and when we see that one half of
Europe is now emancipated from the old superstition, we may reasonably
expect that the Irish will soon follow the example of the other nations
which have embraced the doctrines of the Reformation." Cecil, I say,
and his colleagues might naturally entertain this expectation, and might
without absurdity make preparations for an event which they regarded
as in the highest degree probable. But we, who have seen this system in
full operation from the year 1560 to the year 1845, ought to have been
taught better, unless indeed we are past all teaching. Two hundred and
eighty-five years has this Church been at work. What could have been
done for it in the way of authority, privileges, endowments, which has
not been done? Did any other set of bishops and priests in the world
ever receive so much for doing so little? Nay, did any other set of
bishops and priests in the world ever receive half as much for doing
twice as much? And what have we to show for all this lavish expenditure?
What but the most zealous Roman Catholic population on the face of the
earth? Where you were one hundred years ago, where you were two hundred
years ago, there you are still, not victorious over the domain of the
old faith, but painfully and with dubious success defending your own
frontier, your own English pale. Sometimes a deserter leaves you.
Sometimes a deserter steals over to you. Whether your gains or losses
of this sort be the greater I do not know; nor is it worth while to
inquire. On the great solid mass of the Roman Catholic population you
have made no impression whatever. There they are, as they were ages ago,
ten to one against the members of your Established Church. Explain this
to me. I speak to you, the zealous Protestants on the other side of the
House. Explain this to me on Protestant principles. If I were a Roman
Catholic, I could easily account for the phenomena. If I were a Roman
Catholic, I should content myself with saying that the mighty hand and
the outstretched arm had been put forth, according to the promise, in
defence of the unchangeable Church; that He who in the old time turned
into blessings the curses of Balaam, and smote the host of Sennacherib,
had signally confounded the arts of heretic statesmen. But what is
a Protestant to say? He holds that, through the whole of this long
conflict, during which ten generations of men have been born and have
died, reason and Scripture have been on the side of the Established
Clergy. Tell us then what we are to say of this strange war, in which,
reason and Scripture backed by wealth, by dignity, by the help of the
civil power, have been found no match for oppressed and destitute error?
The fuller our conviction that our doctrines are right, the fuller, if
we are rational men, must be our conviction that our tactics have been
wrong, and that we have been encumbering the cause which we meant to
aid.
Observe, it is not only the comparative number of Roman Catholics
and Protestants that may justly furnish us with matter for serious
reflection. The quality as well as the quantity of Irish Romanism
deserves to be considered. Is there any other country inhabited by a
mixed population of Catholics and Protestants, any other country in
which Protestant doctrines have long been freely promulgated from the
press and from the pulpit, where the Roman Catholics spirit is so strong
as in Ireland? I believe not. The Belgians are generally considered as
very stubborn and zealous Roman Catholics. But I do not believe that
either in stubbornness or in zeal they equal the Irish. And this is
the fruit of three centuries of Protestant archbishops, bishops,
archdeacons, deans, and rectors. And yet where is the wonder? Is this
a miracle that we should stand aghast at it? Not at all. It is a result
which human prudence ought to have long ago foreseen and long ago
averted. It is the natural succession of effect to cause. If you do not
understand it, it is because you do not understand what the nature and
operation of a church is. There are parts of the machinery of Government
which may be just as efficient when they are hated as when they are
loved. An army, a navy, a preventive service, a police force, may do
their work whether the public feeling be with them or against them.
Whether we dislike the corn laws or not, your custom houses and your
coast guard keep out foreign corn. The multitude at Manchester was not
the less effectually dispersed by the yeomanry, because the interference
of the yeomanry excited the bitterest indignation. There the object was
to produce a material effect; the material means were sufficient; and
nothing more was required. But a Church exists for moral ends. A Church
exists to be loved, to be reverenced, to be heard with docility,
to reign in the understandings and hearts of men. A Church which is
abhorred is useless or worse than useless; and to quarter a hostile
Church on a conquered people, as you would quarter a soldiery, is
therefore the most absurd of mistakes. This mistake our ancestors
committed. They posted a Church in Ireland just as they posted garrisons
in Ireland. The garrisons did their work. They were disliked. But that
mattered not. They had their forts and their arms; and they kept down
the aboriginal race. But the Church did not do its work. For to that
work the love and confidence of the people were essential.