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.
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.
Macaulay
He particularly
mentioned grinding. "See how grinding destroys the health, the sight,
the life. Yet there is no outcry against grinding. " He went on to say
that the whole question ought to be left by Parliament to the West
Indian Legislature. [Mr Gladstone: "Really I never said so. You are not
quoting me at all correctly. "] What, not about the sugar cultivation and
the grinding? [Mr Gladstone: "That is correct; but I never recommended
that the question should be left to the West Indian Legislatures. "] I
have quoted correctly. But since my right honourable friend disclaims
the sentiment imputed to him by the reporters, I shall say no more about
it. I have no doubt that he is quite right, and that what he said was
misunderstood. What is undisputed is amply sufficient for my purpose.
I see that the persons who now show so much zeal against slavery in
foreign countries, are the same persons who formerly countenanced
slavery in the British Colonies. I remember a time when they maintained
that we were bound in justice to protect slave grown sugar against the
competition of free grown sugar, and even of British free grown sugar.
I now hear them calling on us to protect free grown sugar against the
competition of slave grown sugar. I remember a time when they extenuated
as much as they could the evils of the sugar cultivation. I now hear
them exaggerating those evils. But, devious as their course has been,
there is one clue by which I can easily track them through the whole
maze. Inconstant in everything else, they are constant in demanding
protection for the West Indian planter. While he employs slaves, they
do their best to apologise for the evils of slavery. As soon as he is
forced to employ freemen, they begin to cry up the blessings of freedom.
They go round the whole compass, and yet to one point they steadfastly
adhere: and that point is the interest of the West Indian proprietors.
I have done, Sir; and I thank the House most sincerely for the patience
and indulgence with which I have been heard. I hope that I have at
least vindicated my own consistency. How Her Majesty's Ministers will
vindicate their consistency, how they will show that their conduct has
at all times been guided by the same principles, or even that their
conduct at the present time is guided by any fixed principle at all, I
am unable to conjecture.
*****
MAYNOOTH. (APRIL 14, 1845) A SPEECH DELIVERED IN THE HOUSE OF COMMONS ON
THE 14TH OF APRIL, 1845.
On Saturday the eleventh of April, 1845, Sir Robert Peel moved the
second reading of the Maynooth College Bill. After a debate of six
nights the motion was carried by 323 votes to 176. On the second night
the following Speech was made.
I do not mean, Sir, to follow the honourable gentleman who has just sate
down into a discussion on an amendment which is not now before us. When
my honourable friend the Member for Sheffield shall think it expedient
to make a motion on that important subject to which he has repeatedly
called the attention of the House, I may, perhaps, ask to be heard.
At present I shall content myself with explaining the reasons which
convince me that it is my duty to vote for the second reading of this
bill; and I cannot, I think, better explain those reasons than by
passing in review, as rapidly as I can, the chief objections which have
been made to the bill here and elsewhere.
The objectors, Sir, may be divided into three classes. The first class
consists of those persons who object, not to the principle of the grant
to Maynooth College, but merely to the amount. The second class consists
of persons who object on principle to all grants made to a church which
they regard as corrupt. The third class consists of persons who object
on principle to all grants made to churches, whether corrupt or pure.
Now, Sir, of those three classes the first is evidently that which
takes the most untenable ground. How any person can think that Maynooth
College ought to be supported by public money, and yet can think
this bill too bad to be suffered to go into Committee, I do not well
understand. I am forced however to believe that there are many such
persons. For I cannot but remember that the old annual vote attracted
scarcely any notice; and I see that this bill has produced violent
excitement. I cannot but remember that the old annual vote used to pass
with very few dissentients; and I see that great numbers of gentlemen,
who never were among those dissentients, have crowded down to the House
in order to divide against this bill. It is indeed certain that a large
proportion, I believe a majority, of those members who cannot, as
they assure us, conscientiously support the plan proposed by the right
honourable Baronet at the head of the Government, would without the
smallest scruple have supported him if he had in this, as in former
years, asked us to give nine thousand pounds for twelve months. So it
is: yet I cannot help wondering that it should be so. For how can
any human ingenuity turn a question between nine thousand pounds and
twenty-six thousand pounds, or between twelve months and an indefinite
number of months, into a question of principle? Observe: I am not now
answering those who maintain that nothing ought to be given out of
the public purse to a corrupt church; nor am I now answering those who
maintain that nothing ought to be given out of the public purse to
any church whatever. They, I admit, oppose this bill on principle. I
perfectly understand, though I do not myself hold, the opinion of the
zealous voluntary who says, "Whether the Roman Catholic Church teaches
truth or error, she ought to have no assistance from the State. " I also
perfectly understand, though I do not myself hold, the opinion of the
zealous Protestant who says, "The Roman Catholic Church teaches error,
and therefore ought to have no assistance from the State. " But I cannot
understand the reasoning of the man who says, "In spite of the errors
of the Roman Catholic Church, I think that she ought to have some
assistance from the State; but I am bound to mark my abhorrence of her
errors by doling out to her a miserable pittance. Her tenets are so
absurd and noxious that I will pay the professor who teaches them wages
less than I should offer to my groom. Her rites are so superstitious
that I will take care that they shall be performed in a chapel with a
leaky roof and a dirty floor. By all means let us keep her a college,
provided only that it be a shabby one. Let us support those who are
intended to teach her doctrines and to administer her sacraments to the
next generation, provided only that every future priest shall cost us
less than a foot soldier. Let us board her young theologians; but let
their larder be so scantily supplied that they may be compelled to break
up before the regular vacation from mere want of food. Let us lodge
them; but let their lodging be one in which they may be packed like pigs
in a stye, and be punished for their heterodoxy by feeling the snow and
the wind through the broken panes. " Is it possible to conceive anything
more absurd or more disgraceful? Can anything be clearer than this, that
whatever it is lawful to do it is lawful to do well? If it be right that
we should keep up this college at all, it must be right that we should
keep it up respectably. Our national dignity is concerned. For this
institution, whether good or bad, is, beyond all dispute, a very
important institution. Its office is to form the character of those who
are to form the character of millions. Whether we ought to extend any
patronage to such an institution is a question about which wise and
honest men may differ. But that, as we do extend our patronage to such
an institution, our patronage ought to be worthy of the object, and
worthy of the greatness of our country, is a proposition from which I am
astonished to hear any person dissent.
It is, I must say, with a peculiarly bad grace that one of the members
for the University to which I have the honour to belong (The Honourable
Charles Law, Member for the University of Cambridge. ), a gentleman who
never thought himself bound to say a word or to give a vote against
the grant of nine thousand pounds, now vehemently opposes the grant
of twenty-six thousand pounds as exorbitant. When I consider how
munificently the colleges of Cambridge and Oxford are endowed, and with
what pomp religion and learning are there surrounded; when I call to
mind the long streets of palaces, the towers and oriels, the venerable
cloisters, the trim gardens, the organs, the altar pieces, the solemn
light of the stained windows, the libraries, the museums, the galleries
of painting and sculpture; when I call to mind also the physical
comforts which are provided both for instructors and for pupils; when I
reflect that the very sizars and servitors are far better lodged and fed
than those students who are to be, a few years hence, the priests and
bishops of the Irish people; when I think of the spacious and stately
mansions of the heads of houses, of the commodious chambers of the
fellows and scholars, of the refectories, the combination rooms, the
bowling greens, the stabling, of the state and luxury of the great feast
days, of the piles of old plate on the tables, of the savoury steam of
the kitchens, of the multitudes of geese and capons which turn at once
on the spits, of the oceans of excellent ale in the butteries; and when
I remember from whom all this splendour and plenty is derived; when I
remember what was the faith of Edward the Third and of Henry the Sixth,
of Margaret of Anjou and Margaret of Richmond, of William of Wykeham and
William of Waynefleet, of Archbishop Chicheley and Cardinal Wolsey; when
I remember what we have taken from the Roman Catholics, King's College,
New College, Christ Church, my own Trinity; and when I look at the
miserable Dotheboys Hall which we have given them in exchange, I feel,
I must own, less proud than I could wish of being a Protestant and a
Cambridge man.
Some gentlemen, it is true, have made an attempt to show that there is
a distinction of principle between the old grant which they have always
supported and the larger grant which they are determined to oppose. But
never was attempt more unsuccessful. They say that, at the time of the
Union, we entered into an implied contract with Ireland to keep up this
college. We are therefore, they argue, bound by public faith to continue
the old grant; but we are not bound to make any addition to that grant.
Now, Sir, on this point, though on no other, I do most cordially agree
with those petitioners who have, on this occasion, covered your
table with such huge bales of spoiled paper and parchment. I deny the
existence of any such contract. I think myself perfectly free to vote
for the abolition of this college, if I am satisfied that it is a
pernicious institution; as free as I am to vote against any item of
the ordnance estimates; as free as I am to vote for a reduction of the
number of marines. It is strange, too, that those who appeal to this
imaginary contract should not perceive that, even if their fiction be
admitted as true, it will by no means get them out of their difficulty.
Tell us plainly what are the precise terms of the contract which you
suppose Great Britain to have made with Ireland about this college.
Whatever the terms be, they will not serve your purpose. Was the
contract this, that the Imperial Parliament would do for the college
what the Irish Parliament had been used to do? Or was the contract this,
that the Imperial Parliament would keep the college in a respectable and
efficient state? If the former was the contract, nine thousand pounds
would be too much. If the latter was the contract, you will not, I
am confident, be able to prove that twenty-six thousand pounds is too
little.
I have now, I think, said quite as much as need be said in answer to
those who maintain that we ought to give support to this college, but
that the support ought to be niggardly and precarious. I now come to
another and a much more formidable class of objectors. Their objections
may be simply stated thus. No man can justifiably, either as
an individual or as a trustee for the public, contribute to the
dissemination of religious error. But the church of Rome teaches
religious error. Therefore we cannot justifiably contribute to the
support of an institution of which the object is the dissemination of
the doctrines of the Church of Rome. Now, Sir, I deny the major of this
syllogism. I think that there are occasions on which we are bound to
contribute to the dissemination of doctrines with which errors are
inseparably intermingled. Let me be clearly understood. The question is
not whether we should teach truth or teach error, but whether we should
teach truth adulterated with error, or teach no truth at all. The
constitution of the human mind is such that it is impossible to provide
any machinery for the dissemination of truth which shall not, with the
truth, disseminate some error. Even those rays which come down to us
from the great source of light, pure as they are in themselves, no
sooner enter that gross and dark atmosphere in which we dwell than the
they are so much refracted, discoloured, and obscured, that they too
often lead us astray. It will be generally admitted that, if religious
truth can be anywhere found untainted by error, it is in the Scriptures.
Yet is there actually on the face of the globe a single copy of the
Scriptures of which it can be said that it contains truth absolutely
untainted with error? Is there any manuscript, any edition of the Old or
New Testament in the original tongues, which any scholar will pronounce
faultless? But to the vast majority of Christians the original tongues
are and always must be unintelligible. With the exception of perhaps one
man in ten thousand, we must be content with translations. And is there
any translation in which there are not numerous mistakes? Are there not
numerous mistakes even in our own authorised version, executed as that
version was with painful diligence and care, by very able men, and under
very splendid patronage? Of course mistakes must be still more numerous
in those translations which pious men have lately made into Bengalee,
Hindostanee, Tamul, Canarese, and other Oriental tongues. I admire the
zeal, the industry, the energy of those who, in spite of difficulties
which to ordinary minds would seem insurmountable, accomplished that
arduous work. I applaud those benevolent societies which munificently
encouraged that work. But I have been assured by good judges that the
translations have many faults. And how should it have been otherwise?
How should an Englishman produce a faultless translation from the Hebrew
into the Cingalese? I say, therefore, that even the Scriptures, in every
form in which men actually possess them, contain a certain portion of
error. And, if this be so, how can you look for pure undefecated truth
in any other composition? You contribute, without any scruple, to the
printing of religious tracts, to the establishing of Sunday Schools, to
the sending forth of missionaries. But are your tracts perfect? Are your
schoolmasters infallible? Are your missionaries inspired? Look at the
two churches which are established in this island. Will you say that
they both teach truth without any mixture of error? That is impossible.
For they teach different doctrines on more than one important subject.
It is plain therefore, that if, as you tell us, it be a sin in a state
to patronise an institution which teaches religious error, either the
Church of England or the Church of Scotland ought to be abolished.
But will anybody even venture to affirm that either of those churches
teaches truth without any mixture of error? Have there not long been in
the Church of Scotland two very different schools of theology? During
many years, Dr Robertson, the head of the moderate party, and Dr
Erskine, the head of the Calvinistic party, preached under the same
roof, one in the morning, the other in the evening. They preached
two different religions, so different that the followers of Robertson
thought the followers of Erskine fanatics, and the followers of Erskine
thought the followers of Robertson Arians or worse. And is there no
mixture of error in the doctrine taught by the clergy of the Church of
England? Is not the whole country at this moment convulsed by disputes
as to what the doctrine of the Church on some important subjects really
is? I shall not take on myself to say who is right and who is wrong.
But this I say with confidence, that, whether the Tractarians or the
Evangelicals be in the right, many hundreds of those divines who every
Sunday occupy the pulpits of our parish churches must be very much in
the wrong.
Now, Sir, I see that many highly respectable persons, who think it a sin
to contribute to the teaching of error at Maynooth College, think it not
merely lawful, but a sacred duty, to contribute to the teaching of error
in the other cases which I have mentioned. They know that our version of
the Bible contains some error. Yet they subscribe to the Bible Society.
They know that the Serampore translations contain a still greater
quantity of error. Yet they give largely towards the printing and
circulating of those translations. My honourable friend the Member for
the University of Oxford will not deny that there is among the clergy of
the Church of England a Puritan party, and also an Anti-puritan
party, and that one of these parties must teach some error. Yet he is
constantly urging us to grant to this Church an additional endowment of
I know not how many hundreds of thousands of pounds. He would doubtless
defend himself by saying that nothing on earth is perfect; that the
purest religious society must consist of human beings, and must have
those defects which arise from human infirmities; and that the truths
held by the established clergy, though not altogether unalloyed with
error, are so precious, that it is better that they should be imparted
to the people with the alloy than that they should not be imparted at
all. Just so say I. I am sorry that we cannot teach pure truth to the
Irish people. But I think it better that they should have important and
salutary truth, polluted by some error, than that they should remain
altogether uninstructed. I heartily wish that they were Protestants. But
I had rather that they should be Roman Catholics than that they should
have no religion at all. Would you, says one gentleman, teach the people
to worship Jugernaut or Kalee? Certainly not. My argument leads to
no such conclusion. The worship of Jugernaut and Kalee is a curse to
mankind. It is much better that people should be without any religion
than that they should believe in a religion which enjoins prostitution,
suicide, robbery, assassination. But will any Protestant deny that it
is better that the Irish should be Roman Catholics than that they should
live and die like the beasts of the field, indulge their appetites
without any religious restraint, suffer want and calamity without any
religious consolation, and go to their graves without any religious
hope? These considerations entirely satisfy my mind. Of course I would
not propagate error for its own sake. To do so would be not merely
wicked, but diabolical. But, in order that I may be able to propagate
truth, I consent to propagate that portion of error which adheres to
truth, and which cannot be separated from truth. I wish Christianity to
have a great influence on the peasantry of Ireland. I see no probability
that Christianity will have that influence except in one form. That form
I consider as very corrupt. Nevertheless, the good seems to me greatly
to predominate over the evil; and therefore, being unable to get the
good alone, I am content to take the good and the evil together.
I now come to the third class of our opponents. I mean those who take
their stand on the voluntary principle. I will not, on this occasion,
inquire whether they are right in thinking that governments ought not to
contribute to the support of any religion, true or false. For it seems
to me that, even if I were to admit that the general rule is correctly
laid down by them, the present case would be an exception to that rule.
The question on which I am about to vote is not whether the State shall
or shall not give any support to religion in Ireland. The State does
give such support, and will continue to give such support, whatever may
be the issue of this debate. The only point which we have now to decide
is whether, while such support is given, it shall be given exclusively
to the religion of the minority. Here is an island with a population of
near eight millions, and with a wealthy established church, the members
of which are little more than eight hundred thousand. There is an
archbishop with ten thousand a year. If I recollect rightly, seventy
thousand pounds are divided among twelve prelates. At the same time the
Protestant dissenters in the north of Ireland receive, in another form,
support from the State. But the great majority of the population, the
poorest part of the population, the part of the population which is most
in need of assistance, the part of the population which holds that faith
for the propagation of which the tithes were originally set apart, and
the church lands originally given, is left to maintain its own priests.
Now is not this a case which stands quite by itself? And may not even
those who hold the general proposition, that every man ought to pay
his own spiritual pastor, yet vote, without any inconsistency, for this
bill? I was astonished to hear the honourable Member for Shrewsbury (Mr
Disraeli. ) tell us that, if we make this grant, it will be impossible
for us to resist the claims of any dissenting sect. He particularly
mentioned the Wesleyan Methodists. Are the cases analogous? Is there the
slightest resemblance between them? Let the honourable gentleman show
me that of the sixteen millions of people who inhabit England thirteen
millions are Wesleyan Methodists. Let him show me that the members of
the Established Church in England are only one tenth of the population.
Let him show me that English dissenters who are not Wesleyan Methodists
receive a Regium Donum. Let him show me that immense estates bequeathed
to John Wesley for the propagation of Methodism have, by Act of
Parliament, been taken from the Methodists and given to the Church.
If he can show me this, I promise him that, whenever the Wesleyan
Methodists shall ask for twenty-six thousand pounds a year to educate
their ministers, I shall be prepared to grant their request. But neither
the case of the Methodists nor any other case which can be mentioned,
resembles the case with which we have to do. Look round Europe, round
the world, for a parallel; and you will look in vain. Indeed the state
of things which exists in Ireland never could have existed had not
Ireland been closely connected with a country, which possessed a great
superiority of power, and which abused that superiority. The burden
which we are now, I hope, about to lay on ourselves is but a small
penalty for a great injustice. Were I a staunch voluntary, I should
still feel that, while the church of eight hundred thousand people
retains its great endowments, I should not be justified in refusing this
small boon to the church of eight millions.
To sum up shortly what I have said; it is clear to me in the first place
that, if we have no religious scruple about granting to this College
nine thousand pounds for one year, we ought to have no religious scruple
about granting twenty-six thousand pounds a year for an indefinite term.
Secondly, it seems to me that those persons who tell us that we ought
never in any circumstances to contribute to the propagation of error do
in fact lay down a rule which would altogether interdict the propagation
of truth.
Thirdly, it seems to me that, even on the hypothesis that the voluntary
principle is the sound principle, the present case is an excepted case,
to which it would be unjust and unwise to apply that principle.
So much, Sir, as to this bill; and now let me add a few words about
those by whom it has been framed and introduced. We were exhorted,
on the first night of this debate, to vote against the bill, without
inquiring into its merits, on the ground that, good or bad, it was
proposed by men who could not honestly and honourably propose it. A
similar appeal has been made to us this evening. In these circumstances,
Sir, I must, not I hope from party spirit, not, I am sure, from personal
animosity, but from a regard for the public interest, which must be
injuriously affected by everything which tends to lower the character
of public men, say plainly what I think of the conduct of Her Majesty's
Ministers. Undoubtedly it is of the highest importance that we should
legislate well. But it is also of the highest importance that those who
govern us should have, and should be known to have, fixed principles,
and should be guided by those principles both in office and in
opposition. It is of the highest importance that the world should not be
under the impression that a statesman is a person who, when he is out,
will profess and promise anything in order to get in, and who, when he
is in, will forget all that he professed and promised when he was out.
I need not, I suppose, waste time in proving that a law may be in itself
an exceedingly good law, and yet that it may be a law which, when viewed
in connection with the former conduct of those who proposed it, may
prove them to be undeserving of the confidence of their country. When
this is the case, our course is clear. We ought to distinguish between
the law and its authors. The law we ought, on account of its intrinsic
merits, to support. Of the authors of the law, it may be our duty to
speak in terms of censure.
In such terms I feel it to be my duty to speak of Her Majesty's
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.
mentioned grinding. "See how grinding destroys the health, the sight,
the life. Yet there is no outcry against grinding. " He went on to say
that the whole question ought to be left by Parliament to the West
Indian Legislature. [Mr Gladstone: "Really I never said so. You are not
quoting me at all correctly. "] What, not about the sugar cultivation and
the grinding? [Mr Gladstone: "That is correct; but I never recommended
that the question should be left to the West Indian Legislatures. "] I
have quoted correctly. But since my right honourable friend disclaims
the sentiment imputed to him by the reporters, I shall say no more about
it. I have no doubt that he is quite right, and that what he said was
misunderstood. What is undisputed is amply sufficient for my purpose.
I see that the persons who now show so much zeal against slavery in
foreign countries, are the same persons who formerly countenanced
slavery in the British Colonies. I remember a time when they maintained
that we were bound in justice to protect slave grown sugar against the
competition of free grown sugar, and even of British free grown sugar.
I now hear them calling on us to protect free grown sugar against the
competition of slave grown sugar. I remember a time when they extenuated
as much as they could the evils of the sugar cultivation. I now hear
them exaggerating those evils. But, devious as their course has been,
there is one clue by which I can easily track them through the whole
maze. Inconstant in everything else, they are constant in demanding
protection for the West Indian planter. While he employs slaves, they
do their best to apologise for the evils of slavery. As soon as he is
forced to employ freemen, they begin to cry up the blessings of freedom.
They go round the whole compass, and yet to one point they steadfastly
adhere: and that point is the interest of the West Indian proprietors.
I have done, Sir; and I thank the House most sincerely for the patience
and indulgence with which I have been heard. I hope that I have at
least vindicated my own consistency. How Her Majesty's Ministers will
vindicate their consistency, how they will show that their conduct has
at all times been guided by the same principles, or even that their
conduct at the present time is guided by any fixed principle at all, I
am unable to conjecture.
*****
MAYNOOTH. (APRIL 14, 1845) A SPEECH DELIVERED IN THE HOUSE OF COMMONS ON
THE 14TH OF APRIL, 1845.
On Saturday the eleventh of April, 1845, Sir Robert Peel moved the
second reading of the Maynooth College Bill. After a debate of six
nights the motion was carried by 323 votes to 176. On the second night
the following Speech was made.
I do not mean, Sir, to follow the honourable gentleman who has just sate
down into a discussion on an amendment which is not now before us. When
my honourable friend the Member for Sheffield shall think it expedient
to make a motion on that important subject to which he has repeatedly
called the attention of the House, I may, perhaps, ask to be heard.
At present I shall content myself with explaining the reasons which
convince me that it is my duty to vote for the second reading of this
bill; and I cannot, I think, better explain those reasons than by
passing in review, as rapidly as I can, the chief objections which have
been made to the bill here and elsewhere.
The objectors, Sir, may be divided into three classes. The first class
consists of those persons who object, not to the principle of the grant
to Maynooth College, but merely to the amount. The second class consists
of persons who object on principle to all grants made to a church which
they regard as corrupt. The third class consists of persons who object
on principle to all grants made to churches, whether corrupt or pure.
Now, Sir, of those three classes the first is evidently that which
takes the most untenable ground. How any person can think that Maynooth
College ought to be supported by public money, and yet can think
this bill too bad to be suffered to go into Committee, I do not well
understand. I am forced however to believe that there are many such
persons. For I cannot but remember that the old annual vote attracted
scarcely any notice; and I see that this bill has produced violent
excitement. I cannot but remember that the old annual vote used to pass
with very few dissentients; and I see that great numbers of gentlemen,
who never were among those dissentients, have crowded down to the House
in order to divide against this bill. It is indeed certain that a large
proportion, I believe a majority, of those members who cannot, as
they assure us, conscientiously support the plan proposed by the right
honourable Baronet at the head of the Government, would without the
smallest scruple have supported him if he had in this, as in former
years, asked us to give nine thousand pounds for twelve months. So it
is: yet I cannot help wondering that it should be so. For how can
any human ingenuity turn a question between nine thousand pounds and
twenty-six thousand pounds, or between twelve months and an indefinite
number of months, into a question of principle? Observe: I am not now
answering those who maintain that nothing ought to be given out of
the public purse to a corrupt church; nor am I now answering those who
maintain that nothing ought to be given out of the public purse to
any church whatever. They, I admit, oppose this bill on principle. I
perfectly understand, though I do not myself hold, the opinion of the
zealous voluntary who says, "Whether the Roman Catholic Church teaches
truth or error, she ought to have no assistance from the State. " I also
perfectly understand, though I do not myself hold, the opinion of the
zealous Protestant who says, "The Roman Catholic Church teaches error,
and therefore ought to have no assistance from the State. " But I cannot
understand the reasoning of the man who says, "In spite of the errors
of the Roman Catholic Church, I think that she ought to have some
assistance from the State; but I am bound to mark my abhorrence of her
errors by doling out to her a miserable pittance. Her tenets are so
absurd and noxious that I will pay the professor who teaches them wages
less than I should offer to my groom. Her rites are so superstitious
that I will take care that they shall be performed in a chapel with a
leaky roof and a dirty floor. By all means let us keep her a college,
provided only that it be a shabby one. Let us support those who are
intended to teach her doctrines and to administer her sacraments to the
next generation, provided only that every future priest shall cost us
less than a foot soldier. Let us board her young theologians; but let
their larder be so scantily supplied that they may be compelled to break
up before the regular vacation from mere want of food. Let us lodge
them; but let their lodging be one in which they may be packed like pigs
in a stye, and be punished for their heterodoxy by feeling the snow and
the wind through the broken panes. " Is it possible to conceive anything
more absurd or more disgraceful? Can anything be clearer than this, that
whatever it is lawful to do it is lawful to do well? If it be right that
we should keep up this college at all, it must be right that we should
keep it up respectably. Our national dignity is concerned. For this
institution, whether good or bad, is, beyond all dispute, a very
important institution. Its office is to form the character of those who
are to form the character of millions. Whether we ought to extend any
patronage to such an institution is a question about which wise and
honest men may differ. But that, as we do extend our patronage to such
an institution, our patronage ought to be worthy of the object, and
worthy of the greatness of our country, is a proposition from which I am
astonished to hear any person dissent.
It is, I must say, with a peculiarly bad grace that one of the members
for the University to which I have the honour to belong (The Honourable
Charles Law, Member for the University of Cambridge. ), a gentleman who
never thought himself bound to say a word or to give a vote against
the grant of nine thousand pounds, now vehemently opposes the grant
of twenty-six thousand pounds as exorbitant. When I consider how
munificently the colleges of Cambridge and Oxford are endowed, and with
what pomp religion and learning are there surrounded; when I call to
mind the long streets of palaces, the towers and oriels, the venerable
cloisters, the trim gardens, the organs, the altar pieces, the solemn
light of the stained windows, the libraries, the museums, the galleries
of painting and sculpture; when I call to mind also the physical
comforts which are provided both for instructors and for pupils; when I
reflect that the very sizars and servitors are far better lodged and fed
than those students who are to be, a few years hence, the priests and
bishops of the Irish people; when I think of the spacious and stately
mansions of the heads of houses, of the commodious chambers of the
fellows and scholars, of the refectories, the combination rooms, the
bowling greens, the stabling, of the state and luxury of the great feast
days, of the piles of old plate on the tables, of the savoury steam of
the kitchens, of the multitudes of geese and capons which turn at once
on the spits, of the oceans of excellent ale in the butteries; and when
I remember from whom all this splendour and plenty is derived; when I
remember what was the faith of Edward the Third and of Henry the Sixth,
of Margaret of Anjou and Margaret of Richmond, of William of Wykeham and
William of Waynefleet, of Archbishop Chicheley and Cardinal Wolsey; when
I remember what we have taken from the Roman Catholics, King's College,
New College, Christ Church, my own Trinity; and when I look at the
miserable Dotheboys Hall which we have given them in exchange, I feel,
I must own, less proud than I could wish of being a Protestant and a
Cambridge man.
Some gentlemen, it is true, have made an attempt to show that there is
a distinction of principle between the old grant which they have always
supported and the larger grant which they are determined to oppose. But
never was attempt more unsuccessful. They say that, at the time of the
Union, we entered into an implied contract with Ireland to keep up this
college. We are therefore, they argue, bound by public faith to continue
the old grant; but we are not bound to make any addition to that grant.
Now, Sir, on this point, though on no other, I do most cordially agree
with those petitioners who have, on this occasion, covered your
table with such huge bales of spoiled paper and parchment. I deny the
existence of any such contract. I think myself perfectly free to vote
for the abolition of this college, if I am satisfied that it is a
pernicious institution; as free as I am to vote against any item of
the ordnance estimates; as free as I am to vote for a reduction of the
number of marines. It is strange, too, that those who appeal to this
imaginary contract should not perceive that, even if their fiction be
admitted as true, it will by no means get them out of their difficulty.
Tell us plainly what are the precise terms of the contract which you
suppose Great Britain to have made with Ireland about this college.
Whatever the terms be, they will not serve your purpose. Was the
contract this, that the Imperial Parliament would do for the college
what the Irish Parliament had been used to do? Or was the contract this,
that the Imperial Parliament would keep the college in a respectable and
efficient state? If the former was the contract, nine thousand pounds
would be too much. If the latter was the contract, you will not, I
am confident, be able to prove that twenty-six thousand pounds is too
little.
I have now, I think, said quite as much as need be said in answer to
those who maintain that we ought to give support to this college, but
that the support ought to be niggardly and precarious. I now come to
another and a much more formidable class of objectors. Their objections
may be simply stated thus. No man can justifiably, either as
an individual or as a trustee for the public, contribute to the
dissemination of religious error. But the church of Rome teaches
religious error. Therefore we cannot justifiably contribute to the
support of an institution of which the object is the dissemination of
the doctrines of the Church of Rome. Now, Sir, I deny the major of this
syllogism. I think that there are occasions on which we are bound to
contribute to the dissemination of doctrines with which errors are
inseparably intermingled. Let me be clearly understood. The question is
not whether we should teach truth or teach error, but whether we should
teach truth adulterated with error, or teach no truth at all. The
constitution of the human mind is such that it is impossible to provide
any machinery for the dissemination of truth which shall not, with the
truth, disseminate some error. Even those rays which come down to us
from the great source of light, pure as they are in themselves, no
sooner enter that gross and dark atmosphere in which we dwell than the
they are so much refracted, discoloured, and obscured, that they too
often lead us astray. It will be generally admitted that, if religious
truth can be anywhere found untainted by error, it is in the Scriptures.
Yet is there actually on the face of the globe a single copy of the
Scriptures of which it can be said that it contains truth absolutely
untainted with error? Is there any manuscript, any edition of the Old or
New Testament in the original tongues, which any scholar will pronounce
faultless? But to the vast majority of Christians the original tongues
are and always must be unintelligible. With the exception of perhaps one
man in ten thousand, we must be content with translations. And is there
any translation in which there are not numerous mistakes? Are there not
numerous mistakes even in our own authorised version, executed as that
version was with painful diligence and care, by very able men, and under
very splendid patronage? Of course mistakes must be still more numerous
in those translations which pious men have lately made into Bengalee,
Hindostanee, Tamul, Canarese, and other Oriental tongues. I admire the
zeal, the industry, the energy of those who, in spite of difficulties
which to ordinary minds would seem insurmountable, accomplished that
arduous work. I applaud those benevolent societies which munificently
encouraged that work. But I have been assured by good judges that the
translations have many faults. And how should it have been otherwise?
How should an Englishman produce a faultless translation from the Hebrew
into the Cingalese? I say, therefore, that even the Scriptures, in every
form in which men actually possess them, contain a certain portion of
error. And, if this be so, how can you look for pure undefecated truth
in any other composition? You contribute, without any scruple, to the
printing of religious tracts, to the establishing of Sunday Schools, to
the sending forth of missionaries. But are your tracts perfect? Are your
schoolmasters infallible? Are your missionaries inspired? Look at the
two churches which are established in this island. Will you say that
they both teach truth without any mixture of error? That is impossible.
For they teach different doctrines on more than one important subject.
It is plain therefore, that if, as you tell us, it be a sin in a state
to patronise an institution which teaches religious error, either the
Church of England or the Church of Scotland ought to be abolished.
But will anybody even venture to affirm that either of those churches
teaches truth without any mixture of error? Have there not long been in
the Church of Scotland two very different schools of theology? During
many years, Dr Robertson, the head of the moderate party, and Dr
Erskine, the head of the Calvinistic party, preached under the same
roof, one in the morning, the other in the evening. They preached
two different religions, so different that the followers of Robertson
thought the followers of Erskine fanatics, and the followers of Erskine
thought the followers of Robertson Arians or worse. And is there no
mixture of error in the doctrine taught by the clergy of the Church of
England? Is not the whole country at this moment convulsed by disputes
as to what the doctrine of the Church on some important subjects really
is? I shall not take on myself to say who is right and who is wrong.
But this I say with confidence, that, whether the Tractarians or the
Evangelicals be in the right, many hundreds of those divines who every
Sunday occupy the pulpits of our parish churches must be very much in
the wrong.
Now, Sir, I see that many highly respectable persons, who think it a sin
to contribute to the teaching of error at Maynooth College, think it not
merely lawful, but a sacred duty, to contribute to the teaching of error
in the other cases which I have mentioned. They know that our version of
the Bible contains some error. Yet they subscribe to the Bible Society.
They know that the Serampore translations contain a still greater
quantity of error. Yet they give largely towards the printing and
circulating of those translations. My honourable friend the Member for
the University of Oxford will not deny that there is among the clergy of
the Church of England a Puritan party, and also an Anti-puritan
party, and that one of these parties must teach some error. Yet he is
constantly urging us to grant to this Church an additional endowment of
I know not how many hundreds of thousands of pounds. He would doubtless
defend himself by saying that nothing on earth is perfect; that the
purest religious society must consist of human beings, and must have
those defects which arise from human infirmities; and that the truths
held by the established clergy, though not altogether unalloyed with
error, are so precious, that it is better that they should be imparted
to the people with the alloy than that they should not be imparted at
all. Just so say I. I am sorry that we cannot teach pure truth to the
Irish people. But I think it better that they should have important and
salutary truth, polluted by some error, than that they should remain
altogether uninstructed. I heartily wish that they were Protestants. But
I had rather that they should be Roman Catholics than that they should
have no religion at all. Would you, says one gentleman, teach the people
to worship Jugernaut or Kalee? Certainly not. My argument leads to
no such conclusion. The worship of Jugernaut and Kalee is a curse to
mankind. It is much better that people should be without any religion
than that they should believe in a religion which enjoins prostitution,
suicide, robbery, assassination. But will any Protestant deny that it
is better that the Irish should be Roman Catholics than that they should
live and die like the beasts of the field, indulge their appetites
without any religious restraint, suffer want and calamity without any
religious consolation, and go to their graves without any religious
hope? These considerations entirely satisfy my mind. Of course I would
not propagate error for its own sake. To do so would be not merely
wicked, but diabolical. But, in order that I may be able to propagate
truth, I consent to propagate that portion of error which adheres to
truth, and which cannot be separated from truth. I wish Christianity to
have a great influence on the peasantry of Ireland. I see no probability
that Christianity will have that influence except in one form. That form
I consider as very corrupt. Nevertheless, the good seems to me greatly
to predominate over the evil; and therefore, being unable to get the
good alone, I am content to take the good and the evil together.
I now come to the third class of our opponents. I mean those who take
their stand on the voluntary principle. I will not, on this occasion,
inquire whether they are right in thinking that governments ought not to
contribute to the support of any religion, true or false. For it seems
to me that, even if I were to admit that the general rule is correctly
laid down by them, the present case would be an exception to that rule.
The question on which I am about to vote is not whether the State shall
or shall not give any support to religion in Ireland. The State does
give such support, and will continue to give such support, whatever may
be the issue of this debate. The only point which we have now to decide
is whether, while such support is given, it shall be given exclusively
to the religion of the minority. Here is an island with a population of
near eight millions, and with a wealthy established church, the members
of which are little more than eight hundred thousand. There is an
archbishop with ten thousand a year. If I recollect rightly, seventy
thousand pounds are divided among twelve prelates. At the same time the
Protestant dissenters in the north of Ireland receive, in another form,
support from the State. But the great majority of the population, the
poorest part of the population, the part of the population which is most
in need of assistance, the part of the population which holds that faith
for the propagation of which the tithes were originally set apart, and
the church lands originally given, is left to maintain its own priests.
Now is not this a case which stands quite by itself? And may not even
those who hold the general proposition, that every man ought to pay
his own spiritual pastor, yet vote, without any inconsistency, for this
bill? I was astonished to hear the honourable Member for Shrewsbury (Mr
Disraeli. ) tell us that, if we make this grant, it will be impossible
for us to resist the claims of any dissenting sect. He particularly
mentioned the Wesleyan Methodists. Are the cases analogous? Is there the
slightest resemblance between them? Let the honourable gentleman show
me that of the sixteen millions of people who inhabit England thirteen
millions are Wesleyan Methodists. Let him show me that the members of
the Established Church in England are only one tenth of the population.
Let him show me that English dissenters who are not Wesleyan Methodists
receive a Regium Donum. Let him show me that immense estates bequeathed
to John Wesley for the propagation of Methodism have, by Act of
Parliament, been taken from the Methodists and given to the Church.
If he can show me this, I promise him that, whenever the Wesleyan
Methodists shall ask for twenty-six thousand pounds a year to educate
their ministers, I shall be prepared to grant their request. But neither
the case of the Methodists nor any other case which can be mentioned,
resembles the case with which we have to do. Look round Europe, round
the world, for a parallel; and you will look in vain. Indeed the state
of things which exists in Ireland never could have existed had not
Ireland been closely connected with a country, which possessed a great
superiority of power, and which abused that superiority. The burden
which we are now, I hope, about to lay on ourselves is but a small
penalty for a great injustice. Were I a staunch voluntary, I should
still feel that, while the church of eight hundred thousand people
retains its great endowments, I should not be justified in refusing this
small boon to the church of eight millions.
To sum up shortly what I have said; it is clear to me in the first place
that, if we have no religious scruple about granting to this College
nine thousand pounds for one year, we ought to have no religious scruple
about granting twenty-six thousand pounds a year for an indefinite term.
Secondly, it seems to me that those persons who tell us that we ought
never in any circumstances to contribute to the propagation of error do
in fact lay down a rule which would altogether interdict the propagation
of truth.
Thirdly, it seems to me that, even on the hypothesis that the voluntary
principle is the sound principle, the present case is an excepted case,
to which it would be unjust and unwise to apply that principle.
So much, Sir, as to this bill; and now let me add a few words about
those by whom it has been framed and introduced. We were exhorted,
on the first night of this debate, to vote against the bill, without
inquiring into its merits, on the ground that, good or bad, it was
proposed by men who could not honestly and honourably propose it. A
similar appeal has been made to us this evening. In these circumstances,
Sir, I must, not I hope from party spirit, not, I am sure, from personal
animosity, but from a regard for the public interest, which must be
injuriously affected by everything which tends to lower the character
of public men, say plainly what I think of the conduct of Her Majesty's
Ministers. Undoubtedly it is of the highest importance that we should
legislate well. But it is also of the highest importance that those who
govern us should have, and should be known to have, fixed principles,
and should be guided by those principles both in office and in
opposition. It is of the highest importance that the world should not be
under the impression that a statesman is a person who, when he is out,
will profess and promise anything in order to get in, and who, when he
is in, will forget all that he professed and promised when he was out.
I need not, I suppose, waste time in proving that a law may be in itself
an exceedingly good law, and yet that it may be a law which, when viewed
in connection with the former conduct of those who proposed it, may
prove them to be undeserving of the confidence of their country. When
this is the case, our course is clear. We ought to distinguish between
the law and its authors. The law we ought, on account of its intrinsic
merits, to support. Of the authors of the law, it may be our duty to
speak in terms of censure.
In such terms I feel it to be my duty to speak of Her Majesty's
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.
