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 honorable Member for Shrewsbury and to vote against their bill? Not 80. 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 honorable cause.

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 honorable Baronet opposite. The motion now before us opens, I conceive, the whole question. My honorable 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 upon 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 honorable 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 honorable 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 honorable 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 honorable 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 Mermonism 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 ascendancy 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 Lound 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 the 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 honorable 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