he perused the debates (as I have heard) in this house, on his own fright. ful tyranny to Poland-well did he exclaim, "Poland is Russia's Ire land." He confiscates, as your fathers did; he banishes as they did; ne debases, as they did; he violates the instincts of human nature, and from the parent tears the child, as they did; and he inflicts upon a Catholic people a church alien to their national habits, feelings, and belief, as you do. And think you not that there are men to be found in the senate of St. Petersburgh, who exclaim that the Greek Church must be maintained in all its ascendancy in Poland-that it is the bond of connexion between Poland and Russia-that a Greek priest dispensing hospitality, and holding out a salutary example by the excellence of his moral conduct, must in every Polish village be the source of improvement?* And can you doubt that some Tartar secretary for Poland is sufficiently prompt to furnish the materials for a Warsaw speech, and to exclaim that a lesson must be given to Poland, and that she must be taught to fear, before she can learn how to love? You all exclaim, the Russian policy is not only wicked but insane. Is English policy commendable and wise? In Heaven's name what useful purpose has your gorgeous establishment ever promoted? Last night the member for Weymouth, who represents and expresses the feeling of so large a pɔrtion of the religious and moral community of this country--who does not love Popery, but who abhors tyranny-told you that his conviction was that the abuses of the Protestant Church had been the greatest impediment to the progress of the Protestant religion. You cannot hope to proselytise us through the means of the establishment. You nave put the experiment to the test of three centuries. If the truth be with you it may be great, but in this instance it does not sustain the aphorism-for it does not prevail. You have tried everything. I'enal codes, foundling hospitals, charter schools (those nurseries for corporations), Kildare-street societies; but these you have abandoned; and even the noble lord opposite, with all his scriptural addictions—and although he be the author of a work on the parables (I wonder what he says about the Pharisee)-still, so convinced was he of the futility of all attempts at our conversion, that he himself introduced that system which is so erroneously designated by his present auxiliaries, as the "mutilation" of the Word of God. But who that reflects on the subject for a moment *an believe that the abuses of the church can have any other effect than to array the country against the system with which it is connected? How can religion advance-with police, process servers, and commissioners of rebellion for its missionaries? Recollect what arguments, or, if you please, what sophisms these abuses supply to its opponents. Have not the rival clergy an opportunity of asking whether it is in an Aceldama that the vineyard of the Lord should be planted? Whether they re indeed the ministers of Christ who, while they inculcate the reading of his Word, enter the field of massacre with the Gospel, as an impleBent for swearing a distracted mother over the body of her child that This alludes to an expression used by Lord Stanley with regard to Ireland bies dead and stark before her.* But if in a religious point of view the establishment cannot conduce to the interests of religion-in a political view, what purpose does it answer? It is said that it cements the Union -cements the Union! It furnishes the great argument against the Union-it is the most degrading incident of all the incidents of degradation by which that measure was accompanied-it is the yoke, the brand, the shame, and the exasperation of Ireland-it arrays millions of Irishmen against you, and marshals them in opposition to the measure, of which you avail yourselves for the sustainment of a monstrous army, and which you plead in bar to that requisition for redress, which, it is not wise, because it will not be safe to withhold. * This alludes to an incident in one of the tithe massacres in Ireland. THE IRISH CHURCH SPEECH IN THE HOUSE OF COMMONS, AUGUST 2, 1836 How few there are who look beyond to-day and have a political to-mor row, who believe it possible that the abuses of the Irish Church can be .ong maintained? The right honourable baronet, the member for Tamworth, does not labour under so signal a delusion. His speech to-night was an intimation of despair: he said that if the blow must be struck, it should not be struck by him; he spoke of the prostration of those pillars, which he declared that he, for one, would not contribute to overthrow. What did he mean but to tell us, that upon this question he would not play the part which, in reference to the great measure of Catholic aggrandizement, he was driven by that high necessity which results from a sense of duty to perform?-that he would leave it to others to do what he foresees to be ultimately inevitable that he had already made sufficient sacrifices, and that a second martyrdom to fame could not be endured! A man endowed with the sagacity of the right honourable gentleman must needs feel that the continued sustainment of the church in the enjoyment of its gorgeous superfluities is impossible. The only chance of preserving whatever there is of any value in the church, infinitesimal as it may be, is the speedy application of a bold process of reform. In time-take down in time the splendid pinnacles which the right honourable baronet mistakes for "the pillars" of the church— take down the golden dome, which has become too ponderous and has begun to totter-take down that gorgeous mass which does not belong to the Christian order, if you would serve the edifice, which it endangers far more than it adorns :-in the first political concussion, it will not only fall, but overwhelm the altar in its ruins. The proposition which I mean briefly to assume in this debate is as simple as it is bold. Instead of entering into half-forensic and demischolastic disquisitions upon the nature of church property, I frankly and fearlessly tell you, that with the power which Catholic Ireland has acquired, and is rapidly acquiring, your sacerdotal predominance is incompatible. Have you observed the development of Catholic Ireland? It is the fashion to say that the property of Ireland is almost exclusively Protestant, and I acknowledge that, when you revert to the military spoliations inflicted on us by your ancestors, you should arrive at the conclusion that you have left us bare. It was a biting sarcasın of him who said that the history of Ireland was a continuation of rapine.* But while I admit that the fee-simple of Ireland is in a great measure Cromwellian, I asseverate that the mass of property to which political influence is attached is in the hands of the Catholic middle classes.The Reform Bill has been attended in Ireland with one most important result, which has not been the subject of as much attention as it deservez. Sir Hercules Langrishe was asked where was the Lest history of Ireland to be found He said: In the continuation of Rapin."-ED. Before that event the close boroughs of Ireland were in the hands of a few Protestant nominators, who deputed their representatives, the guardians of ecclesiastical opulence to this house; a large transfer of power in this essential particular has taken place: it is now vested in the Roman Catholic inhabitants of the towns of Ireland which send memhers here. I do not think that I can present the extraordinary change which has taken place in this most essential regard, in a more striking light, than by giving a kind of ocular demonstration, and bidding you fix your eyes on two very remarkable and exceedingly interesting getlemen, who are sitting this moment immediately opposite to each other -the one is the member for the University of Oxford, and the other the member for Dundalk. But although the member for Dundalk (Mr. Sharman Crawford) never was and never will be member for the University of Oxford, the other (Sir Robert Inglis), the member for the University of Oxford was once member for Dundalk. My Lord Roden, influenced of course by no sublunary considerations, the patron before the Reform Bill of the borough of Dundalk, selected the honourable baronet as the most appropriate representative of his own ecclesiastica. attachments in the house. Since the Reform Bill my honourable friend behind me has been chosen by the people of Dundalk as the sentinel of their interests, and as the mirror in which their feelings and opinions will be most faithfully reflected. Look at them both-Look at the incarnation of plenteous Toryism upon one side, and the exemplification of somewhat spare and stern Republicanism on the other, and of the effects of the Reform Bill you will behold the most striking illustration. The house, I perceive, find in the contrast of the two honourable gentlemen a subject of merriment, which they, who themselves participate in it, do not take in bad part: but though there may be matter for mirth in the outward and visible signs of the old system and of the new, you will see, upon reflection, that from the type of Conservatism and the symbol of Democracy thus offered to you in this exhibition of the honourable gentlemen, most important inferences are to be deduced The boroughs of Ireland have been delivered to the majority of the people; the influence exercised a few years ago by individual Protestant patricians has been handed over to the merchants, and traders, and mechanics, located in the towns, by whom their representatives are delegated to the House of Commons. You must be sensible that the consequences of this great alteration are most prejudicial to the ecclesiastical establishment of Ireland, and that in the particular to which I have alluded, Catholic power has gained an extraordinary augmentation. In the Irish counties again a great preponderance of Catholic influence will be found, and it may be stated, without dread of contradiction that the very great majority of the representatives of Ireland are returned by that community which not very long since was considered to be destitute of parliamentary influence. It is worth your while to look a littk further into the circumstances which ought to convince you that every day the Church of Ireland—that structure of ascendancy which cannot long survive its parent-is becoming more and more enfeebled, and losing the sustainment on which it formerly relied. The greater the advances of Ireland in prosperity, the greater the expansion of trade, and the improvement in agriculture; the more Ireland sells and buys, the more ships enter her harbours; the greater the wealth the earth throws up from ber bosom, the greater must be the progress of the people, as contra-distinguished to the aristocracy of Ireland, and the core formidable the array of those millions by whom the abatement of the great anomaly is required. Note an incident to the state of Ireland, which may at first view escape your notice. A small sect once enjoyed a monopoly of the patronage of the crown-Protestantism supplied the channel beyond which the royal bounty, issuing from the Castle, was never permitted to flow:- — but now, under a government, by which the principle of emancipation is carried out, an indiscriminate participation takes place in the dignities and in the emoluments connected with the chief departments of the state In the year 1812, the Catholics of Ireland were denounced as "miscreants" by a Protestant Attorney-General for Ireland, and one of the "miscreants" is now Attorney-General for Ireland. My learned friend, the member for Cashel (Mr. Sergeant Woulfe), who occupies the highest place in his profession, is one of his Majesty's law-officers; and my friend, the member for Clonmel (Mr. Ball), for talents and erudition is unsurpassed at the Irish bar: these eminent men are advancing to the bench. In a country so situated, of whose condition these facts are striking illustrations, can the Irish Church. be long maintained? If we were seven millions of unintellectual degraded serfs-a heap of helotism-of our seven millions little account should be made. If the physical aspect of Ireland has undergone a great change, a still more conspicuous moral alteration has taken place. Not only has cultivation made its way into the morass, but the mind of Ireland has been reclaimed. With the education of the people the permanence of unnatural and anti-national institutions is irreconcilable. But if education has done much, agitation, the apprenticeship to liberty, has done more; although in your judgment it may have been productive of many mischiefs, they are outweighed by the preponderant and countervailing good. Public opinion and public feeling have been created in Ireland. Men of all classes have been instructed in the principles on which the rights of nations depend. The humblest peasant, amidst destitution the most abject, has learned to respect himself. remember when if you struck him he cowered beneath the blow; but now lift up your hand, the spirit of insulted manhood will start up in a bosom covered with rags, his Celtic blood will boil, as yours would do, and he will feel, and he will act, as if he had been born in this noble land of yours, where the person of every citizen is sacred from affronts, and from his birth he had breathed the moral atmosphere which Britons are accustomed to inhale. Englishmen, we are too like you to give you leave to do us wrong, and, in the name of millions of my countrymen, assimilated to yourselves, I demand the reduction of a great abuse-the retrenchment of a monstrous sinecure-or, in other words, I demand justice at your hands. "Justice to Ireland” is a phrase which has been, I am well aware, treated as a topic for derision, but the time will come, nor is it, perhaps, remote, when you will not be able to cxtract much I |