as Mr. Gladstone addressed the opposite side of the House, must he not have been conscious that those whom he saw in front of him knew far more about what the Church is than the illassorted majority behind him, composed of every sect and party, including a large section of utter destructives whenever the word 'Church' is before the public; we do not say House, for happily the House of Commons does not very willingly make itself the arena for the discussion of Church politics. But, politically, there was a peculiar fitness in the introduction of a question this session about which the great mass of the Liberal party were wholly uneducated, but which yet is a very good cry at all times for calling together the sectarian and unbelieving elements of the British public. Argument, otherwise than declamation, was thereby guarded against. Mr. Gladstone's friends not being capable of talking rationally on the union of Church and State, were the more content to follow their leader (strange that that leader should have been the Gladstone once looked on as the champion of Oxford churchmanship!), and the more disposed to do so, because they had not time to learn the subject better before their coming dissolution, nor inclination to appear before their constituents, in the hot struggle so near ahead, with any chance of an incipient regard for Church and State being thrown against them on the platform of a general election. Such was the grand inchoate mass which Mr. Gladstone, standing in the forefront of the battle, had immediately behind him, ready for him to seize, after the fashion of an Homeric hero, and hurl across the table of the House of Commons. But if this warfare became a personal contest on the one side in the massive majorities Mr. Gladstone had at his command, there was a fitness also, of an equally personal character, in the adroitness and the stedfast resolution of the leader of her Majesty's Government in dodging these assaults, evading these missiles, and thus binding his own friends together with renewed confidence in their leader; a confidence that became mutual, from the ability displayed by the leader, and the value attached to the opinion of his followers, though numerically less than the other side of the House.

Another peculiar feature of this debate on the Abolition of the Irish Establishment is the relation it bears to the wild excitement on the Papal aggression question of sixteen years ago, lately revived in a somewhat contemptible manner for the purpose of repealing the Ecclesiastical Bill, the most inoperative of all parliamentary efforts, the keenest satire on a popular religious clamour. Most warmly did we sympathise at the time with the noble stand made by Mr. Gladstone for the toleration of the Romish system in its completeness within the United Kingdom

of England and Ireland. Subsequent events have proved, with humiliating confessions on the part of many then actively engaged in what we thought at the time a work of intolerance, that any attempt to interfere by legislation with any religious body separating from the Established Church, was a political error of the greatest magnitude; but it does not follow from this that the principle of a national Established Church should be interfered with. Let the Romanists have their assumed ecclesiastical titles and arrangements, but do not allow the English Constitution in Church and State to give away in all its reality before this assumption. A great principle is here involved, which it must be confusion to violate. Mr. Gladstone has shown, by the gradual development of his opinions on many points, that his strong convictions at any one time are often dictated by more advanced ideas than he acknowledges to himself, or avows to others. There has ever, if we trace his career, been the seed within him of future and as yet unformed ideas, for the growth of which he has at all times been instinctively preparing. His strong line on the Papal Aggression question was so mixed up with a withering denunciation of the conduct of the English bishops at the time, to whom it was but natural to be officially jealous of an assumed hierarchy, so far as to claim some tenderness even from those who did not go with their protestations, as to suggest the idea of a somewhat ruthless severity in dealing with the claims of Established Church dignities. Again, whenever consulted on the question of Church endowments, he very early acknowledged great confusion of mind; his avowal being expressed with that personal humility more suggestive, on second reflection, of an unsympathising than of an incapable intellect. Avowed difficulty in solving any questions is the common medium between an existing profession before the world, and a future change of position. But while thus discerning the elements of Mr. Gladstone's non-Establishment bias so far back as the Papal aggression,-a bias in which his connexion with the Scottish non-Established Church added force,—and tracing his conduct then to something more than a consistent toleration, we cannot but acknowledge that this view of the case places Mr. Gladstone personally in a position that contrasts most forcibly with that of Lord Russell, to the moral credit of the former, and the humiliation of the latter. Lord Russell's boast is consistency; but how is that quality shown in the man who wrote the Durham letter, who brought in the Ecclesiastical Titles' Bill, in defence of the Irish Established hierarchy against Romish invasions of their dignities; or, if he did not act solely from this motive, at any rate claimed credit as a champion of Protestantism, throwing down the gauntlet to all comers; and in the same man who now

humbly supports Mr. Gladstone in his too bold development of principles which then were so hostile to himself—who now would abolish what then he so jealously defended, and who would now eat his own Protestantism by handing over Ireland at one swoop to the tender mercies of the Pope himself. What a strange conversion must this appear to the Pope or Antonelli, judging from naked facts, or from the interpretation of them, that Irish Catholics in Rome would give!

But another feature belonging to this struggle within the House of Commons, though outside it, deserves special notice; we mean the way in which this sudden onslaught has been received by different parties in Church and State. Much wonder has been expressed at the seeming indifference of the English clergy, or rather at the want of excitement manifested, and the failure to arouse the wild anti-popery cry so familiar to all who remember various epochs of our history. We think the conduct of the clergy, and of Churchmen generally, admits of easy explanation. It must be ready-formed sympathy with an old cry to cause a sudden outburst of feeling. If the grievance is felt to be in any way new, men watch each other and take their time, especially on points which they understand well enough to fear any precipitate action. It is silently felt by Church people that an anti-popery furore would but very partially hit the present emergency. Churchmen in England do not wish to be converted into Orangemen, neither do they wish their own hard-earned progress in the cause of the Church to be imperilled by too cordial a sympathy with the personal tone of the Irish Church. The defence of the Irish Church, as we undertake it, is, we cannot but confess, a very generous effort on our part. The general tone of the Irish clergy has not been in accordance with the sentiments of this Review,-to the great revival of Church principles they have contributed either direct hostility or culpable indifference, and it might, therefore, seem to be Quixotic thus to plead their cause. But a great principle of Church and State is involved, before which we are content to merge many ecclesiastical differences, in hopes that by the bond of union which a common constitution affords, we may in the end be promoting the unity of Christians in this country. It is very remarkable among ourselves in England, how the searching after, and the appreciation of, this common ground has already softened many asperities and brought diverse minds more or less together. Those who are commonly supposed to represent the Erastian school have received this shock with considerable surprise, and it seems to us with a certain degree of humility. They have been working steadily and conscientiously for a certain ideal of Church and State,

to

which has gone in the direction of sinking the distinctive government, doctrine, and discipline of the Church in subordination to a State religion, more comprehensive in its nature than the independence of the High Church theory would seem encourage. The Irish Church question, however, shows them that the House of Commons does not seek or desire the absorption of a modified churchmanship into the government of the country, but that its inclination rather is to drive the Church away into its own machinery and its own poverty. Men of this school avow a great change in their minds on all questions affecting Church property, even Church rates, and have asked very ingenuously whether a changed feeling has not come over the clergy within a very few weeks, and whether the constitutional character of Convocation itself has not after all some value in it as affording a solid guarantee against total and immediate dissolution.

There is, however, another party in the Church, or rather we would say there are individuals, whom we would here address with a friendly but an earnest caution. It is a remarkable sight to find zealous, laborious men, who have all their lives been developing Church views, defending Church government, and opposing the hostile attacks of the Liberal party, at once siding with their old enemies in the work of destruction, the object of their dislike being a most ancient branch of the Church Catholic, one united by the closest bond with our own, being in fact one with us, and equally with our own, established in our common Constitution. Let us ask their motives. These, we would suggest, are twofold-personal, and arising from a spirit of impatience; personal also under two heads, and impatient under two heads. We will consider the former motive. There is an obstinate feeling of loyalty to Mr. Gladstone, which blinds many minds to a real perception as to the tendency of his actions and avowed principles; but we have all of us in the present age learned many a lesson, in public and in private life, against putting our faith in man. Times of change and of active fermentation, if so we may speak of public affairs, seem specially to bear on their very surface great and conspicuous warnings against any blind following of individual leaders. Such times work through the activity of individual atoms rather than the conflict of well-organized parties, permanently arrayed against each other. However we respect an individual's past career or past character, we yet have the responsibility ever before us of carefully watching their guiding principles, and their common susceptibility with the rest of the world to the common motives and common tempers of humanity. If Mr. Gladstone's own history has taught one thing more than another, it is the noble

free independence of individual convictions, and they but tamely follow him who give up any single principle from personal regard or confidence. There is a ruthlessness about his mind which, at the same time that it betokens intellectual strength, shakes off from him the softer marks of personal reliance. The personal motives, however, under our present consideration, have another and quite a different aspect. The theological world of Ireland has presented to the jealous, and specially to the imaginative High Church mind, a very great trial. The clergy of Ireland, as a rule, belong to the ultra Low Church party, and are advocates of a rabid Protestantism; while, on the other hand, the Romish system can point to Ireland as a witness of its power over the masses of a people. We bring no commonplace charges of sympathy with Rome, but this picture and that, seen by the persons we are considering, stir up a personal bias under which the Establishment theory sadly quakes. And this brings us to the motive of impatience under its two heads-impatience at the very long trials under which the Church of Ireland seems ordained to suffer, at the hands of her unestablished but more popular rival; and an impatience that comes nearer home in the general desire of enthusiastic minds to see their principles have a fair and open trial, without being hampered by the State, which to their minds does practically impede the free action of the Church. There are many, in fact, who rather hail a free Church in England, and would demolish the Irish Establishment as a step towards it. To such we would earnestly commend a little serious thought on the responsibility they incur as Churchmen in forming an individual opinion, as to the good position of the Church with reference to the world and her influence over it, different, to say the least of it, from the historical and the common-sense view of the question; viz. that the word 'Establishment' means and implies that reception by the State which is in itself a most desirable state of things, and the happiest recognition of the Church by the world we can hope for. Of this, however, more in its place after concluding our part of the subject that concerns the reception of the proposed measure by different parties in the Church. It has occasioned a curious split in the Broad Church party. The conduct of that section of it which unites simple Erastianism with breadth in doctrine, we have already alluded to as having shown great toleration and some humility. But a mischievous alliance has been formed between a more bitter section of the Broad Church party which unites personal intolerance with anti-dogmatic principles, and, on the other hand, semi-Ritualists; that uplifts its voice with a confused and uncertain cry, more significant of wishing for a row than of having