“We who did our lineage high
Draw from beyond the starry sky,
Are yet upon the other side,
To earth and to its dust allied.”
And so the Church Establishment, regarded in its theory and in its aim, is beautiful and attractive. Yet what is it but an appropriation of public property, an appropriation of the fruits of labor and of skill to certain purposes, and unless these purposes are fulfilled, that appropriation cannot be justified. Therefore, Sir, I cannot but feel that we must set aside fears which thrust themselves upon the imagination, and act upon the sober dictates of our judgment.
I think it has been shown that the cause for action is strong—not for precipitate action, not for action beyond our powers, but for such action as the opportunities of the times and the condition of Parliament, if there be but a ready will, will amply and easily admit of. If I am asked as to my expectations of the issue of this struggle, I begin frankly by avowing that I, for one, would not have entered into it unless I believed that the final hour was about to sound.
And I hope that the noble lord will forgive me if I say that before Friday last I thought that the thread of the remaining life of the Irish Established Church was short, but that since Friday last, when at half-past four o’clock in the afternoon the noble lord stood at that table, I have regarded it as being shorter still. The issue is not in our hands.
What we had and have to do is to consider well and deeply before we take the first step in an engagement such as this; but having entered into the controversy, there and then to acquit ourselves like men, and to use every effort to remove what still remains of the scandals and calamities in the relations which exist between England and Ireland, and use our best efforts at least to fill up with the cement of human concord the noble fabric of the British empire.
