Speeches on Questions of Public Policy, Volume 1

by John Bright

What, then, are we about to do? What is the House about to do if we adopt the resolutions of the right hon. Member for South Lancashire? If the House accept the advice of the majority sitting on this side, what will be done? We are not going to commit any vital wrong upon that one city population of 500,000 or 600,000. When we have done everything that I have suggested should be done, we shall leave them in as comfortable a position as the majority of the people of Scotland are in at this moment. We shall leave them as well off as eight or nine-tenths of the population of Wales are; we shall leave them as well off as half, and not the least religious half, of the people of England are; we shall leave them as well off as the English, Scotch, Welsh, and Irish people who form the population in our colonies, whether in North America or Australia. And what can be more monstrous than for Gentlemen to come here from Ireland—and there may he some from England—and tell us we are bringing about a revolution, that we are committing an enormous oppression, that we are hazarding the loyalty of the people of the North of Ireland, when, after all, the most and worst which any of us proposes to do is that the Church population of Ireland will be left at least as well off as any of the various populations of the Empire I have just described? I hope hon. Gentlemen opposite will be convinced that it is not a bottomless abyss we are going to plunge their friends into.

Although it is a very small question for the Church in Ireland and for the Church people, I hold it is an infinitely larger question for the Catholic population. The hon. and learned Gentleman who spoke last relies much upon law. I suppose it will be admitted that there are only two pretences on which this State Church—the Protestant Church—can exist in Ireland. The one is religious—the other is political. Now, has anybody been able to show that, as a religious institution, it has not been a deplorable failure? because clearly, the original intention, the original hope was, that the people of Ireland would be drawn from the Church of Rome and brought into harmony with the Church of England. I undertake to say, from the time of its first establishment until now, reckoning up all the Catholics on the one side and the Protestants on the other, that it could not be shown, and is not to be believed, that it has ever added really one person in every hundred persons to the actual number of Protestants in the kingdom of Ireland. It has been an entire failure—a failure deplorable, and almost ludicrous, as an engine for converting the Catholic population. But it has not only not made Catholics into Protestants, but it has made Catholics in Ireland more intensely Roman than the members of that Church are found to be in any other country in Europe or in America. And what is more than that, I think it can be demonstrated that the existence of the Protestant Church in Ireland, whether missionary or not in pretence, has not only not converted the Catholics themselves, but has made it absolutely impossible that anybody else, or any other Church, should convert them. Because, if you look how the Church has been connected with the State, and with the politics of the country, with the supremacy of the landed proprietors, with the supremacy of the Protestant party, with all the dark records of the past, you will see the effect has been to make Catholicism in Ireland not only a faith, but absolutely a patriotism.

I think I might appeal to every Member of the House who now hears me whether, if he had been placed in Ireland with his father before him among the Catholic population—I might ask him whether he would not have felt that if he threw off his allegiance to his Church, and if he entered the portals of this garrison Church, that it would have been to him not only a change of faith, but a denial as it were of his birth and of his country. I have felt always in considering this question—and I have considered it much for twenty-five years past—that all the circumstances of that Church in Ireland have been such as to stimulate the heart of every Catholic to a stronger adherence to his own faith, and to a determined and unchangeable rejection of the faith and of the Church which were offered to him by the hands of conquest. There is one point on this, too, which is important, that the more you have produced dissatisfaction with Imperial rule in Ireland, the more you have thrown the population into the hands of Rome. Now, I hope I shall offend no Catholic Member in this House when I say that I consider it one of the greatest calamities of the world that there are in many countries millions of Catholic population who are liable to be directed in much of their conduct, and often in their political conduct, through their bishops and clergy from the centre of the city of Rome. I think that is a misfortune—I think it is a misfortune to the freedom of the world. And I think, moreover, that it is a misfortune to every Catholic Church in every country, for it tends to prevent it from being wholly national, and it prevents also such changes and such reformations as, I believe, are necessary in the progress of every Church. We see some result of this in other countries of Europe. Notably, at this moment, in Austria, even in that country which we lately thought was the very last in the race of freedom, there is a contest going on with Rome. But there probably is no country in Europe at this moment in which the Catholic Church and population are more entirely subject than in Ireland to the direct influence of a certain number of persons, of whom most of us know nothing, who pull the strings of the Catholic world in the city of Rome. I attribute much of this, which I think a great evil, to the existence of the Protestant Church in Ireland. You know perfectly well that the great discontent of Ireland is chiefly entertained by the Catholic population, and you know that this population is even at this moment, more than it was some years ago, subject directly to political influences from Rome. But I am satisfied that it is for the interest of the Catholic population, and that it is for the interest of this great nation and of this Imperial Government, that whatsoever be the tie between the Catholic population of Ireland and the Government in Ireland, we ought at least to take away every obstacle that can lessen in the smallest degree the loyalty of that people to the Imperial Crown.

And if this Church has failed as a religious institution, how stands it as a political institution? It was intended not only to convert the Catholics, but to secure the Union. An hon. Gentleman, with a courage that I should not like to imitate, said that if the 5th Article of the Act of Union should be altered, then in point of fact the Union is as good as abolished. I see the hon. Gentleman up there, and I think he is not the only one who has said it in the course of this discussion. It is a very old and not a very strange device to expect the people to be made loyal through the instrumentality of the clergy. I know that many centuries ago a monk of some celebrity at the Court of Louis of Bavaria told that monarch, 'You defend me with the sword, and I will defend you with the pen.' We have been during all this time defending this Church with the sword. The sword has scarcely ever been out of the hand of the governing power in Ireland. And if a fair, simple, and unadorned narrative were given of the transactions of this Parliament with Ireland, with regard to its different enactments, coercive restrictions, suspensions of the Habeas Corpus Act, and so forth, it would form a narrative which would astonish the world and would discredit us. Sir, I am afraid it is not too much to say that, in support of this supremacy, many victims have perished on the scaffold in Ireland, and that the fields of Ireland have been more than once drenched with the blood of her people. But, after all this is done, we are not a bit more secure.

It is no matter what Government sits on the bench opposite. The right hon. Gentleman the Member for South Lancashire was there two years ago, and on that occasion, by the consent of his Colleagues, the then Home Secretary had to introduce the Bill for the suspension of the Habeas Corpus Act. Now you are on that side of the House, and you have to do the same. Nobody says it is not necessary. I am not prepared to say it has not been necessary at other times. But surely if this be necessary— and if there is this painful duty to perform at various times—it shows that the Union is not very secure in Ireland. In fact, Sir, it is the most painful thing that we have witnessed lately, that the suspension of the Habeas Corpus Act has become so common that it causes almost no remark. The measure is introduced into the House. An Irish Member makes a feeble protest against it, and it is passed, and we suspend the liberties of one of the three kingdoms from year to year. And the Prime Minister has the courage—I might almost use another word—he has the courage to say there is no crisis, and that things are going on very much as usual, and that the House of Commons is not required to do much or care much for that country.

What you have in Ireland is this. There is anarchy, which is subdued by force, and after centuries of rule—not our rule, but that of our forefathers—we have got no farther. We have not reconciled Ireland to us, we have done none of those things which the world says we ought to have done; and at this moment—in the year 1868—we are discussing the question whether it is possible to make any change with reference to the Established Church in Ireland which will bring about a better state of feeling between the people and the Imperial Government. Sir, I am afraid there has been very little statesmanship and very much neglect, and I think we ought to take shame to ourselves, and try to get rid of some of our antiquated prejudices on this matter, and look at it as men would look at it from a distance, as men whose vision is not impaired by the passionate feelings which have so often prevailed in this country with regard to this question. What, then, is the remedy that is now offered? What do people say of it? Now, I challenge any hon. Gentleman on the other side to deny this, that out of half a million Episcopalians in Ireland there are many—there are some in the Irish nobility, some landed proprietors, some magistrates, even some of the clergy, a great many Irishmen—who believe at this moment that it is of the very first importance that the proposition of the right hon. Gentleman the Member for South Lancashire should be carried.

I am not going to overstate my case. I do not say that all of them are of that opinion. Of that half-million, say that one-fourth—I will state no number—but of this I am quite certain, that there is an influential, a considerable, and, as I believe, a wise minority, who are in favour of distinct and decided action on the part of Parliament with regard to this question. But if you ask the whole Roman Catholic population of Ireland, be they nobles, or landed proprietors, or merchants, or farmers, or labourers,—the whole number of the Catholic population in Ireland being, I suppose, eight or nine times the number of Episcopalians—these are probably, without exception, of opinion that it would be greatly advantageous and just to their country if the proposition submitted on this side of the House should receive the sanction of Parliament. Now, if some Protestants and all Catholics are agreed that we should remove this Church, what would happen if Ireland was 1,000 miles away, and we were discussing it as we might discuss the same state of affairs in Canada? If we were to have in Canada and in Australia all this disloyalty among the Roman Catholic population, owing to the existence of a State Church there, the House would be unanimous that the State Church in those colonies should be abolished, and that perfect freedom in religion should be given.

But there is a fear in the mind of the right hon. Gentleman the Home Secretary that the malady which would exist in Ireland might cross the Channel and appear in England; that in fact the disorder of Voluntaryism, as he deems it, in Ireland, like any other contagious disorder, might cross the Channel, by force of the west wind, lodging first in Scotland, and then crossing the Tweed and coming south to England. I think the right hon. Gentleman went so far as to say that he was so much in favour of religious equality, that if you went so far as to disestablish the Church in Ireland, he would recommend the same policy for England. Now, with regard to that, I will give you an anecdote which has reference to Scotland. Some years ago I had the pleasure of spending some days in Scotland at the house of the late Lord Aberdeen, after he had ceased to be Prime Minister. He was talking of the disruption of the Church of Scotland, and he said that nothing in the course of his public life had given him so much pain as the disruption, and the establishment of the Free Church in that country; but he said he had lived long enough to discover that it was one of the greatest blessings that had ever come to Scotland. He said that they had a vast increase in the number of churches, a corresponding increase in the number of manses or ministers' houses, and that schools had increased, also, to an extraordinary extent; that there had been imparted to the Established Church a vitality and energy which it had not known for a long period; and that education, morality, and religion had received a great advancement in Scotland in consequence of that change. Therefore, after all, it is not the most dreadful thing in the world—not so bad as a great earthquake—or as many other things that have happened. I am not quite sure that the Scottish people themselves may not some day ask you—if you do not yourselves introduce and pass it without their asking—to allow their State Church to be disestablished.

I met only the other day a most intelligent gentleman from the north of Scotland, and he told me that the minister of the church he frequented had 250_l_. a-year from the Establishment Funds, which he thought very much too little, and he felt certain that, if the Establishment were abolished, and the Church made into a Free Church, the salary of the minister would be immediately advanced to at least 500_l_. a- year. That is a very good argument for the ministers, and we shall see by-and-by, if the conversion of Scotland proceeds much further, that you may be asked to disestablish their Church. The hon. Member for Honiton last night quoted something which, I daresay, he did not recollect accurately—something which I had said respecting the Church of England; but the fact is that the Church of England is not suffering from the assaults of the Liberation Society; it is suffering from a very different complaint. It is an internal complaint. You have had it before one of the courts of law within the last few days, and a very curious decision has been given,—that candles are lawful, but incense is something terrible, and cannot be allowed; and then the newspapers tell you that on the very next Sunday there is more incense in that particular church which has been complained of than there ever had been before.

I will tell hon. Gentlemen opposite what it is that endangers the State Church now—I mean a State Church like this in England, against which there is no violent political assault. It is the prevalence of zeal. Whenever zeal creeps into a State Church, it takes naturally different forms—one strongly Evangelical, another strongly High Church or Ritualist—and these two species of zeal work on and on in opposition, until finally there comes a catastrophe, and it is found that it is not Mr. Miall and the Liberation Society, although they have prepared men's minds not to dread it, but it is something wholly different, within the Church itself, that causes the disruption of the Church. The Scottish disruption did not take place from any assaults from without—it took place from zeal and difficulties within; and if you could keep the whole of the Church of England perfectly harmonious within its own borders, it would take a very daring prophet who would undertake to point out the time when it would be disestablished.