A History of the Four Georges and of William IV, Volume IV

by Justin McCarthy; Justin H. McCarthy

It was becoming more and more evident every day that the whole conditions of the State Church in Ireland were responsible for the trouble of which the tithes difficulty was only an incident. Already a party was forming itself in the House of Commons composed of intellectual and far-seeing men who recognized the fact that the Irish State Church was in its very principles an anomaly and an anachronism. On May 27, 1834, a debate on the whole question of the Irish State Church and its revenues was raised in the House of Commons by Mr. Henry Ward, one of the most advanced reformers and thoughtful politicians whom the new conditions of the franchise had brought into Parliament. Henry Ward was a son of that Plumer Ward who was at one time famous as the author of a novel {213} called "Tremaine." If any memory of "Tremaine" lingers in the minds of readers who belong to the present generation, the lingering recollection is probably only due to the fact that in Disraeli's "Vivian Grey" there is an amusing scene in which the hero makes audacious use of an extemporized passage, which he professes to find in Plumer Ward's novel. Henry Ward, the son, afterwards won some distinction by his administration of the Ionian Islands while the islands were under the charge of Great Britain. In our Parliamentary history, however, he will always be remembered as the author of the first serious attempt to obtain a national recognition of the principle which, within our own times, secured its final acknowledgment by the disestablishment of the Irish Church. The resolution which was proposed merely declared that the Protestant Episcopal Establishment in Ireland exceeded the wants of the Protestant population, and that, it being the right of the State to regulate the distribution of Church property in such manner as Parliament might determine, it was the opinion of the House that the temporal possessions of the State Church in Ireland ought to be reduced. This resolution went no further in words, as it will be seen, than to ask for a reduction of the revenues of that Church on the ground that it had already more funds than were required for the full discharge of its duties among those who attended its ministrations. But then the resolution also assumed the right of the State to institute an inquiry into the application of the revenues and the needs of the surrounding population, and would necessarily carry with it the assertion of the principle that the Irish State Church existed only to minister to the wants of the Protestants of Ireland. It is clear that if once this principle were recognized by the State the whole theory of the Established Church in Ireland could no longer be maintained. That theory was that the State had a right to uphold and a duty to perform in the maintenance of a Protestant Establishment in Ireland for the purpose of converting to its doctrines that vast majority of the Irish population who could not be driven, even at the bayonet's point, to attend the {214} services conducted by a Protestant pastor. Only a few years after this time the great statesman who was afterwards to obtain from Parliament the disestablishment of the Irish Church was arguing, in his earliest published work, that the fewer the Protestants in Ireland the greater was the necessity for the State to be lavish of its money with the object of converting the outer population of Ireland to the established religion. Mr. Ward, in his speech, set himself to make it clear to the House of Commons that the collection of tithes in Ireland was, at that time, the principal cause of the disturbance and disaffection which brought so much calamity on the unhappy island, and prevented any possibility of its becoming a loyal part of the British dominions. He showed by facts and figures that the opposition to the collection of tithes was not any longer confined to the Catholic population alone, but had spread among the Protestants of dissenting denominations, and was showing itself in the North of Ireland, as well as in the provinces of the South and the West and the Midlands. He pointed to the fact that it was found necessary to maintain in Ireland, for the purpose of collecting the tithes, an army larger than that which England needed for the maintenance of her Indian Empire, and that, nevertheless, it was found impossible to collect the tithes in Ireland, and that the Government could suggest nothing better than a project for the payment of the tithes out of the pockets of the national taxpayer. Mr. Ward made it clear to the House of Commons that the revenues of the State Church in Ireland were not distributed with anything like a view to the fair and equal remuneration of its clergy. In numbers of cases the clergy of the higher ranks had enormous incomes, quite out of all proportion to any duties they were even supposed to perform, while the clergymen who actually did the work were, as a general rule, screwed down to a pitiful rate of payment which hardly kept soul and body together. Twenty pounds a year was not an uncommon stipend among the curates who did the hard work, while an annual revenue of sixty pounds was regarded as something like opulence. Where the curate received his thirty {215} or forty pounds a year or less, the incumbent usually had his two thousand a year, and in many instances much more. As we said before, the incumbent deriving a rich revenue from his office was often habitually an absentee, who left the whole of his work to be performed, as best it might be done, by the curate, half starving on a miserable pittance. Mr. Ward made out a case which must have produced some impression on any Parliamentary assembly, and could hardly fail to find attentive listeners and ready sympathy among the members of the first reformed House of Commons.

[Sidenote: 1834—George Grote]

The motion was seconded by a remarkable man in a remarkable speech. Mr. George Grote, afterwards famous as the historian of Greece, was one of the new members of Parliament. He was a man of a peculiar type, of an intellectual order which we do not usually associate with the movement of the political world, but which is, nevertheless, seldom without its representative in the House of Commons. Grote was one of the small group of men who were, at that time, described as the philosophical Radicals. He acknowledged the influence of Bentham; he was a friend and associate of the elder and the younger Mill; he was a banker by occupation, a scholar and an author by vocation; a member of Parliament from a sense of duty. Grote, no doubt, was sometimes mistaken in the political conclusions at which he arrived, but he deserved the praise which Macaulay has justly given to Burke, that he was always right in his point of view. With Grote a political measure was right or wrong only as it helped or hindered the spread of education, human happiness, and peace. He was one of the earliest and most persevering advocates of the ballot system at elections, and during his short Parliamentary career he made the ballot the subject of an annual motion. Some of us can still well remember George Grote in his much later days, and can bear testimony to the fact that, to quote the thrilling words of Schiller, he reverenced in his manhood the dreams of his youth. We can remember how steady an opponent he was of slavery, and how his sympathies went with the cause of the North during the {216} great American civil war. One can hardly suppose that Grote's style as a speaker was well suited to the ways of the House of Commons, but it is certain that whenever he spoke he always made a distinct impression on the House. Some of us who can remember John Stuart Mill addressing that same assembly at a later day, can probably form an idea of the influence exercised on the House by the man who seemed to be thinking his thoughts aloud rather than trying to win over votes or to catch encouraging applause. Grote's speech on Ward's motion brought up one view of the Irish Church which especially deserved consideration. Grote dealt with the alarms and the convictions of those who were insisting that to acknowledge any right of Parliament to interfere with the Irish State Church would be to sound in advance the doom of the English State Church as well. He pointed out that, whatever difference of opinion there might be as to the general principle of a State Establishment, the case of the two Churches, the English and the Irish, must be argued upon grounds which had nothing in common. Every argument which could be used, and must be used, for the State Church of England was an argument against the State Church in Ireland. The State Church of England was the Church to which the vast majority of the English people belonged. It ministered to their spiritual needs, it was associated with their ways, their hopes, their past, and their future. If an overwhelming majority in any country could claim the right, by virtue of their majority, to set up and maintain any institution, the Protestant population of England could claim a right to set up a State Church. But every word that could be said in support of the English State Church was a word of condemnation and of sentence on the State Church in Ireland. The Irish State Church was the Church of so small a minority that, when allowance had been made for the numbers of dissenting Protestants in Ireland, it was doubtful whether one in every twelve of the whole population could be claimed as a worshipper in the temples maintained and endowed by law. Moreover, the Irish State Church was a badge of conquest, and was {217} regarded as such by the whole Celtic population of the island. The tithe exacted from the Irish Catholic farmer was not merely a tribute exacted by the conqueror, but was also a brand of degradation on the faith and on the nationality of the Irish Celt who was called upon to meet the demand. The student of history will note with some interest that, at a day much nearer to our own, the Lord Stanley whose name we shall presently have to bring up in connection with this debate on Mr. Ward's motion made use, in the House of Lords, of an appeal which suggested the idea that he had not heard or had forgotten George Grote's speech on which we have just been making comment. Not very long before his death Lord Derby, as he had then become, was declaiming in the House of Lords against the proposal to disestablish the Irish State Church, and he warned the House that if the fabric of the Irish Church were to be touched by a destroying hand it would be in vain to hope that the destruction of the English State Church could long be averted. [Sidenote: 1834—Lord Derby] Lord Derby had always a very happy gift of quotation, and he made on this occasion a striking allusion. He reminded the House of that thrilling scene in Scott's "Guy Mannering" where the gypsy woman suddenly presents herself on the roadside to the elder, the Laird of Ellangowan and some of his friends, and, complaining of the eviction of her own people from their homesteads, bids the gentlefolk take care that their own roof-trees are not put in danger by what they had done. Lord Derby made use of this passage as a warning to the prelates and peers of England that, if they allowed the Irish State Church to be disestablished, the statelier fabric of their own Church in England might suffer by the example. It was pointed out at the time, by some of those who commented on Lord Derby's speech, that George Grote had answered this argument by unconscious anticipation, and had shown that the best security of the English State Church was the fact that it rested on a foundation totally different from that of the State Church in Ireland.

The Government were greatly embarrassed by all this {218} discussion as to the condition, the work, and the character of the Establishment in Ireland. Lord Grey, whose whole nature inclined him to move along the path of progress with slow, steady, and stately steps, began to chafe against the eagerness with which the more Radical reformers were endeavoring to hurry on the political movement. It was necessary that the Government should announce a purpose of one kind or another—should either give a general sanction to the inquiry into the claims and merits of the Irish Church, or declare themselves against any movement of reform in that direction. It was found hardly possible for the Government to ally themselves with the followers of old-fashioned Toryism, and it soon began to be rumored that Lord Grey could only keep on the reforming path at the cost of losing some of his most capable colleagues. Before long it was made publicly known that the rumors were well founded. Lord Stanley and Sir James Graham resigned their places in the Ministry. Graham afterwards held office in more than one Administration that might well be called Liberal, but Lord Stanley passed the greater part of his Parliamentary life in the ranks of uncompromising Toryism. He had begun his public career as an enthusiastic champion of Parliamentary reform, and he was the figure-head of reform again at a much later date, but on all other questions he remained a steadfast and a most eloquent advocate of genuine Tory principles. It may fittingly be mentioned here that the existence of the Radical party, recognized as such and regarded as distinct from the ordinary Liberals, began with the debates on the State Church in Ireland. The passing of the Reform Bill divided the Whigs and Tories into Liberals and Conservatives, and the discussions on the Irish Church divided those who had once been Whigs into Liberals and Radicals.

[Sidenote: 1834—King William and the Irish State Church]

Meanwhile poor old King William was greatly concerned by the attacks which were made upon the State Church in Ireland. William the Fourth had a simple sort of piety of his own, and was perhaps somewhat like the man whom Doctor Johnson commended because, whatever {219} follies or offences he might have committed, he never passed a church without taking off his hat. The King knew little or nothing, we may well suppose, about the Irish Church and the way in which it fulfilled, or had any chance of fulfilling, its sacred office. But he took off his hat to it as a Church, and, more than that, he shed tears and positively blubbered over its hard fate in having to stand so many attacks from its enemies. The King received, on one of his birthdays, a delegation from the prelates of the Irish Church, and to them he poured out his assurances that nothing should ever induce him to abandon that Church to its ungodly foes. He reminded the prelates that he was growing an old man, that his departure from this world must be near at hand, that he had nothing left now to live for but the rightful discharge of his duties as a Protestant sovereign, and he bade them to believe that the tears which were bedewing his countenance were the tears of heartfelt sympathy and sorrow. The King nevertheless did not get into any quarrel with his ministers on the subject of the Irish Church, and when any documents bearing on the question were presented to him for signature he ended by affixing his name and did not allow his tears to fall upon it and blot it out. The Duke of Cumberland, too, stood by the Irish Church to the best of his power. A member of the House of Lords has a privilege which is not accorded to a member of the House of Commons—he can enter on the books of the House his written protest against the passing of any measure which he has not been able to keep out of legislation. The Duke of Cumberland entered his protest against some of the resolutions taken with regard to the Irish State Church, and he declared that the sovereign who affirmed such resolves must do so in defiance of the coronation oath. That coronation oath had not been brought into much prominence since the days of George the Third, when it used to be relied upon as an impassable barrier to many a great measure of political justice and mercy. The Duke of Cumberland was not exactly the sort of man who could quicken it anew into an animating influence, and King {220} William did what his ministers advised him to do, and the world went on its way. The King, however, liked his ministers none the more because he did not see his way to quarrel with them when they advised him to make some concessions to public feeling on the subject of the Irish tithes. Thus far, indeed, the concessions were not very great, and the important fact for this part of our history is only that the tithe question brought up the far more momentous question which called into doubt the right to existence of the Irish State Church itself. The Government went no farther, for the time, than to offer the appointment of a commission to inquire into the incidence and the levying of the tithes, and endeavored to evade the question of appropriation, that is, the question as to the right of Parliament to decide the manner in which the revenues of the Irish State Church ought to be employed. The tithe question itself was finally settled for England before it came to be finally settled for Ireland. But its settlement involved no such consequences to the English State Church as it did to the State Church in Ireland. For our present purposes it is enough to record the fact that the earliest clear indications of the national policy, which in a later generation disestablished the Irish State Church, were given by the first Reform Parliament. Meanwhile the controversy raised as to the position of the Irish Establishment had had the effect of disturbing Lord Grey, who did not like to be driven too rapidly along the path of reform; of greatly angering the sovereign, who grumbled all the more because he could not openly resist; and of dissatisfying men like Ward and Grote and Lord Durham, and even members of the Cabinet like Lord John Russell, who could not regard mere slowness as a virtue when there was an obvious wrong to be redressed.

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CHAPTER LXXVI.

"ONLY A PAUPER."

[Sidenote: 1832—The poor-law system]