In 1858, after a long and unseemly struggle, the House of Commons was opened to the long-proscribed race; and about a quarter of a century later, the House of Lords admitted to a seat Baron Rothschild, the first peer of Hebrew faith that had ever sat in that body.
DISESTABLISHMENT OF THE IRISH CHURCH (1869).—Forty years after the
Catholic Emancipation Act, the English government took another great step
in the direction of religious equality, by the disestablishment of the
State Church in Ireland.
The Irish have always and steadily refused to accept the religion which their English conquerors have somehow felt constrained to force upon them. The vast majority of the people are to-day and ever have been Catholics; yet up to the time where we have now arrived these Irish Catholics had been compelled to pay tithes and fees for the maintenance among them of the Anglican Church worship. Meanwhile their own churches, in which the great masses were instructed and cared for spiritually, had to be kept up by voluntary contributions. The proposition to do away with this grievance by the disestablishment of the State Church in Ireland was bitterly opposed by the Conservatives; but at length, after a memorable debate, the Liberals, under the lead of Bright and Gladstone, the latter then prime minister, carried the measure. This was in 1869, but the actual disestablishment was not to take place until the year 1871, at which time the Irish State Church, ceasing to exist as a state institution, became a free Episcopal Church. The historian May pronounces this "the most important ecclesiastical matter since the Reformation."
PROPOSED DISESTABLISHMENT OF THE STATE CHURCH IN ENGLAND AND IN SCOTLAND. —The perfect application of the principle of religious equality demands, in the opinion of many English Liberals, the disestablishment of the State Church in England and in Scotland. [Footnote: The Established Church in Scotland is the Presbyterian.] They feel that for the government to maintain any particular sect, is to give the State a monopoly in religion. They would have the churches of all denominations placed on an absolute equality. Especially in Scotland is the sentiment in favor of disestablishment very strong.
3. GROWTH OF THE BRITISH EMPIRE IN THE EAST.
THE CLEW TO ENGLAND'S FOREIGN POLICY IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY.—Seeking the main fact of modern English history, Professor Seeley [Footnote: J. R. Seeley, in his work entitled The Expansion of England.] finds it in the expansion of England. He says, in substance, that the expansion of England in the New World and in Asia is the formula which sums up for England the history of the last three centuries. As the outgrowth of this extension into remote lands of English population or influence, England has come successively into sharp rivalry with three of the leading powers of Europe, her competitors in the field of colonization or in the race for empire. The seventeenth century stands out as an age of intense rivalry between England and Spain; the eighteenth was a period of gigantic competition between England and France; while the nineteenth has been an age of jealous rivalry between England and Russia.
England triumphed over Spain and France; it remains to be seen whether she will in like manner triumph over Russia.
We have space simply to indicate how England's foreign policies and wars during the present century have grown out of her Eastern connections, and her fear of the overshadowing influence of the Colossus of the North. RISE OF THE ENGLISH POWER IN INDIA.—And first, we must say a word respecting the establishment of English authority in India. By the close of the seventeenth century the East India Company (see p. 603) had founded establishments at Bombay, Calcutta, and Madras, the three most important centres of English population and influence in India at the present time. The company's efforts to extend its authority in India were favored by the decayed state into which the Great Mogul Empire—founded in Northern India by the Tartar conquerors (see p. 461)—had fallen, and by the contentions of the independent native princes among themselves.
For a long time it was a matter of doubt whether the empire to be erected upon the ruins of the Great Mogul Empire and of the contending native states should be French or English. About the middle of the eighteenth century the former had the stronger foothold in the peninsula, just as previous to the French and Indian War in the New World they had the stronger hold upon the North American continent.
A terrible crime committed by the Nabob Surajah Dowlah of Bengal, a province lying along the lower courses of the Ganges, determined the fate not only of that native state, but of all India. Moved by jealousy of the growing power of the English, and encouraged by the French, the Nabob attacked and captured the English post at Calcutta. His one hundred and forty-six prisoners he crowded into a close dungeon, called the Black Hole. In the course of a sultry night the larger part of the unfortunate prisoners were suffocated.