[100] Probably always in England. In France the reverse is happening.
[101] This idea is, among other speeches, worked out in that delivered at Amersham, December 4, 1860, where he says: “The parish is one of the strongest securities for local government, and on local government mainly depends our political liberty.” He points out that the Church is not oligarchical, and does not claim those exclusive privileges which the Nonconformists often do. It is national in its comprehensive ties with the country and its inclusiveness. The abolition of the parish system would alone prove a national and social upheaval.
[102] This policy was pressed by Peel in the early ’forties, and led to the fine work of the National Schools.
[103] That of Strauss.
[104] In the Croker Papers will be found a masterly letter from Sir Robert Peel on the importance of the Church rising to her educational opportunities. It was Peel’s foresight that produced the National Schools. Peel, though latitudinarian, was a Church statesman.
[105] I may add that what Disraeli resented in Gladstone’s thwarted proposals for his Catholic University scheme was that it sought to exclude theology and philosophy—an exception unworthy of any “Universitas rerum,” and deeply repugnant to the Catholics.
[106] Letter to D. O’Connell, 1835.
[107] This has been elaborately developed by Bolingbroke in his “Philosophical Works.”
[108] How true this has now proved itself in France!
[109] Elsewhere Disraeli said that Paris always remains a republic.