The Dorset County Express and Agricultural Gazette.
Dorchester, Dorset, England, 1868-10-27 00:00:00

Correspontitnce.

THE HONOURABLE MR. PORTMAN AND THE
IRISH °HILTED&

To Use Edigor.

Sir,—lt is with simmers pleasure that I read in your
paper the sensible view which one of our county members
takes of the Irish Church question.
"I shall vote (he oteerves) for no scheme which can
injure the Protestant religion, or which does not &al
liberally with vested intimate and private or personal
rights."
I am, I coxless, one of • great number who do not
...ore weight to thc opinion of a man because -a
°over iment has made him either a Dean, • Bishop, or
&RAJ .hbishop ; but as there arelsome who do, let me
ea.., the retuembranoe of these adherents to dignity
and office the opinion of the late Archbishop Whately.
I have not the book by me, but he wrote and thought
in this way.
To support a church in Ireland, and to call it an Irish
Church, is not so much an injury, as it is an exert/ to the
Irish people, reminding them of their conquered state.
In India, whete the mass of the people are Hindoce,
you don't talk of the Church of lodia, but the branch
of the Church of England there established.
These are not his words, but I think my words repre-
sent his opinion.
Can there be anything more barbarous, more tyrannical,
than to force your religious teaching on a people? Is it
not exactly the spirit the great head of the Church
condemned, when Peter drew the sword?
Will not Mr. Disraeli find, that after • certain time,
a people were to be given up? Don't we real in an
old hook, of •' turning to tho Handles," of," shaking
the dust off your feet?'
Then as to danger to the Church of England. Is she
not more in danger from her friends than her enemies?
The men who offer pig's heads and pats of butter at
her altars ; rig themselves in the colours of Lord
Hastings and Mr. Pedwick ; °all a dismal howl
'intoning ;" and make Church Services a thing of
posture and Imposture?
May we not fear that there ion little hypocrisy in this
4441111111ki fear, lest the fabric of the Church should be
broken up? May there not be • little self at the bottom
of it? How many of these Conservatives possess the
groat tithe.? Are tAey in danger? How many of these
men who have the plunder will you find giving up their
money to the clergy, it having struck them all at once
that, by tAe saws proreu they ROW deprecate. they are
ren,iving what has been alienated from the Church of
F nif awl ?
And then as to the expediency of still forcing our
Church upon Ireland' What have been the result.!
Why the Irish corroborate the old opinion, "You may
talcs a horse to the water, but you can't make him
drink." Power makes no proselytes, it repels con-
fidence, it quenches affection. ' The Irish repu/se our
advances, and who cen wonder at it?
Mr. Disraeli (like the cuttle fish) is merely making
the political waters dark and muddy—(l have heard him
and hie political party likened to • lot of skunks).
There is as much Protestantism on the Liberal aide as iv
the Conservative clique, only the first would work by
affection and the other by force. The one persists in
the old medicine which aggravates the disease, the other
...this the member mortitled'eata off the limb.— I am,
sir, your obedient servant,
THE VICAR OF AN ISOLATED PARISH.