The Sun.
London, England, 1834-06-24 00:00:00

sonal grandeur to the good of their cotintryy were true to
themselves. The gentry and the
.peeple fought shoulder
to shoulder, and the consegnence Was, that you conceded
to the Scotch people 'the etereise of their own religion.
Yoe tent church to Ireland, too, and the people were
stupid enough not to take it (Hear, and a laugh); but still
you lodged a party of churchmen thtre, and you are deter-
mined they shall at least haVe all the emoluments they can
draw from the people. (Hear.) Why do I state this ? I
state it to show that you do not treat Ireland as you.treated
Sootland, when you took away the clergy that they did
not want there. You should noe taice the opportunity
of apportioning the surpliYl hinds of that church to pur-
poses of public wilily and charity. You have hospitals,
dispensaries, houses for the sick and for the poor, the
;expeYilels Of which you can, in this manner, meet without
taking anything from the public funds. Thus, the sick,
the maimed, the insane, have claims upon the public
(Hear, hear), and to their comfort and maintenance the
surplus might well be applied. Public utility also includes
public education—and no work of public utility ranks
higher than the purposes of public education. (Hear,
hear.) There are, therefore, abundant sources of public
utility and charity to which that surplus fund could be
properly applied. Tell the people of Ireland, then, that
at length you are to take one step in their behalf—show
them that the idol of Juggernaut is not again to be drawn
through the valleys and meadows of their island. Why
have you lost the late Secretary for the Colonies? Why
is he not still upon those benches? It is not for nothing.
You would be insane if you parted with his services for
no grounds whatever. (Hear; hear.) You had grounds,
and they were not light. You parted with him because
he adhered to his principles. (Cheers.) Have you
thrown him aside because he adhered to his principles—and
have you congregated together because you have no prin-
ciples of your own ? (Cheers.) Shall I hear it said to-
morrow that he was no longer fit to be in the same go-
vernment with you, because he had principles and you
had none ? ( Hear, hear, hear.) That supposition is
something so monstrous, that I cannot allow myself
to entertain the supposition. Merely show how the
condact of the right hon. ,member for North Lancashire
was such as to call on you to cast him from among you.
He would be unworthy Of his noble race if he did not
adhere to his principles, and have you got rid of him for
nothing ? I cannot think so ; and I hope you will show
by your vote, that you cannot be accused to-morrow of
being neither fish, flesh, nor good red herring. (Hear,
hear, and a laugh.) Oh, no ; you are English gentle-
men. I ask, then, is there any shrinking among you
from the declaration of your principles ? Did the name of
coward ever brand any one of you ? No • morally and
politically you are bound to stand high, andlet me not be
told to-morrow that you are mere miserable creatures,
crawling and crouching down for the sake of place and
office, and yet flying from the declaration of the principles
on which you hold your offices. ( Hear, hear.) And why
not declare that principle, when• the declaration of it would
bring peace ? (Hear, hear.) Why hesitate to proclaim it,
when the very moment it appears that you have no prin-
ciple many will speculate on coming in under the wings of
the right hon. gentleman, and who would uphold spiritual
supremacy ? Bigotry in Ireland was an exotic, nurtured
in the hot-bed of English impotence and tyranny, which
would have withered long ago, and flowers of peace would
have flourished, were Ireland left to herself. But perhaps
you are alarmed for something in England. Perhaps you
fear that there is some assembly where it may be inconve-
nient to be just to Ireland. ( Hear, hear.) I know that
personal valour prevails in that place, but there is also a
comfortable quantity of political expediency. They are
bold when you waver—they are courageous when you
vacillate. (Hear, hear.) But I call on you to declare
for God and the people, and to fear nothing. The time
has arrived when you should urge every good man to
press forward in the cause of justice, heedless of the
cawing of rooks (A laugh), or the screech of owls, or
even the petitions from Holy Island. Oh, •for the ghost
of poor St. Cuthbert ! He would cut down every thing
that impaired his rights—he would not carry reform
further than would just suffice to stifle clamour ; but the
people of England speak not as monk either of the last or
of the present century, and the voice of those croakers is
but as a penny whistle to the united vdice of the people,
proclaiming liberalism, equally remote from revolution and
the darksoine days of Toryism. (Hear.) They' will wit-
ness your triumph, and loin in proclaiming your fame,
.aid the friends of Ireland will at last see the days of do-
mination cease, a new day dawning, and justice begun.
(Cheering.) The hon. gentleman concluded by moving
" That it should be an instruction to the committee in
like manner to provide for such appropriation of the
funds to be raised in lieu of tithes, as, after having due
regard to vested interests, and to the providing suitably
for the spiritual wants of the Protestants of Ireland of
the established church, should dedicate the surplus to
purposes of public utility and charity." (Cheers.)
Mr. HUME seconded the motion, because it was in
effect but giving force to the former promises of the house.
He would say no more but that he hoped that, after the
manifold promises made to Ireland upon this subject, they
would not be disappointed. England felt as much inte-
rested in it as Ireland, and he therefore called on his Ma-
jesty's Ministers to come forward and state what their in-
tentions were. He called on the house, as the represen-
tatives of the people, to profit by the experience of their
predecessors, and not reject this motion, which he believed
tote the olive branch of peace. The object of church property
was to do good, and promote peace ; but at present it had
a contrary effect. He called on the Government then to
act like men, and to declare what they would do, and he
was sure it would find itself backed by the voices of a
united people ; and he entreated of them to remember
that their characters would be good or ill with the country
according to their conduct that night. (Hear, hear. )
Lord AIORPETH said that when a question was forced
upon public attention—when the interests and feelings
and passions of the people intermingled in its discussion,
then he was sure that the only way for a government to
act was to do what was right (Hear, hear) ; to stand up
for no abuse, while it gave way upon no just prin-
ciple ; and in order that it might resist at last an
indiscriminate attack,
_ not to oppose a justly
called for reform. Now, such he thought was the
state of the case with respect to the church. He might
have felt like others, if the question had remained dormant,
no wish to direct the attention of Parliament to the pro-
priety of effecting an alteration in any portion of the re-
venues of the church ; but when the question had arisen,
when it had grown into great importance, when, in fact, it
pervaded every corner of the country, he could not dis-
guise from himself that, with respect to the branch of the
church of England and Ireland that existed in Ireland,
there was one circumstance of great importance to be
taken into consideration in reference to the question of
maintaining a religious establishment at the expense of the
state—namely, its coincidence with the opinions and feel-
ings of the people, and that was a circumstance which, as
regarded the Established Church in Ireland, was wanting.
( Hear.) It would be idle and puerile to stand upon the
argument that the two countries were one, and that the
two establishments should be considered as one. If such
an argument as that was to be relied upon, it would in his
opinion form a very plausible objection to the union having
been made, and would supply a plausible reason for its
repeal. (Hear.) He was hound to admit the right of
Parliament to interfere with and to regulate the distri-
bution of the ecclesiastical revenues of the Irish church
establishment, and if it saw good grounds for it, to extend
those revenues beyond the pale of that establishment, and
to other than purely ecclesiastical purposes. ( Hear.) But
when he used the word " right," he could not deny that it
was a strictly legal right, and he would not allow any just
or moral right on the part of Parliament to devote those
'revenues to purposes which could not be properly con-
strued as analogous to those for which they had been
originally destined. Now the phrase " public utility," in
the lion. gentleman's motion, might mean anything or
everything. If there was to be a distribution of any sur-
plus arising out of the revenues of the Protestant church,
it should be spent for the moral, spiritual, and christian in-
struction and edification of the country. As he had voted
against the motion of the hon. member for St. Alban's,
he should also vote against the motion of the hon. and
learned member in its present form. With all his respect
fo•-• the talents of his right hon. friend the late Secretary
for the Colonies, he could not see the force of the argu-
ments contained in his late speech on this subject. Accord-
ing to his right hon. friend's reasoning, they should keep
up the present ecclesiastical staff in Ireland, even if there
was not a single Protestant, with a view to the future pos-
sible conversion of the dissenters in 'that country. With
respect to the church of England, he 'felt assured that
with the purity of its doctrines, with the consolations it
diffused, with the happiness and blessings parochially dis-
pensed by it, it might defy all the attacks of its enemies,
and even survive the defence of some of its friends.
( Hear; hear.) The noble lord, after ridiculing the idea
that the late exhibition at Oxford could have possibly the
slightest political influence on the public mind upon this or
any other question (and he must remark that the support
of Oxford to any party would appear from our history to be
singularly unfortunate—of that Oxford which had endea-
voured to sustain the waning fortunes of Charles, and
which had backed as long as it could the struggling hopes
of Jacobinism) (Hear, hear) proceeded to express his
gratification at the step which government had taken in
issuing a commission to inquire into the state of the
Irish church.
Lord ALTHORP had waited until some hon. members
should have delivered their opinions to the house, before
he presented himself to its attention, with a view to hear
whatever arguments might be urged in support of the pro-
position of the hon. and learned member for Dublin. He
confessed, however, that he had not heard an argument
at all showing the necessity of the adoption of 'the resolu-
tion now under consideration. The hon. and learned gen-
tleman had charged his Majesty's government with not
having expressed an opinion .or, in other words, he com-
plained that his Majesty's Ministers had not declared their
principles upon the subject of church property ; but, at
the same time that the hon. and learned gentleman made
this complaint? he afforded proof—proof incontestible—
that the government had already fully declared the princi-
ples on which they meant to act. Because,
.when the hon.
and learned gentleman inquired why the present ministry
had separated from the right hon. gentleman who had lately
presided over the Colonial Department, he bad himself