The Sun.
London, England, 1869-03-24 00:00:00

.r.OANDOV, TVEDSESDAY, MARCH 21, 18C9.

The confident expectations of the country have
been surpassed. 'The ultimate transformation of the
Irish Church Bill into an enactment may now be re-
garded as assured. The Second Reading could
hardly have been passed in the popular branch of the
Legislature by a larger House or by a more over-
whelming majority. As to the aggregate number of
the House—the Speaker and the four tellers in-
cluded—it amounted altogether to 623. As to the
clear majority on the side of the Government- —it was
118. Out of the full compliment of the House of
Commons, that is to say, out of the 658 members
constituting the sum total of the national representa-
tives, 35 votes only were absent from this morning's
division. The numbers were 368 on the side of the
Government, and 250 on the side of the Opposition.
The supporters of the Irish Church Bill, exclusive of
the two Liberal tellers of the Speaker, and of all those
who were absent from the House, either by choice or
by compulsion, exceeded by 39 a clear moiety of
the whole House. A clear moiety of 658 being
329—and the number of the supporters of the Bill,
exclusive of Speaker, tellers, and absentees, being
368—the result is precisely as we have just now de-
scribed it to be—namely, that the supporters of the
measure actually told off this morning, a little
before three o'clock, was in excess of the full
half, of the whole, of the popular branch of the
Legislature by thirty-nine. History has to be
ransacked to discover any majority in the
smallest degree comparable to that sustaining the
policy of the present Liberal Administration. Mem-
bers have been true to their hustings' pledges. The
decision arrived at by the Electors of the United
Kingdom during the course of the last General Elec-
tion in November and December has been endorsed,
k has been enforced, has been responded-to, to the very
echo, by their carefully selected representatives. The
constituencies have, in other words, been faithfully
represented. And what is especially remarkable in
regard to the decision arrived at this morning by
the newly - created Parliament is this, that it
hai been arrived at upon a matter of the
most vital importance a matter that half
a century ago could not possibly have been
agitated throughout the three kingdoms without
leading to turmoil, and very possibly to bloodshed
the decision arrived at now upon that virtually im-
portant subject has been arrived at almost as one
might say in cold blood, certainly quite deliberately.
Among the most enthusiastic supporters of the
Ministerial measure, there have from first to last
been no overweening evidences of exultation in the
recognized security of their position, or in the un-
mistakeable portents of the
ofein inevitable victory viliic,storyawait-
await-
ing them at every stag
advance-
ment. 'While, upon the other hand, tlhiekreephasayseine
beent
manifest no indications of anything
antagonism or morbidly exaggerated excitement.
The The right hon. gentleman the member
closed his speech at an early hour this morning by
solemnly denouncing the Bill before Parliament as a
sacriliegoui measure''—just as the Premier,bexb;,,,v
Leader of his party, had talked of ro . and e
cot -
fiseat ion, and spoliation, and so forth, as words alone
accurately indicative of the character of :he proposed
innovation. But with the one and with the other, pre-
cisely, in fact, as with every individual opponent of
this Irish Church:Bill both within and without the walls
of Imperial Parliament, the efforts made from first to
1 bst, in its regard, have been made in the tone and spirit
of constitutional opposition to what they have, one
and all of tbkm, regarded as a most obnoxious pro-
posal of the design for a legislative enactment—not
the least in the world, it should be said, in that spirit