The Sun.
London, England, 1835-04-08 00:00:00

THE SUN, LONDON, WEDNESDAY, APRIL 8, 1835.

ciple I resist.—( Cheers.) It is not the withdrawing of a
certain limited sum from the Church for the purposes of edu-
cation, or the application of this sum, but it is the principle,
the element of the right of transfer, that I think dangerous,
and which will fall with disastrous consequences upon the very
vitality of the Irish Church, and be the forerunner of invasion
on other property.—( Cheers.) Sir, I maintain quite a dif-
ferent principle from the Noble Lord and his incongruous
body of adherents.—( Cheers.) The principle for which I
contend—yes, and for which I am sure the rank, the mind,
and property of the country will contend—is a principle that
has been most uniformly, most strenuously, and most un-
flinchingly contended for by the men most eminent in point
of talent, and most distinguished for their bold and persevering
efforts for the removal of civil distinctions and civil disabilities.
If I take a survey of the men since the first discussions of the
Catholic question who have been most famed for their genius
and erudition, and laboured most effectively to procure jus-
tice and equality for all classes of the people, men who
were the most prominent and the most powerful in pulling
down ascendancy and monopoly—l find all these boldly and
positively contending for the maintenance of the Pro-
testant Establishment.—( Hear, hear.) They contended for
it on the grounds of policy and justice.—( Loud cheers
from the Ministerial side.) Burke, while in the full-
ness of his attachment to the cause of well-regulated liberty.
and in his sympathy for his proscribed countrymen, supported
the propriety of removing the disabilities of the Catholics, and
every other disability that affected any class of the people, yet
laid it down as a distinct and unalterable principle, that the
Protestant Establishment should be upheld. Lord Plunket,
who did mot,: than any other man by the force of his vast ta-
lents, by his legal 1:n owledge, and his perseverance, power,
and skill as a debater anU do advocate, to advance the success
of the Catholic cause, declareu :bet an Established Church in

Ireland was necessary, and, in his own forcible language, he
said " the ruin of the Establishment would seal the fate of the
Union."—(Renewed cheers.) But Lord Plunket was not
alone. Sir J. Newport; with talents inferior, but with a fidelity
as tried, a devotion as strong, and a zeal as warm in the cause
of the emancipation of the Irish Catholics as Lord Plunket,
and with an enthusiasm, too, in the cause of liberty as great as
Burke, maintained the same doctrine, and avowed the same
opinions. This venerable advocate of the Irish Catholics pre-
sided at a meeting in the city of Waterford, when he gave his
sanction to a resolution which declared that, " after making a
suitable provision for the curates, and providing for the build-
ing and repairs of churches, the revenues of the Church were
not more than necessary for its wants."--(Loud cheering.)
Such were the opinions of Sir J. Newport, who diligently
examined the whole state and property of the Church, and I
think he will be thought no mean authority on the subject.
But, Sir, this is not all. I have another authority as distin-
guished, as indisputable, and as genuine as either. I have the
dying declaration of the celebrated Grattan. I have this de-
claration, not as the sudden and fleeting remark of a great man,
but as his written and published testimony to the value of the
Protestant Church and the propriety of maintaining it. I
recollect the debate on the Catholic question, after the death
of that great man, and I shall beg to quote to the House
the dying declaration that he had written, and which was used
on that occasion. It refers to resolutions which he intended
to have moved in the House if his life were spared, and to the
conditions on which they were to be based. The resolutions
were not moved—and the declaration is merely to be consi-
dered as a testamentary document showing the opinions of
that eminent man of the utility of the Church established in
Ireland, and the propriety of upholding it. The Right Hon.
Baronet read the document, which was to this effect :—That
he asked Providence to spare his life to give him an oppor-
tunity of recommending the appointment of a Committee of
the House to remove the disabilities of the Roman Catholics
—but that the repeal of such disabilities be made with a regard
to the maintenance of the Protestant religion of Ireland. It
concluded by saying, " I die with the love of liberty in my
breast, and those resolutions in my heart."—( Cheers.) Such
was the dying testimony of Grattan in favour of the Irish
Church ; and will you (speaking to the Opposition) dis-
regard it ?—( Cheers.) Look, I warn you, to what you
are about to do ; you are entering on new scenes, and
broaching bold and strange principles. To these scenes
and those principles there will be—for there can be—no
limitation, no check, but in the destruction of the Protestant
Church.—( Cheers.) I, Sir, am not unconscious of the diffi-
culties of the present time. I see well the embarrassments
that surround us. I see the erroneous and vicious doctrines
respecting property that are beginning to be set afloat. I see
the busy spirits that are at work to unsettle the public mind
and heave the nation. I would, then, most unfeignedly labour
to remove those difficulties, and produce general security and
repose; and I shall make every effort consistent with honour
and public principle, and a regard for the public interest, to
retain the post to which the favour of the Sovereign has called
me.—( Cheers.) But neither honour, nor duty, nor my regard
for the public interest, and the maintenance of the Union, on
which depend the integrity and stability of the empire, tell me
I can sanction the pernicious principle involved in these frau-
dulent resolutions.—( Cheers.) I think I shall expose the coun-
try to less difficulty, and the State to less alarm, by refusing
to adopt them.—(l,oncl cheers.) I refuse to adopt them from
an imperious sense of dily, from the h7d doctrine they broach,
and the fatal ends they will lead to ; and in this refusal I have
the support of great authority.—( Cheers. ) On the high
grounds then of duty and the public welfare, and on the
authority of the greatest and the wisest of our statesmen, the
friend of liberty and the Censtitotion—Burke--on the autho-
rity of Plunkett the untiring and able champion of Catholic
Emancipai ion—tin the authority of Newport, the old and con-
sistent advocate of the Irish people ; and on the authority of
the dying declaration of the illustrious Grattan, the father of
his country, I proclaim to this House and the empire that,
come what mav, I shall be no party to the principle of the reso-
lution of the Noble Lord. (The Right Hon. Baronet resumed
his seat amidst the most enthusiastic cheering, which lasted
several minutes.)
Mr. SPRING RICE rose amidst loud cries of " Divide I"
and called upon the House to inquire whether the Right Hon.
Baronet had put the question on which they were about to de-
cide upon its fair and just ground ? It was not fairly stated
of those on his side of the House, that they had precipitated
the decision of the question ; nor had the Right Hon. Baronet
fairly assumed that any reproach ought to be cast upon them
for calling upon the House to decide upon it in the absence of
information which might afterwards be afforded. The ques-
tion had been mentioned in the early part of the session. One
of the earliest notices given was that of his Noble Friend,
which was given even before the Right Hon. Gentleman an-
nounced his intention of introducing a Tithe Bill. His Noble
Friend was then informed that the report was not forthcoming,
and so anxious was he for information, that he asked for any
which could be furnished. He had at length come forward
with his motion, when it was forced on him, by the introduc-
tion, on the part of the Right Hon. Secretary for Ireland, of
the Tithe Bill. Those with whom he ( Mr. S. Rice) then
acted had stated on that occasion, that the resolution which
the Right Hon. Gentleman then proposed, did, in point of
fact, affirm the present question against them. If they could,
they would have been willing to wait for the report of the
Commissioners, because what was matter of inference now,
would have been matter of certainty then. The Right Hon.
Gentleman had charged them with the necessity of proving the
existence of a surplus, and then had taxed them with wanting
evidence to establish that point. He (Mr. S. R.) would repeat
again what he formerly urged, that as long as there were
parishes in Ireland, in which clergy were endowed without
having any duty to perform—he wanted not to go into any
further calculations on the subject--there was at once suffi-
cient ground for declaring that these church sinecures were
sinecures which ought to be abolished. There was no safety
for the Church in Ireland, while they existed. They were
advancing no new opinions, and maintaining no new doctrines ;
they had not taken their present position for the purpose of
harrassing the existing Government.—( Oh, oh !) It was pos-
sible that some Gentlemen, who were not Members of the
late Parliament, might doubt that declaration ; those who
were Members of that Parliament need only be reminded
of the principles laid down by his Noble Friend Lord Al-
thorp, in the late session, on the 2d of June, and which
coincided, in every essential particular, with the course
which had been taken by them on his (Mr. Spring Rice's)
side of the House. " Church property;" said that Noble
Lord, " is trust property ; and if such property is greater
than is necessary for accomplishing that trust, if it is greater
than is necessary for the maintenance of the Established
Church or for the benefit of Ireland, I think that, so far
from injuring the interests of the Established Church, the
applying of part of that property to the religious and moral
education of the people, will tend quite as much, if not a great
deal more, to promote the interests of the Protestant religion,
than the ruainicl. in which that property is now applied. It
would be quite impossible for any one who compared these
sentiments with the resolution before tan House to suppose
that those who brought forward that resolution could be
actuated by any motives of faction, The Right Hon. Baronet
said also that they had anticipated the Tithe Bill, and pre-
maturely brought on a discussion which they might have taken
in the Committee on that Bill. Whose fault was it that they
were not then discussing that Bill ? They had tendered their
support to the Right Hon. Gentleman when he brought in the
resolution:, en which the Bill was to be founded ; and was it
fair for the Right Hon. Gentleman to suspend that measure
from the 20th March to the ith April, and then tax those with
whom he (Mr. S. Rice) acted with anticipating it. The
Right Hon. Baronet said that the course which they had taken
was unprecedented. There had been much in the course of
the present Session which was unprecedented, and which
called. on them to take their stand.--( Hear, hear.) He
belieVed that the present proposition had been brought
forward with the former Government still in power. If
the Honourable Member for St. Albans (Mr. Ward) had
proposed a resolution to this effect, he believed that the
sense of the late House of Commons would have carried that
resolution against the late Government. But looking to the
resolution itself, if it were true, surely it was right for the
House of Commons to icy down as a preliminary principle of
legislation, that which they believed to be essential to the
Tithe Bill. It was not for him to make any observations on
the concluding declaration of the Right Hon. Baronet ; be
could assure him that in the whole course of his proceeding in
respect to the present question. the last thing that entered into
his contemplation was the making it a party question.—(oh,
oh ; hear, hear.) If those Gentlemen who appeared to dis-
sent from that declaration wished to hold out, by so dissenting,
that the House was to be fettered in the just and legitimate
exercise of their own powers, for the purpose of securing
the present or any other Goverriment—[hear, hear)—if, in
this Reformed Parliament, they entert tined such an opi-
nion, they did not rightly understand the legitimate alle-
giance of political friends--they did not understand the
fair performance of duty on the part of those dis-
, connected with them. There were weightier interests
connected with this question than the existence of any one
Government.—( Loud cries of " Hear," from both sides.) He
. believed that as firmly as any of the Gentlemen on the oppo-
. site side, who cheered; and they might, perhaps, cheer again,

when he told them that the first and the chief of those inte-
rests he considered to be the maintenance, in due proportion,
of the means of giving religious instruction to the Protestants
of Ireland. He did not disregard the inconvenience—the pos-
sible dangers connected with this or any other proposition on
the subject; but were there, let him ask, no existing dangers
or difficulties? Was the preaent state of Church property--
under which the Right Hon. Gentleman himself told them
they could not undertake the recovery of tithes without force—
was that free from all inconvenience or peril? The Right
Hon. Gentleman had quoted authorities in Irish history, to
which he (Mr. S. Rice) and his friends paid the greatest
respect ; but those authorities were rather the authorities of
the names of those great individuals than of their actual
opinions; in this latter view they were his (Mr. S. Rice's)
authorities, and he called on the House in their names
to assist him, and those with whom he acted, in main-
taining the Irish Church. He took the liberty of saying that,
as a Protestant, he considered education to be a strictly
Protestant purpose; and believing, as he did, that the religion
which he professed was the true one, he believed also that the
progress of knowledge must be most conducive to its diffusion.
Give him in one parish an effective schoolmaster, and in ano-
ther a sinecure clergyman without a flock, and he should be
disposed to look for more beneficial results in the former than
in the latter case. The Right Hon. Gentleman then sat
down, and loud cries of " Divide 1" immediately resounded
throughout the House ; in the midst of which
Mr. HARDY put a question to Lord John Russell, which
the Noble Lord answered. Both the question and the reply
were inaudible.
The House then divided—
For the motion
Against it 258
Majority . —27
The announcement of the numbers was received with loud
cheers.