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

The Noble Lord's proposition only carried that principle out
a little farther, and said it would be wise to extend education
also to the Roman Catholics. He (Mr. Perrin) agreed
with the Noble Lord ( Stanley) the Member for North Lanca-
shire in his opinion of the Protestant faith ; he wished that
every man in Ireland was a Protestant ; and he thought that
the best way of attaining that most desirable end would be
to afford a general moral and religious education to the
whole of the community. In the course of his speech he
(Mr. Perrin) had alluded very particularly to a parish where
the Protestant families amounted only to four, where a Pro-
testant curate received only 751. a year, but where the tithe
amounted to 750/. a year; in conclusion, he would only ask
who was the incumbent of that parish ? Sir Harcourt Lees.
—( Loud cheers.)
Mr. Serjeant JACKSON, notwithstanding the respect
that he entertained for the opinions of his Hon. and Learned
Friend who had just sat down, differed from him upon many
questions, and upon none more strongly than that under the
consideration of the House, he was rejoiced, however, to
hear his Hon. and Learned Friend make one admission—
the necessity of maintaining an Established Church in Ireland;
but he much doubted whether many of those by whom his
Hon. and Learned Friend was surrounded, would agree with
him in that opinion. It was true that some few had conceded
it—but if this measure were once passed he thought his Hon.
and Learned Friend would find that those who agreed with
him at the present moment would soon retract their opinions
and express themselves ready to combine with any who should
be prepared to take another step against the Church. Of
the ultimate intentions of the Roman Catholics it was impossi-
ble to doubt when they referred to a letter written by the
Hon. and Learned Member for the city of Dublin, in Sep-
tember last, in which that Hon. and Learned Gentleman vindi-
cated himself in the eyes of his Catholic countrymen
by declaring that he had limited himself to an at-
tempt to otain the remission of three-fifths only of
the tithes of Ireland, because he felt that three-fifths
was all that he could then reasonably expect to ob-
tain, adding, " I will make sure of the first instalment,
and afterwards labour to obtain • the residue of the
debt." The Hon. Gentleman proceeded in a tone of voice
scarcely audible in the Gallery, to enter into a statement of
figures to show that the revenues of the Church in Ireland had
been greatly over-rated. The surplus, if any, could not be
very great, but as yet they could not tell that there was any at
all. The course pursued by the late Government had been
most unstatesmanlike and impolitic. He did not deny the
necessity of education—he had never opposed himself to edu-
cation ; but he maintained that the funds now in the hands of
the Board of Education in Ireland were amply sufficient.
One of the objections that he made to the proposition of the
Noble Lord was this—that so far from being a healing mea-
sure, so far from producing peace and harmony in Ireland, it
would, in his opinion, be impossible to find a measure more
calculated to produce and' even bloodshed, in that
country.—( Hear.) And why ? Because by that measure
it was proposed that wherever a certain number of Protestants
were not found in a parish, or where the Protestant population
did not bear a certain proportion to the Roman Catholic, a
Protestant clergyman should not be appointed at all. What
would be the result of such a provision ? Why, that the
Roman Catholics would take care, by every means in their
power, to discourage the residence of Protestants. That
course was already pursued to a certain extent, and the conse-
quence of it was, that great numbers of respectable Protestant
yeomen were annually emigrating from Ireland, with the
view of seeking in a distant land the peace and security
denied them on their native soil.—( Cries of " Hear, hear.")
Mr. GISBORNE said, the point between the two sides of
the House appeared to him to be this—that whereas the Gen-
tlemen on the Ministerial side of the House, together with the
Noble Lord ( Stanley) and the Right Baronet ( Sir James
Graham) asserted that tithes were, in fact, by reason of
the mode of collection, the sole cause of the disturbances
in Ireland so far as related to ecclesiastical matters, whilst they
on that (the Opposition) side of the House, asserted that they
were not the sole cause of those disorders; but that the exist-
ance of the Irish Church, as a Pr .testant Establishment main....

tained solely for a small part only of the inhabitants of
that country, partook also with the tithes in causing those
disturbances. That, he apprehended, was the point of difference
now arising between the two sides of the House on the reso-
lution then before them. He conceived that the House could
hardly come to a right solution of that point of difference
without first considering the system on which the Irish
Church was founded. The Protestant Church in Ire-
land bad always been the corner stone and foundation of
our system of government in that country. Protestant Lord
Lieutenants of counties, Protestant magistrates, Prosestant
Sheriffs, a Protestant court, a Protestant judicial bench,
packed juries, and an Orange yeomanry—these were the in-
stitutions—a part of them now rescinded, and a part retained
—that formed part and parcel of the same exclusive system of
Protestantism. The real question which affected the feelings
of the people of Ireland, was this—for whose benefit had these
institutions been maintained? Had it been for the banefit of
the Irish people ? When he heard the Noble Lord ( Stanley)
say that he could not believe that the Protestant Church,
maintained out of its own resources, could be the cause of the
discontents in Ireland, it seemed to him (Mr. Gisborne) that
the Noble Lord did not understand the elementary principle
on which society rested. What was the principle on which
law and order were maintained in society ? Surely, not the
principle of force. The idea of maintaining order and law
by force was a monstrous and barbarous idea. Social insti-
tutions were of no value, nor were they capable of promoting
either the happiness or the prosperity of a people unless main-
tained by public feeling and public opinion.—(Cheers.) In
England and Scotland there was a feeling in every man's
mind that, with some causes of complaint, the institutions of the
country mainly existed for his benefit; but in Ireland the insti-
tutions were not in accordance with the feelings of the people.
That was the cause of the alienation of the people from those
institutions, and that was the cause of the necessity that existed
there for the maintenance of order and law by force. —( Cheers. )
It was not simply the existence of the Irish Church, but it was
the fact of the general feelings of the people being alienated
from the institutions of the country, of which the maintenance
of that Church was the foundation, that produced a state of
society in Ireland under which no security and no prosperity
could exist.—( Cheers. ) The ecclesiastical institutions in Ire-
land not being in consonance with the feelings of the great
bulk of the people, was the foundation of all the insecurity and
all the misery which existed in that country. This Resolution
of the Noble Lord was the last, the sincere—he trusted it
might not be the desperate—attempt to save the Protestant
Church in Ireland.—( Laughter from the Ministerial side, and
loud cheers from the Opposition.) He would say that it was
with such an intention, and with the view to make the Pro-
testant Church tolerable to the feelings of the people of Ire-
land, that the Resolution was now proposed.—( Renewed
laughter and cheers.) He had nothing to disguise from the
House. He would say, that if the Protestant Church could
not be made to exist in consonance with the feelings of the
people of Ireland, it was impossible that the Government or
the people of this country could maintain it. The only
way to maintain the Church in Ireland was by letting the
people feel that they had an interest in it. The Noble
Lord ( Stanley) had said, that if there were only ten Pro-
testants—nay, if there were only one Protestant in a parish—
he had a right to have a Church Establishment maintained for
him ; and the Noble Lord also said, that the Catholic had not
even the paltry right of having the surplus revenue of the Pro-
testant Church applied to the education of his children. If
that were the Noble Lord's principle, then he had, indeed, di-
vided the people of Ireland into two classes—into 500,000
Spartans on the one side, and seven millions of Helots on the
other.—( Cheers.) Did the Noble Lord really maintain this
principle, even with regard to a surplus ? Because, if this
were indeed the principle of the Noble Lord, then, much as
he respected the Noble Lord's talents, and highly as he ad-
mired his character, he must say, that he would most unwil-
lingly ever see that Noble Lord conducting the administra-
tion of the affairs of this country.—( Very great cheering from
the Opposition.) Any connection of the Noble Lord with
any Administration, if made inseparable from such a prin-
ciple as that, would, in spite of his talents and his character, be
a great national calamity.—( Great cheering.) The Noble
Lord had told them, and other Hon. Gentlemen had since re-
peated the observation, that our resolution proposed at once to
give peace and satisfaction to Ireland. Now, he (Mr. Gis-
borne) never thought such a thing, and he had never heard of
such a proposition.—( Cheers.) But he would tell the Noble
Lord what the object of the resolution was, and what it would
do :—its object was to remove, and he believed it would
remove, an impediment, without the removal of which
peace could not come to Ireland. It would remove an insu-
perable impediment out of the way, and that was all it pro-
fessed to do. He sincerely hoped that they might be able to
attain that object.—(Cheers.) But if that impediment should
not be removed by the resolution being now rejected, he most
earnestly believed that peace never could be produced in Ire-
land without the total destruction of the Established Church.
(Cheers.) He, perhaps, might be allowed to say a few words
on the subject of the right of interference with Church pro-
perty. It had been said that Parliament could not interfere
with property over which there existed in no way and supreme
power. The Church itself could not alienate the property,
nor, it was said, could the State in any manner deal with it.
How did the Church become possessed of property of this un-
intelligible quality? " Why, Sir (continued Mr. Gisborne),
in some dark and ignorant age, some gross profligate, some
enormous sinner, some oppressor of the people, some despoiler
of the widow and the orphan, when lying on his death-bed is
visited by a wily priest, who tells him his sins arc so great
that unless he gives his property to the Church his soul will re-
main in purgatory till the day of judgment, and in eternal tor-
ments ever after. That is the foundation of the right of the
Church to that property ; and the consequence of such a gift—a
gift made perhaps after the wavering reason had ceased to guide
the act or the intentions of the donor—is to be, that to the end of
society this estate must be devoted to ecclesiastical purposes.
That is your first absurdity.—( Cheers.) Then, this gross
and unscriptural attempt to expiate sin—this, which you
yourselves bold to be impious, heretical, and anti-christian,
you construe into an unalienable title to this property for Pro..
testant purposes. That is your second absurdity." Now, to
show that he was not exaggerating nor mis-stating anything,
he would not bring any paltry instance, nor cite any small por-
tion of property which some wretched sinner had been deluded
out of at the end of his life. He would read the preamble of
an Act which was made the foundation of large possessions
held by the Church. That Act was made by a King who
was an usurper, and who, in the first year of his usurpation,
being anxious to secure the clergy on his side, presented them
with this large donation. The preamble of the grant of tithes
by King Stephen, in 1135, ran thus :—" Because, through
the Providence of Divine mercy we know it is to be so or-
dered, and by the churches publishing it far and near, every-
body hath heard, that by the distribution of alms persons may
be absolved from the bonds of sin, and acquire the reward of
heavenly joy, I, Stephen, by the grace of God, King of Eng-
land, being willing to have part with them who, by a happy
kind of trading, exchange heavenly things for earthly, and