The Sun.
London, England, 1835-07-24 00:00:00

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necessity there was for a Peotcetant Church. lie did not
believe in what the Hon. Member for the University of
Oxford (Sir IL Inglis) called the expansive force cf Pro-
testantism.—( Hear, hear.) The next point to which he
objected in the Bill was the great discretionary power which
k was proposed to give to the Lord Lieutenant. He objected
to the delegation of so great a power to an, Berson whatever.
He had every reason to suneose, from what he knew of the
Noble Lord who now filled the office of Lord Lieutenant of
Ireland, that he would exercise any power entrusted to him
fairly and justly ; but the powers proposed in this instance
to be conferred were so great, that unless Parliament
fatal definitively the point at which the reduction should posi
tively commence, he feared the whole object of the Bill
might be neutralized, if it should fall into unfriendly hands in
the person of the Lord Lieutenant. He objected, therefore,
to the 60th, 61st, and 70th clauses. all of which gave great
eliscretionaes powers to the Lord Lieutenant, both as to the
Appointment of ministers, and the amount of salary they should
receive. He would not quarrel with the principle of univer-
saiity, as laid down by his Noble Friend below him—that
principle, which said that there should be no part of the coun-
try which could be regarded as out of the pale of the Establish-
ed Church ; but he must say, that he regarded the 5/. which,
tinder the provisions of the Bill, might redistributed in 150 in
stai.ees to the officiating- ministers of adjoining parishes, for looks
ing aw^r the spiritual wants of other parishes in which there was
a single Protestantresident, as money completely thrown away.
Another point to which he objected, was the preservation of
the whole, stab of the Irish Church. He thought that one
-Bishop for every province in Ireland, with 4,000/. a year, and
the Archbishop. for the whole country with 6,000/. or 7,000/.
a year, would be' apply sufficient. If lie went into any
argumett upon the pc,;:qt,,_ he might say that the whole Pro-
testant populatforeof Irelai;4 -amounted only to 100,000 souls,
that there was double that arnolant in the diocese of London
alone, for whose spiritual governii:4l4 there was but one
Bishop, and that in the new diocese of :‘.ateellester which the
Eeetesulstical Commissioners proposed to establish, there
would not be less than 1,200 000. He for onJ, -therefore,
could not perceive any necessity that existed for preseassing so
-large ai, neer of not did ha see any thillg,
irreligious in extendirg the provisions of the Church Tempo-
ralities Bill, to reduce the number of i;isliopa to the lowest
possible amount consistent with a proper episcopal superin-
tendence of the Church, and to appropriate the revenues of
the reduced bishoprics in aid of the fund provided for the
parochial .clergy, and for the advancement of the moral and
religious instruction of the poorer classes. lie now came
to the arguments advanced in the course of the last night
against the Government plan, and more especially to the
arguments advanced by the Right Honourable Baronet ( Sir
James Graham) the Member for Cumberland, whom he
regretted not to see in his place at that time, and whose
absence lie confessed be was not very well able to ac-
count for, because the Right Honourable Baronet must
naturally expect, after the language he used last evening to-
wards his old associates—after the bitter reproaches lie had
thrown out against them—after the deliberate accusation that
they were guilty of a sacrilegous violation 'of .the rights of the
Church—after the application of such terms to these with
whom he formerly acted in concert, the Right Hon. Baronet
must naturally have expected that the first person who rose
this evening would be anxious to reply to him.—( Hear, hear.)
In the absence of the Right Hon. Baronet, therefore, he-
should not be prevented from using every argument he should
have felt it his duty to use had he been present. He would
not use any stronger terms than he should have used in the
Rieht lion. Baronet's presence ; but his absence on the oc-
casion should not induce him to abstain from commenting on
the Right Hon. Baronet's speech in the terms in which he
thought it deserved.—( Hear.) His Noble Friend (Lord
Howick) said he had listened to that speech with astonish-
ment. ( Here an Hon. Member on the Opposition side made
an observation.) The Gallant Officer opposite said that the
Noble Lord replied to it. The Noble Lord did reply, and
replied to it most admirably. But, at the same time, he (Mr.
Ward) admitted at once, that the Right Hon. Baronet's speech
was a speech of no ordinary length—of no ordinary propor-
tion—not hastily prepared, and therefore not hastily to be
answered. The Noble Lord (Howick) said that he had lis-
tened to the speech with astonishment. He (Mr. Ward) had
listened to it with more than astonishment—ho would not use
a harsh term ; but he would say he had listened to it with
grief—( Hear, hear)—with grief to see a man, whose name had
been attached to measures of reform and liberal improvement,
so completely apostatized from his party—( Cheers)—as to
hold in that House sentiments of the most narrow-minded and
bigotted fanaticism.—( Cheers.) In his speech of last night,
the Right lion. Baronet unsaid all that he had previously as-
serted in the course of his political career. The Right Hon.
Baronet knew full well that we never could expect stability in
the order of affairs in Ireland, or in this country, until the Irish
Church question was settled—yet lie last night held language
utterly at variance with that knowledge, and in which, as if
not satisfied with his own apostacy, he took the opportunity of
alluding invidiously to those with whom he formerly acted.—
(" No, no," and cheers.) And all this the Right lion. Ba-
ronet did with the word " toleration" constantly on his lips.
He (Mr. Ward) thanked GOD that his views of toleration
were very different • from those of the Right Hon. Baronet.
—( Hear, hear.) He took his principle of -what really
constituted Christianity and toleration from a very high au-
thority, and as the Right Hon. Baronet (Sir James Gra-
ham) was indulged by the House in reading more than one
passage which ho conceived to bear on this argument, he
trusted that the House would indulge him by listening to one
extract from a work of one of the most distinguished orna-
ments of the Established Church—he alluded to BishopWat-
aose_4 Hear, hear.) Bishop Watson said—" By Christianity
I mean not that a man should pass his life in theological con-
troversy, or perplex himself in estimating the worth of the se-
veral systems of faith with which the Christian world has, un-
happily, been oppressed, but that he should be habituated to
consider the Gospel as containing a rule of life, which nothing
should ever induce him to disparage or neglect. I scruple
not in giving the name of Christian Churches to assemblies 'of
men uniting together for public worship, though they may differ
somewhat from each other in doctrine and discipline, provided
they all agtile in the fundamental principle of the Christian re-
ligion, that is the Christ, the Saviour of the world. Each
Church is apt to impute not. merely error, but crime, to every
other Church. This imputation I think extremely wrong. It
is judging another man's servant. It is assuming dominion over
_ another man's faith. It is presuming that we are rendering
God service, when it may be that we are merely supporting
our own prejudices, flattering our own self-sufficiency, and
paying homage to our own intellectual pride." Now that
was Zdefinition of Christianity in which he (Mr. Ward) most
cordially concurred, and he wished the Right Hon. Baro,iet
had gathered his principles cf toleration and his conception
of the Christian religion from the writings of Bishop Wat-
son.—( Hear.) Here the Hon. Gentleman went into a state-
ment to show that the Right Hon. Baronet ( Sir James Gra-
ham) had not taken a correct view of the feeling of the peop'a
of Scotland upon this subject. All the great towns of Scot-
land—Edinburgh, Aberdeen, Glasgow, Leith, Dundee, and
fair proportion of the Scotch counties—bad returned liberal
Nlembers to Parliament, every one of whom was in favour of
the present proposition. God forbid, therefore, that he should
so belie tho sentiments of that literal and enlightened na-
tion as to say their sentiments were fairly represented
by the miserable address from the Synod of Dumfries,
to which the Right Honourable Baronet had referred.—
( Loud cheering.) What was the Synod of Dumfries ? I low
was it constituted ? Was the I louse aware that thirty of its
members were actually appointed by the Duke of Buecleuch ?
—(Cries of" Hear, hear.") Such-was the fact : and it was
his firm belief that the address to which they had pledged
themselves was not an address of their own manufacture. He
believed it was sent up from somewhere about this quarter of
the country.—( Hear, hear.) It smelt of the South.—( Hear,
bear.) It savoured strongly of Exeter hall.—(Great laugh-
ter and cheering.) If it were. submitted to the other Synods
of Scotland, with a fair deseription, not a calumnious descrip-
tion, but a air description of the provisions of the present
Bill, he believed it would be universally repudiated by them.
There were one or two other points on which the Right Hon.
Baronet touched, and on which he (Mr. Ward), though sen-
sible he had already trespassed too long on the patience of the
House, was still anxious to say a few words.—(" Go on.")
To his great astonishment the Right lion. Baronet had quoted
from the works of Mr. Cobbett—and certainly the quotation
was not a very happy or a very appropriate one. He quoted
Mr. Cobbett not to decide the point, but for the purpose of
supporting the opinion that tithei were as much the property
of the Church as family estates were the property of a gen-
tleman.—(hear, hear.) NOW the misfortune of quoting
from Mr. Cobbett was, that if in one place lie had as-
serted a particular opinion, with a little industry one might
almost always find a direct answer to it in another.— (Hear,
hear, and loud laughter.) If the Right Honourable Ba-
ronet were ready to make one admission, and that was, that
Mr. Cobbett, like himself, grew wiser as lie, grew older, and
that his last opinion, therefose, was - infinitely more valuable
than his first—if the Right Hon. Baronet would admit that,
lie ( Mr. Ward) would take the last work of. Me. Cobbett,
which he entitled " A Legacy to Parsons"—( Hear, hear)—
and would quote a passage, which he thought afforded a pretty
good answer to the proposition advanced by the Right Hon.
Baronet.- - Mr. Cobbett said, " The great question now at
issue is thia—Has the Parliament the rightful power to as-
sume, to take possession of, and to dispose of the tithes and all
other property commonly called Church property, in what-
ever manner it may think proper?" And further on, he an-
swered the question thus :—" We arc now going to see, that
to tither, to oblations, to bishops' lands,. to anything that you
possess us clergy of the Church, you have no prescriptive
right, any more than the Duke of Wellington has to his estate
of Stratlifieldsayoe which he possesses in virtue of an Act of
Parliament, and solely in virtue of that Act of Parliament."
The argument of Mr. C,l)bett was, that what the law consti-
tuted, it could change ; but the argument of the Right lion.
Baronet ( Sir James Graham) Was, that what no law consti-
tuted, no law could change. ee,
Lord STANLEY was understood to v ask, what was the
ground of the Act of Parliament that settled Strathfieldsaye
on the Duke of Welling-ton ?
Mr. WARD replied that the ground of that Act still sub-
sisted. That ground was the national gratitude—(Cheers
from Lord Stanley); and he admitted it would be unjust to
repeal that Act.
Mr. O' CONNELL observed that the Duke of Welling.
might forfeit the property given to him by the public will ;
and that Parliament might take it away from him.—( Cheers
from the Opposition, and particularly from Lord Stanley-)
Mr. WARD did not mind those cheers. He would re-
peat, that it would be a most unjust act to take that property
away from the Duke of Wellington, because the grounds on
which he held it were subsisting ; hiit the question was, whe-
ther the original grounds on which the Church property in
Ireland was held by that Church, did any longer subsist ?
(( Ministerial cheers.) It was not enough to say that ori-
ginally there were grounds for the Church holding this pro.
perty. Ile called upon the Right lion. Baronet and the