The Sun.
London, England, 1868-04-04 00:00:00

2IIE POLITICS OF THE FUTURE.

The debate on the Irish Church is not only
a party contest, a life and death struggle
between the Insand the Outs, but it is some-
thing far more—a discussion of rare occurrence
involving principles of the most momentous
consequence to the nation. Under the pro-
cess of this discussion men are learning to
know their own minds, to -define their political
views as to the position of religion in political
life, and as they formulate their conclusions,
they will have to range themselves into new
combinations. Such a process—the natural
result of an earnest attempt to discover a con-
sistent principle of action—cannot but have a
disintegrating effect on existing political par-
ties, whose bond of union, until this question
arose with its imperious demand of justice
undelayed was a common view as to the fran-
chise, or free trade, or foreign policy. What-
ever the immediate effect of this debate may
be, men, whose opinions influence the life and
history of a nation, must declare themselves
either for or against the religious principle in
politics. No more momentous issue can be
put to a nation. England has hitherto enjoyed,
almost unconsciously, the happy heritage of
Catholic principles in politics. Hers was a
traditional wisdom, far surpassing the actual
statesmanship of many a Catholic nation which
had passed through the furnace of the Revo-
lution or suffered from the desolating effects
of a wide-spread irreligious Liberalism. Cus-
tom is nowhere stronger than in Conserva-
tive England, but custom has been on God's
side.
Now the traditional course, the principles
of our Catholic Constitution, have to be squared
with the principles of the age. The Irish
Church question is forcing on a decision which
could not anyhow have been long delayed in
the presence of that other great question which
awaits a solution—national education. We
must make up our minds whether, as a nation,
we are to uphold our traditional religious cha-
racter in politics, or sacrifice it to the irreli-
gious Liberalism of an influential and growing
section of English society. England, indeed,
has hitherto been better than her principles.
Is the nation now, under the force of the new
school of political philosophers, to square her
old practice with the new principles of politi-
cal and religious thought ? Such are the re-
flections which the Irish Church question is
forcing upon the public mind.
The Radicals, the Manchester school, the
philosophers and their allies and auxiliaries,
in a greater or lesser degree, are opposed
to the principle of Church Establishments
and endowments, to the public recognition
of religion, to the power and presence even
of the Church in public life. In the present
debate their course of action is clear ; they are
against the Irish Church, not only or exclu-
sively because it is not the national Church

but an alien religion forced on an unwilling
people by conquest and maintained in injus-
tice, but because it is a State Church. They
would sever politics, taken in the widest sense
of the word, from religion. The public life
of the nation, the actions of the State, the aim
and end of Government are, on the theory of
the rising school, to have no public connec-
tion whatsoever with religion. Religion is to
be to the State an unknown influence. Indi-
viduals in their private capacity may be open,
if they choose, to religious influences, but their
private opinions are to have no public effect,
and the religious association to which they be-
long no public recognition. Catholics have
no principles in common with the Liberation
Society and the philosophical secularists ;
they are the enemies of the Irish Establish-
ment, but no friends of ours—non tali auxilio
nec defensoribus istis.
At the present moment no policy would be
more beneficial, indeed, nothing is more neces-
sary for the sake of the highest interests of
the nation, than to challenge and defy the
godless theory of Government, to put the Man-
chester school and the philosophers on their
defence, to force them to avow before the face
of the nation their real and ultimate designs.
Were the Government to proclaim with one
voice, if that be possible in a Cabinet divided
against itself, that the public recognition of
religion, the endowment of the Church, its
union with the State, its control of every public
matter affecting spiritual interests, were essen-
tial principles of the English constitution im-
bedded in the heart of the nation, and that it
would be a treason to God, and a consummate
injury to the highest interests of the nation
to sacrifice the religious character of the State
to the theories of modern Liberalism, such a
distinct avowal of policy, such a challenge, we
feel satisfied, would rally greater support round
the Government than the " cross-fishing "
tactics that have no higher aim than to catch
stray votes. But what policy is more short-
sighted, or more disingenuous, than to con-
found the support of the Irish Establishment
with the upholding of a State Church such
as that of England ? The conditions under
which the Irish and English Establishments
I exist are, as we endeavoured to show last week,
totally different in character. To defend the
Irish Establishment is, indeed, to give strength
to the enemies of State Churches, and to divest
their designs in the public mind of their
irreligious character. Inferences are quickly
drawn. Men readily see that to attack so gross
a violation of justice as the existence of the Irish
Establishment is not an irreligious act, but a
duty. The sympathy, therefore, of a people
who love justice is on the side of State-Church
abolitionists, at least in their first step. To put
the enemies of religious endowments in the
right, even in one instance, is a grave folly.
The Government, in supporting the Irish
Establishment, is guilty of this irreparable
folly. Every true friend and supporter of the
principle of the public recognition of religion
by the State ought now to declare : Let jus-
tice be done on the Irish Establishment—let a
Church which is not the Church of the nation,
but the Church of a small minority, an alien
Church, repugnant to the faith and to the
patriotism of the people, imposed upon them
by force, be disestablished and disendowed—
let the Church of the nation—since for good
and sufficient reasons it declines to be be-
holden to the State—be at least publicly recog-
ni7.ed, give legal value to its acts, acknowledge
officially the status of its episcopate and clergy,
and treat it in every respect as a corporate
body possessing rights and representing the
religion of the nation. By so doing the Go-
vernment would proclaim a definite policy,
would draw a line of -marked distinction be-
tween itself and the irreligiou.s Liberalism of
the philosophers of the Manchester school and
their disciples. Such a policy would remove
from Ireland a long-standing injustice, would
save the English Establishment, and would be
a pledge that at least one powerful party in
the State would uphold as a principle of its
existence the recognition of religion in England
in all its relations to public life.
In the new combinations of parties which
the strife and collision of principles such as
now stir the hearts of men, is sure to bring
about, the statesman who is sagacidus enough
to take his stand on the religious principle in
politics, would not only be able to head a
powerful party, united by a common and in-
creasing danger, but even by the attempt
alone to stem the onsweep of irreligious Libe-
ralism, would confer an unspeakable benefit
on his country, and earn for himself an hon-
ourable name in the annals of its history.—
Westminster Gazette.

MISCELLANEOUS NEIVS.

(From the Anylo-American Times.)

The accounts of the Irish reception of the Heir
Apparent and the New Zealand reception of his
younger brother will simultaneously be presented
to the'public, and will form a pleasing contrast.
While the Prince of Wales is surrounded by gor-
geous ceremonials, which the " bloated aristocrats"
know so well how to make imposing, while an an-
cient Cathedral, rich iu church decoration, and re-
sounding with the solemn swell of sacred music,
witnesses an installation every effort of heraldry
combines to make impressive —the Duke of Edin-
burgh will be the centre of a Maori circle with a
old blankets a
lankestsuckwinigthpiag before him,
hole in the
their
e garments
aorfmpeonttast potatoes and
middle ; the fretted aisles, smoke stained rafters,
or better still, the canopy of heaven. But if civili-
zation gives:to the elder brother the advantages of
wealth and refinement in the hospitality extended,
nature will do much to compensate the younger for
these deficiencies. Through an atmosphere whose
brilliancy and purity that of Italy but faintly re-
sembles, the Prince will look abroad from the
mountain pah over a wild waste of towering moun-
tains and rushing water, of stupendous forests and
distant snow-capped ranges, and feel the elasticity
imparted by the pure untainted air of an unin-
habited country. The invitation has been extended
to him by a Chief of the Society Islands, who, when
asked how he intended to entertain his Royal
Highness, replied, " I would give him a basket of
sweet potatoes and taro and a sucking pig ; then,
if he were not full, he should have a basket of
oranges."
If the Fenians have made Ireland fashionable in
society, they have succeeded likewise in making
Irish questions fashionable in
the Legislature.
Mr. Gladstone proposes to disendow and dis-
establish the Irish Church, and the wild Irish
howl that followed the resolution has been
caught up in England, and from the row
it might be conjectured that the greatest " wake"
yet known in the
Emerald Isle was taking place.
It does not follow that the Irish Church is dead
and going to be buried, even though it should be dis-
endowed and divorced from the State. Many such
measures have been adopted amidst the most con-
fident predictions of ruin, but instead of ruin the
thing that has real
ever and vitality, freed from
degrading trarnniels and spurred by the necessity
for exertion, has thriven beyond the expectation of
gy
the most sanguine promoter of the measure. As it
exists the Irish Church is simply hateful to the mass
of the Irish people. It is a badge of conquest, a
clanking chain of servitude ; and to expect ad en-
thusiastic and imaginative race to hug these fetters,
is to look for an absurdity. A more useless
establishment
has never been maintained for a
more lengthened period. It was founded to
Protestantiz3 Ireland ; and it has ma le
Ireland the most Catholic country of Europe; it
was founded to maintain English ascendancy, and
it has made the very name of England hateful to
every Celt in every part of the worn. It was
founded to pacify
the 'island, and the latest crop it
has produced is Fenianism. All principles of jus-
tice being outraged by this establishment, it could
not offer any strenuous opposition to the measure
that swept it from it existence, were it not re-
garded as the outer bulwark of the establishment in
England. There the case is wholly different, for
the Church finds its hold in the hearts of the people.
It is the Church of their fathers for long genera-
.,