The Sun.
London, England, 1868-06-30 00:00:00

IMPERIAL PARLIAMENT

HOUSE OF LORDS-LAST EVENING.

The LouD OfLINCELLOR took his seat on the wo9lsack
at five o'clock. •
THIRD READINGS.
Tottenham and Hampstead Junction Railway ; South-
Eastern and London, Chatham, and Dover (London,
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Mho

FA IRS BILL.
This bill was read a second time time.
ESTABLISHED CHURCH (IRELAND) DILL.
The adjourned debate on the am m Iment that this bill
be read a second time this day six months was resumed

this evening.
The Duke of ARGYLL, who, as mover of the
adjournment, was in possession of the house, said
that it was not possible or desirable that this debate
should be confined within the limits of the bill before them.

There wore other important subjects surrounding it that

ought to be introduced into the matter. There was
a duty which those interested in the bill ought to
perform, and that was that they ought to give
to the Irish people au imperial guarantee that this impor-
tant bill should receive the fullest consideration, and he

believed that not even an adverse vote thereon

would repudiate it. They had made th 3 disesta-
blishment of the Irish Church a great party

question, and ho did not deny it. For this they had been
censured by the bench of bishops and by members of the
Government. The noble duke, the President of the Council,
had told them that theirpolicy was a dishonest policy. But
those offensive expressions excited no anger in his
mini He would tell the noble dukes and earls
opposite that no such motives actuated them.
lI
held it to be the duty of great party leaders to introduce
great questions, and not to be withheld from bringing
them forward. He was surprised to hear that their policy
had been stiginatised as dishonest. The conduct of the
party to which ho bolonze I had nlw Lys been the first to
precipitate any groat mossuro. Take, for instance,
the question of Reform ; it was their object
to obtain it, and now it was their bounden
duty to connect their feelings in concert with
their own political body, and there would be no
greater test of their sincerity than to connect their own
opinions with the fOrtunes of their own political party.
(Hear, hear.) They wished to save the funds of the Irish
Church, and this was quite at variance with the opinion's
of a noble lord, who said that the funds of the Irish
Church were so great that he proposed to divide them
among six millions of the Irish people. It
was most important to preserve those funds
from being wasted. They all knew there wore more
bishops than were necessary, and more livings than people
to support them, and he asserted that every year they lost
they were spending money which might be consoli -
dated. They were every year by rejecting this bill
doing nothing but pure mischief by allowing money
to be uselessly spent. He wished to say another word on
this bill, that was the bearing that it had to the Resolu-
tions in the House of Commons. It was urged that there
might be a quibble on the part of the Opposition that the
word disendowmeut was not used in theßesolutions in the
House of Commons, but that the word " disestablish-
meat " woul I be supplie I. Now, no human being
thought of such a thing as total disandowrnent—it was
only a question how far the disendownsent should
go; and those who voted on this bill were quite
at liberty to go as far as they chose with the
question of disendowment. This was a bill for the pur-
pose of saving a waste of funds and nothing else, and the
ultimate disposal of these funds would be a question for
the house to determine hereafter. The reason why
bishops were not appointed to sees where their
a•nount of emolument would be uncertain, was that
they considered it impossible to ask high offioers of the
Church to be appointed under such conditions, and there-
_ .

fore they introduced the clause that during such intermis-
sion no appointment should be made. Another prelate had
stated that such a condition of the church would kill
it by inches, and if he thought so he should oppose the
bill. But he, however, considered that the bill would in-
troduce such a train of consequences that a compromise
would take place in one or two years, and
that would effect the object in view. Public
men have convictions, as all should w ell
know, which they could not put into shape, and this was
the case with the Liberal party with regard to the Irish
Church. The noble duke then alluded to the sentiments
formerly expressed by Mr. Gladstone, and said that he
must protest against certain quotations, as he did not
think that the exact words were quoted.
The Earl of DERBY—Yes I did, 1 assure you.
'rhe Date of ARGYLL said that he would, however,
refer to the speech of Mr. Gladstone of March 28, 1858.
That speech was unfavourable to the Irish Church,
and there was not one sentiment favourable to
the Irish Church that the right honourable
gentleman did not traverse, but there was not one sen-
tence which was inconsistent with what he now proposed.
What was the use of charging them and twitting them
that they did not bring forward the question of the dises-
tablishment of the Irish Church?
The Bishop of OXFORD read, written broadly over the
whole of the Duke of Argyll's courageous speech, the title
"Presbyterian." He asserted that, whatever might be
alleged, there was a clear intention to disendow, and the
expediency and justice of this he denied. The circum-
stances of the Canadian Church were entirely unlike those
of the Irish Church. A nation or a church in its youth
could dispense with endowments. A nation's youth was
the time of endowments; but a church which had once
been endowed formed, as did men, habits from these cir-
cumstanzes, and it was ungenerous and unfair, in spite of
Mr. Spurgeon's congratulations to the Irish Church on its
threatened fate, to abandon it, despoiled of its ancient en-
dowment, to an equal conflict with religious bodies which
had-not been endowed. He maintained that to confiscate
the property of the Irish Church, which was still the
Church of St. Patrick, would, besides being most unjust
to the 700,000 Protestant souls, be unjust to the Church of
Ireland itself, and would be to arot the penalty before al-
lotting the blame—blame which, when the accounts were
fairly cast up, would be found to attach first of all to the
English Government, which had, as Boulter, Spen-
ser, and Swift proved, made the Irish Church
the meanest, instrument of our misrule. He
urged, finally, the rejection of this measure, as
what might be, he would repeat, represented as an attempt
to buy off assassins ; as unfair, since it made the Irish
Church the State's whipping-boy ;as inexpedient and un-
grateful, since it would deprive Ireland of the most intel-
ligent and energetic class of the community ; and as a
scheme which would, in deference to the sentimental
grievance which persons felt at the possession of property
by their neighbours, endanger the highest religious and
political interests of the country.
Lord SHAFTESBURY was vehemently opposed to the
disestablishment of the Irish Church. He, moreover, con-
sidered the Bill feeble, meagre, and insignificant. But he
feared that its rejection on the eve of an election might
be used to induce a feeling that the house was opposed to
a full inquiry on this subject, and might thus prove in-
jurious to the Irish Church. He concluded by announc-
ing his intention, out of regard to the opinion of friends, of
taking no part in the division.
The Duke of RICHMOND thought the minority argu-
ment a dangerous one. At all events, the Legislature
would certainly not in past times have entertained a plan
for disestablishing the Irish Church ; and, as the propor-
tion of its members to the population had increased, there
was less reason for doing it now than formerly. He be-
lieved that the Irish Church had a perfectly g ,od title to
its endowments., and that to deprive it of them would be,
on all grounds, impolitic and unjust.
Lord HOUGH roN. was of opinion that the arguments
which had been urged against the bill were equally op-
posed to Protestantism at large and to all reformation
whatever. The bill was, he thought, required on every
principle of justice. Tho grievance which it was designed
to remedy had been ridiculed by the Bishop of Oxford as
a sentimental grievance. But he could tell him that sen-
timental grievances might become very practical ones if
not attended to.
Lord BANDON considered that the Irish Church could
make out a good historical claim to its estates, which were
not, in fact, spoils of the Roman Catholic Church, and that
there was no connexion between Fenianism and this ques-
t don. He had been unable to discover any parallel to this