The Sun.
London, England, 1868-09-11 00:00:00

7 lIR UN EMPLOYED POOR.

Last night an open-air meeting, convened by the
Unemployed Poor League," was held at the side

of the Ironmongers' Arms, Millwall, for the pur-
pose of bearing a deputation from the league ex-

plain its principles and objects.
Mr. CooKE, who was called to the chair, said the
question upon which they had met was one which
•the league had deeply at heart, in common with
their unemployed brethren. As a holy they de-
sired to help their n-iL:hbours with gool example
and good advice. Tint meeting would not be the
last held this winter, in other places as well as upon

:hat spot, with the view of creating a public opinion

in favour of the measures advocated by the league.

He personally knew what it was to have an empty

cupboard with a wife and children looking up
to him and crying for the bread which he could

not give them, and ho knew in thousands
of cases tears had been wrung from manly
eyes by the sufferings they could not alleviate.
What the working men wanted was honest work,

.n order that they might be independent men and
Live by their own labour. (llear, hear.) He knew

,hat the working classes in that district had had to

encounter many troubles, and that there were per-
sons who would have helped them with alms, but
said that they were not worthy of them. (Cries of
"'We don't want charity.") As a test of the cha-
racter of that meeting he asked all those who were
unemployed to hold up one hand. (4 large majo-

rity of the meeting responded to this appeal by
holding up their hands.) What he wanted, and
what they ought to insist upon was, not charity,
but justice ; and how that could be obtained would
be explained by the speakers who would address
them.

Mr. RIDDLE moved the first resolution, which
was to the effect, that it is the duty of the State
to provide casual or temporary employment for
those having no visible means of lawful subsist-
ence other than by their labour, on such terms
and conditions as might be found practical.
In supporting this resolution, the speaker said they
had come together with one grand object, namely,
how to support the unemployed poor, not of Lon-

don only, but of the whole country. Many of them,
he knew, preferred to starve rather than wear the
hated garb of a pauper. After 300 years of boasted
freedom and an Established Church, with institu-

tions which were boasted of as the most perfect in
the world, we had a million of paupers in work-
houses and three or four millions out. He asked
whether it was Christianity to rob men of their
natural right to the soil and to reduce millions
to the position of paupers who wanted to earn
an honest living ? (Ilear, hear.) Such things
were a scandal to Christianity and to our boasted
civilisation. How did it happen that in a land
where there were millions of acres of land. that
had never had a spade put. into them there were
at the same time millions of men out of work and
in want of the sustenance of life? There was a
cause for this, and he would tell them what it was.
For 300 years the Church and the State had been
twin robbers of the people. The land had been taken
from them and given to an overgorged aristocracy
and an ovar;),,orged Church. Our government had
been misgovernment. (Cheers.) He was horror-
struck at the spectacles produced in this so-called
Christian country. It was high time that some-
thing should be done. This state of things could
not continue much longer. They did not want a
revolution, but a wholesome reform, based not upon
expediency, but upon truth—a reformation based
upon the principle that land was God-created for a
God-created people. (Cheers.) God did not
create paupers. It was the Church and the aristo-
cracy who had created paupers, by robbing them of
their natural and inherent right in the soil, and
then trying to bolster up the injustice by soup kit-
chens and charitable doles. Between 1760 and
1834 Parliament had passed no less than 3,742 en-
closure acts, by which 6,840,500 acres of common
land had been taken from the people. It had been
computed that three acres of land, well cultivated,
would support eight persons in comfort ; and thus
the laud taken from the commons would, if pro-
perly cultivated, have supported a population of
18,240,106 persons. In the face of that fact, why
should there be a single pauper in the country
instead of millions? While the landlords had
been receiving millions in the shape of rent, the
people of England had been paying hundreds of
millions in the shape of poor rates ; and all for
what ? To support a robbing aristocracy. Why
should so many acres be kept as covers
for partridges and hares, while men with bodies and
souls were starving? (Hear.) Time did not sanctify
the original injustice. If a man robbed him of his
watch and kept it in his pocket for six years, he was
no less a robber at the end of that time than when
the robbery was committed, and the three hundred
years which had elapsed since the landlords and the
Church robbed the people did not give them a better
claim than when the robbery took place. (Cheers.)
If the peopla li Id the land they would become a self-
supporting and educated people, and all other re-
forms were but shams. Until this great reform was
accomplished there could be no secure basis for
peace, prosperity, and contentment. (Cheers.)
Mr. BLIGH seconded the resolution, which was
agreed to.
Mr. NIoTE moved and Mr. IVEsToN seconded the
next resolution :—,That fully believing that the
realisation of the closing suggestions contain-,d iu
Canon Giallestone's able and truthful piper, re-
cently r<a.-1 by hill before the disapproving and
protesting me nbers of the Association for the Pro-
motion of Scimce, would not only promote the wel-
fare of the agricultural labourer, but also by their
beneficial operation conduce to the advancement of
the wages and other important interests of the
artisan and all other classes of labourers
in both town and country districts, as well
as speedily empty the unions and poorhouses,
reduce ratepayers' burdens, and generally ele-
vate working men from a state of poverty and

dependence to that of a comfortable subsistence,
and con•parative and honourable independence, and
lastly, tend to bring about a more satisfactory ad-
justment of the social scale, this meeting, composed
of the unemployed poor at Millwall and its neigh-
bourhood, and other persons sympathising with
them, strongly and earnestly recommends the next
reformed Parliament to embody those suggestions
in a legislative enactment."
On the motion of Mr. TAYLOR, it was resolved—
" That the most hearty thanks of this meeting are
given to Canon Girdlestone for his outspoken,
truthful, and able paper ; and this meeting also ex-
presses their sincere hope that the noble canon may
be enabled to pursue the same honest, straightfor-
ward course through life, and thus benefitthe many
despite the opposition of the few."
A vote of thanks to the deputation closed the
proceedings.

[ADVERTlSEsiENT.J—Dyspepsia(lndigestion), Constipation, De-
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7.11 E PRIMATE OF IRE LAND ON THE

CIILRCII CRISIS.

His Grace the Lord Primate of Ireland (the
Archbishop of Armagh), in his charge at the trien-
nial visitation of his diocese, delivered in Armagh
Cathedral, on Tuesday, said the dangers which

now threaten that branch of the Church of Christ

which had, by the grace of God, for 300 years been

established in this part of the United Kingdom,
were neither unforeseen nor unsuspected. After
alluding to the position of the Church of England

as intermediate between that of Rome and the Dis-

senting bodies, and to that hostility of many of the

other Churches to her, his Grace said that many

persons, relying on the fact that the great majority

of the people of the empire profess the principles of
the Reformation, and also on the faith of England
being pledged in the Articles of Union to the

maintenance of the Irish Church, believed that the

danger from that hostility was still remote. In
order to satisfy the public mind, which otherwise
might be shocked at the infliction of unde,erved
wrong, plausible grounds had been put forward to
justify a course of action predetermined upon from

other motives. It might be well to consider the
pleas assigned iu vindication of the doom pronounced

by a large political party upon the Protestant Esta-

biished Church in this country. We arc told that
it is unjust on the part of the State to maintain in

connexion with itself the Church of the minority,
and that this injustice can only be removed by the
disatablishment of the Irish branch of the United

Church. Some weight might be given to this objec-

tion if Ireland were in itself a separate kingdom, and
if the State there maintained the religion of the
minority as a separate and independent institution.
But this is not the case. Ireland is but the part of a

great kingdom, the religion of whose State is the reli-
gion—when the whole nation is considered—of the
great majority of the people. The members of the
Churoh resident in Ireland are part of that National
Church which extends over the whole kingdom; and
the National Church when viewed in relation to the

whole kingdom, is the Church of the majority.

So long, then, as Great Britain and Ireland are one
united kingdom, under one Sovereign, one law, one
Parliament—and so long as the National Church

remains the Church of the majority, so long will it
be impossible to prove that the Irish members of
that Church belong to a minority. If this view is
adopted, the Union is, in fact, dissolved, and a se-
parate State is constituted of Ireland. Ever con-
sidering the question solely with regard to Ireland,
it is to be observed that the Roman Catholics them-

selves cannot be connected by an Establishment with
the State, for the Sovereign, by a fundamental law
of the Constitution, must be a Protestant, and is
supreme, according to the law of England, in all
causes, ecclesiastical as well as civil. The Roman
Catholic Church claims supremacy for a foreign

potentate, and never has submitted, and never will
submit, to the ecclesiastical jurisdiction of the
Crown. This renders the case of Ireland ex-
tremely peculiar, even if we were to 'consider Ire-
Find solely by itself. The result is that the Ro-
man Catholics, refusing to have any alliance
with the State, demand that all connexion between
religion and the State should be dissolved in Ireland,
and the Government constituted upon a new foun-
dation, ignoring religion altogether in the country,
and proceeding in total independence of any reli-
gious body. This cannot be regarded in any other
light than as a revolution subversive of all the prin-
ciples hitherto considered essential to good govern-
ment, and leading to consequences fatal to the peace
of society. The Roman Catholics themselves can-
not enter into union with a State essentially Protes-
tant; yet they call upon Government to eject from
that union their fellow-subjects who enjoy it in

right of a prescription of three centuries. The State
in Ireland is to become, as a religion, without form
and void. In England and Scotland the same State
is to remain Christian and Protestant. If a State
has adopted an established religion because it is
true, and therefore most adapted for the good of
the people and the glory of God, it is surely bound
to protect its ministers and respect its endowments.
This is to be .the rule in England, but to cease to
govern the conduct of the nation in Ireland. With
respect to the argument derived from a majority
of the people being of a different persuasion,
it is very questionable if at any period
the Church in Ireland, which was in con-
nection with the Church in England, ever em-
braced a majority of the inhabitants. His grace
gave an historical review of the position of the
Church of Ireland relative to the Church of Eng-
land anterior to the Reformation, commencing with
the Council of Cashel, at which the jurisdiction of
the Pope and of England were first conceded. Dr.
Lanignan, the Roman Catholic historian, had stated
that after that council the clergy and people still
followed their own ecclesiastical rules, as if that
council had never existed. In fact, there were be-
! fore the Reformation two Churches in Ireland—one,
the Church of the Parliament and the English
party ; and the other, the Church of the Irish
clergy and the people. Of these two Churches, or
parties in the Church, that which adhered to Eng-
land was the less numerous. If, after the length-
ened possession which the Protestant Church had
I enjoyed of its endowments, and the confirmation of
it by the Treaty of Union and repeated acts of
Parliament, the clergy were now to he deprived of
their property, it was impossible to avoid the infe-
' recce that the right to any property would be re-
duced to a mere possession subject to the capricious
exigencies of party interests. One of the leaders
of the opposition to the Church had referred
to the proposition of uniting benefices where
there was a small number of Protestant; to-
gether, and had alleged that the plan was
to take the ministers from those parishes and apply
the revenues to the use of clergymen in Dublin and
B..‘lfast. That st itement manifestly referred to a
proposition made by the Irish prelates, through
himself, to Lord Palmerston's Government, and
was founded on an entirely erroneous view of the
nature of that proposition. That proposition was
to enable the bishops, by an improvement of the
law, to unite small benefices together, and thus duly
to apportion emoluments to labour. Others had
joined in an opposition against the Church from a
belief that otherwise we must choose between two
alternatives—the endowment of the Roman Ca-
tholic Church concurrently with the Protestant, or
the disestablishment of the Protestant Church.
These persons, sooner than see a religion they con-
demn aided and acknowledged by the State, would
destroy the means of support appertaining to a re-
ligion of which they approve and to which they be-
long. Whether that were a right principle or not need
not now be discussed, as it seemed to be taken for
granted that no Government is able to induce the
House of Commons to make such an endowment
out of the public funds ; and even if it were, the
Roman Catholic clergy had pronounced against the
scheme. His Grace referred to the declaration of
the Roman Catholic prelates against endowment,
and to the reasons both of policy and interest which
probably induced them to make that declaration.
Statements had been made in Parliament as to the
very large means received by the Church of Rome
from voluntary contributions. One person, who
had not been contradicted, and whose authority he
had no reason to doubt, had estimated the yearly
revenues at not less than £700,000 a year—a re-
venue so large that they could scarcely be expected
to exchange it to become dependent on a Protestant
Government. Another topic urged against the
Church was, that its property had been unjustly
seized from the Roman Catholic Church and trans-
ferred to the Protestant. When the history of
the Irish Church was examined such statements
would be found not to be correct. No such
transfer, in the sense in which the expression
was used, took place. Property belonging to one
corporate body can be handed over to another
only by Act of Parliament. There is no statute
declaring that the property should he taken from
the one Church and givon to the other. It was the
owners of it—the clergy themselves—who, retain-
ing their properly, reformed their cried. In the
reign of Henry VIII. the great nobles acknow-
ledged the Royal supremacy ; and in the reign of
Elizabeth, all the bishops, except two, on oath ac-
cepted the supremacy of the Crown. How for
they did this in sincerity and truth, and how many
of the ciorgi really embraced the =tie vf the Re-

formation, it was useless to inquire, and impossible

to ascertain. They did what was required of them,
and the people repaired to the parish churches. To

use the words of the Roman Catholic Bishop Her-