The Sun.
London, England, 1868-01-10 00:00:00

NATIONAL REFORM- UNION.

A public meeting in connexion with the National
Reform Union was held last night in St. James's
Hall—Mr. E. Miall in the chair. The meeting,
which was free, was well attended, the object being
to hear an address from Mr. T. Mason Jones on the
Irish Church.

The CHAIRMAN, on rising, was received with
cheers. In opening the proceedings, he stated that
he had consented to preside not because he had
anything important or new to say ou the sub-
ject, but to show the interest he took in the
Irish Church question, and to evince his con-
viction that it was necessary that the public
should be educated on the subject. Broadly,
the people of England were fully convinced of
the injustice which was done to Ireland —(loud
cheers)—by the establishment of the church of
the minority, thereby inflicting an insult on the
majority of the people, and fastening on them a
badge of conquest. (Hear, hear.) But whilst
Englishmen broadly and generally viewed this mat-
ter as a wrong that ought to be remedied, large
numbers were unacquainted with the history of that
church,and if they knew the political wickedness and
social wrong which had been done in order to bol- '
ster up Protestant ascendancy in Ireland, they
would be convinced that the only remedy was to do
away with it altogether. (Cheers.) Compromise
in this matter would inflict further wrong on Ire-
land. If we had done wrong in inflicting an alien
church on her, it was better to extinguish it, instead
of widening the evil, taking into consideration, of
course, all interests concerned. He earnestly
trusted the new constituencies would make this sub-
ject one on which their will should be unmistake-
ably manifested. and if it did not lead to that
result it would lead to nothing. He had the fullest
confidence in the interest Mr. Jones took in this
question. (Hear, hear.) That gentleman pos-
sessed the fullest information upon the subject, and
bad means of judging of the feelings of the people
not only of Ireland, but of Irishmen in America.
He trusted that before they left the ball they
would b 3 of unanimous opinion that as soon as pos-
sible the word would go forth from the English
people that the Irish Church Establishment ought
to be swept away altogether. (Cheers.)
Mr. MASON JONES reminded the meeting that the
truth uttered by Sir R. Peel thirty years ago, that
Ireland was England's greatest difficulty, was
equally true now. When the Irish difficulty was
confined to America and Canada the people of
England were comparatively indifferent ; but now
that outrage and assassination were stalking in
our streets that indifference vanished, and had
given place to a feeling of fear and alarm which was
not very creditable to the courage of the nation.
He believed that for ulterior political purposes a
certain portion of the newspaper press fostered that
feeling, and endeavoured to drive weak Liberals into
the ranks of Toryism for the future. (Hear, hear.)
But while the English people were properly deter-
mined to repress and punish outrages of so terrible
a character that those who committed them scrupled
not to offer up the lives of innocent persons as a
holocaust to their revenge, let them not forget the
wrongs under which Ireland laboured, the prin-
cipal of which were the land question, and
the Irish Church. It was on the latter point
he was to speak, and it was impossible to use
language too strong in referring to that Church.
It was, in fact, the grossest, the most monstrous,
and unjustifiable anomaly of modern times, the
like of which was to be found in no country on the
face of the civilised globe. The Established Church
was imposed upon Ireland quite as much as a poli-
tical as a religious institution, with the twofold pur-
pose of forming a religious garrison and Anglicising
and converting the natives to the reformed faith,
and they had endeavoured to uphold it ever since by
wholesal confiscation and the bayonet. To the evils
of conquest they added all the evils of persecution,
and the history of Ireland from the early part of
Queen Elizabeth's reign to the revolution of 1688
was a ghastly record of unjust laws, conspiracies, in-
surrections, sieges, and massacres, which destroyed
nuamerce, brought agriculture to a standstill, and
wasted, despoiled, and destroyed the country.
The speaker then went on to quote statistics in
reference to the revenues of the Irish Church,
and the opinions of numerous statesmen,
and then proceeded to discuss the remedies pro-
posed, giving it as his opinion that nothing would
be effective as a cure for the present state of things
but the total disendowment of every religious de-
nomination in Ireland. With respect to the dis-
tribution of the revenues, that question was pre-
mature, but he was of opinion that the funds
might be profitably expended in bringing into cul-
tivation the million of acres of waste lands in Ire-
land and creating a peasant proprietary ; besides
which there would be a poetical justice in making
the revenues of a church which, 150 years ago,
destroyed the existing tenure of land in Ireland,
the means of creating a new and loyal peasant
proprietary. (Cheers.) To the new Parliament
Ireland would appeal as a simple suitor
for justice, and he had the utmost faith
in the great English heart, with its love
of liberty, its love of justice, its love of fair play, and
when the Irish people demanded in a constitutional
manner that her wrongs should be redressed, he be-
lieved that the darkness of Ireland's night would
pass away, and that her appeal to the justice of
England's people would not be made in vain. (Mr.
Jones sat down amidst the general cheers of the
meeting.)

Mr. PROBYN next addressed the meeting, express-
ing his views as an Englishman and a Protestant
on the injustice of maintaining the present Church
Establishment in Ireland, and his opinion that
the Scotch and English nations were one
because their churches were two; and he put
it to the meeting whether, if Ireland had been
the stronger power and England the weaker, and
if Ireland had attempted by penal measures to
make Roman Catholicism the predominant roligion
of England, and were to support out of Emglish
revenues an Irish Roman Catholic churca, the
people of England would not resist to the death ?
(Cheers.)

Sir 11. 110AnE proposed a cordial vote of thanks
to the chairman for presiding. That gentles nan
was a talented supporter of the voluntary syst am,
and he had not only carried out that priu
but had come to preside over the meeting at