The Sun.
London, England, 1868-11-16 00:00:00

nerous.' "

Both at this meeting and at Wavertree Mr. Gladstone
complained that the Ministry had no policy. At Waver-
tree he exclaimed : " I say the Government have no
policy. They ought to have ; it is their duty to have.
If they have not got a policy, they ought not to be a
Government ; and I trust that whoever may constitute
the new Parliament, the first day when that Parliament
will meet will bring to the test the question whether a set
of men possessed of office are to continue to possess office,
with its authority and power, and to fail in its first duty—
namely, in having principles and plans of their own, and
fairly laying them before the country as the plans which
they, on the part of the Crown, think to be required by
the public interest." Mr. Gladstone forthwith proceeded
to show that he had a policy. He answered seriatim the
questions put to him by the Morning Herald. The first
was, "What is to bo done w;th the mor ej? Mr.
Gladstone does not say." To this the Liberal leader re-
p •
lied • " What I have stated is this, and every man with
a grain of sense inhis head knows perfectly, but it does not
suit certain parties to see it—l said this, that the
men who must determine that must know the social
and civil wants of Ireland, and where they most stand
in need of being met and replenished by the application
of new funds ; they must be men in command of these
means of reformation and all the agencies in the State,
which it eerfectly :possible for th. Opposition to
possess, but which, on the contrary, every Government
must possess. We have said, and said it a hundred times,
but it does not signify if I had said it a million of
times it would not be a bit more effectual with people
determined not to hear it—we have said that it is the
business and duty of the State to wind up, on the
principles of strict equality, and irrespective of even the
tender considerations for all personal interests, all affairs
both of the Church in Ireland and of the claims of other
religious bodies about to be considered in Ireland, and,
having done that, to apply the residue to those purposes
which shall be found to be most for the interests of the
people of Ireland—not to the endowment of any church,
not to the support of any clergy, not to the teaching, in a
divided country, of any religious community." To the
second question, " What is to be done with the churches
themselves, the church buildings?" Mr. Gladstone
said : " My opinion is that we should do wisely, in the
application of our abstract principles, to have a due regard
to existing circumstances, and not merely to the logical
faculty, but to the feelings of mankind. These churches
in Ireland, viewed in the abstract, are national property,
but, viewed in the concrete, they are buildings which
have been solemnly set apart . for the worship of
Almighty God, in the form and according to the laws of
a particular religious communion ; and in my opinion it
would be the reverse of wisdom to attempt to remove the
control of those churches from the religious bodyfor whose
use they were built. The same thing applies in the main to
the parsonages and the immediate appendages of these
parsonages. The third question is `What distinction is to be
drawn between the public and private gifts and the
ancient and modern endowments?" Mr. Gladstone said that
it appeared to him and to his party that private endowments
ought to be considered as gifts, not to the State, but to the
!particular religious persuasion for whose purposes they had
been given. The fourth question, " What is to be the limit
or organisation for the Protestant Church in Ireland and
what its relation to the Church in England ?" Mr. (lad-
stone thought was a rather stiff one. Whatever religious
order or organisation they, in the conscious use of
their own private rights, think fit to establish, we ought
to recognise their equality with us as citizens, and to
extend to them the common protection of the law. In
answer to the fifth question, " What is to be the status
of the clergy and their government in the intermediate,
while existing life interests are still extant?" Mr.
Gladstone said that the status of the clergy
would continue the same as it is now, until the time
when it shall be altered." In concluding this speech,
Mr. Gladstone said : " Our ambition, gentlemen—the
ambition of my noble friend, of myself—is to be your
organs for that work (of doing justice to Ireland). For
that purpose my friend Mr. Grenfell has sacrificed
one of the most tranquil seats that the House of
Commons could have found for him. For that purpose
I have deliberately refused a seat, sheltered and
easy of access, in the representative chamber of this
country at this great crisis of our affairs. Had I been
a year ago a member for some place with 500 voters, per-
haps I e.hould have done wisely to continue there. But
destiny, or Providence, had not so willed it, and, as repre-
sentative of the great community of South Lancashire,
which in so many respects has been for England the
standard-bearer in the path of progress, I felt, having
here ardent and zealous friends ready to fight the
battle to the last with a masculine determination, that
for me to turn my back upon you and upon them would
be nothing less than treachery and baseness. And from
your judgment, from your free intelligence, I ask a verdict
upon this question, engaged as we are—my friend, with
whom I am identified, and I—in a cause in which it would
be noble even to fail. But every indication that reaches
us from every point of the compass conveys to Its cheering
goivA4gSCI tkAl 21V •