N
CO
CM
O
REMARKS
bj
RECENT COMMERCIAL LEGISLATION;
SUGGESTED BY THE
EXPOSITORY STATEMENT OF THE REVENUE FROM CUSTOMS,
AND OTHER PAPERS LATELY SUBMITTED
TO PARLIAMENT.
BY
THE RIGHT HON. W. E. GLADSTONE,
M.P. FOR NEWARK.
LONDON:
JOHN MURRAY, ALBEMARLE STREET.
1845.
LONDON :
Printed by WILLIAM CLOWES and SONS,
Stamford Street.
CONTENTS.
PAGE
Introductory Remarks ... ..... 5
The late Reductions of Customs' Duty considered :
I. With regard to the Proportion of our entire Trade which
they have affected ....... 6
II. With regard to the entire Amount of Revenue surrendered . 8
III. With regard to their particular results on Revenue and on
Trade .......... 13
Class A ......... 16
Class B ......... 17
Class E ......... 18
General result upon Revenue of the Act 5 & 6 Viet.,
c. 47, as to Raw Materials . . . . .19
Class C ......... 22
Class D ......... 23
General result upon Revenue of the Act 5 & 6 Viet.,
c. 47, as to Manufactured Products . . .24
General result as to all the Classes . . . .27
Rules to which the frame of the Act approximated . . 28
General result of the Act upon our Import Trade . 29
Particular results :
Case of Timber ....... 31
Case of Coffee ....... 38
Principal Raw Materials affected by the Act other
than Timber ..... .39
IV. With regard to their results upon Domestic Producers . 43
V. The policy of these measures considered, with especial refe-
rence to the recent proceedings of Foreign Powers in
matters of Trade ........ 53
Conclusion . . .65
B 2
REMARKS,
THE ' Expository Statement of the Customs' Revenue * of the
United Kingdom,, which was presented to Parliament at the
opening of the session by her Majesty's command, has attracted
considerable notice from the public : and a desire has been ex-
pressed in the House of Commons by one of its most distinguished
members * for something in the nature of a commentary upon
that statement, which should bring clearly and definitely into
view the leading results it may be found to establish. It is,
indeed, obvious that a series of tables so complex and extended
afford rather the crude materials of information to the general
observer, than information itself.
On account of my official cognisance of those changes of the
law in 1842, which led to the preparation of the document in
question, I am led to make an attempt of the nature I have
described. And upon the whole I have preferred making it
through the medium of the press, rather than occupying so much
of the time of the House of Commons, engrossed as it is by the
mass of other business, as would be requisite for the purpose of an
oral exposition essentially involving many figures and details.
With this introduction, I propose to traverse in succession the
following departments of the subject :
* Speech of Lord John Russell on motion for going into Committee of Ways and
Means, Feb. 17, 1845.
*3 Remarks upon
I. The proportion of our entire foreign trade which has been
affected, in various degrees, by the reductions of the last
three years.
II. The amount of revenue directly surrendered by them.
III. The actual results of the recent changes upon the revenue
of the state and on our trade in various branches, so far
as they are exhibited by the documents now before Par-
liament.
IV. Their results upon domestic producers.
V. The policy of these measures, with especial reference to the
recent proceedings of Foreign Powers in matters of Trade.
My examination is suggested by the ' Expository Statement *
and other kindred papers which have recently been laid before
Parliament ; but it will oblige me to enter into even the financial
policy of the legislature and of the administration up to the pre-
sent moment, so far as it is immediately connected with trade.
Again, it will turn, in the main at least, and directly, upon the
course of our import trade. It is true, indeed, that Parliament
has now sealed the doom of the very last of our duties upon ex-
ports : but this operation had long been within one step of entire
accomplishment ; and the amount of immediate relief remaining
to be given by the final act during the present year was too small
to produce a general effect of appreciable magnitude. I should
rather plead that the value of the recent measures with regard to
imports might be taken as the ultimate test of their value with
reference to the exports with which those imports must be pur-
chased ; because, though we cannot in every particular case
assume an immediate trade outwards when we create a trade in-
wards, yet it is manifest that upon the whole such is the law
which must govern our commercial transactions.
I. As to the proportion of the trading operations of the country
which the measures have embraced.
In the Account of trade and navigation,* annually presented to
Parliament at its meeting, I find the principal imports of the
* Paper No. 18, Sess. 1845.
Recent Commercial Legislation.
country specified to the number of one hundred and thirty-three.
Of these the duties have been reduced or removed upon one
hundred and six ; upon twenty-nine they remain unaltered.
Again, if we take the official valuations of all imports into the
United Kingdom for the year 1843 (the latest for which the
accounts have been published), we find that they amounted to
the sum of 70,093,0007.
The total values of all those articles (as nearly as I can com-
pute them without minute detail) upon which no change has been
made amounted to about 8,500,0007. of the entire sum ; and the
values, which have shared in various degrees the relief afforded
by the alterations, amount to about 61,600,0007.
It is well known that the criterion of official value is extremely
fallacious in detail. It is, however, unfortunately, the only form
in which, at the present moment, our imports are reduced to a
common measure, and rendered capable of being treated as a
whole. In several of the cases the standard fixed has now be-
come, through change of circumstances,, egregiously false. Thus
cotton wool is valued at 7d. and 7%d. per lb., or nearly twice its
average price ; fir timber at 1 5s. per load, or less than a third
part of its average price ; and tea, again, at 2s. per lb., which is
not much short of twice its average price. Still it does not ap-
pear to me that, when the scale of computation is so large, these
errors, which very much neutralise one another, materially inter-
fere with my object: and therefore the proposition holds good
that of our whole import trade seven-eighths have been affected by
the reductions of import duty which Parliament has adopted in
the years 1842-5.
It is true that they have been affected in very various degrees.
On raw silk, for instance, and hemp, both of them important
articles, only the insensible duties of Id. per lb. and Id. per cwt.
respectively were imposed by the previous law. But, speak-
ing generally, the reductions and remissions have been far from
inconsiderable. For instance, on the three great articles of sugar,
timber, and corn, the diminution made, though it cannot be
estimated with strict accuracy, may be said to amount nearly to
one- half of the duties previously subsisting.
8 Remarks upon
II. At the same time it is undeniable that whatever may be
the extent of these measures in reference to trade, in reference to
the whole amount of revenue which we raise from imported com-
modities, they have been secondary. Four articles, of the first
class with respect to the amount of duty levied from them, have
been left wholly untouched. They are the articles of
1. Tea, yielding in 1844 . . . . 4,524,000
2. Tobacco 3,977,000
3. Wine 1,991,000*
4. Spirits 2,211,000
12,703,000
or more than half of the entire revenue derived from the customs.
With respect to this topic, it is enough to say that no consider-
able party in this country appears to contemplate any funda-
mental change in the system by which we supply a very large
part of the wants of the Treasury through the medium of indirect
taxation : and, so long as this is the case, any reductions of duty,
which may be conceded from time to time, must always bear but
a small proportion to the amount still continuing to be levied.
But the four articles, which I have quoted as the most con-
spicuous and productive among those unaffected by the recent
alterations, are none of them articles of the first rank in our
trade. The aggregate values of the whole four, independent of
duty, do not equal the value, taken singly, either of the cotton or
of the sugar, or in most years of the grain, which we import.
There are only six other articles of any considerable importance
to trade which remain, like the four above specified, subject to
the same duties as those payable upon them before the Act of
the 5 and 6 Viet. c. 47. They are these :
1. Tallow, which in 1844 yielded . 174,000
2. Butter 136,000
3. Cheese . . . . . 117,000
4. Raisins 159,000
5. Pepper 81,000
6. Silk manufactures of Europe . . 277,000
994,000
Recent Commercial Legislation.
If, then, we divide our imports according to the revenue they
yield, the major part have remained untouched ; but, estimated
according to value, that is, according to their commercial im-
portance, they are a small fraction of the whole with regard to
which this can be asserted.
Let us now, accordingly, examine the extent of these changes
in regard to revenue.
The reductions of 1842 were originally estimated as involving
a loss of about 1,200,000/., but during the progress of the
measure of that year they were extended in a variety of parti-
culars, and they ultimately reached not less than (without any
allowance, except upon timber, for partial recovery through in-
creased consumption) 1,550,000/.
The principal items were estimated at the time as fol-
lows :
1. Raw Materials:
Timber . . . . . 600,000
Tanning and dyeing stuffs . 110,000
Hides and skins . . . 60,000
Turpentine .... 80,000
Clover seed .... 70,000
Furniture woods . . . 50,000
Other raw materials . . . 165,000
1,135,000
2. Articles of consumption :
Coffee 240,000
Other articles of consumption and
manufactures . . . 86,000
317,000
3. Exported manufactures .
Total
Subtract the coal-duty
100,000
1,552,000
114,000
There remains
1,438,000
10 Remarks upon
The mere view of these figures, indeed, gives no adequate re-
presentation of the changes made in 1812. Many of them which
removed prohibitions, and lowered duties formerly prohibitory to
a moderate standard, were important on account of the principle
which they recognised even when their direct effects were small.
Many of them which involved the greatest difficulty, and aroused
the most serious alarm, have proved to be almost nugatory in
their operation on the domestic interests that regarded them with
so much apprehension. It may be said that there was no justi-
fication for creating such alarm, if, after all, no important conse-
quences were to follow from the change. I will not interrupt
this portion of the inquiry by any detailed examination of the
objection. But, in the first place, it should be remembered, that
the reduction of prohibitory duty may give the very stimulus to
domestic trade which may cause the foreign article to be ex-
cluded by being undersold. Secondly, it affords a security for
good and economical manufacture which otherwise would not
exist. Thirdly, each case of the kind renders the course of
British legislation with respect to commerce more and more
definite and intelligible to the rest of the world.
In 1843 there were no remissions of duty. In 1844 the duties
of customs remitted were as follow :
1. Sheep and lamb's-wool .... 100,000
2. Currants (7s. 2d. per cwt. on 254,000 cwts.) 91,000
3. Coffee (2d. per Ib. on 9,854,000 Ibs.) . . 82,000
273,000
Of the duties of customs comprehended in the remissions of
the present year, the first and greatest, namely, that on sugar,
was estimated by Sir Robert Peel in his financial statement on
the 14th of February, as involving a loss of 1,300,0007.
With the present prospects of supply from British sources, and
of the working of the proposed classification of sugars, I should
prefer charging the reduction upon sugar, combined with that on
molasses, at 1,500,0007. A large sum without doubt: but in
order to estimate rightly the equivalent received by the consumer,
Recent Commercial Legislation.
we must take into view the reduction of price effected by the
measure of last year, of which the bill now in Parliament is
avowedly the complement : this cannot be estimated at less than
4s. per cwt. To this we have now to add a reduction amounting
to 11s. 3d. per cwt. The diminution, therefore, in the long or
wholesale price amounts to 1 5s. 3d. per cwt. ; and to this is to
be added relief from the subsequent charges for interest of
money and profit on that portion of the price. If these are taken
at Is. Id. per cwt., which I think a moderate computation, the
total saving to the consumer from this financial operation will be
about Ife?. per lb., or 16s. 4d. per cwt. Applying this to the
quantity of 205,000 tons, which formed the consumption of the
year 1844, we find the saving to the public will amount to no
less than 3,348,0007., which is purchased at a cost to the revenue
of only 1,500,0007., or less than one moiety of the benefit. We
ought not, 1 admit, to set down among the sacrifices of the Ex-
chequer anything more than it actually loses by the direct deduc-
tion of 11s. 3d. per cwt. from the tax. Thus computed, how-
ever, the amount still reaches to 2,306,0007., while the loss to the
revenue will probably be so far retrieved by an increase of con-
sumption as to keep it down to 1,500,0007., or about two-thirds
of that sum. This calculation does not indeed pretend to minute
accuracy ; on the one hand it does not include any deduction on
account of sugars to be charged at 16s. 4d. instead of 14s.; nor,
on the other, any addition on account of the diminution of duty
on molasses : but it seems to point out fairly the aggregate
result.
The amount of taxation upon foreign trade remitted by the
measures of the present year, as distinct from the balance of
loss likely to be entailed upon the Treasury, may be stated as
follows :
1. Sugar 2,306,000
2. Cotton 680,000
3. Duties on other materials of industry and partially
manufactured articles ...... 320,000
4. Duty on coals, and minor export duties . . . 125,000
3,431,000
12 Remarks upon
We have therefore the whole amount of direct receipt surren-
dered by Parliament during the last three years as follows :
In 1842 . . . . 1,438,000
In 1844 . . . . 273,000
In 1845 .... 3,431,000
Total . . 5,142,000
It appears, then, to be very worthy of note, that without taking
into account the indirect benefit which has accrued from the exten-
sion of trade, or from the diminution of protective duties, the country
has already received the reward of its submission to the income-
tax in the removal, upon Customs duties alone, of an amount of
taxation about as large as the sum which is yielded by that highly
productive impost. The last year's return of the income-tax was
5,191,0007. This, however, does not present the whole case.
In the Budget of 1842, on the one hand, a deficiency was calcu-
lated for the year 1842-3, amounting to 2,570,000., and so much
of the income-tax as would absorb this deficiency was accord-
ingly forestalled. On the other hand, duties other than
those of customs, but in general connected with trade in other
forms, have been repealed (of are now proposed for repeal), as
follows :
In 1842, on stage-coaches . 70,000
In 1844, on glass . . . 45,000
on vinegar . . 25,000
on marine insurances 130,000
In 1845, on glass . . 642,000
on auctions . . 250,000
1,162,000
Add customs'-duties repealed 5,142,000
Total . .6,304,000
If then we assume, as we reasonably may, that the service of
the present year is adequately provided for, and the revenue will
balance the expenditure, it appears that the free surplus of the
Recent Commercial Legislation.
income-tax, over and above what was required to supply actual
deficiency, or 2,621,000?., has been most economically laid out,
as the saving in other taxes realised by means of it has been
6,304,000^., or more than double its amount. The question
may be raised how far this is owing to the course of legisla-
tion, and how far to the buoyancy of the national industry :
this, being well content with either cause, I am not curious to
discuss ; in some proportion it must evidently be divided between
them.
III. Having thus measured, in its most general form, the
bearing of the recent legislation on the revenue of the country,
I now proceed to examine in some degree of detail the effects
produced by the changes adopted in 1842 upon the revenue,
and also upon our general trade with foreign parts. I pro-
pose first to consider these effects as they affect the various great
Classes of commodities, distinguished by successive letters of
the alphabet, into which the ' Expository Statement ' is divided :
and subsequently to take into view singly the cases of such
particular articles as may appear on any ground to demand a
separate notice.
I must then, in the first place, beg the particular attention of
the reader to the abstract which has been prefixed to the ' Expo-
sitory Statement,' and which I here introduce for the greater
facility of inspection; premising, that the eight schedules into
which each class of articles is divided, have reference to the
amount of revenue produced, upon a mean of two years, by the
respective articles under the operation of the Act 5 and 6 Viet.,
c. 47, according to the following scale :
Schedule I. Contains all articles yielding less than 100 each annually.
II. From 100 to 500 each.
III. From 500 to 1000 each.
IV. From 1000 to 10,000 each.
V. From 10,000 to 50,000 each.
VI. From 50,000 to 100,000 each.
VII. Upwards of 100,000 each.
VIII. Articles free or prohibited.
porte
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Mean Annual
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wholly
nufactu
Articles
partially
nufactured.
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to be used
Manufactur
Mean
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3.8*3
SO O CO
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Mean Annual
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Remarks upon Recent Commercial Legislation.
I have already described the reductions of customs' duty made
in 1842 as removing direct charges upon trade to the extent of
1,552,000/. ; and I have divided those reductions, after with-
drawing the sum of 100,000/. for the repeal of duties upon ex-
ports, into two branches according as they fell
(1) Upon the raw materials of industry ;
(2) Upon articles of consumption imported into this country ;
The amount of reductions under the first head was 1,135,000
The amount under the second .... 317,000
Making together . . 1,452,000
Upon adverting to the five classes A, B, C, D, E, in the ' Ex-
pository Statement/ we shall perceive that classes A, B, and E
contain the articles which may generally, though not with minute
accuracy, be denominated the raw materials of industry, and
which received remissions to the amount of 1,126,0002., while
classes C and D contain the two great divisions of articles prepared
for consumption, viz., manufactured goods and articles of food,
upon which, taken together, the remissions amounted to 326,0007.
I shall therefore consider the three first together, and the two
last together, as the most just and comprehensive mode of esti-
mating the effect of the reductions.
But I have to make another and a material change in the ar-
rangement of this Abstract. It purports to compare the mean
receipts of two years antecedent to the law of 1842 (1838 and
1840) with those of the two years immediately subsequent to it.
But instead of taking the mean products of these two latter years,
1 propose to take each year separately, There are several
reasons for doing this. In the first place, for nearly four months
of the earlier half of the year 1842 the new tariff had been an-
nounced, and its details were undergoing consideration. Deli-
veries of the articles affected by it were accordingly in a great
degree suspended until the bill had become law in the com-
mencement of July: and immediately afterwards unusually large
quantities of goods were released, so that the first year shows in
many cases rather more than is its due. No such objection applies
to the second yc?ar, and it therefore affords a more just criterion
of the working of the law.
1-6
Remarks upon
But, besides this, the intention of Sir Robert Peel was declared
to be, to reimburse the Exchequer for the remissions which he
proposed first, by their general effect upon trade and consump-
tion and, secondly, by augmenting the demand for the particular
articles which were affected. Now, all recovery of this kind is of
necessity gradual : and it is even more important, therefore, to
ascertain what relation the second year of the new law bears to
the first, than to know the relation which the two jointly bear to
the period which preceded the alteration. And particularly we
must observe that the presumptions in favour of the change are
strengthened, if the second year shall be found to bear a favour-
able comparison with the first, on account of the factitious aid
which, as has been explained, the first of necessity derived from
the immediately preceding stagnation, pending the discussions on
the measure. On every ground then it is desirable to distinguish
the two years which are averaged in the Abstract now before Par-
liament.
I take first Class A, which contains, in general, articles the most
strictly corresponding with the definition of raw materials.
Class A.
Articles in a raw state
to be used in
Manufactures.
Number
of
Articles.
Mean
Annual Produce
of Duties
in Two Years
preceding the
establishment
of the
Produce
of
the Duties
from
July 5, 1842,
to
Produce
of
the Duties
from
Julv 5, 1843,
to
New Tariff.
July 5, 1843.
July 5, 1844.
Schedule I., containing ar-
.
.
.
ticles that yield, un-
der the new law, less
144
9,817
2,488
2,443
than 100/. each of
customs' duty .
II. (100/. to 500/.)
45
36,665
10,477
12,081
III. (5007. to 1000/0
16
24,542
11,227
11,199
IV. (1,000/. to 10,000/.)
28
322,881
83,845
72,902
V. (10,000/. to 50,000/0
6
145,187
86,537
134,131
VI. (50,000/. to 100,000/0
2
148,165
141,353
173,966
VII. (upwards of 1 00,000/0
3
1,507,627
1,032,403
1,054,530
VIII. (Free or prohibited)
under the new law)/
8
196
252
2,195,080
1,368,330
1,461,252
Recent Commercial Legislation.
Now of the 252 articles comprised in this class, I find that
there have been duties reduced or removed by the law of 1842
(and in a few cases, which it is not worth while to distinguish, by
subsequent acts) upon 215, viz. in
Schedule I. on 128 Schedule V. on 4
II. 38 VI. 1
,,JII. 13 VII. 1
IV. 25 , VIII. 5
Total . 215
The entire receipt from these 252 articles was as follows :-
Mean of two years before the new law 2,195,080
First year of the new law .
Showing a loss of
1,368,330
826,750
But again:
Mean of two years before the new law 2,195,080
Second year of the new law . . 1,461,252
Showing a loss of 733,828
Gain of the second year on the first . 82,922
This, I think, should be deemed not unsatisfactory as an ad-
vance, in proportion to the time, towards the recovery of the
revenue.
Let us now proceed to Class B.
Class B.
Articles partially
Manufactured.
Number
of
Articles.
Mean
Annual Produce
of Duties
iu Two Years
preceding the
establishment
of the
New Tariff.
Produce
of
Duties
from
July 5, 1842,
July 5? 1843.
Produce
'of
Duties
from
July 5, 1843,
to
July 5, 1844.
Schedule I.
54
.
887
.
673
.
637
II.
19
6,536
4,254
5,832
III.
5
6,712
4,000
3,143
IV.
11
40,835
21,516
44,113
V.
5
179,357
93,231
98,039
VI.
. .
. .
..
VII.
1
816,902
397,470
630,069
VIII.
95
1,051,229
521,144
781,833
18
Remarks upon
Of the 95 articles comprised in this Class, there have been
reduced 89 ; viz. in
Schedule I. . . 50 Schedule V. . . 5
II. . . 17 VI. . .
III. . . 5 VII. . . 1
IV. . . 11 VIII. . .
Total -. . 89
The entire receipt from this class was as follows :
Mean of two years before the 5 and 6 Viet. c. 47 . l ,051 ,229
First year after the Act . . . . .
Showing a loss of
But again
Mean of two years before the Act
Second year after the Act
521,144
530,085
1,051,229
781,833
269 3 396
Showing a loss of ..
And a gain of the second year on the first year,
Amounting to ....... 260,689
which is an advance much beyond the measure of all ordinary
expectation.
The articles in the analogous class E are of less moment: but
the exhibition of them is necessary to complete this part of the
subject.
Class E.
Articles
not properly belonging
to any of the
foregoing heads.
Number
of
Articles.
Mean
Annual Produce
of Duties
in Two Years
preceding the
establishment
of the
New Tariff,
Produce
of
the Duties
from
July 5, 1842,
to
July 5, 1843.
Produce
of
the Duties
from
July 5, 1843,
to
July 5, 1844.
.
.
.
Schedule I.
91
3,950
1,927
1,476
II.
27
14,415
6,462
6,601
III.
6
JO, 972
4,310
3,690
IV.
15
49,432
33,593
36,833
V.
2
145,229
52,204
57,284
VI.
VII.
..
VIII.
8
149
223,998
98,496
105,884
Recent Commercial Legislation.
Of the 145 articles comprised in this Class, there have been
reduced 121 ; viz. in
Schedule I. . . 79 Schedule V. . . 2
II. . . 22 VI. . .
III. . . 5 VII. . .
IV. . . 13 VIII. . .
Total . .121
The entire receipt has been as follows :
Mean of two years before the Act . . . 223,998
First year after the Act . . . . . 98,496
Showing a loss of . . . 125,502
Again
Mean of two years before the Act . . . 223,998
Second year under the Act 105,884
Showing a loss of . . . 118,114
And a gain of the second year on the first
Amounting to 7,388
Let us now bring together these results.
Mean receipt on Class A before the Act . . 2, 195,080
on Class B . . 1,051,229
on Class E . . 223,998
3,470,207
Receipt of the first year after the Act
On Class A 1,368,330
On Class B 521,144
On Class E 98,496
1,987,970
Receipt of the second year after the Act
On Class A 1,461,252
On Class B . . . . . . 781,833
On Class E 105,884
2,348,969
Loss on the three Classes for the first year , . l ,482, 237
for the second . . 1,121,238
Gain on the second as compared with the first . 360,999
c 2
20 Remarks upon
There are, however, some corrections which it is necessary to
make in these figures.
1. The mean receipt of the two years before the Act of 5 and
6 Viet, should be charged with the drawback which was allowed
on timber used in the mines under the provisions of the former
law, amounting to about 60,0007. per annum.
2. The year from July 1843 to July 1844, should be credited
with not less than 20,0007. on account of the abstraction of the
duty on wool, which, under a new Act of the Legislature, actually
took effect before it had expired, and had been announced, and
must therefore have operated on deliveries from a considerably
earlier period.
By these changes we reduce
The loss on the first year to . l ,422,237
The loss on the second year to .... 1 ,061 ,238
And the recovery of revenue
On the second year as compared with the first rises
to 380,999
It appears to me that this general comparison of the second
year with the first, under the new law, as to materials, is emi-
nently satisfactory, and must encourage those who take a sanguine
view of the energies of our productive industry.
The picture is less flattering when we compare the first year
under the new law with the mean product of the two years of the
old law. The reductions of 1842 on raw materials amounted, as
has been already stated, to ... . 1,135,000
But the ensuing defalcation of revenue on that
description of commodities amounted to . 1,422,237
Showing an excess of loss above the estimate of . 307,237
It will, however, be recollected that the twelve months from
July 184*2 to July 1843, were a period of extraordinary depres-
sion and distress to the trade of the country. The last six of
them, or perhaps rather the last three, exhibited marks of par-
Recent Commercial Legislation.
tial revival, which were aided both by the changes of the law
and the reduced cost of subsistence. Still for the greater part of
the time business had been contracted, and enterprise languid, in
a degree quite sufficient to account for the excess of loss which
has just been noted. In the second year this excess was re-
trieved, and the process of recovery had commenced, for whereas
the reductions amounted to .... i0 * 1,1 35,000
The loss in the second year was . . . 1,061,000
Or, as 20,0007. may be set down to the account
of the further measure regarding wool in 1844,
the real loss in the second year was . . 1,041,000
Up to this point, I have adverted only to that portion of the
operation of 1842, which regarded materials intended for employ-
ment in our domestic industry. Even this involved, indeed, many
points of conflict with protected interests : such as those relating
to copper ore and other ores and metals, to hides and leather, to
seeds, and to timber. Still its main bearing was in most par-
ticulars on the revenue of the country.
The other division of the remissions, which included only
317,0007. of revenue, involved in almost every case a diminution
of protective duty. Before the Act of 1842, the general character
of our Tariff with regard to manufactures, and in a great degree
with regard to food, was prohibitory. But it may be said with
truth, that from the moment when the provisions of that Act had
taken effect, moderate duties of twenty per cent, and less were
the rule of the Tariff of the United Kingdom, and high or prohi-
bitory rates the exception.
This was indeed the most prominent and essential characteristic
of the measure, so far as it affected the classes now under consider-
ation. Out of 196 articles contained in Class C, 181 underwent
reduction : yet I do not find that the remission of duties actually
levied upon goods in it under the former law, could be estimated
at more than 35,0007., or at the most 40,0007.
Remarks upon
Class C.
Articles
wholly
Manufactured.
Number
of
Articles.
Mean
Annual Produce
of Duties
in Two Years
preceding the
establishment
of the
New Tariff.
Produce
of
the Duties
from
July 5, 1842,
to
July 5, 1843.
Produce
of
the Duties
from
July 5, 1843,
July 5 1844.
Schedule I.
113
.
3,393
.
2,171
.
1,842
II.
31
10,208
7,248
7,992
III.
17
23,260
13,329
12,731
IV.
27
85,767
86,284
99,063
V.
5
117,049
105,148
123,020
VI.
. .
. .
. .
VII.
1
239,893
223,457
268,766
VIII.
2
-
196
479,570
437,637
513,414
The articles in Class C on which duty was reduced were, in
Schedule I. . . 108 Schedule V. . . 4
II. . . 29 VI. . .
III. . . 16 VII. . . 1
IV. . . 23 VIII.
Here we find the
Mean produce before the Act
First year under the Act
Total
181
479,570
437,637
Loss . 41,933
But for the second year the account stands as follows :
Mean produce before the Act .... 479, 570
Second year under the Act . . . . . 513,414
Increase . 33,844
Gain upon the second year as compared with the first 75,777
But this result again requires correction. More than half of
the revenue under Class C arises from silk goods, which, with
their various divisions, stand under a single heading in the Tariff.
They were not, however, altered by the law of 1842, except with
regard to the silks of the East Indies. Let us therefore deduct
from all these years the revenue on silks other than those of
India ; and the figures will stand as follows :
Recent Commercial Legislation.
Mean produce of two years before the Act
First year under the Act
Loss
252,351
217,091
34,260
252,351
248,855
And again
Mean produce of two years before the Act
Second year under the Act .
Loss . 3,496
Gain upon the second year as compared with the first 37 , 756
Thus then it appears that, within the second year from the
passing of the Act, the remissions of duty on manufactured goods
were as nearly as possible replaced by the increased importations
of them : a result worthy of remark in itself, but yet, as I think,
less remarkable than another inference which arises from the in-
spection of this part of the Statement, and which I shall notice in
another portion of these remarks.
We now come to Class D, containing articles of food, upon
which the great mass of our customs' revenue has for a long time
been levied. Seven-eighths of the whole receipt stand, as will be
seen, to the account of this Class,
Class D.
Articles of Food.
dumber
of
Articles.
Mean
Annual Produce
of Duties
in Two Years
preceding the
establishment
of the
New Tariff.
Produce
of
the Duties
from
July 5, 1842,
to
July 5, 1843.
Produce
of
the Duties
from
July 5, 1843.
to
July 5, 1844.
Schedule I.
46
.
990
.
1,241
.
1,074
II.
15
4,148
3,351
4,625
III.
6
3,546
4,311
4,577
IV.
28
71,803
80,451
76,388
V.
7
120,169
131,427
142,120
VI.
Totals of )
Schedules V
I. VI. J
3
240,841
221,395
254,494
441,497
442,176
483,278
Sched. VII.
12
18,246,120
19,161,312
20,066,920
VIII.
4
121
18,687,617
19,603,488
20,550,198
24 , Remarks upon
Of the 121 articles comprised in this Class, prohibitions were
removed, or duties lowered, on 66, as follows :
Schedule I. . . 30 Schedule V. . . 5
II. .. 9 VI. ..
III. . . 5 VII. . . 2
IV. . . 15 VIII. . .
Total . 66
On this class we find the
Mean produce before the Act .... 18,687,617
First year under the Act 19,603,488
Increase . 915,871
And again
Mean produce before the Act .... 18,687,617
Second year under the Act .... 20,550,198
Increase . 1,862,531
Gain on the second year as compared with the first 946,710
These figures, however, may much more justly be taken as an
index of the general prosperity of the country, than of the working
of the Customs' Act of 1842. I have already named four great
articles * upon which no reduction has taken place up to the
present time, yielding twelve millions of money, besides others
not inconsiderable : nor was there any change in the law relating
to sugar, which yields five millions more, until the year 1844:
nor has there been yet time for the change then made to produce
any appreciable effects upon the revenue, as the supplies of the
foreign article are only beginning to arrive. About seventeen
millions, therefore, of the whole amount of duties have been
practically unaffected by alterations in the law. It may indeed
be true, that those alterations have tended powerfully, by their
general effects upon trade, and therefore on consumption, to in-
crease the receipts of the treasury from these great articles, and
may thus claim the credit of a part of the excess which has been
shown. But we may carry the investigation of the effects of the
Act to a greater degree of precision by ejecting from the account
* Supra, p. 8.
Recent Commercial Legislation.
all the great articles in Schedule VII., upon which either no
change has been made, or no change of which the effects are per-
ceptible within the period embraced by the ' Expository State-
ment.' Now coffee is the only article comprised in Schedule VII.
of Class D, on which the duty was materially altered by the Act
5 and 6 Viet. c. 47. The duties on foreign corn had, however,
already been regulated by a previous Act of the same year, and
may therefore be taken into account. The total amount of the
duties on these two articles was as follows:
Their mean produce in two years before the Act . 1,475,027
First year under the Act 2,053,748
Second year under the Act 1,710,132
It is difficult to carry the examination of these items farther ;
because as to corn no safe inference can be drawn from a single
year, though the experience of the last three years, which have
elapsed since the present Act commenced, may be thought to
demonstrate that it at least effected a very beneficial change as
regarded the revenue : while, as to coffee, the result is obscured
by a farther change in the duty which took effect before the
second year had expired ; and I propose therefore to examine that
case more minutely by itself.
But if further we remove Schedule VI., in which no alteration
of any moment was made in 1842, from the comparison, so as to
confine our view yet more closely to results brought about by the
immediate operation of the change in the law, it stands as
follows :
Mean produce of two years before the Act . . 200,656
First year under the Act 220,781
Increase . 20,125
And again
Mean produce of two years before the Act . . 200,656
Second year under the Act 228,784
Increase . 28,128
Gain upon the second year as compared with the first 8,003
*26 Remarks upon
Again,, if we combine Classes C and D, both of which may be
said to contain articles of consumption as contradistinguished
from raw materials, we have the following results :
Mean produce of Class C and of Class D, with ex-
ceptions as above specified, before the Act . 453,007
Joint produce of first year under the Act . . 437,872
Loss . 15,135
And further
Mean produce as before 453,007
Joint produce of second year under the Act . . 477,639
Gain . 24,632
Gain on the second year as compared with the first 39,767
Now the revenue remitted on these several descriptions of
articles amounted to about 90,0007. a-year in round numbers ; of
which the whole was replaced in the first year, except 15,1357.,
and was replaced in the second year with an addition of 24,6327.
The fiscal scale of this part of the operation was, it is true,
contracted, but it was of great importance, and of great difficulty,
in other points of view ; and the result thus shown affords, as
respects the treasury at least, an ample vindication of the wisdom
of Parliament in the adoption of this part of the measure.
To conclude this portion of the subject, let us combine the two
divisions in which we have thus far been considering it : but in
order that the view given of the reductions effected by the new
Tariff of 1842 upon imports, may be a complete one, I must
include (though with some undue advantage to the first year and
prejudice to the second) the receipts from coffee.
The reductions, with the exception of 100,0007. on exports,
were
On materials 1,135,000
On articles of consumption (Classes C, D, corrected
as above) ....... 317,000
Total of reductions . . 1,452,000
The effect upon the revenue is shown in the following
figures :
Recent Commercial Legislation.
I. Receipts of the first year.
1. Mean of two years before the 5 and 6 Viet. c. 47.
Class A ...
Deduct for timber drawback
Class B
Class E
Class C .
Class D, including coffee
2. First year under the Act
Class A ....
Class B ....
Class E .
Class C . . .
Class D, including coffee
2,195,080
60,000
2,135,080
1,051,229
223,998
3,410,207
252,351
1,003,972
Total 4,666,550
1,368,330
521,144
98,496
1,987,970
217,091
1,002,503
Total 3,207,564
Actual loss for the first year on all the Classes
together 1,458,986
Estimated amount of reductions as above . 1,452,000
Thus the total loss on the five Classes ex-
ceeded the estimate by the sum of about . 6,986
1 1 . Receipts of the second year.
1. Mean revenue of two years before the 5
and 6 Viet. c. 47, as above . . . 4,666,550
2. Second year under the
Act, Class A . . 1,461,252
Add on account of loss from
the repeal of the Wool
Duties in 1844 . . 20,000
Total 1,481,252
28 Remarks upon
Brought forward . . 1,481,252 4,666,550
Class B . . . 781,833
Class E . . . . 105,884
2,368,969
Class C . . . . 248,855
Class D, without \
coffee . . 228,784 V 915,462
Coffee 686,678 J
3,533,286
Actual loss on the second year . . . 1,133,264
Gain on the second year as compared with the
first, on all the Schedules affected by the re-
ductions of 1842, and on coffee . . . 325,722
From this view of the tables, first in the several classes into
which they are divided, and secondly as a whole, I now pass to
consider the general outline of the Act of 1842, and to estimate
rudely its effect upon the import trade of the country.
The Act of that year was not merely an Act involving a consi-
derable remission of duties : it was the first attempt to apply general
rules to the construction of the tariff of the United Kingdom, and
was also the most comprehensive modification of the restrictive
system which had ever been accomplished.
Mr. Pitt, in 1787j found our customs' law a mass of intricacy
and confusion. He stated to Parliament the object of his great
reform. * The mode in which he proposed to remedy this great
abuse was by abolishing all the duties which now subsisted in
this confused and complex manner, and to substitute in their
stead one single duty on each article, amounting, as nearly as
possible, to the aggregate of all the various subsidies already
paid.' * Also * in some few articles,' for example timber, he
meant to introduce ' regulations of much greater extent ;' but
such was the general scope of his arrangement.
During the war, and during the first years of peace, many
augmentations of duty took place : some for purposes of revenue,
* Parliamentary History, xxvi., 629.
Recent Commercial Legislation.
but with the effect of enhancing the stringency of protection ;
some for protective purposes alone.
The tariff underwent a general revision in 1819 by the Act
59 Geo. III. c. 52; and again, under the government of Lord
Grey (which had failed in 1831 to carry a plan for the reduction
of the timber duties), a large number of minor duties were re-
duced in the years 1 832 and 1 833 ; but it was in the interval
between these two periods that the most important relaxations of
the prohibitory and protective system were introduced into the
law, first by Mr. Wallace, and afterwards and principally by Mr.
Huskisson. Still it continued to contain some prohibitions, and
a very great number of prohibitory rates of duty; and no approxi-
mation to unity of principle was discernible in its structure as a
whole.
In 1842 it was attempted to make a general approach to the
following rules :
1 . The removal of prohibitions.
2. The reduction of duties on manufactured articles, and of
protective duties generally, to an average of 20 per cent.
ad valorem.
3. On partially manufactured articles to rates not exceeding
10 per cent.
4. On raw materials to rates not exceeding 5 per cent.
The duties were then reduced on about 660 articles. Many
changes were made which were of great importance to the con-
sumer or to some branch of trade, but which cost little to the
revenue, or were even, in some cases, positively profitable. I
allude particularly to the changes affecting cattle, salt meat,
seeds, oils, manures, leather, and ores, as belonging to these two
classes.
It is very difficult to form any general estimate of the effect of
the measure of 1842 upon the import trade of the country, which
shall even approach to precision. Still I think a rude view of
this important subject may be presented by means of the tables
of official valuations, which reduce the quantities of articles im-
SO Remarks upon
ported to a common measure. We have these valuations printed
for the years 1841, 1842, 1843.* I reject 1842, which was
almost equally divided between the old law and the new ; and I
take 1841 as the latest full year of the old law, and 1843 as the
first full year of the new one.
The official values of imports into the United Kingdom
were
For the year 1841 .... 64,377,952
1843 .... 70,093,353
Increase . . 5,715,401
But there are two articles of importance which it may be better
to exclude from this comparison -cotton and corn inasmuch as
the quantities of them which we receive in one year as compared
with another depend much more upon the respective crops ot
those products in America and England than upon any increased
facilities in the means of exchange. The official values imported
in 1841 were
Of cotton 15,948,384
Of corn 5,238,389
21,186,773
And in 1843
Of cotton 22,282,365
Of corn 2,048,768
24,331,133
Deducting these amounts from the respective totals, we have the
official values of imports
For the year 1841 .... 43,191,139
1843 .... 45,762,220
Increase . . 2,571,081
Finance Accounts, Paper No. 147, of 1844, pp. 131-36.
Recent Commercial Legislation.
This is a rude, but I do not think by any means an excessive,
statement of the increase of general trade which had been realized
in 1843, and of which a considerable part may be considered due
to the alterations of the law. It is likely that the returns for
1844 may bear a stronger testimony to its influence.
I will now proceed to examine the two most conspicuous among
all the reductions of duty on particular articles which were enacted
in 1842, namely, the cases of timber and coffee; and first, that of
timber.
This is a most important subject : and the error of the govern-
ment and of parliament, which adopted, without division, the most
essential parts of the proposal, was, if an error at all, a very great
one.
It is a subject to try the faith of political economists. Some of
them there are, who have shrunk from the sacrifice of a great
amount of revenue, which they think might have been spared :
and have consistently denounced the plan of 1842 as a waste of
public money, while they have been friendly to its principle so far
as it involved diminution of the differential duty between colonial
and foreign wood.
Upon the other hand, there is much to urge, besides the claim
of the colony of Canada, as a colony then recently recovered from
two rebellions, and the claim of the subsisting interests in the trade
to be as gently handled as a regard to public objects would^allow.
First, it is very doubtful whether the revenue, such as it stood
in the years immediately preceding 1842, could have been entirely
preserved. I do not advert now to the distress of the particular
period ; but to the permanent operation of the old scale of duties.
The premium on colonial timber was so enormous, that it was
gradually tending to reduce the proportion of Baltic wood brought
into the market. And likewise the article of iron was displacing
wood in various important branches of its consumption,
Secondly, it must never be forgotten that the scale of duties
upon timber was doubly differential. The duty of 55s. per load
was, so far as regarded 45s. of its amount, a differential duty
against foreign and in favour of colonial wood. But the whole
duty both of 55s. on foreign and of 10s. on colonial wood, was a
.32 Remarks upon
differential impost in favour of British -grown wood and against
the growths both of our colonies and of foreign countries.
In the year 1841, the then existing administration proposed to
reduce the foreign duty by an almost insensible amount, namely,
from 55s. to 50s. ; and to raise the colonial duty from 10s. to 20s.
This plan would have reduced the protection of the colonist
against the foreigner from 45s. per load to 30s. per load ; but also
it would have increased that of the home-grower of wood against
the colonist by 10s. per load, and would have reduced it against
the foreigner by only 5s. per load. It would have borne hardly
upon the intermediate party, the colonist, who was thus smitten
on both sides : it would have added, I believe, nothing whatever
at the moment, and subsequently very little, to the revenue : 5s.
per load would have been the maximum of possible relief to the
consumer. Further, with this plan it would scarcely have been
possible either to have abolished the drawback allowed to the
Cornish miners, which appears to have cost the country 60,0007.
per annum, or to have introduced the measurement of sawn wood
according to cubic contents, which really means taking wood
according to the dimensions to which Providence ordains that it
shall grow, instead of regulating those dimensions by the schedules
of a Customs' Act.
The plan actually adopted, on the other hand, which imposed a
duty of Is. per load on colonial and 25s. per load on foreign timber,
involved a loss of 600,OOOZ. per annum : and although it was
in one view much more favourable to the colonist, since it placed
him nearly upon an equality with the British grower of timber in
our ports, yet as against the foreigner it left him only a protection
of 24s. instead of 30s. The British grower, again, who, in the
case of an article so essential and of such heavy cost of transport
will find in general briskness of trade by much his most effective
safeguard, lost 30s. per load of his defence against foreign wood
and nearly the whole of his preference over his colonial fellow-
subjects. But the gain to the consumer, which, if there be truth
in political economy, could not exceed 5s. per load under the plan
of 1841, by the plan of 1842 might reach, and on the whole, I
apprehend, has already nearly reached, 30s. per load.
Recent Commercial Legislation.
There was one argument for a large revenue from timber, the
argument of possession. It was no mere speculation : we had it
in hard money, a million and a half annually. But I know no
other apology for such a mode of taxation under ordinary circum-
stances. It may be by one degree less impolitic than the impo-
sition of a heavy duty without drawback upon the raw material of
some manufacture which we export largely: but I know no
argument that can be offered in its defence, which would not
vindicate a fortiori such taxes as a heavy duty of excise upon coals,
upon iron, or upon manures. If there be but one of the mazy
paths of fiscal legislation which we may tread fearlessly and
firmly, surely it is that in which we reduce the burdens upon such
raw materials of industry as are of great bulk in proportion to
their value, and as stand in the first order of necessity.
Passing, however, from the general discussion, I have now to
inquire into the operation of the measure. As regards the deal-
ings in the article, with the exception of some local inconveniences,
which, as might be expected, accompanied the great alteration
that was made in the mode of charging the duty, I gather from
the reports of eminent houses in the trade, and from the figures
indicating the consumption, that it has been eminently satisfactory.
As regards revenue, I shall endeavour to show that we have
reason to be well contented with its effects.
Sir Robert Peel, in his financial statement for the year 1842,
estimated his first year's loss at 600,0007. : and the second year's
at 590,0007.
I subjoin a statement of the gross and net quarterly revenue
from timber during three years before the new system took effect,
and also during two years after it.
34
Remarks upon
(I.) An Account of the RECEIPTS from TIMBER in each Quarter of Three Years
antecedent to 10th October, 1842: also, REPAYMENTS for Drawbacks, ar.d
NET RECEIPT remaining in each of those Quarters.
(II.) A similar Account for each Quarter from 10th October, 1842, to 10th Octo-
ber, 1844.
I. <
II. (
QUARTERS
ended
Duties on Wood and Timber in the
United Kingdom.
Gross Receipt.
Drawbacks and
Repayments.
Net Produce.
^ 5th January, 1 840
5th April,
5th July,
10th October, ,,
5th January, 1841
5th April, , ,
5th July, , ,
10th October, , ,
5th January, 1842
5th April, , ,
5th July, , ,
LlOth October , ,
/ 5th January, 1843
5th April, , ,
5th July, , ,
10th October, , ,
5th January, 1844
5th April, , ,
5th July, , ,
\l Oth October ,,
.
382,542
263,681
416,269
733,344
.
33,258
12,046
29,806
6,204
.
349,284
251,635
386,463
727,140
1,795,836
81,314
1,714,522
401,295
259,782
349,796
652,015
32,226
10,812
31,603
5,972
369,069
248,970
318,193
646,043
1,662,888
80,613
1,582,275
327,865
213,621
211,453
380,237
35,753
6,479
35,370
2,692
292,112
207,142
176,083
377,545
1,133,176
80,294
1,052,882
228,012
121,088
160,942
162,539
29,433
18,086
22,006
4,243
198,579
103,002
138,936
158,296
672,581
73,768
598,813
285,182
147,750
210,748
345,954
16,654.
3,230
5,490
2,233
268,528
144,520
205,258
343,721
989,634
27,607
962,027
Recent Commercial Legislation.
Now it will be necessary to make several qualifications of this
statement before we can draw a just comparison between the
periods to which it refers.
1 . The drawback of about 60,0007. a-year, on timber used in
the mines of Cornwall, was a regular attendant of the old law,
and forms a legitimate deduction from the gross receipt. But
the sums charged on this account in the years 1843 and 1844
were liabilities incurred in the preceding years which stood over,
and ought not to be charged to the debit of the new system. I
shall, therefore, make a corresponding deduction from the sum
of 73,7687., charged for drawbacks and repayments in 1842-3,
and I shall withdraw (by conjecture) for the same reason half of
the 27,6077., which appears for 1843-4.
It will be seen that in the table the total amount of repayments
before the change in the law exceeds 80,0007. annually, but
rather more than a fourth of this amount was disbursed on wood
other than that used in the mines.
2. The diminution of half a million in the last year of the first
term is owing, without doubt, in some degree to that stagnation
of the trade which prevailed to a great extent from the middle of
March, 1842, when the new duties were announced, to the 10th
of October, when they took effect. But there is, it will be ob-
served, a decrease on the receipt of the first quarter amounting to
77,0007. as compared with the corresponding quarter of the fore-
going year : it having fallen from 369,0007. to 292,0007., and
this before any change in the law could well have been antici-
pated. Hence it is clear, that a great diminution in this branch
of the revenue must have taken place if the law had continued as
it was: and indeed the fact is otherwise notorious, that the
timber-market was thoroughly glutted, and the demand extremely
feeble at the time. Still, as it is not easy to assign to each of
these concurrent causes their due share in producing the effect,
I propose to leave out the year 1841-2 altogether, and to adopt
another mode of ascertaining what allowance ought to be made
for the stagnation of all building enterprise, in estimating the
consequences of the alteration of the law.
3. With this view I have procured a statement of the produce
D 2
36 Remarks upon
of the brick-duty in the years 1840-4, and I propose to take the
decline of it in the years 1843 and 1844 as compared with 1840
and 1841, as a criterion of the decline which would have occurred
in the timber-duty if the law had remained without change. I
think there is every reason to suppose it would even have been
greater. The periods do not precisely correspond, as the years
of the timber account begin on the 10th of October, and the years
of the brick account on the 5th of January : but this is to the dis-
advantage of my argument, as the period taken for bricks being
by nearly three months later represents a more advanced stage of
that commercial recovery which was in progress during the years
1843 and 1844:
The receipt from bricks in 1840 was ... .524,000
in 1841 . . . . 449,000
Mean of the two .... 486,000
The receipt from bricks in 1843 was . . . 363,000
in 1844 . . . . 447,000
Mean of the two .... 405,000
The net receipt from timber in 1840, or rather from
October 10, 1839, to October 10, 1840, was . . 1,714,000
In the year October 10, 1840, to October 10, 1841 . 1,582,000
Mean of the two .... 1,648000
We have, therefore, the following proportion :
486,000 : 405,000 : : 1,648,000 : x,
x being the probable annual receipt from the timber-duty between
October 10, 1842, and October 10, 1844, under the old law. On
working this sum, we find
x = 1,373,000.
Which I therefore assume as the standard of comparison to try
the new law :
Probable annual receipt from timber under the old scale
of duties from October 10, 1842, to October 10,
1844 1,373,000
Actual receipt, first year, gross . 672,581
Deduct for repayments . . . 13,768
Net receipt 658,813
Loss 714,187
Recent Commercial Legislation.
Again :
Probable receipt from the old duties, as before . . 1,373,000
Actual receipt, second year, gross . . 989,634
Deduct for repayments .... 13,803
Net receipt ........ 975,831
Loss 397,169
Gain upon the second year as compared with the first 317,018
Thus the loss upon the first year was greater by 1 14,0007. than
Sir Robert Peel's estimate : but such was the progress of recovery
that in the second year it was less than his estimate (of 590,0007.)
by no less than 193,0007. : and the mean loss of the two years,
ascribable, with any presumption of justice, to the change in the
law, was 555,5007., less by about 40,0007. per annum than the
allowance he had made.
Some persons may be surprised at the very great difference
between the first year and the second : but it may, I think, readily
be accounted for by the fact that a second reduction of 5s. per
load on timber and 6s. per load on deals took effect at the com-
mencement of the second year, and that a considerable quantity
of goods, held back for the benefit of this reduction, go to the
account of the second year, whereas in the natural course of
things they would have belonged to the first.
When, however, it is remembered, how peculiar was the course
of the timber-trade and the mode of preparing deals for the
British market under the former law, that we have only two
years of the new system before us, and that timber does not come
here until the year after it is cut, I think it is evident that another
twelvemonth at least must elapse before we can fully appreciate
the benefits of the alteration which has been made.
As, however, it was confidently predicted by many persons that
the consumer would not obtain the benefit of the great reduction
of the duties on foreign timber, I have referred to trustworthy
sources of information, and have obtained the following results:
Price of Dantzic or Memel timber in the London market per
load, duty paid :
58 Remarks upon
January, 1842 5 12 6
January, 1845, 41. 7*. 6d. to 41. 10s. . Mean 489
Reduction to the consumer in 1845 . . .139
Again :
Dantzic fir, common and middling, sold in Liverpool,*
In January, 1841, for 26jd. to 27d. . . , . Mean 26|d per foot.
1842 24 \d. to 25 \d Mean 25d.
1845 19%d. to 2ld. .... Mean 2Qd.
Showing a reduction in 1845,
As compared with 1841, of 6d. per foot, or 21s. Id. per load.
1842, of4fd. Ws.lOd.
Which latter, however., was a period of very great depression in
the wood trade, and not such as to exhibit with any fairness the
ordinary state of the market.
I take next the article of coffee, the second in importance of
those on which material reductions were made in the year 1842.
The duty was lowered on British coffee from 6d. to 4d. per
lb., and on foreign from a rate nominally of 15^., and really of
$d. (with an addition of extra charges making it perhaps equal to
a burden of 10?.), to 8d. per lb. The first loss was calculated at
226,OOOZ. ; but it was hoped that so much of this would be made
up by increased consumption as to leave an actual defalcation
of only 170,0007.
Now, on turning to the ' Expository Statement,'-)- we find that
the produce of the duties on coffee was as follows :
Mean of two years before the Act 5 and 6 Viet. c. 47 . 803,316
First year under the Act 781,722
Loss .... 21,594
Much coffee, however, was held back during the four months of
discussions on the new table of duties, and swelled beyond its just
proportions the receipt for the first year.
Again, the receipt of the second year under the Act was inter-
rupted by the further change of the duty on foreign coffee from
* See Circular of Messrs. James Houghton and Co., brokers, for Feb. 1845.
f P. 158.
Recent Commercial Legislation.
Qd. to 4d. per Ib. in 1844. We may however estimate, with
tolerable accuracy, the effect of this latter reduction by reference
to the receipts for the year 1844, as compared with the year 1843,
which are given in the tables on trade and navigation, presented
to Parliament on February 12, 1845.*
The revenue from coffee for 1843 was . . 697,983
The revenue for 1844 was ... 682,218
Less in 1844 by ... 15,765
But the Chancellor of the Exchequer, in his financial statement
for 1844, had estimated his loss at 50,0007. ; and the immediate
remission of 2d. per Ib. on 9,854,000 Ibs , the quantity of foreign
coffee consumed in 1 843, amounted to 82 5 200Z.
In this case much must be allowed for the advancing prosperity
of the nation, and something for the gradually growing use of
coffee as compared with other commodities ; but enough will
surely remain to warrant the assertion that the reductions upon
coffee have been, up to the present time, eminently successful in
their effects with regard to the revenue and also, if progressive
extension of demand may be taken as a criterion, to the consumer.
I shall next extract from the ' Expository Statement' the most
important, after timber, of those raw materials and accessories
of industry on which remissions of duty were then granted. These
I consider, speaking generally, to be the following articles :
1. Hides. 7. Rosewood.
2. Turpentine. 8. Lard.
3. Palm-oil. 9. Copper-ore.
4. Olive-oil. 10. Train and sperm oil.
5. Bark. 11. Iron.
6. Mahogany.
But of these I shall not include copper-ore, because, although
the trade has increased since the Act of 1842, the allegation of
those interested in it is, that the burden of duty then imposed as
the condition of being allowed to smelt in this country much
more than counterbalanced any advantage attending an admission
to the home-market. | Nor lard, nor train and sperm oil, because
* Paper No. 18, Sess. 1845.
f Before the law of 1842 the duty on copper-ore was prohibitory, but parties were
allowed to smelt in bond for export. By (hat law the prohibitory duty was very
greatly reduced, but the privilege of smelting in bond was withdrawn.
40
Remarks upon
those cases are complicated by the direct competition of the foreign
and British article, and should rather be considered in connexion
with another branch of the subject. Nor iron, because the de-
mand for foreign iron has, I apprehend, suffered more by im-
proved modes of preparation for British iron than it could gain
by a diminution of the customs' duty. After withdrawing these,
there remain seven articles which will afford considerable in-
formation with regard to the working of the altered law.
The deliveries for consumption, however, of the first year were
so much enlarged in most of these cases by the great inducement
to hold back for the reduction of duty, which operated during the
discussions of 1842, that I shall notice only the second year's
returns, as a fairer standard of comparison.
Articles.
Estimated
First Loss
by the
Reduction
of Duty.
Mean Entries
for Consumption
in
1838 and 1840.
Entries
for Consumption,
July 1843-44.
Mean
Revenue of
1833 and
1840.
Revenue,
July 13,
184344.
1. Hides . .
.
45,000
349,903 cwts.
551, 550 cwts.
.
48,976
.
8,029
2. Turpentine .
80,500
365,621
509,410
82,056
2,237
3. Palm-oil .
11,000
293,936
393,491
18,817
10,394
4. Olive-oil .
24,000
7,960 tuns
9,591 tuns
42,897
20,940
5. Bark . .
13,000
625,612 cwts.
894, 783 cwts.
20,874
11,983
6. Mahogany .
42,000
22,957 tons
22, 885 tons
52,494
11,345
7. Rosewood .
8,500
1,671
2,864
10,190
2,926
In the next table I bring out the results upon trade in a more
definite shape :
Articles.
Actual Loss
of Revenue on
each Article-
Quantities
added to the
Trade.
Assumed Value
of
the Unit.
Value
added to 'lie
Trade.
.
453,706
1. Hides . . .
.
36,971
20 1,647 cwts.
45*. over all
2. Turpentine
79,819
133,789
8*. ,,
53,510
3. Palm-oil . .
8,423
99,455
25*. , ,
123,774
4. Olive-oil . .
21,957
1,631 tuns
601 , ,
97,860
5. Bark . . .
8,891
269,171 cwts.
7*. ,,
94,210
6. Mahogany
41,148
72 tons
10Z. ,,
720
7. Rosewood
Total . .
7,264
1,198
10A , ,
11,980
204,473
834,720
Recent Commercial Legislation.
Thus we find, with a sacrifice of 204,0007. in duties on raw
materials, an extension of trade in them to the extent of 834,0007.
I should describe this as a satisfactory and sufficient rather than
as a very remarkable result.
It would be easy to present others which are, in a financial
view, much more striking : in cases where duties nearly pro-
hibitory, or other impolitic arrangements, were amended.
For instance, the mean produce of the duties on foreign sperm-
oil, train-oil, and whale-fins, in L838 and 1840, was 10,4637., the
duties then being 267. 12s. per tun on the two former, and 47. 15s.
per cwt. on the latter. Indeed it was only the prevalence of
enormous prices at home that caused the entry of the sperm-oil
which yielded almost the whole of this small revenue.
But on the 5th of July, 1843, the duties were reduced, under
the provisions of the Act of 1842, as follows: On sperm-oil,
from 267. 12s. to 157. ; on train-oil, from 267. 15s. to 67. ; and on
whale-fins, from 47. 15s. per cwt. to 20 per cent, ad valorem a
rate probably equal to about 20s. per cwt., or little more. The
revenue yielded in the year from that day to July 5, 1844, was
On sperm-oil . . . 44,272
On train-oil .... 6,663
On whale-fins . . . 6,530
Total . . . 57,465
So that a gain of nearly 50,0007. for one year followed upon this
reduction. I may add that, owing to increased demand, $iere was
a simultaneous improvement in the prices of sperm oil as com-
pared with their previous range.
Again, copper-ore, which yielded no revenue under the former
law, produced about 47,0007. in the first year after the Act of
1 842, and nearly 70,0007. in the second, with no contraction, but,
on the contrary, with an expansion of the smelting operations of
the country.
Again, lard, at a duty of 8s. per cwt., yielded in 1840 the sum
of 307. In the first year of the new law, at 2s. per cwt., it was
entered to such an extent as to produce 4946/., and in the second
year 79807.
In the year 1840, thrown silk yielded a revenue of only 7257.,
42 Remarks upon
the chief part of the importation paying a duty of 3s. 6d. per Ib.
A drawback was allowed which absorbed nearly the whole receipt
and., indeed, in 1838, there was an excess of repayment over
revenue to the extent of 5398Z. In the first year of the new law
the debentures due under the old one again absorbed the whole
revenue ; but in the second year the balance of net receipts
amounted to 16,4207.
I will give two other instances, in which duties were reduced
for the purpose of driving the smuggler, if possible, out of the
market.
Under the former law watches were charged at 25 per cent, ad
valorem : the value entered in 1840 was 5084Z., and the duty paid
was 13871. In 1842 the duty was reduced to 10 per cent. : the
value entered rose to 52,622/., and the duty paid to 539 II.
The duty on thread lace was reduced in 1842 from 30 per cent
to 12^ per cent, on the value, with the active concurrence (a rare
example) of the parties engaged in carrying on the trade at home.
The entry under the head Thread Lace in the ' Statement' shows
an increase only of about one-fourth in the quantities entered
under the new law ; but another heading had been introduced for
all lace made by the hand, including thread lace, under which a
large and apparently increasing quantity has been entered:* so
that in this instance, also, we may hope that the province of the
smuggler has at least been greatly narrowed.
I have still one portion of the ' Statement ' to subject to further
* I believe that the annexed figures will represent pretty accurately the effect of the
alteration in the duty upon thread lace.
Duty received on Thread Lace.
1838 . . . .1,39212 Rate of duty 30 per Cent.
1839 .... 2,403 86 ,,
1840 .... 1,791 65 ,,
1841 .... 1,239 19 10
1842 .... 1,001 17 4
2,515 8 7 Pillow Lace.
3,517 511 Duty reduced in July, 184-',
. to 12 per Cent.
1843 . . . 953 5 2
7,611 17 7 Pillow Lace.
8,565 2 9 Duty 12 per Cent.
Recent Commercial Legislation.
examination : that of articles of consumption, by which I mean
such as are comprised in classes C and D, with reference to the
effects of the late reductions upon protected interests.
I have already shown how easily the revenue surrendered under
these classes recovered itself, which, of course, could only be by
increased importations, and it is not difficult to name many articles
on which such increase has taken place : gloves, boots and shoes,
damask and diaper linens, corks, toys, prints and drawings, India
silks, tanned leather, and many more, in Class C ; and in Class D,
animals, fish, lard, salt provisions, potatoes, onions, and some other
vegetables.
IV. But I own it appears to me impossible for any person
who has been cognisant from the beginning of the discussions in
and out of Parliament relating to the Act of 1842, who has noticed
the fears and hopes with which in different quarters many of the
new duties were regarded and, finally, who has examined the
results of the change with any care to do otherwise than rest in
the conclusion that both those hopes and fears were by many
persons enormously exaggerated, and that, as a general (I by no
means say an invariable) rule, British industry has much less to
apprehend than was commonly, perhaps almost universally, sup-
posed, from the effects of foreign competition in the domestic
market.
This, however, is a subject too important to be discussed with-
out careful illustration ; and, in order to afford it, I shall have
occasion to refer both to debates which took place in Parliament,
and likewise to representations made, and I believe most honestly
made in many cases, to the Government with reference to the
certainty of the most destructive consequences if they should per-
severe in the proposals which they had submitted to Parliament.
Some parties obtained partial concessions which, forming my
judgment at this time with the aid of the experimental results, I
should say, had better in almost every instance have been with-
held : some kicked and plunged vigorously, but in vain ; and
some made up their minds to ruin with a decent composure.
Many who resisted because they thought the sacrifice demanded
of them too great and many more who thought it their duty,
44 Remarks upon
under the distressed circumstances of the country, not to refuse it,
however large must have been alike surprised to discover, by
subsequent experience, in how numerous cases the mountain has
simply, as of old, produced the mouse.
There were, indeed, some rather sharp and stringent effects on
prices caused by the legislation of 184*2; and particularly I would
name the case of the Irish provision trade. But these were the
exceptions. As a general rule they were gentle and insensible ;
and in many cases where the very greatest and most boisterous
alarm had existed, absolutely null. There is no worthy satisfac-
tion in reverting simply to the circumstance that expectations
which had been extensively entertained were very generally falsi-
fied. But there is a most just pleasure attaching to the discovery
that the power of British skill and labour are greater than we had
believed them to be ; and this is the most important proposition
established by the smallness of results which followed upon many
very great reductions of duty.
Nearly one hundred and fifty questions were discussed between
the Government and the various interests which were, or believed
themselves to be, affected by the changes proposed in the law ;
and twenty- six divisions were taken in the House of Commons,
many of which, however, were in favour of more sweeping pro-
positions than those of the Government. But I will go to parti-
culars.
And first I will point out that where there has been an increase
large enough to be worth naming in the import of an agricultural
or manufactured product, it has still been in almost every instance
confined within very moderate bounds. For example, from the
first class.
The duty on potatoes was reduced from 2s. to 2d. per cwt.,
although the Government was confidently assured by a deputation
to the Board of Trade, on the 12th of April, 1842, that, with so
small a protection, the cultivation of them in Yorkshire must be
abandoned. The import rose from 1794 cwts., in 1840, to
99,062 cwts., or nearly 5000 tons, in the second year of the new
law. But this quantity is little more than the crop of 600 acres
of land; and constitutes but one-sixtieth part of the estimated
Recent Commercial Legislation.
consumption of the metropolis alone, perhaps one six-hundredth
part of the consumption of the country.
The duty on onions was reduced from 3s. to 6e?. The quantity
increased from 14,500 bushels in 1840, to 34,900 in the second
year of the new law. Now this quantity, I believe, is the yield of
about 116 acres of land : whereas 1 have been informed that, in
the county of Essex alone, eight or ten times that breadth is
occupied in raising not onions, but onion-seed.
Again, among manufactured articles. The importation of men's
boots rose from 4800 pairs to 12,900 pairs, and shoes of the same
description from 1 100 pairs to 3700 pairs. But if we assume that
each male person in the metropolis and its vicinity wears out two
pairs of boots or shoes annually, it will appear that the increase in
the foreign supply of between 10,000 and 1 1,000 pairs can scarcely
amount to more than one-hundredth part of the demand for that
portion of the population of the country taken alone. In the case
of women's boots and shoes there is an increase of about double
the number of pairs, which might possibly supply about 2 per
cent, of the corresponding demand.
In another class of cases where the first proposition of the Go-
vernment was regarded as utterly ruinous, and some modification
of it took place in consequence of the apparent strength of the
representations, or of the indisposition to bear hard upon a feeble
class (for no such concession was made during the whole of the
discussion in any case affecting a powerful interest), the result has
very commonly been that the change eventually made has been
practically a nullity.
For instance, in the first print of the Resolutions of 1842, it
was proposed to reduce the duty on starch from the prohibitory
rate of 97. 10s. per cwt. to 5s. per cwt., about 20 per cent, on the
value of the foreign article in bond. However it was subsequently
agreed to substitute 1 Os. for 5s. ; and even a greater change than
this was urged by members of Parliament inclined to free trade,
on the ground of the enhancement of the cost of wheat (from which
starch was usually made) in this country through the operation of
the corn law. The duty of 10s. was represented by manufacturers
of starch as a totally insufficient protection. Now mark the result.
46 Remarks upon
In the first twelve months of the new law we find an experimental
importation took place to the extent of 498 cwts. But in the
second year it sank to 20 cwts., or a value of about 25/.
The case of straw platting, again, is a remarkable one. In
order, however, to estimate it justly, we must combine with it the
entries of the hats or bonnets made of straw plat. These latter
were charged by the dozen under the former law ; but I convert
these into weight at 31 Ibs. per dozen :
1838. 1839.* 1840.
Weight of straw-plat entered . . 34,662 Ibs. 22,340 Ibs. 13,034 Ibs.
straw hats or bonnets . 1,171 Ibs. 1,241 Ibs. 2,307 Ibs.
35,793 Ibs. 23,531 Ibs. 15,341 Ibs.
Thus the trade was falling off. The duty was very high 17*.
per lb., or about 80 per cent, on the plat, and from 50 to 60 on
the manufactured article : an anomalous relation between the
duties on the material and on the article made up, which was very
far from uncommon under the former law. It was proposed to
reduce the duty on the plat to 5s. Numerous remonstrances
were made ; and the Government so far receded as to fix it at
7*. 6rf. ; and that on hats or bonnets of straw was settled at 8s. Qd.
per lb., instead of a rate equal probably to about 18s. 6d. per lb.
In the face of these great reductions, the importations actually
declined upon the change ; and in the second year they scarcely
recovered the low scale of 1840, and did not reach a moiety of
that of 1838, as will appear from the following figures :
1842-3. 1843-4.
Weight of straw plat entered . . . 8,322 Ibs. 12,070 Ibs.
of straw hats or bonnets . . . 4,081 Ibs. 3,546 Ibs.
Total .... 12,403 Ibs. 15,616 Ibs.
Without specifying other instances, I pass to another numerous
class of cases those, namely, in which speculation was set to
work by the change of the duty, and importation of the commodity
immediately took a spring ; but in which a material decrease in
the second year, as compared with the first, shows that the expecta-
* See Tables of Revenue, Trade, &c., Part x., 1840.
Recent Commercial Legislation.
tions which had been raised had also been in various degrees dis-
appointed. Thus, for example, we find the following entriies :
1. Among manufactured goods
First Year.
1,919,000 pairs
33,000 yards
7,500/. at value
7,722 cwts.
25,000/. at value
3,700/.
710 cwts.
233,000 number
1,353/. value
Gloves .
Damasks and damask diaper
Plain linens
Spirit of turpentine
Embroidery
Manufactures of skin or fur
Hard soap ....
Dutch bricks
Plain china
Second Year.
1,795,000 pairs
21,000 yards
6,500/. at value
35 cwts.
7,500/. at value
1,800/.
536 cwts.
202,000 number
980/. value
2. Among articles of food
First Year.
3,462 cwts.
7,677
764
206
6,188
Second Year.
989 cwts.
1,096
108
28
2,716
Beef, salted (foreign) .
Pork, salted (foreign) .
Salmon ....
Bacon (foreign) .
Hams (foreign) .
Most of these were articles, with regard to which the very
greatest apprehensions had been expressed. It is within my own
recollection, that in the month of August, 1842, the people of a
rural district of Scotland, thirty or forty miles from any focus of
foreign trade, were much excited on the subject of some salt
meat which had been exposed for sale at 3d. per lb., in conse-
quence, as was professed, of the new tariff: the fact being that
the change in duty on that article amounted only to the small
sum of 4s. per cwt., and that this change did not take place
until the 10th of October, two or three months after its miraculous
results had been palmed upon the public, Nor was it an uncom-
mon thing in the streets of London to see advertisements of goods
purporting to be cheapened by the new tariff, with regard to which
no change either was made or had ever been proposed.
But the most remarkable example of this recession after a first
experiment was in the case which of all others excited the greatest
alarm and apprehension namely, the importation of live animals
for food. Arguing in Parliament against the exaggerated appre-
48 Remarks upon
hensions which were entertained with respect to the effects of that
measure, I protested against an estimate, that had met my eye,
according to which it was shown, that in the course of a few years
there might be 300,000,000 pigs disposable for importation into
England from a single country : but I, somewhat weakly, admitted
the possibility that within a short time we might have from abroad
as a maximum of addition to our supplies, 50,000 head of cattle
annually. The importations of the first six months were
Cattle ....... 4,076
Swine and hogs ...... 410*
But the parties engaged in them apparently (as it is termed) burnt
their fingers: for in the whole year 1843 there were only im-
ported
Cattle . 1,482
Swine and hogs ...... 361
There is, indeed, a revival in 1844, sufficient to save the results of
the measure from becoming ridiculous. In that year we obtained
from the whole world
Cattle . 4,865
But of swine and hogs only . . . . 271
An argument, however, has been frequently advanced to the
effect, that the foreign prices have acted powerfully in reducing
British prices to their own level, although when they had reached
that level no extended opening could remain for importation.
My answer is two-fold : first, it is impossible that foreign prices
could have exercised a depressing influence ' upon the immense
market of England to any considerable extent say, for instance,
Id. per Ib. without having held out such opportunities of profit
by actual importations from abroad as must have led to very much
more extensive operations than those which have actually taken
place ; secondly, there are two modes in which price may be
lowered either by addition to supply, or by subtraction from
demand. An addition of 3000 head to supply will have no
greater effect upon prices than a diminution of 3000 head in the
demand. The new tariff is responsible for the addition of 3000
* Paper No. 43, Session 1845.
Recent Commercial Legislation.
head to the supply ; but commercial distress affecting immedi-
ately, perhaps, four or five millions of the people, nearly all of
whom were consumers of animal food is responsible for con-
tracting the demand to an amount nearer 300,000 head than
3000. If fall of price took place, it appears to me more rational
to ascribe it to the latter cause than to the former one.
The result seems to be that there is no likelihood, for some
considerable time at least, of our obtaining a supply of cattle
from abroad at all sufficient to meet the steady increase of our
population. Nor is this, in my view, an unsatisfactory result.
On the contrary, what has taken place is highly cheering, for this
reason, at least, that it shows this most important branch of agri-
cultural industry in our own country to be pursued with an eco-
nomy and skill which need not shrink from competition, and
which, indeed, has now defied it ; and it may teach us not to
regard, so much as we are apt to do, the low nominal prices
which commodities may bear in some other countries, while, not-
withstanding, it may be, and is often true, that, when quality is
considered, the Englishman gets the cheapest article.
I must quote, however, as a last class of illustrations, one or
two cases of manufactured commodities, for the very striking
manner in which they contrast the anticipations of persons be-
wildered by their fears with the actual results of changes in duties
upon imports.
Amidst predictions of ruin, the duty on the candles termed
stearine (a refined tallow) was reduced from 63s. 4d. to 23s. 4d.
per cwt. The quantities entered were no more than 1000 Ibs.
(of the value of perhaps 50/.) in the first year, and 2000 (or 1007.
in value) for the second.
The duty on beaver-hats was lowered from 10s. fid. each to
2s. 6e?. each. Foreign hats had been introduced in 1840 to the
number of 240. In the first year of the new Act they were but
135, and in the second 191.
The duty on cordage and on cable-yarn was reduced from
10s. 9<f. per cwt. to 6s. per cwt. The first proposal was only
5,y. This duty touched upon a very important trade, and a great
mass of hand labour. We are importers of 700,000 cwts. of
E
50 Remarks upon
hemp annually, of the value of about a million sterling. There
was submitted to the Government the most complete invulner-
able paper -demonstration, that our trade in cordage must pass
bodily into the hands of Russia. Export duties, low wages, em-
ployment in the long Russian winters for hands otherwise idle,
and therefore costing next to nothing, saving in freight and in-
surance all these arguments and many more were duly mar-
shalled. It was shown by a price current from St. Petersburgh
that the change meditated in England had excited attention in
that market. Moreover, all this was not only urged by traders
of intelligence and character, but they were led on by one of the
most distinguished among the many distinguished men of busi-
ness in the city of London, thoroughly acquainted with the trade
from former connexion, but then, I believe, retaining little or no
interest in it. The prophecies of such men made, I confess, a
deep impression on my mind, which has become deeper still
since I have witnessed their issue.
However, the stroke descended ; and the importations of cord-
age and cable-yarn, taken together, which had reached 451 cwts.
in 1838, and 294 cwts. in 1840, rose to 333 cwts. in 1842-3, and
to 1032 cwts. in 1843-4 ; the trade in the manufactured article
thus appearing to be in extent about one six-hundredth part of
that in the raw material .
The case of corks, on some accounts, was still more remark-
able, because it was one of those commonly quoted at the time
by such persons as chose to cast upon the Government the impu-
tation that, while they dealt gently with great interests, they dealt
most severely with small ones ; and I am bound to add, because,
as I believe, the journeymen employed in this trade were, in
some instances, actually dismissed from work in anticipation of
the change. They therefore, no doubt, had good reason to be-
lieve the predictions that were freely delivered on all hands of
the total and certain loss of our trade in cork-cutting; and, I
must admit, it was distressing to receive from persons in such a
class remonstrances so piteous, delivered in a manner the most
candid, simple, and sincere.
Their case attracted an uncommon degree of attention, and
Recent Commercial Legislation.
perhaps not less than ten or twelve deputations attended various
members of the Government upon it, to say nothing of a volumi-
nous correspondence, while a most lively interest in their favour
was excited in the House of Commons.
But I think it is manifest that these parties, and those who
supported them in Parliament, were deceivers, as being them-
selves deceived. I arrive at this conclusion from the figures
before me. The change was postponed until July, 1843, so that
there was plenty of time to prepare large importations of the
manufactured article. The old duties were, on the wood, 8/.
per ton, and on corks 7**. per Ib. The uniform declaration of
the parties in the trade was, that no duty less than 4s. per Ib.
would protect them. The rates were reduced to Is. per ton on
the wood, and 8d. per Ib. on corks. The importations of the
first year, under the altered system, were as follows :
Corks, 81,683 Ibs. = 36i tons.
Cork-wood 4,271
Or the import of the manufactured article from abroad was
about the one-hundred-and-eighteenth part of the import of the
material to be manufactured in this country. But there is much
refuse in cork- wood. If, then, we allow each ton of corks to
represent in value two tons of cork- wood, still the proportion
remains one to fifty-nine. If, further, we ought to allow for the
excess in the delivery of cork-wood for the period in question,
because of the reduction of the duty charged on it, then we find
the average delivery of two years from July, 1842, to July, 1844
to be only 2973 tons,* instead of 4271 tons ; and the proportion
of the trade in the manufactured article becomes one in forty-
one, or somewhat less than 2J per cent, of the whole. This is a
change, no doubt ; but if it be a violent and cruel one, then it is
difficult to conceive what change is not violent and cruel ; and it
remains a memorable example of the difference, in such matters,
between anticipation and experience.
I must add, however, that I had long ago been informed that
the trade was in a small number of hands, and was conducted
The mean delivery of 1838 and 1840 was 2933 tons.
E 2
52 Remarks upon
with something of the manner of monopoly, and that English
corks were very inferior to those of French manufacture. I
learn, upon recent inquiry, that the price of wine-corks has been
reduced from 85. to less than 65. 6d. per Ib. by the change ; but
the bulk of the trade, it is manifest, has been retained in British
hands.
I shall draw a concluding illustration from the occurrences of
last year. The same words, I might almost say the same for-
mulae, of sinister prognostication were then used, mutatis mu-
tandis, by the manufacturers of vinegar, including persons of the
very highest respectability, which had been employed in 1842 by
many scores of other classes. I ventured to refer, at a confer-
ence, to the falsification of the previous omens in so many in-
stances. I was answered by a distinguished member of Parlia-
ment (friendly to the abolition of the Corn Law), who accompa-
nied the deputation, that it would be no consolation to the vinegar
manufacturer when he should find his apprehensions realised, to
know that other trades had discovered theirs to be baseless. It
afforded, however, some presumption that his demonstrations and
his prophecies might prove to be of the same family as theirs, and
to be destined to the same limbo.
The trade declared a duty of Is. per gallon on foreign vinegar
to be necessary in order to enable them to subsist. It was re-
duced (from Is. 6e?.) to 4d. I subjoin the result:
Quantities of Foreign Vinegar entered for Home Consumption.
In the year 1841 . . . 22,205 gallons.
In 1842 ..... 18,139
In 1843 14,144
In 1844 (new duty from June 6) . 49,574
Now, the quantity of British vinegar charged with excise duty
appears to have been about 3,000,000 gallons, so that the
foreigner has at most obtained (up to the present time) but one-
sixtieth part of the trade, and fifty-nine parts remain with the
British manufacturer.
That in some few instances, among alterations so numerous,
the British producer may have been subjected to inconvenient
pressure, I can readily believe : that increased importation has
Recent Commercial Legislation.
produced benefit to the public almost follows, as a general rule,
from the fact that it has taken place. That the degree of in-
crease has ordinarily been so limited appears to me, on the
whole, to be a fact full of instruction ; and gives rise not only to
the supposition that foreign competition has often stimulated im-
provements which have enabled the British producer to repel or
to endure it, but also to the inference I have already named,
which, if true, is very important, namely, that British industry
even when it is not supported by superior machinery, by the
application of capital on a large scale, or by great physical advan-
tages is able to meet the industry of foreign countries upon a
footing of less inequality than we have been apt to suppose.
It would be well, also, if all parties, who conceive themselves
to be threatened by impending changes, would recollect that
there are usually some classes who have a strong interest in ex-
aggerating their force, and that such interest may either afford a
temptation to dishonesty, or very powerfully warp the judgment.
It was, for instance, a tempting opportunity in 1842 to assure
the farmer that foreign cattle would come over like locusts, and
thereby to induce him to sell his own better bred and fed beasts
for much less than they were worth. Much mischief of this
kind, I do not doubt, has been done ; but for such mischief the
legislature is hardly to be held responsible.
I have now completed my endeavour to show however inade-
quately, yet in a connected form the proportion of our revenue
and of our commerce which have been affected by legislation,
comprised within a period of three years, and the results of that
legislation upon both ; and I cannot scruple to avow that they
seem to me to vindicate the policy of a gradual and circumspect
relaxation of restrictions, as being the best means of enabling
the skill and labour of England to find their full value in the
market of the world.
It has been my endeavour rather to state facts, and the infer-
ences immediately connected with them, than to trace the re-
lation subsisting between these and the general principles of trade,
and of legislation in respect to trade. Yet I feel strongly that the
results obtained up to the present time, although necessarily as
54 Remarks upon
yet incomplete, are in a high degree favourable to the commercial
policy applied on a large scale by the legislature in the year
1842, and again upon different occasions during each of the years
that have since elapsed. I have yet greater satisfaction in the be-
lief that these results tend not less, but even more powerfully, to
uphold the propostion that the foundations of the commercial
power of this country are up to this moment, at least in a com-
mercial sense, unimpaired ; and that the industry and skill, which
are its central support, together with the physical advantages and
those of great capital and long established connection which are
its accessories, will receive no vital wound from the restrictive
measures which have found or may find acceptance elsewhere.
But while it seems to me just that the principles favourable to
the circumspect and guarded relaxation of restraints upon trade
should not be defrauded of any credit which an actual, though
partial, experience may show to be their due, I am bound to add
that I for one draw no inferences from what I am about to state
in favour of their precipitate and sweeping application, or of
practising, by an incessant repetition of experiments in legisla-
tion, upon those employments by which our fellow-countrymen
gain their bread. I am a deliberate adherent of that policy
which is described in contemptuous terms as halting between
two opinions: between the opinion which regards commercial
restriction as being permanently and essentially a good, and the
opinion which deals with it as an evil necessarily greater than
that of a sharp and violent transition to freedom ; as the source
of all our economical difficulties ; and even as a violation of the
laws of God. Nor is it a fearful and languid mean, a mere
neutrality, of which the observance is here implied : it is only
that reasonable circumspection, that regard to the lessons of the
past, in their detail, as guides for the future that just comparison
of conflicting considerations and care to elicit their compound
result, which in almost every branch of legislation constitute the
universally acknowledged rule of statesmen, and which have alike
marked the genius of the institutions of this country as a whole,
and the character of its people.
For the desire to realise, under these conditions, a just
Recent Commercial Legislation.
liberty of trade, I can deem no apology requisite from any adhe-
rent of a party which follows in the main Mr. Burke and Mr.
Pitt as its guides among the luminaries of a former generation,
and which has reckoned Mr. Canning, Lord Liverpool, and Mr.
Huskisson among its members, within the memory and the ex-
perience of our living statesmen. The disposition, by which that
desire is balanced, is a disposition to respect the subsisting distri-
bution of capital and labour, to preserve it from all violent and
sudden shocks, and from the worrying agitation of incessant
change, to maintain a confidence, not in the absolute immobility
of law, but in the determination of the legislature to deal tempe-
rately and dispassionately by all, to adopt no change except for
some good and positive reason, and to confine it when adopted
within the limits which such reason prescribes. For this disposi-
tion I find an ample defence, alike in the writings of economists,
in the acts of commercial statesmen, and in the analogies which
all legislation, and especially which all British legislation, sup-
plies.
There are indeed some who would, as it were, revenge upon
commerce itself the wrong done to higher pursuits and ends by the
money- worshipping spirit of the age. I do not doubt that wealth
is the heaviest curse to those who idolize either it or the pleasures
which it purchases ; and that the pursuit of wealth is often one of
the subtlest snares by which the path of the human being is beset.
But in this view, wealth, and commerce as the means of wealth,
are like knowledge, or talent, or health, or any other earthly en-
dowment. Yet each of them has its place in the natural that is,
in the Providential order of the world. Let us not exalt them
above their own region, but neither let us deny their prerogatives
within it. The diversity of the productions of different regions is
the primeval law which sanctions their exchange :
* Nonne vides, croceos ut Tmolus odores,
India mittit ebur, molles sua thura Sabaei ?' Virg. Georg. I. 66.
Still there is an alteration in the policy of the present year, as
compared with that of J 842, so important as to demand specific
notice : I mean the total abolition of duties, of great duties like
56 Remarks upon
those on cotton and glass, as well as small ones, like the multi-
tudes of petty imposts that are now on the point of being swept
from our tariff, instead of a reduction which might aim simul-
taneously at relieving trade and at giving scope, through in-
creased consumption, for the final recovery of the revenue sur-
rendered.
I am not about to discuss in this place the policy of the aboli-
tion of minor duties on materials of industry, but to offer a few
remarks upon another very important subject, closely allied to
that of our own commercial legislation I mean the commercial
legislation of foreign countries, It is by considerations drawn
from this quarter that I should prefer mainly to vindicate the
principle of total abolition of duty, as applied to those articles
upon which British labour is to be employed.
But in the first place I must endeavour to set aside a notion
which has gone abroad, and which has received countenance in quar-
ters where it was little to be expected, that our trade with foreign
countries, and especially with the continent of Europe, is of com-
paratively small, or at any rate of diminishing, importance. I ap-
prehend that the labour of the people of Great Britain, man for
man, is the most productive labour in the world. We subject it to
a severe test in comparing it with that of the United States. On
turning, however, to a recent estimate, drawn from accounts which
have the sanction of some public authority, I find the total annual
product of the industry of that country,* in the various branches
of agriculture, manufactures, commerce, mining, the forest, and
the fisheries, calculated at 1063 millions of dollars ; equal to about
two hundred and fifty millions sterling. The population amounted
at the same time to between eighteen and nineteen millions, or was
about equal to that of Great Britain in 1841. We have no statis-
tics which would warrant my venturing upon a determinate conjec-
ture of the annual value of the fruits of the labour of this country,
but I do not think there can be a doubt that they must be consi-
derably higher suppose even to the amount of 50 per cent. But
if this be so, still the fact remains, that a much larger proportion
* Tucker's ' Progress of the United States/ p. 195. 1843.
Recent Commercial Legislation.
of our industry is engaged in trade with foreign countries, than of
the industry of America. Her exports are under twenty-five mil-
lions sterling, ours are over fifty. Of her labour, they employ
one-tenth; of ours, even according to the computation I have
hazarded, a seventh. In short, we are more dependent than any
other great people upon external trade for the employment of our
population.
Nor is it the fact that, as many suppose, this external trade is
leaving the channels of our intercourse with Europe in order to
fill those of distant, and especially of colonial markets.
In order to make good this proposition, I take the term of the
thirteen latest years of which we possess the accounts namely,
from 1831 to 1843;* and I show by the following figures the
increase of our export trade,
1 . With the whole world ;
2. With the whole world, except Europe ;
3. With Europe alone.
1. In the year 1831 we exported to all countries of
the world goods of the declared value of . 37,164,372
In the year 1843 52,279,709
Increase in twelve years . . 15,115,337
or 40-6 per cent.
2. In the year 1831 we exported to all countries,
except those of Europe, goods amounting to
the declared value of .... 23,523,932
In the year 1843 28,295,750
Increase in twelve years . . 5,771,818
or 24*5 per cent.
3. In the year 1831 we exported, to Europe only,
goods to the declared value of . . . 13,640,440
In the year 1843 23,983,959
Increase in twelve years . . 10,343,511
or 75 8 per cent.
According to this statement our trade with Europe has in-
creased nearly twice as fast as our trade with the whole world,
*From the Decennial Tables for 1831-40; and the subsequent single years as they
58
Remarks upon
and three times as fast as our trade with the residue of the
world.
But, as single years may fluctuate from irregular causes, let us
take periods of three years, in the same order as that already fol-
lowed :
1. In the years 1831-3 we exported annually to all
countries, on the average, goods to the de-
clared value of 37,760,771
In the years 1841-3 50,431,785
Increase in ten years . . 12,671,014
or 33*5 per cent.
2. In the year 1831-3 we exported annually, on the
average, to all countries, except those of
Europe, goods to the declared value of . 22,815,359
In the year 1841-3 27,087,423
Increase in ten years . . 4,272,064
or 18*7 per cent.
3. In the years 1831-3 we exported annually, on
the average, to Europe, goods to the declared
value of 14,945,411
In the years 1843 23,344,362
Increase in ten years . . 8,398,951
or 56 2 per cent.
According to this mode of computation, the rate of increase
in our European trade approaches to double that of our entire
external trade ; and it exceeds by more than three times the rate
of increase in our trade with the other three quarters of the
globe.
In European trade are included our European colonies; but
of these Gibraltar alone materially influences the result ; and the
exports to Gibraltar are due to the commercial demand of foreign
states. The condition indeed of the trade with the United States,
in the years 1842 and 1843, has an unfavourable influence in the
comparison : and it is also true that, on the whole, our European
trade does not now represent so great an amount of British labour,
in proportion to its extent, as it did twenty years or thirty years
ago : but neither these nor any other circumstances, so far as I
Recent Commercial Legislation.
am aware, can do more than slightly qualify the conclusions which
the foregoing figures appear to establish.
The period during which this rapid extension of dealings has
been going on, has been distinguished, first, by many relaxations
in the commercial code of England, and increased facilities for
the importation of foreign commodities ; and, secondly, by efforts
on the part of almost every European power either to erect or to
tighten a restrictive and prohibitory system.
In the earlier portion of the period was constituted the Customs*
Union of Northern Germany ; a wise and noble scheme, if it be
viewed in its internal bearings, for extending the intercourse of a
great people, for maintaining its European influence, and en-
hancing its sentiment of nationality ; but, with respect to foreign
trade, a measure of jealousy and rigour, not the less but the
more grievous because its severe and in many instances crushing
enactments were ushered into the world under the most alluring
titles of simplicity and uniformity, and with a professed limita-
tion of the maximum or general duty upon imports to 10 per
cent, ad valorem.
Within the last four years, Russia, Prussia, France, and
Spain in fine, every great country of Europe, except Austria
has given increased stringency to its commercial system. Nor
have the minor states in general been backward in following the
vicious example. Belgium in particular worries her commerce
with a succession of new restraints, now taxing iron, now cottons,
now linen yarns, and at last inventing a system of differential
duties upon ships, with the avowed intention of taking rank
among the maritime powers of Europe ! On the other hand, the
signs of a disposition to relax have been few, and generally faint.
Hanover has indeed stood her ground, and Holland has even re-
duced her domestic tariff, which was very moderate before the
reduction. Sardinia has made considerable diminutions in her
customs' duties. Portugal was not unwilling, but sought too high
a price, in the surrender of British revenue, for doing herself a
benefit. Austria has effected some small relaxations, and, though
they are small, she deserves honour for them.
On the other side of the Atlantic, it is enough to refer to the
60 Remarks upon
tariffs of Brazil, adopted in 1844, and of the United States,
adopted in 1842 : the latter distinguished from those of the whole
world in this particular, that while we are constantly assured that
its main object is revenue and not protection, it admits free of all
duty tea and coffee, and other articles on which revenue could be
raised without any other than a fiscal effect, and imposes heavy
charges only on such productions as can enter into competition
with its domestic interests.
Most of the countries to which I have adverted appear to be
possessed by a sentiment that they have found the philosopher's
stone in a prohibitory system. They appear to have realized one
of the most singular of the impostures of Joseph Smith, the
leader of the Mormons, who 1 think professed to have discovered
in the far north a people enormously rich, whose territory had,
from time immemorial, been surrounded by walls of brass, that
they might have no intercourse with any other nation of the
earth. England, it is held, has grown rich by restriction, and
now only wishes to grow richer by casting it away. Whether we
relax or not, they are alike inexorable. When we maintain the
restraints we find in existence, they use our conduct as their
apology for inventing new ones. When we remove such re-
straints, they perceive only a deeper plan for bringing about
their ruin by cheap production, which requires of them still more
imperiously the multiplication of their repressive and prohibitory
enactments.
It is needless to determine, for how much of this unfortunate
policy abroad, England, by her own proceedings, at certain periods
in particular, has become justly responsible. That would be a
necessary inquiry if I were engaged in examining my subject for
the purpose of awarding praise or blame ; but it is not so. In
the first place I believe that the European governments are
obeying what seems to grow more and more the law of all govern-
ments, and are exhibiting the actual direction of the popular
movement, often in opposition to the personal convictions of their
members. Doubtless they act on what they believe to be, on the
whole, for the good of their respective countries ; and I entirely
disclaim alike the right and the desire to censure them.
It may be true that England is the main sufferer by their pro-
Recent Commercial Legislation.
ceedings. We hear much of the jealousy with which she is re-
garded ; we know that the flame of jealousy readily finds its
necessary food, where there is a supposed collision of pecuniary
interests ; but I for one utterly disbelieve that hostility to Eng-
land is the root and ground of these measures. I rather view it
as an unhappy, and, if I may so speak, a maladroit homage to
her, that other nations show so very impetuous a desire to copy
her example, and trust more to her traditions than to their own
understandings.
I cannot however but believe, on the part of our own legislators
of former times, that they looked to the protective system rather
as a temporary stimulus to enterprise while yet in its infancy, than
as a permanent and essential good rather as a means of de-
veloping real, natural, inherent capabilities, than as an expedient
for supplying the want of them. I fear that the temper now pre-
vailing in many countries verges towards this latter, and surely
most irrational, most pernicious view.
I have dwelt long on this subject of the commercial policy of
foreign states, but it is one of immense moment. The power of
capital, skill, industry, long established character, and connexions,
sustaining English commerce, bears up against all that has been
done. Sometimes the smuggler gives us a commercial remedy,
in which no man should rejoice, hand in hand with a moral evil.
Sometimes what we lose by new restrictions in a particular
country, we gain by the diminished capacity of that country, now
become a dearer producer, to compete with us in third markets.
Sometimes enhancements of price, equivalent to the increase of
duty, leave to the British merchant the means of continuing his
business ; and the whole weight of the burden is borne by the
patient public of the foreign state. Sometimes our trade staggers
for a moment under the blow, and then recovers. Upon the
whole, notwithstanding the sharp and rapid succession of re-
strictive measures during recent years, it has grown, and continues
to grow, from year to year with a perverse rapidity, as if perse-
cution were not less feeble when applied to commerce, than it
is now commonly reputed to be when used against religious
opinion.
62 Remarks upon
But if so, it may be naturally asked, why all this anxiety? My
answer is, that while I do not believe that we have been losers,
relatively to the countries of which I now speak, but hold, on the
contrary, that their blows have told most severely on themselves,
yet I cannot doubt that the states in question have taken much
from us as well as from their own inhabitants, have neutralised or
contracted a thousand benefits which it was practicable to have
attained, and that their policy demands from us a vigorous and
steady counteraction.
But what is to be the form of that counteraction? Are we to
weary them, by remonstrances, into undoing their acts ? But
first, as matters now stand, it is too probable that we should be
interpreted by contraries, as Irish pigs are said to understand
their drivers; that the earnestness of our request might be
deemed the most demonstrative reason against its being granted.
Secondly, to do is one thing, rapidly to undo is a very different
one. We ourselves have occasion to urge this plea : we must
allow it due weight on behalf of others. We cannot and ought
not to expect foreign states at once to break down the lofty barriers
which they have been so carefully erecting.
Shall we then counteract by retaliation? The public senti-
ment, I think, among us nowhere leans to such a course. For
states having more contracted interests to regard, it is, I believe,
in most cases, as unwise as at first sight it is seductive : for us it
would be suicidal.
Shall we then pursue the daring course of repudiating at once
all our own restraints, all our protective duties, high and low,
and our Navigation Act from its first section to its last, in order
thereby to prove our heroic sincerity, and to force a sympathy in
other lands, which shall bear down every obstacle, and establish
the commercial intercourse of men on the footing of universal
brotherhood ? This is the sentiment of an hardy minority among
us ; but the project, on account of its disregard of subsisting
arrangements and habits, is unwise and unjust : and, what is
enough for enabling us to dispense with detailed discussion upon
its merits in this place, it is plainly impracticable.
There remains, I think, only one course it is to use every
Recent Commercial Legislation.
effort to disburden of all charges, so far as our law is concerned,
the materials of industry, and thus to enable the workman to ap-
proach his work at home on better terms, as the terms on which
he enters foreign markets are altered for the worse against him.
I do not believe that this will be a losing game ; but, on the con-
trary, that if we steadily pursue it, then although the prohibitory
policy of foreign states, or, as I should rather say, although the
forced concessions of foreign governments to the anti- commercial
spirit of particular classes of their subjects, may indeed and will
diminish the aggregate trade of the world, they will not diminish
the share of it which falls to the lot of England. They may
smite, from time to time, some branch of our commerce, and it
may fall as a lofty tree falls in the forest. We hear the crash,
and we deplore the void ; but we forget that a thousand more are
lifting their heads and spreading forth their arms with an in-
sensible but constant growth. Even so it is in our commerce
with other nations. If a new tax is laid in Germany upon the
iron which our bounteous earth yields us in profusion, that tax
cripples the power of the country imposing it to compete with us
in every one of the hundred branches of trade to which iron is an
accessory. If France doubles the duty on our linen yarns, she
stimulates us to economy, and bids the smuggler thrive, she taxes
her consumer, and fetters that ingenuity and taste on the part
of her weavers, which are the main support of her commercial
strength.
I do not mean that what is undoubtedly injurious to us is to be
viewed with satisfaction because it is yet more injurious to others ;
but let other nations come to be convinced that such is the ten-
dency of their present policy, and they will spontaneously save us
the trouble of expostulation, and will hasten to reverse it, for the
just and natural reason which alone would warrant their revers-
ing it namely, not our interest, but their own. How are they
to be brought to that mind ? As I think, by seeing that although
we may, by one act and another, be crippled in detail, yet our
aggregate commerce even with them maintains itself, and even
gains further augmentation ; that while they obstruct the channel
at one end, yet, as we clear it at the other, the waters find their
64 Remarks upon
way in reflux as well as flux : that their purchases from us, ii
despite of adverse legislation, have increased with their sales
us, and that with a rapidity that none but the most sanguine
would have ventured to expect. Let us have a few more years
of experimental instruction, such as that which is afforded by the
figures of the statement I have given of the relative growth of our
trade with Europe and the world : such results cannot fail to
exercise a powerful influence on the intelligence and the will of
governments, and of the nations whom they rule.
It is this regard to the course of commerce and of commercial
legislation in the world at large which convinces me of the wis-
dom of pushing further than might otherwise be necessary, or
even desirable, our efforts to relieve the materials of industry from
fiscal burdens, and also of endeavouring to diminish (as is just
now being done in the case of sugar) the impositions upon articles
of consumption, as the state may be able to afford it, and our own
industry and capital, immediately engaged, to bear the operation,
I do not say without alarm, but without real and substantial de-
rangement.
I freely grant that the relief of raw materials from taxation is a
different policy from that of annihilating protection : some will
say a more timid, as I venture to think a more just and a less
hazardous course of action. But at least it has been steadily pur-
sued. Before 1842 we levied upon foreign commodities of that
class nearly three millions and a half. Of this sum nearly
1,250,0007. was surrendered in 1842 and 1844. In the present
year there is added another million : and at the same time nearly
800,0007. of taxation, analogous in its character, that is of direct
charge upon glass and upon coals produced at home, is likewise
given up. Only three articles belonging strictly to the class of raw
materials will now remain subject to taxation : namely, copper
ore, timber, and tallow : and of these the two first have been
placed by the law of 1842 upon a footing much more favourable
to the consumer than that on which they formerly stood. Such
being the case, I think the actual policy of the country, notwith-
standing exceptions and apparent anomalies, is as clear and un-
deniable in fact, as it is sound in reason.
Recent Commercial Legislation.
I close this review with two remarks. First, I have taken no
particular notice of many important changes in the laws affecting
our foreign commerce, which have been adopted during the last
few years, such as the universal permission to export machinery,
the Corn Substitution Act, the freedom of the trade for provision-
ing ships, the reduction of duties in the colonial possessions of the
Crown, the abolition of the system of naturalisation of goods, and
the Canadian Corn Act the last a measure of which we are not
yet, I think, in a condition to form any judgment from experi-
ence. All these, however, belong to the same policy in its dif-
ferent aspects : they must stand or fall with it, and I need not
prolong these already lengthened remarks by examining them in
detail.
Secondly, in exhibiting so many figures, and traversing a ground
so extensive, I am aware that even this prolonged statement must
be very incomplete ; and further, that besides omitting, in some
cases, what is material, I may even have advanced what is erro-
neous. If it be so I hope, and I do not doubt, there will be found
persons both able and willing to set me right ; but neither in esti-
mating relief to trade, nor surrender of revenue, nor the results of
the diminution of protective duties, have I in any instance
knowingly given a form or colour to my statement such as would
draw from it an undue advantage for my reasoning. I have
thought it necessary to state this, because in such matters figures
are an instrument of dangerous and tempting power ; and in order
to use them justly and fairly, there is need not only of a generally
honest intention, but of constant care in their application to par-
ticulars.
London, March 15, 1845.
London : Printed by WIT.WA.M CLOWES and SONS, Stamford Street.
F
ADDRESS
ON THE
PLACE OF ANCIENT GEEECE
IN THE
PROVIDENTIAL ORDER OF THE WORLD:
DELIVERED BEFOEE THE UNIVERSITY OP EDINBURGH,
ON THE THIRD OP NOVEMBER, 1865.
EIGHT HON. W. B. GLADSTONE, M.P.,
CHANCELLOR OP THE EXCHEQUER,
AND FOREIGN ASSOCIATE OF THE INSTITUTE OF FRANCE.
LONDON :
JOHN MURRAY, ALBEMARLE STREET.
EDINBURGH: OLIVER AND BOYD.
1865.
Lately Published,
MR. GLADSTONE'S FINANCIAL STATEMENTS of the years 1853,
'60, '63, and '64. With Speeches on Tax-Bills, 1861, and Charities, 1863.
Second Edition. 8v r o. 12s.
The following can be had separately,
FINANCIAL STATEMENT, 1863, 1864 & 1865. 2s. each.
SPEECH ON CUSTOMS & INLAND REVENUE BILL, 1861. Is.
CHARITIES, 1863. Is.
EXTENSION OF SUFFRAGE IN TOWNS. Is.
WEDGWOOD THE POTTER : AN ADDRESS. Is. ; or with Woodcuts,
2t.
ADDRESS AND SPEECHES AT MANCHESTER, 1862. Is. 6d.
LETTERS TO LORD ABERDEEN, on the State Prosecutions of
the Neapolitan Government. Is.
JOHN MURRAY, ALBEMARLE STREET.
LONDON : PRINTED HI WILLIAM CLOWES AND SONS, STAMFORD STREET,
AND CHARING CKOSS.
ADDRESS,
$c. fyc.
MR. VICE-CHANCELLOR, PROFESSORS, AND GENTLEMEN :
The subject on which I desire to address to
you my parting words, is, the place of ancient Greece
in the providential order of the world.
Even the pointed announcement of such a subject
may seem to partake of paradox. No one, indeed,
would think of denying that the people, who inha-
bited that little cluster of rugged mountains and of
narrow vales, played a part, and a great part, upon
the stage of history, and left a mark, not deep only,
but indelible, upon the character of the human race.
No one would deny that they have delivered to us bril-
liant examples of energy in action, and matchless pro-
ductions of the mind and hand, models in letters and
in art. Nor is there any doubt about the fact, that
Christian Europe has during many generations
assigned to Greece the largest share in the culti-
vation of the human mind. But this age, which
questions much, questions naturally enough the pro-
priety of the judgment, which has thus awarded her
the place of honour in the career of general educa-
tion. Her language, her history, her literature, and
her art, are regarded as the privileged delight and
separate entertainment of the few ; but there is no
B 2
clear perception in the majority of minds, that all
these have entered deeply into the common interests
of mankind. Lastly, they are distinguished in so
broad a manner from the teaching of the Gospel, nay
in certain points and instances they are so much in
conflict with the spirit of the Evangelical code, that
there is a disposition to regard them as belonging
exclusively to the secular order, as well as to the
secondary, and if I may so speak ornamental, interests
of life. To its secondary interests, because Greece
does not propose to teach us how to choose a pro-
fession, or to make way in the world :
o-' 01 pvdpol irpbs roX^)ira ; " "
To the secular order, because it is beyond doubt
that we cannot obtain from her the lessons of true
religion. Nay, she has sometimes almost assumed
the attitude of its rival ; for both the period of the
revival of learning, and also more modern times,
have supplied signal instances, in which her fascina-
tions have well-nigh persuaded men of genius or of
letters, Christian-born, to desert their allegiance to
their faith, and endeavour to revive for themselves,
at least in the region of the fancy, the worship once
in use at her long-abandoned shrines.
Other reasons besides these have produced a
practical indisposition to regard ancient Greece as
having had a distinct, assignable, and most important
place in the providential government of the world.
Something that may be called religionism, rather
* Aristoph. Nf<. v. 648.
than religion, has led us for the most part not indeed
to deny in terms that God has been and is the God
and Father and Governor of the whole human race,
as well as of Jews and Christians, yet to think and
act as if His providential eye and care had been
confined in ancient times to the narrow valley of
Jerusalem, and since the Advent to the Christian
pale, or even to something which, enforcing some
yet narrower limitation at our own arbitrary will,
we think fit to call such. But surely He, who cared
for the sixscore thousand persons in ancient Nineveh
that could not distinguish between their right hand
and their left, He without whom not a sparrow falls,
He that shapes, in its minutest detail, even the
inanimate world, and clothes the lily of the field
with its beauty and its grace, He never forgot those
sheep of His in the wilderness, but as, on the one
hand, He solicited them, and bore witness to them of
Himself, by never-ceasing bounty and by the law
written in their hearts, so on the other hand in
unseen modes He used them, as He is always using
us, for either the willing, or if not the willing, then
the unconscious or unwilling, furtherance and accom-
plishment of His designs. The real paradox then
would be not to assert, but to deny or even to
overlook, the part which may have been assigned
to any race, and especially to a race of such unrivalled
gifts, in that great and all-embracing plan for the
rearing and training of the human children of our
Father in heaven, which we call the Providential
Government of the world.
( 6 )
Such preparation, ascertained and established upon
the solid ground of fact, may be termed prophecy in
action ; and is, if possible, yet stronger for the con-
firmation of belief, and yet more sublime in aspect as
an illustration of Almighty greatness, than prophecy
in word.
But in this Providential government there are
diversities of operations. In this great house * there
are vessels of gold and silver, vessels of wood and earth.
In the sphere of common experience we see some
human beings live and die, and furnish by their life
no special lessons visible to man, but only that general
teaching, in elementary and simple forms, which is
derivable from every particle of human experience.
Others there have been who, from the time when
their young lives first, as it were, peeped over the
horizon, seemed at once to
" Flame in the forehead of the morning sky ;" f
whose lengthening years have been but one growing-
splendour, and at the last who
" leave a lofty name,
A light, a landmark, on the cliffs of fame." J
Now, it is not in the general, the ordinary, the
elementary way, but it is in a high and special sense,
that I claim for ancient Greece a marked, appro-
priated, distinctive place in the Providential order of
the world. And I will set about explaining what I
mean.
I presume that all philosophy, claiming to be
* 2 Tim. ii. 20. f Lycidas. $ Moore.
( 7 )
Christian, regards the history of our race, from its
earliest records down to the Incarnation and Advent
of our Lord, as a preparation for that transcendent
event, on which were to be hung thereafter the
destinies of our race.
Let us, however, examine more particularly that
opinion which has prevailed in the world, sometimes
sustained by argument, oftener by sufferance, some-
times lurking underground, and sometimes embold-
ened to assert itself in the face of day, that although
the Divine care extends in a general way to all men,
yet we are to look for this preparation, at least for
the positive parts of it, nowhere except in the pages
of the Old Testament, and in the history and tradi-
tions of the Patriarchs and the Jews. This opinion
has what some of our fathers would have termed " a
face of piety :" it has undoubtedly been held by pious
persons, and urged in what are termed the interests
of religion. But that face I am persuaded is a face
only, a mask which ought to be stripped off, as it
hides the reality from our view.
According to this theory, we are to consider the
line of the patriarchs and the descendants of Abra-
ham as exclusively the objects of any Divine dispen-
sation which, operating in the times before the
Advent, is to be reckoned as part of the preparation
for the great event. To them we are to look as the
guardians of all human excellence in all its infinite
varieties ; and when we seem to find it elsewhere, we
are either to treat the phenomenon as spurious, or
else, believing without sight, we are to consider it as
( 8 )
derived, through some hidden channel, from the stores
communicated by Divine revelation to the favoured
race. This theory found perhaps its fullest, nay
even its most properly fanatical, development in the
6 Paradise Regained ' of Milton. There the works of
the Greek intellect and imagination are depreciated
in a strain of the utmost extravagance ; and, what is
worse, the extravagance is made to proceed from
those Divine lips, all whose words were weighed and
measured in the exactest balances and lines of truth.
First, the proposition is advanced by the poet that
divine inspiration precludes the need of any other
knowledge, even " though granted true : " " but
these," so proceeds the speech
" But these are false, or little else hut dreams,
Conjectures, fancies, built on nothing firm."
The Greek philosophers are dismissed, as a body,
with wholesale condemnation : while Homer and
the tragedians are stated, with a gravity in itself
wonderful enough, to have learned the art of poetry
from the Jews :
" All our law and story strewed
With hymns, our psalms with artful terms inscribed,
Our Hebrew songs and harps, in Babylon
That pleased so well our victors' ear, declare
That rather Greece from us these arts derived."
The orators are set to compete with the Hebrew
prophets :
" Herein to our prophets far beneath
As men divinely taught, and better teaching
The solid rules of civil government." *
A competition this, which would probably have
* Paradise Eegained,' Book iv. 291, 334, 356.
( 9 )
caused the greatest astonishment to those to whom
the prize in it is awarded.
It is difficult to understand how Milton's genius
could have prompted him thus to pit against one
another things really, in the main, incommensurable ;
or how his learning, which must have made him
acquainted with the Greek philosophy, could have
failed to impress him with the belief that men like
Aristotle and Plato were earnest seekers after truth.
Warburton observes upon these passages, that
they were in accordance with the fashion of the
time. And it appears that, especially in the later
years of Milton's life, there were a number of learned
men, English and foreign, such as Bochart, Huet,
Voss, Gale, and Bogan, who busied themselves in
showing correspondences between the Hebrew and
the Pagan traditions, and who in some instances,
particularly that of Huet, Bishop of Avranches,
pushed their undertaking into undue and fanciful
detail. But I have not found that they propounded
any doctrine in reference to the derivation of heathen
literature from Jewish sources, either to the sweep-
ing extent, or in the cynical spirit, of the ' Paradise
Regained.' Their object appears to have been a
different one, namely, to fortify the historical credit
of the sacred records by tracing elsewhere matter
essentially corresponding with their contents ; either
as clothed in contemporary disguises, or as flowing
from a common fountain-head.
In truth, the seed-plot of this peculiar learning
belongs to a much earlier and a more interesting
and important literature. Paganism, which had been
for the two greatest races of the ancient world in
their infancy a creed, and in their riper age a pro-
fession, did not, when assailed by the victorious
advance of Christianity, retire from the intellectual
battle-field without a desperate struggle, carried on
in its behalf with all the resources of powerful and
subtle intellects. As a revelation of the designs of
God for the recovery and moral renovation of man-
kind, the Gospel was not unfairly required to give
an account, not only of itself, but of everything else
in the world that preceded or opposed it. The
Pagan system, if it had nothing else, had at least
one important advantage in the controversy. It
represented a continuous unbroken tradition, dating
from beyond the memory of man : it had come down
from father to son through more than a hundred
generations with an ostensible sameness and a very
widely-extended sway ; and none could name the
day when, in the two far-famed peninsulas that had
given the breath of life to the ancient world, it did
not exist and prevail.
Under these circumstances, it was most difficult for
the Christian apologists to admit that there lay in
the old religions of the world, and particularly in the
Greek or the Latin mythology, any nucleus or germ
of the primeval truth. For the logical consequence
of such an admission might have seemed to be that
they should not sweep the old religion off the face of
the earth, but endeavour to reduce it to some imagined
standard of its purer infancy : that they should not
( 11 )
destroy it, but reform it : whereas, on the contrary,
their purpose was, and could not but be, not to
reform but to destroy. They met, then, the'traditional
claims of Paganism by taking their stand upon the
purer, clearer, and still older tradition of the Hebrews.
They parried the negative value in argument of an
undefined antiquity with the positive record of the
creation of the world, and with the sublime exordium
of the human race, propagated in a definite line from
man to man, down to the firm ground of historic
times. So far so good. But still they were obstinately
confronted by a system conterminous both in space
and in duration with the civilised world, and^able,
too, to say of itself, with some apparent truth, that
when civilisation and culture themselves began they
did not make or bring it, but found it on the ground
before them. Thus upon the merely historic field
the battle might have looked, to the ordinary spec-
tator, like a drawn one ; while it seemed needful for
the dignity and high origin of the new religion to
conquer not at one point but at all. Hence perhaps
the tendency of the Christian apologists, in uncon-
scious obedience to the exigencies of controversy,
after they had proved by reasoning the truth and
authority of the Gospel, and had smitten their enemy,
as they did smite him, to the dust, by their moral
arguments against Paganism, to accelerate its end,
and to demolish the very last of its seeming titles,
its antiquity of origin, by refusing to affiliate any
part or parcel of it, at any point of time, to the stock
of a primeval religion, and by contending that so
( 12 )
much of truth as was scattered through the rolls
of its literature had been filtered in detail through
successive media, from Greece to Rome, from Egypt
to Greece, but was ultimately to be traced in every
case to the ancient people of God, and to the records
and traditions which had had an historical existence
among them.
I turn now to the remarkable work of Eusebius,
commonly called the ' Prseparatio Evangelica.' In
that work he sets forth the moral impurity, im-
becility, impiety, and falseness of the Pagan system.
He contrasts with it the marvellous prerogatives of
the older Scriptures. In what lies beyond this
province, he is not so injudicious as to depreciate
the intellectual development of the Hellenic race,
alike original and vast. But, he says they learned,
in its elementary form, the u superstitious error " of
their religion, which by their own genius they
afterwards recast and adorned,* from Egyptian,
Phoenician, and other foreign sources : but their
glimpses of the Godhead, and whatever they had
of instruction for the soul's health, they obtained,
by importation mediate or immediate, from the
Hebrews only, except in as far as it was supplied
them by the light of nature. f
The question here arises, if the Hellenic race got
their religion from Phoenicia and Egypt, from whence
did Egypt and Phoenicia obtain it ? And here it is
that we come upon the chief error into which Eusebius
* Note I.
t Note II.
( 13 )
was led by the controversial exigencies of his posi-
tion. He treats the religions of the world as having
been purely and wholly, even in their first beginnings,
errors and inventions of the human mind, without
any trace or manner of relationship to that Divine
truth which, as he truly tells us, had been imparted
to the Hebrews long before the days of Moses and
the composition of the Pentateuch. According to
him, the old religions were made up of worships
offered to the heavenly bodies, to the powers of
nature, to the spirits of departed men, to useful or
important arts and inventions, and to the demonic
race in its two families of the good and the evil.
He admits, in every part of his work, that he
appears in the arena to maintain and justify the
Christians as the authors of a schism in the religious
world ; and this admission it is, which, by the nature
of his propositions and his argument, he converts
into a boast.
The view taken by Eusebius was I apprehend that
generally taken by the Christian apologists. Saint
Clement of Alexandria* not only denies the origin-
ality of the Greeks in what they possessed of truth,
but treats as a theft their appropriation of Hebrew
ideas :f and fancifully, I might say whimsically,
supports the charge by instances of plagiarism perpe-
trated by one Greek author on another. Justin
Martyr J allows no higher parentage to the Greek
mythology than the poets, who were bad enough, or,
* Strom. B. vi. p. 618, ed. Col. 1688. f Note III.
J Cohortatio ad Graces, 43, 51, 52.
still worse as he says, the philosophers. Lactantius*
ascribes to fallen angels, or daemons, the invention
of image-worship. Theophilusf affirms that the gods
of the heathen were dead men : Lactantius, J that they
were reges maximi et potentissimi. But time does not
permit and the argument does not require me to
pursue this part of the subject into greater detail.^
Suffice it to say that the early Christian writers, not
the narrow-minded men that many take them for, did
not deny or disparage the intellectual prodigies of
the great heathen races, of those marvellous philoso-
phers as Eusebius often calls them, that Plato so
eminently commended by his intellectual debtor the
great Saint Augustine :|| nor did they make light of
the voice of nature in the soul of man, nor of the
Divine Government over the whole world at every
period of its existence, nor of the truths to be found
in ancient writers. But the defiled and putrescent
system of religion which they found confronting
them, formidable as it was from antiquity, wide
extension, general consent, from the strength of habit,
and from the tenacious grasp of powerful interests
upon temporal possessions and advantages, this evil
system they hunted down in argument without
mercy, and did not admit to be an historical and
traditional derivation from a primeval truth, which
the common ancestry of the Semitic and the European
races had once in common enjoyed.
* Div. Inst. ii. 16. f Ad Autol. i. p. 75, A.
J Div. Inst. i. 8. Note IV.
|| De Civ. Dei, viii. 4, and Contra Acad. iii. 37.
( 15 )
It can hardly be said that there was intentional
unfairness in this proceeding. The Christian writers
laboured under the same defect of critical knowledge
and practice with their adversaries. They took the
lives, deeds, and genealogies of the heathen deities,
just as they found them in the popular creed, for the
starting-points of their argument. Their immediate
business was to confute a false religion, and to sweep
from the face of the world a crying and incurable
moral evil : not to construct an universal philosophy
of the religious history of man ; for which the time
had not then, and perhaps has not yet, arrived. But
we have new sources of knowledge, new means of
detecting error and guiding inquiry, new points of
view open to us : and the more freely and faithfully we
use them the more we shall find cause to own, with
reverence and thankfulness, the depth, and height,
and breadth of the wisdom and goodness of Grod.
Meantime, it is easy to perceive the polemical advan-
tage which was obtained by this unsparing manner of
attack. He brought the case straight to issue, not be-
tween differently shaded images of a Deity confessedly
the same, with their respective champions ready to
uphold their several claims amidst the din of con-
tending preferences and of interminable dispute, but,
taking his stand on the threshold of the argument,
and like a soldier in fight disencumbering himself
of all detail, between the God of the Hebrews on the
one side, worshipped from the beginning of mankind,
and pretended gods on the other, which could render
no distinct account of their origin, and were in truth
( 16 )
.
no gods at all. And, to estimate the greatness of this
advantage, we must take into view the nature of the
adverse arguments. The Pagan champions did not
too much embarrass themselves by defending the
popular forms and fables of the old religion. Perhaps,
to the credulous villager, the religion of Porphyry
might have been as unintelligible or as odious as that
of St. Paul. All these incumbrances were at once
disposed of by being treated on the Pagan side as
allegorical, figurative, secondary manifestations of the
true Deity, or even as having been in many cases
due to the intrusive and mischievous activity of the
spirits of evil. The Pagan champion, then, was him-
self contending, not for the forms, but for the one great
unseen Deity, which, driven to his shifts, he affirmed
to lie hid within the forms. To admit, under circum-
stances like these, that any principle of inward life,
under whatever incrustations, was latent in the my-
thology as it lay before their eyes, would have been
to betray the truth. And any seeming approach to
that admission, such as allowing that that foul and
loathsome corpse had once been alive in youthful
health and beauty, might have sorely hindered and
perplexed the Christian argument on its way to the
general mind.
As respects the religious ideas of the Greeks,
properly so called, and their philosophic tenets, the
scholars of the seventeenth century seem to have
occupied much the same ground with Eusebius and
the early Christian writers. But as respected their
mythological personages, not having the Pagans to
( 17 )
argue with, they had no prejudices against finding for
them a lineage in Scripture. I am not competent to
determine how far in the prosecution of their task
they went into excess. But those who admit the truth
of the Sacred Eecords, must surely decline to say that
they were wrong in principle. We are not called
upon to believe that Neptune was Japhet, or that
Iphigenia was Jepththa's daughter ; or that Deucalion
was Noah, or that Bellerophon was really Joseph in
the house of Potiphar, notwithstanding certain resem-
blances of circumstances by which these and some
other such cases are marked. But if we believe in
the substantial soundness of the text of Scripture and
in the substantial truth of its history, we must then
also believe that the Hamitic and Japhetic races, as
they in their successive branches set out upon their
long migrations, brought with them, from the early
home which they had shared with the sons of Shem,
the common religious traditions. They could not but
go, as ^Eneas is fabled to have gone from Troy
" Cum patribus populoque, Penatibus, ac magnis Dis." *
But if there be those who would strangely forbid us
to appeal to what may be called, by the most modest
of its august titles, the oldest and most venerable
document of human history, the argument still remains
much the same. The progress of ethnological and
philological research still supplies us with accumu-
lating evidence of the chain of migrations, north and
westwards, of the Turanian, and especially of the Aryan
races, from points necessarily undefined but in close
* Mn. viii. 679.
( 18 )
proximity with the seats of the patriarchal nomads ;
and has not supplied us with any evidence, or with
any presumption whatever, that their known traditions
sprang from any fountainhead other than that which
is described in the Book of Genesis as the three-
branching family of Noah. If, then, upon this ground,
there is, to say the least, nothing to exclude or to
disparage, but so much to support, the doctrine of
the original intercommunion of these races with the
Semitic tribes, which could not but include religion,
the question recurs in all its force, how was it even
possible that they could leave behind them their
religious traditions upon the occasion of their first
local separation from their parent stock ? They did
not surely, like the souls in transmigration,* drink of
the river of forgetfulness, and raze out from the
tablets of the brain, as a preparation for their journey,
all they had ever known, or heard, or felt. The
obscuration and degeneracy of religious systems is
commonly indeed a rapid, but is necessarily a gradual
process. Nemo repente fuit turpissimus ; and no tribe
or nation passes either from light to darkness, or from
the possession of a religious belief to the loss of it, at
a moment's notice.
It was therefore antecedently probable that, in
examining the actual religious systems of later times,
and of countries at a distance from the earliest known
seat of mankind, but connected with it by the great
current of human migration, we should find remaining
tokens of affinity to any religious system, which upon
* Plat, de Rep. B. x.
( 19 )
competent evidence we might believe to have prevailed
among the races most closely and directly connected
with that seat. And this antecedent probability is
sustained by a mass of evidence running through the
whole web of the Hellenic mythology, obscure indeed
in its latest and most darkened ages, but continually
gaining in force and clearness as we ascend the stream
of time, and so strong in itself as to be, I am firmly
persuaded, incapable of argumentative confutation.
To collect and present this mass of evidence, with
a careful and strict appreciation of the respective
value of its parts, is a work not to be attempted
within the limits, however extended by your indul-
gence, of what is termed an Address. But I will
now endeavour to bring to a head what has been
stated, and to apply it to the purpose which I
announced at the commencement.
I submit then to you, that the true Prceparatio
Evangelica, or the rearing and training of mankind
for the Gospel, was not confined to that eminent and
conspicuous part of it, which is represented by the
dispensations given to the Patriarchs and the Jews,
but extends likewise to other fields of human history
and experience ; among which, in modes, and in
degrees, varyingly perceptible to us, the Almighty
distributed the operations preliminary and introduc-
tory to His one great, surpassing, and central design
for the recovery and happiness of mankind. So that,
in their several spheres, some positive, some negative,
some spiritual, some secular, with a partial conscious-
ness, or with an absolute unconsciousness, all were
c 2
( 20 )
co-operators in working out His will ; under a guidance
strong, and subtle, and the more sublime, perhaps, in
proportion as it was the less sensible.
In the body of those traditions of primitive religion
which are handed down to us in the Book of Genesis,
and which I shall make no further apology for treat-
ing as records of great historic weight, there was
manifestly included what I may term an humanistic
element. It was embodied in the few but pregnant
words which declared that the seed of the woman
should bruise the serpent's head.* The principle of
evil was to receive a deadly shock in its vital part,
and this at the hands of One who should be born
into the very race that He would come to deliver.
The next observation I would submit is this : that
there was no provision made, so far as we are aware,
at any rate in the Mosaic system, for keeping alive
this particular element of the original traditions,
otherwise than as an anticipation reaching into the
far distant future. On the contrary, every pre-
caution was apparently taken to prevent any human
being, or any human form, from becoming the object
of a religious reverence. To this aim the abstraction
of the body of Moses f from the view of the people
seems to be most naturally referred : and the strin-
gent prohibitions of the Second Commandment of the
Decalogue appear to have been especially pointed
against the execution by human hands of the figure
of a man. For we hear in Holy Writ of the serpent J
* Gen. iii. 15. f Dent, xxxiv. 5, 6.
J Num. xxi. 8, 9 ; John iii. 14.
( 21 )
made by Moses and exhibited to the nation : and the
brazen sea of the Temple * rested upon twelve brazen
oxen. There were cherubim in the Ark framed by
Moses ;f and " cherubim of image- work " were made
by Solomon for the Temple :{ but they were not, it
is commonly believed, in human figure : and the four
living creatures of the vision of Ezekiel had each the
mixed character of man, lion, ox, and eagle.
And it would appear, that these measures were
effectual. Ready as were the Jews to worship the
serpent or the golden calf, their idolatry never was
anthropomorphic. The majesty of the Deity was thus
kept, in the belief of the Hebrew race, effectually
apart from that one form of lowering association,
which, as we see from the experience of Paganism,
was by far the subtlest, the most attractive, and the
most enchaining. A pure Theistic system was main-
tained : a redemption to come was embraced in faith :
and, in a religion laden with ritual, and charged with
symbol, no rite, no symbol, was permitted to exhibit
to the senses, and through the senses to the mind, of
the people, the form of Him that was to be the worker
of the great deliverance. Thus was kept vacant until
the appointed time, in the general belief as well as in
the scheme or theory of religion, the sublime and soli-
tary place which the Redeemer of the world was to fill.
Counterfeits there were, but they had not that dan-
gerous resemblance to the truth, which would enable
them to make head against the Messiah when He
* 2 Chron. iv. 2-5. f Exod - xxv - !7. t 2 Chron. iii. 10.
Ezek. i. 5-10.
( 22 )
should arrive. And so, after He had come, His only
rivals and competitors in Judaea were conceptions,
distorted in the abstract, of His character and office ;
far different from those solid formations of an embo-
died and organised religion, whose dangerous contact
the Gospel had not to encounter, until the life and
work of its author, and the foundation of the Christian
society with all its essential powers, were complete.
Let us now turn to the religion of the Hellenic
race ; and we shall find that, as matter of fact, it
appropriated to itself, and was intensely permeated
by, that very anthropomorphic * element which the
Mosaic system was so especially framed to exclude,
and to which the other religions of antiquity gave,
in comparison, but a doubtful and secondary place.
If I am asked to point out a link which espe-
cially associates the early Greek mythology with
the humanistic element of primitive tradition, I ven-
ture to name the character of Apollo as pre-eminently
supplying such a link. He is born of Zeus, but he is
not born of Here. Through him the divine counsels
are revealed to the world as the God of prophecy and
of oracle. This lamp of knowledge, burning in him,
establishes an affinity between him and the sun ; but
the anthropomorphic energy of the religion is jealous
of the absorption of Deity into mere nature-power.
At what period the identification of Apollo with the
sun took place in the Hellenic system, we cannot say ;
but this we know, that it had not taken place in the
* Note V.
( 23 )
time of Homer, with whom Apollo and the Sun are
perfectly distinct individuals. To him is assigned
the healing art, and the general office of deliverance.
To him again, who remains to the last the perfect
model of masculine beauty in the human form, is
assigned by tradition the conquest alike over Death
and over the might of the rebellious spirits. In his
hands we find functions of such rank and such range,
that we cannot understand how they could pass to
him from Zeus the supreme deity, until we remember
that they are the very functions assigned by a more real
and higher system to the Son of God ; the true In-
structor, Healer, Deliverer, Judge, and Conqueror of
Death, in whom the power and majesty of the God-
head were set forth to the world.*
The character of this deity, whom Eusebius calls
" the most venerable and the wisest " f of the whole
Olympian order, affords, in my opinion, the most
complete and varied proof of the traditional relation-
ship to which I now refer. Abundant evidence,
however, of the same character, might be adduced
under many other heads. But I do not refer to this
weighty subject at present with a view of leading you
to affirm the existence of such a relationship: that
could not legitimately be done, except upon a scrutiny,
both deliberate and minute, of a great mass of evi-
dence, gathered from many quarters, and dependent
for much of its force upon careful comparison and
juxta-position. I now advert to the question only as
* Note VI. f Prep. Evang. iv. 17.
( 24 )
casting light upon matter which will follow. What
I take, however, to be indisputable, apart from all
theorising upon causes, is this fact that the Hellenic
mythology is charged throughout with the humanistic
element, in a manner clearly and broadly separating
it from the other religions of the ancient world. It
has anthropomorphism for the soul and centre of
all that is distinctive in it ; and that peculiar quality
seems to enter, more or less, into the religion of other
tribes nearly in proportion as they were related to the
Hellenic race.
Let us now shortly contemplate that mythology,
such as it appears in the works of Homer, its prime
and most conspicuous author, and himself the true
representative of the purely Hellenic spirit in its
largest and most authentic form.
The theology of Homer is variously composed. He
seems to have lived at the critical moment in the
history of the Hellenic, or, as they were then called,
Achaian families or tribes, when the different ethnical
elements or factors with which they were to assi-
milate Pelasgic, Ionian, Egyptian, Phoenician, and
the like settled down and compounded themselves
into the firmly-knit and sharply -defined character of
a people, and they were no longer a chaotic assem-
blage of unassorted or even conflicting units, but as a
people were born into that world on whose fortunes
they were to exercise an influence almost immea-
surable.
The theology of Homer is the Olympian system ;
and that system exhibits a kind of royal or palace-life
( 25 )
of man,* but on the one hand more splendid and
powerful, on the other more intense and free. It is a
wonderful and a gorgeous creation. It is eminently
in accordance with the signification of that English
epithet rather a favourite apparently with our old
writers the epithet jovial^ which is derived from the
Latin name of its head. It is a life of all the plea-
sures of mind and body, of banquet and of revel,
of music and of song; a life in which solemn gran-
deur alternates with jest and gibe ; a life of childish
wilfulness and fretfulness, combined with serious,
manly, and imperial cares ; for the Olympus of
Homer has at least this one recommendation to esteem,
that it is not peopled with the merely lazy and
selfish gods of Epicurus, but its inhabitants busily
deliberate on the government of man, and in their
debates the cause of justice wins. I do not now,
however, discuss the moral titles of the Olympian
scheme ; what I dwell upon is, its intense humanity,
alike in its greatness and its littleness, its glory and
its shame.
As the cares and joys of human life, so the structure
of society below is reflected, by the wayward wit of
man, on heaven above. Though the names and
fundamental traditions of the several deities were
wholly or in great part imported from abroad, their
characters, relations, and attributes passed under a
Hellenising process, which gradually marked off for
them special provinces and functions, according to
laws which appear to have been mainly original and
* Grote's ' History of Greece,' vol. i. pp. 4 seqq. and 462 seqq.
f Note VII.
( 26 )
indigenous, and to have been taken by analogy from
the division of labour in political society. As early
as in Homer, while the prerogatives of Apollo and
Athene are almost universal, yet the Olympian society
has its complement of officers and servants with their
proper functions. Hephaistos moulds the twenty
golden thrones which move automatically to form the
circle of the council of the gods ; and builds for each
of his brother deities their separate palaces in the deep-
folded recesses of the mighty mountain. Music and
song are supplied by Apollo and the Muses: Gany-
mede and Hebe are the cup-bearers : Hermes and Iris
are the messengers : but Themis, in whom is imper-
sonated the idea of deliberation and of relative rights,
is the summoner of the /rcn-aA-X^om * or Great As-
sembly of the Twentieth Iliad, when the great issue of
the war is to be determined. Nothing nearer this on
earth has perhaps been bodied forth by the imagina-
tion of later poets than the scene, in which Schiller
has described the coronation of Eodolph of Hapsburg,
with the Electors of the Empire discharging their
several offices around him : I quote from the only
translation within my reach :
" The ancient hall of Aix was bright :
The coronation-board beside
Sate king Rodolph's anointed might,
In Kaiser's pomp and pride :
His meat was served by the Palatine,
Bohemia poured the sparkling wine ;
The seven Electors every one
Stood, fast about the wide-world's king,
Each his high function following,
Like the planets round the sun."
Note VIII.
( 27 )
But a still deeper trace of humanitarianism lay in
the transportation of the family order into heaven.
Only the faintest rudiment of such a system could
have been drawn from Semitic sources ; but it was
carried by the Hellenes to its furthest consequences,
and used for the basis of their supernatural structure.
The old Pelasgian deities of the country, the impor-
tations from Thrace, Phoenicia, Egypt, or elsewhere,
and the traditions proper to the Hellenic tribes them-
selves, were all marshalled and adjusted in a scheme
formed according to the domestic relations familiar
to us on earth. The Nature-powers of the older
worship received the honorary distinction of being
made parents and grand or great-grand sires to the
ruling dynasty ; but, while thus tricked out with
barren dignity, they were deprived of all active
functions, and relegated into practical insignificance.
Still the very arrangements, which are anomalous in
the abstract, testify to the strength of that anthro-
pomorphic principle, to which they owed their recog-
nition. For the elder deities were not the more
powerful ; and parents were supplanted by their sons.
Oceanus the sire of the whole family, and Tethys
their mother, have for practical purposes no power
or place in the Olympian system. They exercise no
influence whatever on the life or destinies of man.
As the mere representations of certain physical
forces, they were ejected from their old supremacy
by the more aspiring and truer tendencies of the
first Hellenic creed ; but that same creed, still copy-
ing earth in heaven, found for them a place, as the
( 28 )
decrepit and superannuated members of the system,
who had passed from the exercise of sovereignty into
retirement, like Laertes * on his rural farm in Ithaca.
More or less of the same domestic structure is ascribed
without doubt to the theogonies of some other
countries ; but our accounts of them may have been
influenced by Greek sympathies, and besides I am
not aware that in any of them the domestic theory
was worked out with the same genial feeling, and
almost universal consistency.
In one respect indeed, at the least, there was a
conflict of contending sentiments. The early Hellenes
seem to have had a peculiar horror of incestuous
connection. But the notion of unity of descent
among the gods excluded the possibility of arranging
them in the family order except by nuptial relation-
ships which, upon earth and for themselves, Greeks
would have abhorred. The strong repugnance gave
way under the bidding of a necessity yet stronger :
their profound sense of the natural order was less
disturbed by having Zeus a polygamist, with his sister
for his principal wife, than it would have been by
abandoning that scheme of propagation from parent
to child upon which the whole Olympian hierarchy
was arranged. The acknowledgment of what was
forbidden on earth as established in heaven repre-
sents, in all likelihood, the concessions which were
necessary in order to prevent a breach in the frame-
work of the popular creed, and to weld into one
system elements that belonged to many.
* Odyss. xxiv., 205 seqq.
( 29 )
The materials for the old religions, outside of
Greece and the Greek races, were in great part
afforded first by the worship of nature, and secondly
by the worship of animals. Both of these the early
Hellenic system steadily rejected and eschewed ; and
their religion took its stand upon the idea, which
inseparably incorporated deity in the matchless human
form. This, and much besides, obscured in the later
and more mixed traditions, stands out clearly in the
earliest records of the Greeks. The ' Theogony ' of
Hesiod, which must be regarded as a work of very
great antiquity, exhibits to us the elemental and the
Olympian gods in groups clearly enough distin-
guished. The poems of Homer, far more Hellenic in
their spirit, may be said to exclude and repel from the
sacred precinct alike the heavenly bodies and the
elemental powers. The plague in the first Iliad
bears evident marks of solar agency : but, without the
least allusion to that luminary, it is ascribed to Apollo
in one of the noblest anthropomorphic passages of the
poems. The Sun * only once appears as a person in
the Iliad, when he reluctantly obeys the command of
Here that by setting he shall end the day, which was
the last day of Trojan success ; thus indicating the
side to which, as an elemental deity, he inclined.
Again, Xanthos, a river god, appears in the Theo-
machy : but he appears on the side of Troy ; and he
seems also to have had one name as a deity with the
Trojans,f another with the Greeks or Achaians as a
* Note IX. f Note X.
( 30 )
stream. When Agamemnon offers solemn sacrifice
for his army only, he invokes Zeus alone, and
invokes him as dwelling in the sky.* But when he
offers the joint sacrifice of the two parties in the
Third Book, then he invokes Zeus as governing from
the hill of Ida, which was in his view, and invokes
with him the Sun, the Earth, and the Eivers.f The
Rivers are summoned to the Olympian assembly of
the Twentieth Book ; but it is .an assembly in which
the gods are to take their several sides. It is a mis-
take to suppose that Poseidon was an elemental god :
he was the patron of the sea, as he was of the horse,
but he was more the god of navigation than of water.
The sea had its elemental god, the hoary Nereus, with
Amphitrite seemingly for his wife ; but Amphi trite
is always the moaning Amphitrite, and Nereus never
emerges from the depths ; nor, though he is fre-
quently referred to, is he ever named on the Hellenic
page of Homer.J I turn to another head.
Loath on the one side to admit the imposing ele-
ments of Nature-worship on the grand scale, the
Olympian system is yet more alien to the other
favourite form of religious illusion, the worship offered
to animals, and particularly to the ox ; of which
Egypt seems to have been the head-quarters. In the
full exhibition, which the poems of Homer afford us,
of the religion in its earlier forms, there is not a trace
of animal worship. In the Odyssey, indeed, an awful
and mystic sacredness attaches to the Oxen of the
* II. ii. 412. f II. iii. J Note XI. ;~
( 31 )
Sun. In the island of Thrinakie, detained by ad-
verse winds, the companions of Odysseus are warned
that under no extremity should they supply their
wants by the destruction of these animals. Accord-
ingly they resort to birds and fish, unusual food with
the Homeric Greeks ; they finally put some of the
animals to death, only to avoid dying themselves
by famine ; and for this offence the entire crew,
except Odysseus, who had not shared in it, are
drowned when next they take to sea. Now, although
there is no animal worship here, there is what may
be called animal sanctity ; but it is in connection
with a deity not even recognised at the time in the
Hellenic system ; and introduced as it is during the
voyage in remote parts, which must have been based
upon the tales of Phoenician mariners, it appears cer-
tainly to belong to the Phoenician circle of mythology.
And here we find an example of the manner in
which the immense plastic power of the Hellenic
mind dealt with foreign ideas of all kinds, so as to
make them its own. What their sculptors did with
the rude and formless art of Egypt, what their philo-
sophers did with the shreds of Eastern knowledge
picked up on their travels, their theology did with
the many and crude varieties of superstition, which
flowed in upon them from the numerous quarters
that furnished by sea and land immigrants for the
Hellenic peninsula. The old Pelasgian gods, not
rudely overthrown, but gently taken from their
pedestals, were set down harmless in the shade of a
mellow distance ; and the animals, before which lower
( 32 )
types of men were content to bow down the godlike
head, were not, when the traditions that deified them
set foot on Grecian soil, thrust wholly out of view ;
but they were put into appropriate and always se-
condary places. The eagle of Zeus, the falcon of
Apollo, the peacock of Here, the owl of Pallas, stood
no higher in Greece than as accessories to the figures
on which they attend.
In the scheme of Homer, not all even of these are
found. And while in Homer we should look in vain
for anything beyond the faintest and most ambiguous
trace of a connection between Apollo and the wolf,
we find that connection full-blown in the Egyptian
mythology, as it is reported by Diodorus, where
Horos, his counterpart in the system of that country,
is rescued from death by Osiris in the form of that
animal ; and on the other hand, the later Greek tra-
dition, more deeply charged with foreign elements,
abounds with traditions of the wolf,* which in Athens
was the protective emblem of the courts of justice.
But, even thus far down the stream, the rule seems to
hold, that when the figures of the brute creation are
allowed to appear in the Hellenic system, they seem
to be reduced to subordinate and secondary uses.
Saint Clement, indeed, charges f upon the Greeks
certain instances both of nature- worship and of the
worship of animals ; but in a manner, and with par-
ticulars, which show how slight and local were the
instances of either. It will not be expected that in
* Miiller's * Dorians,' i. 273, 325. (Tufnell and Lewis's translation.)
t S. Clem. Admonitio ad Gentes, p. 16, B.
( 33 )
an Address of this nature I should attempt those minuter
shadings, which general statements like the foregoing
must require in order to perfect accuracy. Besides,
a common substratum of ideas runs through the mass
of the old religions of the world : but we trace the
genius of each nation, and it may be the Providential
purpose for which that genius was imparted, in its
distinctive mode of handling the common stock, here
enlarging, there contracting, here elevating, ther e
depressing, so as to produce a distinctive and charac-
teristic result.
And now I will endeavour to point out, in rude
and rapid outline, some of the remarkable results of
this idee mere of the Greek religion, the annexation
of manhood to deity, and the reciprocal incorporation
of deity into manhood : which made the human form
the link between the visible and the invisible worlds,
the meeting-point of earth and heaven. And here
my object will be only to give you a sample of the
redundant materials which seem to rise up around
me thickly piled on every side ; most of all, perhaps,
in the Homeric or Achaian period.
First I will remark a profound reverence for
human life and human nature, which even the
fiercest passions of war would but rarely, and only
for a moment, violate. Hence we find the highest
refinements of the manners of the gentleman exist-
ing at a time, when, among the Greeks, the material
appliances of civilisation were in their infancy, and
when writing and the alphabet were practically un-
known. The sentiment of honour is indicated, at
D
( 34 )
this epoch, by a word (cuW) too delicate for our
rendering by a single term in the English, perhaps
in any modern tongue. A catalogue of horrors that
have stained the life of man elsewhere, sometimes
even in the midst of the triumphs of culture and
refinement, were unknown to the Achaian period.
I will dwell for a moment on one of these, the
practice of human sacrifice.
You will find* from a charming volume, the
Miscellanies of Lord Stanhope, that a few years ago,
some of the most famous men of our day were
brought by him into correspondence on the interest-
ing, but to many startling, question whether human
sacrifices were in use among the Eomans : not the
unlettered semi-barbarians of Eomulus or Tarquin,
but the Eomans of Eome in its highest political
power and its palmiest civilisation. Naturally
enough, a considerable repugnance was manifested
to entertaining this supposition : but as the inquiry
proceeded, a younger yet profoundly learned scholar,
Sir John Acton, was brought into the field. His
full and varied researches do not appear in the
pages of Lord Stanhope. But they range well nigh
over all space and time. His conclusions are that
" we find traces of it, that is of human sacrifice,
"throughout almost the whole Hellenic world,. in the
" cultus of almost every god, and in all periods of their
" independent history." f That among the Eomans it
was still more rife : and that, though attempts were
* Stanhope's 'Miscellanies,' p. 112. f Acton, p. 19.
( 35 )
made to restrain or put down the practice, even the
famous edict of Adrian, to which Eusebius allows
the honour of its extinction, failed to effect it : nay,
more, that " in every generation of the four centuries,
" from the fall of the Kepublic to the establishment of
" Christianity, human victims were sacrificed by the
" Emperors " themselves.
The conclusions of Sir John Acton are not admitted
in their full breadth by other great authorities ;* but
it seems impossible to doubt the wide-spread and
long-continued, or often recurring prevalence of the
practice, in contact, more or less, with civilised times
and nations, and sustained in various degrees by per-
verse but accepted ideas of religion.
Notwithstanding this terrible and too well sus-
tained indictment against the unenlightened and the
enlightened world, it is pleasing to observe that this
horrible rite did not originally belong to the usages
of Greece. It seems to have come in by a late
contagion from abroad : and human sacrifice is not
found in Homer. The slaughter of some Trojan
youths by Achilles, in his unsated vengeance, has
none of the marks of a religious rite, and no relation
to a deity. Of the tradition of Iphigenia, sacrificed
in Aulis for the welfare of the Achaian host, Homer
is wholly ignorant : and Agamemnon in the Iliad
speaks of his daughters as open to the option of
Achilles, as many fathers may since have done who
had two or three of them ready to marry, but so as
* Milman's 'Hist, of Christ.,' i. p. 27, 1st edition.
D 2
( 36 )
almost to supply sufficient evidence that no such
blood-stained gap had been made in the circle of his
family. It is many centuries later, when the tradition
reaches us in the works of the tragedians. In that
grandest of all Greek dramas, the ' Agamemnon ' of
-ZEschylus, his murderous wife Clytemnestra seeks
an apology for her act partly in the immolation of
Iphigenia by her father's hand : and the tone of the
play is so condemnatory as to suggest that an
Athenian audience, of the middle of the fifth century
before Christ, did not allow religion to be an adequate
apology for the deed.
At a somewhat later period, the * Iphigenia in
Tauris' of Euripides supplies us with more direct
evidence that the practice, while not indigenous in
Greece, was foully rife among other races. The
scene is laid abroad in barbaric territory : and the
chorus of Greek attendants on the doomed Princess,
addressing the Deity, says, "Receive, venerable
one, this sacrifice, if it be a sacrifice agreeable to
thee, which the law of us Greeks declares to be
unholy." Thus showing that the tradition of the
foreign origin of the abominable rite, and the original
freedom of the Hellenic system from it, was cherished
in the memory of the people.
I have already had to observe that the Achaians
eschewed both incest and polygamy. I may add that
even the unconscious incest of (Edipus and Jocasta
drew down the heaviest calamities : and further that
we have no trace, among the Homeric records, not
only of cannibalism but of violence to nature in any
( 37 )
form. The crimes of abortion and the exposure of
infants, authorised and commended by Plato in his
ideal State,* have no place in the Homeric poems :
nor do they aiford the slightest indication of those
shameless lusts, which formed the incredible and
indelible disgrace f of Greece in the time of its con-
summate supremacy in Art, and at the climax of its
boasted civilisation.
If I am right in my estimate of the place which
the human form held in its relation to the Hellenic
religion, we may naturally expect to find it attested,
among other ways, by the following signs : an in-
tense admiration of personal beauty :J a resentment
against and avoidance of deformity, as a kind of sin
against the law of nature : and a marked disposition
to associate ignorance with vice.
I cannot now undertake to exhibit the remarkable
manner in which these anticipations are realised in
Homer: whose appreciation of the beauty of the
human form appears from unequivocal signs to
exceed that of any author in any age or country :
while upon the other side, introducing but one
vicious character, Thersites, among the Greeks of
the Iliad, he describes his personal appearance with
a degree of detail foreign to his habit, in order, seem-
ingly, that, even as we read, we may see him before us
in his hideous deformity. The same topics might be
illustrated in detail from the later history of Greece,
in modes inconsistent or questionable enough, yet
* Plat, de Eepubl., B. vi. t Note XII. t Note XIII.
( 38 )
abundantly significant. Courtesans of extraordinary
beauty were sometimes chosen to march in the pro-
cessions of the gods. By the side of the evil tradition
of Aphrodite the promiscuous, there lingered long
the rival tradition of an Aphrodite the heavenly.
On the other hand, with respect to deformity, I do
not remember that Aristophanes,* in his campaign
against Socrates, makes the use which we might have
expected of the ugliness of the philosopher. And
though jests were freely passed upon actual eccen-
tricity of feature, I have not seen it proved, in such
partial examination of the subject as has lain within
my power, that the Greeks were wont to make use
of that which we call caricature ; which I understand
to be, the founding upon some known or peculiar
feature a representation of deformity that does not
exist, for the purpose of exciting ridicule or hatred.
Among the moderns this practice appears to have
been employed even to stimulate religious animosity
or fury : and the rarity or absence of it, among a
people possessed of such high sarcastic power as the
Greeks, suggests that it may have been excluded by
the predominating force of a traditional reverence,
grown into instinct, for the beauty of the human
form ; having its origin nowhere with greater likeli-
hood than in the early and continued association of
that form with the highest objects of religion.
I will now refer to the feeling of the Homeric
period concerning the sacredness of the human body
* Note XIV.
( 39 )
against both violation and exposure. The horror of
Priam in anticipating his own death at the coming
sack of Troy rises to its climax, when he brings into
the picture the tearing and defilement by dogs of his
own exposed and naked figure.* And the extremest
point of punishment threatened to the degraded
Thersites appears to be the stripping of his person
for the disgust and derision of the camp, and the
seaming it with " indecorous " wounds.f Nor was
this respect for decency a shallow or shortlived tra-
dition. It was indeed rudely tried ; since it came
into conflict with the eagerness of the race for high
physical activity and athletic development, stimulated
to the uttermost by the great national institution of the
Games, in which, as Horace said with little exagge-
ration, the palm of the victor uplifted even the lords
of earth to the honours of the gods. Yet, important
as it was for perfection in those unparalleled contests
to free the person from the restraints of clothing,
Thucydides J in his Preface tells us that the athletes
were formerly covered: that the Lacedaemonians
were the first to strip in the arena, and that it was
not many years before his time when the fashion
reached its height.
But when we are seeking to ascertain the measure
of that conception which any given race has formed
of our nature, there is perhaps no single test so
* It. xxii. 66-76.
f II. ii. 261-64; deiitcovi ir\nyfi<nv. To appreciate the force of the
remark, the passages should be consulted in the original.
J Thucyd. i. c. . See Aristoph. Ne<. 972 seqq., on the garb of
youths when with their master of gymnastics.
( 40 )
effective as the position which it assigns to woman.
For as the law of force is the law of the brute
creation, so, in proportion as- he is under the yoke of
that law, does man approximate to the brute : and in
proportion, on the other hand, as he has escaped
from its dominion, is he ascending into the higher
sphere of being, and claiming relationship with deity.
But the emancipation and due ascendancy of woman
are not a mere fact : they are the emphatic assertion
of a principle : and that principle is the dethrone-
ment of the law of force, and the enthronement of
other and higher laws in its place,, and in its despite.
Outside the pale of Christianity, it would be diffi-
cult to find a parallel, in point of elevation, to the
Greek woman of the heroic age. Mr. Buckle candidly
acknowledges that her position was then much higher
than it had come to be in the most civilised historic
period of Greece ; and yet he was a writer whose
bias, and the general cast of whose opinions, would
have disposed him to an opposite conclusion. Again :
if the pictures presented by the historical books of
the Old Testament and by Homer respectively be
compared, candour will claim from us a verdict in
favour of the position of the Greek as compared with
that of the Hebrew woman. Among the Jews poly-
gamy was permitted; to the Greeks, as has been
said, it was unknown. Tales like that of Amnon
and Tamar,* or like that of the Levite and his concu-
bine,! are not found even among the deeds of the
* Judges xix.
2 Sam. xiii.
dissolute Suitors of the Odyssey. Among the Jews
the testimony of our Lord is that because of the
hardness of their hearts Moses suffered them to put
away their wives : but that " from the beginning it
was not so." * Apart from the violent contingencies
of war, manners seem to have been, in the momentous
point of divorce, not very different among the Greeks
of the heroic age, from what they had been in " the
beginning." The picture of Penelope waiting for
her husband through the creeping course of twenty
years, and of Odysseus yearning in like manner for
his wife, is one of the most remarkable in the whole
history of human manners ; and it would lose little, if
anything, of its deeper significance and force, even
if we believed that the persons, whom the poet names
Odysseus and Penelope, have never lived. It must
be observed, too, what, in the mind of Homer, consti-
tutes the extraordinary virtue of the royal matron.
It is not the refusal to marry another while her
husband is alive, but her stubborn determination not
to accept the apparently certain conclusion that he
must have ceased to live. Not even the Suitors
suggest that, if he be indeed alive, any power can
set her free.
Scarcely less noteworthy, for the purpose of the
present argument, are the immunities which she
enjoys even in her painful position. She is impor-
tuned, but she is not insulted. She feels horror and
aversion, but she has no cause for fear. Such, in the
* St. Matt. xix. 8.
( 42 )
morning of Greek life, was the reverence that
hedged a woman, as she sat alone and undefended in
the midst of a body of powerful and abandoned men.
Again : the famous scene of Hector and Andromache*
is not more touching by its immeasurable tenderness,
than it is important for the proof which it affords,
with reference to the contemporary manners, of what
may be called the moral equality of man and wife.
And the general effect of the poems is, to give an
idea of a social parity, and of a share borne by
women in the practical and responsible duties of life,
such as we seek in vain, notwithstanding some
charming specimens of character, among* the Jews.
Still less can it be found among the Greeks of the
more polished ages. In their annals, we scarce ever
hear of a wife or mother, though the names of
mistresses and courtesans are entered on the roll
of fame, and Phrynef dedicated in a Phocian temple
a gilded statue of herself, which was wrought by
the hand of Praxiteles. Indeed, not to speak of
the poetry of Euripides, even the most solid and
impartial judgments, such as those of Thucydides
and Aristotle, were unfavourably warped in their
estimate of women.
It would, I have no doubt, be possible to illustrate
in great detail from ancient records the high value
set by the Greeks upon man, in his mind, life, and
person. I will mention two instances from Pau-
sanias. An Arcadian, named Skedasos, living at
* II. vi, 390 seqq. f Pausanias, x. c. 14, sub fin.
( 43 )
Leuctra, had two daughters, who were violated by
Lacedaemonian youths. Unable to bear the shame,
they put an end to their lives. Their father, also,
having in vain sought justice' from the Spartan
authorities, sternly recoiled from the disgrace, and
destroyed himself. In after times Epaminondas, about
to join battle with the Spartans at the place, made
offerings and prayers to the insulted maidens and to
their parent ; and then won the victory which laid
low the power of Sparta.
The other is of a different, and a yet more singular,
character. The statue of Theagenes, the Thasian
athlete,* after his death, fell upon an enemy of his,
and killed him. The sons of the man, who thus lost
his life, brought an action against the statue ; and it
was thrown into the sea, under a law of Draco, which
made inanimate objects punishable for destroying
human existence. Nor was this law peculiar to
Athens, where it was maintained in the legislation of
Solon. For, as we see, it was recognised in Thasos.
Now there is an apparent resemblance between this
law and the English law of deodand, which involved
the forfeiture, says Blackstone,f of " whatever per-
sonal chattel is the immediate cause of the death of
any reasonable creature." But I think that, with
much seeming similarity, the cases are essentially
different. Deodand was originally a payment to the
Sovereign to be applied to pious uses, and seems
to have passed into a manorial right, or, in the
* Pausanias, vi. 11, 12.
t Blackstone's Commentaries, i. 8, 16.
Germanic codes,* into a compensation for homicide,
payable to the surviving relatives. But it proceeded
upon the principle of making owners pay ; though
they paid in respect of homicide effected through a
material instrument. The Greek law inflicted punish-
ment upon the inanimate matter itself, for having
violated the sanctity of human life. In this essential
point it exactly corresponded with the remarkable
law of Moses, which said, " If an ox gore a man that
" he die, the ox shall be stoned, and his flesh shall not
" be eaten."f But even this provision falls greatly short
of the full spirit of the Greek law, since even the animal
that kills is conscious, ? and gores from excited passion.
I pass, however, to a subject of larger scope, and I
venture to suggest that the anthropomorphic spirit of
the Greek religion was the source of that excellence
in art, which has become to after ages a model for
imitation, and a tribunal without appeal.
All are aware that the Greek religion was emi-
nently poetical ; for it fulfilled in the most striking
manner that condition which poetry above all requires,
harmony in the relation between the worlds of soul
and sense. Every river, fountain, grove, and hill,
was associated with the heart and imagination of the
Greek ; subject, however, always to the condition
that they should appear as ruled by a presiding spirit,
and that that spirit should be impersonated in the
human shape. A poetical religion must, it seems, be
favourable to art. The beauty of form which so much
* Grote's ' History of Greece,' ii. 10, and iii. 104.
t Exodus xxi. 28.
( 45 )
abounded in the country was also favourable to art.
The Athenians, however, are stated not to have been
beautiful ; and at Sparta, where art was neglected,
beauty was immensely prized. And, indeed, the per-
sonal beauty of a race is by no means usually found
sufficient to produce the development of the fine arts :
and as to the poetry of religion, and its bearing upon
art, while a general connection may be admitted, it is
very difficult to define the manner and degree. The
practice of image-worship promotes the production of
works, first rude and coarse, then more or less vulgar
and tawdry. Over the whole continent of Europe
there is scarcely at this moment an object of popular
veneration, which is worthy to be called a work of art.
Of the finest remaining works of Greek art, not very
many, I imagine, bear the mark of having been intended
for worship. The great size required for statues like
the Athene of the Parthenon and the Zeus of Olympia,
seems unfavourable to the exhibition of fine art in
the highest sense.* In Pausanias we find notices of
an immense number of statues in and about the
temples : they are not commonly, I think, praised
for excellence in this respect ; and the mixture of
materials, to which we find constant reference, could
hardly have been chosen by the artist for the sake of
his own proper purpose. I have heard Lord Macaulay
give his opinion that this mixture in the Zeus of
Phidias at Olympia, made of ivory and gold, simple as
was that form of combination, may probably have
* Note XV.
( 46 )
been due to the necessity of condescension to the
popular taste in connection with an object of worship.
Although, therefore, the highest artists were employed,
it does not appear probable that they derived any
part of their higher inspiration from the fervour or
the multitude of the worshippers in the temples.
Neither will it avail to urge the great esteem in which
the professors of the arts were held. High indeed it
was ; and the successions of sculptors in the different
schools * seem to have been recorded apparently with
almost as much care as the Archons of Athens, or the
Priestesses of Here at Argos, those landmarks of the
history of States. But the question recurs, was their
estimation the cause of their excellence, or was their
excellence the cause of their estimation ; and if the
estimation flowed from the excellence, whence came
the excellence itself? Both the one and the other
were perhaps due to another cause.
That many accessories contributed to the wonderful
result I do not doubt. But mainly and essentially,
every art and method, every device and habit, in the
language of Aristotle, has an end ; and is modelled
upon the end at which it aims ; and by that end its
greatness or its littleness is measured. Now the
climax of all art, it seems to be agreed, is the render-
ing of the human form. What, then, could be so
calculated to raise this representation to the acme of
its excellence, as the belief that the human form was
not only the tabernacle, but the original and proper
* Pausamas, in divers passages.
( 47 )
shape, the inseparable attribute, of Deity itself? In
the quaint language of George Herbert,
" He that aims the moon
Shoots higher much, than he that means a tree."
And again as Tennyson has sung :
" It was my duty to have loved the highest :
We needs must love the highest when we see it,
Not Lancelot, nor another." *
It was this perpetual presentation of the highest to
the mind of the Greek artist, that cheered him, and
rewarded him, and yet, while it cheered him and
rewarded him, still ever spurred him on in his pur-
suit. Whatever he had done, more remained to do,
" Nil actum reputans dum quid superesset agendum."
The desire of ambition was fulfilled : he had always
more worlds to conquer. The divine was made fa-
miliar to him, by correspondence of shape : but on
the other side, its elements, which it was his business
to draw forth and indicate to men, reached far away
into the infinite. And I know not what true defini-
tion there is for any age or people of the highest
excellence in any kind, unless it be perpetual effort
upwards in pursuit of an object higher than ourselves,
higher than gur works, higher even than our hopes,
yet beckoning us on from hour to hour, and always
permitting us to apprehend in part.
I venture then to propound for consideration the
opinion, that the fundamental cause of the transcen-
dant excellence of the Greek artist lay in his being,
by his birth and the tradition of his people, as well
* Idylls of the King : Guinevere.
48 )
as with every favouring accessory, both in idea and
in form, and in such a sense as no other artist was,
a worker upon deity, conceived as residing in the
human form.
It is hardly necessary to observe how the rich and
many-sided composition of the Greek mythology
favoured the artist in his work, by answering to the
many-sided development of the mind and life of man.
Unconsciously then to himself, and in a sphere of
almost parochial narrowness, the Greek not only
earned himself an immortal fame, but was equipping
from age to age a great School of Art, to furnish
principles and models made ready to the hand of
that purer and higher civilisation which was to be ;
and over the preparation of which, all the while,
Divine Providence was brooding, like the Spirit on
the face of the waters, till the fulness of time should
come.
But besides the Art and the Poetry of the Greeks,
there were other provinces in which their achieve-
ments were no less remarkable ; and, with reference
to the present argument, I must shortly touch upon
their philosophy.
The first philosophers of the Greek race were not
for the most part natives and inhabitants of Greece,
nor subject exclusively to Greek influences. Their
speculations turned mainly on the nature of the first
principle, arid partook of an eastern spirit. But
when philosophy took up her abode in the country
where Hellenism was supreme and without a rival,
that human element, which lay so profoundly em-
( 49 )
bedded in the whole constitution of the Hellenic
mind, unfolded itself in the region of speculative
thought ; and the true meaning of the famous saying
that Socrates called down philosophy from Heaven
would seem to be, that he gave expression to the
genius of his country by propounding, as the prime
subject for the study of man, the nature, constitution,
and destiny of man himself. And the illustrious
series of disciples, some of them probably greater
than their master, who followed his example, were
not therein aping or adopting the mere peculiarity
of an individual, but obeying a congenial impulse
that sprang from the depths of their being. What-
ever philosophy was to be indigenous in Greece
could not but be predominantly and profoundly
human ; and their power and fame, as analysts of our
unfathomable constitution, are fresh and unabated at
the present hour. Fashion may wave her wand, but
it is with small result. Idolatrous veneration of
course has at times begotten temporary reaction and
neglect ; but the power of Greek culture seems again
and again to assert itself by virtue of the law which
makes all things find their level, and since it came
into existence it has never ceased to be in the most
instructed periods the chief criterion and means of
the highest intellectual training: not, of course,
necessarily for each individual, but for classes and
for countries.
The point, however, to which I wish to draw
particular attention at this moment, is the large and
E
( 50 )
well-balanced view, to which Greek Philosophy
attained, of the compound nature of man.
Never, probably, has there appeared upon the
stage of the world so remarkable an union, as in the
Greeks, of corporal with mental excellence. From
the beginning of the race, Homer shared the privi-
lege of his most gorgeous epithet* between battle
and debate. The Odes of such a poet as Pindar,
handing onwards the tradition of the Twenty-third
Iliad, commemorate, so to speak, the marriage of
athletic exercise with the gift of Song. We do not
trace among the Greeks that contrast, which is found
so rude and sharp elsewhere, between energy in the
body and energy in the brain. The Greek was in
this respect like Adam in the noble verse of Milton,
" For contemplation and for valour born."
And the Greek philosophy was for nothing more
remarkable than the manner in which it not only
asserted but felt, as an elementary law, the place of
the Body in human education.
This was with no exclusive or peculiar view to
what we should call utilitarian purposes, such as
those of defence or industry, or even art. It seems
to have been rather an ample recognition of the right
of the body to be cared for, and to be reared in its
various organs up to the highest excellence it is
capable of attaining, as being, what indeed it is, not
* KvSidveipa. II. i. 490 ; iv. 225, et alibi.
( 51 )
a mere vesture, or tool, or appendage of the soul, but,
like the soul, an integral part of man himself.
This plenitude and accuracy of view on such a
subject is the more to be regarded on some special
grounds. In general, the philosophies of the world,
outside of Christianity, have shown a tendency to
fluctuate between sensuality on the one hand, and on
the other a contempt and hatred of matter, and a
disposition to identify it with the principle of evil.
The philosophy of Socrates, of Plato, and of Aris-
totle, seems to have steered clear and safe between
this Scylla and this Charybdis. But again, the
Greek saw, as all men see, the body parted from
the soul at death, and hastening rapidly, as by the
law of its nature, to corruption. To none could this
severance, and its mournful and painful incidents, be
more repulsive than to him, with his delicate percep-
tions and his lively emotions. Of a future existence
in any shape he usually knew or even surmised little ;
of the revival of the body, or of the reunion hereafter
of the two great factors of the human being, he had yet
less conception. We may say then that he lay under
every temptation to a disparaging view of the body
and of its office. Yet, in spite of his immense disad-
vantage, it fell to him to find a place for the body in
the philosophy of human nature, and to incorporate
the principle thus conceived in laws, usages, and insti-
tutions, with a clearness and general justness of view,
by which Christian learning has done and will yet do
well to profit. What with us is somewhat dubious
and fluctuating both in theory and in practice, with
E 2
( 52 )
him was familiar and elementary in both; and the
teachers of mental accomplishment taught also the
science, if not the art, of bodily excellence.
Thus for example Plato, in his Treatise on the
State, has to consider what men are fit to be chosen
for rulers. They should if possible, he says, have
the advantage of personal beauty. They must be
energetic : and he therefore proceeds to treat of the
character of the <j>i\6Trovo<>* or diligent man. He must
be ready and keen in study : for human souls are
much more cowardly in strong studies '.than in exer-
cises of corporal strength : as in the former they bear
all the burden, instead of sharing it with the body.
But philosophy itself, he admits, has fallen into some
dishonour, from a tendency to partiality in handling
this question. The truly diligent man, then, must not
be halt or one-sided in his diligence. If he be fond of
athletic exercise and of sports, but not apt for learn-
ing and inquiry, then he is but half-diligent. And
no less " lame " will he be, says the philosopher, if,
addicted to mental pursuits, he neglects the training
of the body, and of the organs with which it is
endowed. This may serve for a sample, but it is a
sample only, of the large and complete grasp of the
Greek philosophy upon the nature of man : and I
connect this largeness and completeness with the
fact that the Greek, from the nature of his religion,
cherished in a special degree the idea of the near
association of human existence, in soul and body,
* Plat, de Rep. B. vii. p. 535.
( 53 )
with that existence which we necessarily regard as the
largest and most complete, namely with the Divine.
It may indeed be said, that the Greek lowered and
contaminated the Divine idea by weak and by vile
elements carried into it from the human. Yes : this
and much more may be said, and said with truth.
Nothing can be more humbling or more instructive,
than the total failure of the Greek mind with all its
powers either to attain or even to make progress
towards attaining the greater ends of creation by
rendering man either good or happy. This is the
negative but most important purpose, which the
Greek of old may have been destined to fulfil ;
the purpose of casting down the strongholds of our
pride, by first showing us how great he is, and
then leaving us to see how little, when standing
alone, is all his greatness, if it be measured with
reference to its results in accomplishing those ends of
life, without which every other end is vain. But I
am not now engaged in endeavouring to ascertain
what Greek life or what the Greek mind was in
itself, and for itself; nor for what negative or
secondary uses the study of it may be available. I
wish to point out in some degree what it was for a
purpose beyond itself, what materials it was pre-
paring for our use, how it was, if I may so express
myself, the secular counterpart of the Gospel ; and
how it became, in one word, the great intellectual
factor of the Christian civilisation.
Now it is not I think difficult to see that materials
and instruments, such as it furnished, were required.
( 54 )
I will not attempt by argument to show, that all the
powers and capacities of man, being the work of God,
must have their proper place in His designs ; and that
the evil in the world arises not from their use but
from their misuse, not from their active working each
according to its place in the Providential order, but
from their having gone astray, as the planets would
if the centripetal force, that controls their action,
were withdrawn.
We see then in the Greeks, beyond all question,
these two things : first, a peculiar and powerful ele-
ment of anthropomorphism pervading their religion,
and giving it its distinctive character : secondly, a
remarkable fulness, largeness, subtlety, elevation, and
precision in their conception of human nature ; taking
form in, or at least accompanying, an immense vigour
both of speculation and of action ; a language of
marvellous reach, elasticity, variety, and power ; a
scientific excellence in art never elsewhere attained ;
and an eminence in the various branches of letters
which has given to them, for more than two thousand
years, the place of first authority in the cultivated
world. The Latin literature, though it has both a
character and a purpose of its own, is, in its most
splendid elements, derivative from the Greek.
Now, if we survey with care and candour the
present wealth of the world I mean its wealth intel-
lectual, moral, and spiritual we find that Christianity
has not only contributed to the patrimony of man its
brightest and most precious jewels, but has likewise
been what our Saviour pronounced it, the salt or
preserving principle of all the residue, and has main-
tained its health, so far as it has been maintained at
all, against corrupting agencies. But, the salt is one
thing,, the thing salted is another : and, as in the world
of nature, so in the world of mind and of human
action, there is much that is outside of Christianity,
that harmonises with it, that revolves, so to speak,
around it, but that did not and could not grow out of
it. It seems to have been for the filling up of this
outline, for the occupation of this broad sphere of
exertion and enjoyment, that the Greeks were, in
the councils of Providence, ordained to labour : that so
the Gospel, produced in the fulness of time, after the
world's long gestation, might have its accomplished
work in rearing mankind up to his perfection, first
in the spiritual life, but also, and through that spi-
ritual life, in every form of excellence, for which
his varied powers and capacities have been created.
If this be so, it is quite plain that the Greeks have
their place in the Providential order, ay, and in the
Evangelical Preparation, as truly and really as the
children of Abraham themselves.
But indeed there is no need, in order to a due
appreciation of our debt to the ancient Greeks, that
we should either forget or disparage the function
which was assigned by the Almighty Father to His
most favoured people. Much profit, says St. Paul,
had the Jew in every way. He had the oracles of
God : he had the custody of the promises : he was the
steward of the great and fundamental conception of
the unity of God, the sole and absolute condition under
( 56 )
which the Divine idea could be upheld among men at
its just elevation. No poetry, no philosophy, no art
of Greece, ever embraced, in its most soaring and
widest conceptions, that simple law of love towards
God and towards our neighbour, on which " two com-
" mandments hang all the law and the prophets," and
which supplied the moral basis of the new dispensa-
tion. There is one history, and that the most touching
and most profound of all, for which we should search
in vain through all the pages of the classics, I mean
the history of the human soul in its relations with its
Maker ; the history of its sin, and grief, and death,
and of the way of its recovery to hope and life, and to
enduring joy. For the exercises of strength and skill,
for the achievements and for the enchantments of
wit, of eloquence, of art, of genius, for the imperial
games of politics and war, let us seek them on the
shores of Greece. But if the first among the pro-
blems of life be how to establish the peace and restore
the balance of our inward being ; if the highest of all
conditions in the existence of the creature be his
aspect towards the God to whom he owes his being,
and in whose great hand he stands ; then let us make
our search elsewhere. All the wonders of the Greek
civilisation heaped together are less wonderful than
is the single Book of Psalms. Palestine was weak
and despised, always obscure, oftentimes and long
trodden down beneath the feet of imperious masters.
Greece for a thousand years,
" Confident from foreign purposes," *
* King John, ii. 1.
( 57 )
repelled every invader from her shores, and, fostering
her strength in the keen air of freedom, she defied,
and at length overthrew, the mightiest of empires;
and when finally she felt the resistless grasp of the
masters of all the world, them too, at the very moment
of her subjugation, she subdued to her literature, lan-
guage, arts, and manners.* Palestine, in a word, had
no share of the glories of our race ; they blaze on
every page of the history of Greece with an over-
powering splendour. Greece had valour, policy,
renown, genius, wisdom, wit, she had all, in a word,
that this world could give her ; but the flowers of
Paradise, which blossom thinly, blossomed in Pales-
tine alone.
And yet, as the lower parts of our bodily organiza-
tion are not less material than the higher to the
safety and well-being of the whole, so Christianity
itself was not ordained to a solitary existence in man,
but to find helps meet for it in the legitimate use of
every faculty, and in the gradually accumulated trea-
sures of the genius, sagacity, and industry of the
human family.
Besides the loftiest part of the work of Providence
entrusted to the Hebrew race, there was other work
to do, and it was done elsewhere. It was requisite
to make ready the materials not only of a divine
renewal and of a moral harmony for the world, but
also for a thorough and searching culture of every
power and gift of man, in all his relations to the
* Note XVI.
( 58 )
world and to his kind ; so as to lift up his universal
nature to the level upon which his relation as a
creature to his Creator, and as a child to his Father,
was about to be established.
And the question arises whether, among the auxi-
liaries required to complete the training process for
our race, there were not to be found some which
were of a quality, I will not say to act as a corrective
to Christianity, but to act as a corrective to the nar-
row views and the excesses which might follow upon
certain modes of conceiving and of applying it.
Doubtless the just idea of their general purpose is
that they were a collection of implements and mate-
rials to assist in the cultivation of the entire nature of
man, and to consecrate all his being to the glory and
the designs of his Maker. Yet in part they might
have a purpose more special still, the purpose of
assigning due bounds to the action of impulses spring-
ing out of Christianity itself.
Now, that narrow conception, which I have men-
tioned, of the Jews as virtually the sole object of the
Providential designs of God, while it began doubtless
in a devout sentiment, passed into superstition when
it led men to assign to the Jewish people every ima-
ginable gift and accomplishment, and into virtual
impiety when it came to imply that the Almighty
had little care for the residue of His creatures. And
certainly it was not to Scripture itself that opinions
like these were due. In a Dissertation 6 On the Pro-
phecies of the Messiah dispersed among the Heathen,'
Bishop Horsley has shown what a large amount of
testimony is yielded by the Sacred Books to the
remaining knowledge of the true Grod among the races
in the neighbourhood of Judea. With them religion
seems to have been for long periods, as was also to no
small extent the religious practice of the Jews, an incon-
sistent combination of lingering and struggling truth
with rampant error. Melchisedec, the type of Christ,
Job, one of the chosen patrons of faith and patience,
were of blood foreign to the patriarchal race ; and
the same agency of the prophetic order, which was
employed to correct and guide the Jew, was not
withheld from his neighbours : Balaam, among the
Moabites, was a prophet inspired by the Most High.
Of the minor prophetical books of the Old Testament
two are expressly devoted to setting forth the burden
of Nineveh and the dealings of Grod with its inhabit-
ants : and Eastern Magi were, in the words of Bishop
Horsley, " the first worshippers of Mary's Holy
Child." *
A system of religion, however absolutely perfect
for its purpose, however divine in its conception and
expression, yet of necessity becomes human too, from
the first moment of its contact with humanity ; from
the very time, that is to say, when it begins to do its
proper work by laying hold upon the hearts and
minds of men, mingling, as the leaven in the dough,
with all that they contain, and unfolding and apply-
ing itself in the life and conduct of the individual,
and in the laws, institutions, and usages of society.
* ' Dissertation,' &c., p. 117.
'( 60 )
In the building up of the human temple, the several
portions of the work, while sustaining and strength-
ening each other, confine each other also, like the
stones of a wall, to their proper place and office in
the fabric.
Divine truth contained in the Gospel, is addressed
to the wants and uses of a nature not simple but
manifold, and is manifold itself: though dependent
upon one principle it consists of many parts, and in
order to preserve reciprocally the due place and
balance of those parts, means that we call human are
available, as well as means more obviously divine ;
and secular forms and social influences, all adjusted by
one and the same Governor of the world, are made to
serve the purposes that have their highest expression
in the Kingdom of Grace. The Gospel aims not at
destroying this equilibrium, but at restoring it : and
in the restoration it accepts, nay courts, and by
natural law requires, the aid of secondary means.
It is manifest indeed that there was in Christianity
that which man might easily and innocently carry
into such an excess, as, though it would have ceased
to be Christian, would not have ceased to seem so,
and would under a sacred title have tended to impair
the healthful and complete development of his being.
Rousseau* objects to the Christian system that it
is opposed to social good order and prosperity,
because it teaches a man to regard himself as a
citizen of another world, and thus diverts him from
* Rousseau, ' Contrat Social,' b. iv..c. viii.
( 61 )
the performance of his duties as a member of civil
society. " Far from attaching the hearts of the
" citizens to the state, it detaches them from it, as
" from all other earthly things. I know nothing
" more opposed to * the social spirit .... A society
" of true Christians would no longer be a society of
" men .... What matters it to be free or slave in
" this vale of misery ? The one thing needful is to
"go to Paradise, and submission to calamity is an
" additional means of getting there."
In an age and in a country such as this, it is not
required, it is scarcely allowable, to seem to depreciate
those various forms of self-restraint and self-conquest
which the spirit of man, vexed in its sore conflict
with the flesh and with the world, has in other times
employed to establish the supremacy of the soul, by
trampling upon sense and appetite and all corporal
existence. Even in the time of the Apostles, it seems
to have been manifest that a tendency to excess in
this direction had begun to operate in the Christian
Church. As time passed on, and as the spirit of the
unrenewed world became more rampant within the
sacred precinct, the reaction against it likewise
grew more vehement and eager. The deserts of
Egypt were peopled with thousands upon thousands
of anchorites ; * who forswore every human relation,
extinguished every appetite, and absorbed every
motive, every idea, every movement of our complex
nature in the great but single function of the relation
to the unseen world.f True and earnest in their
* Note XVII. f Note XVIII.
( 62 )
Christian warfare, they notwithstanding represent a
spirit of exaggeration, which it was requisite to check,
uprooting what they ought rather to have pruned,
and destroying what they ought to have chastised,
and mastered, and converted to purposes of good.
That internecine war with sin, which is of the very
essence of Christianity, seems to have been understood
by them as a war against the whole visible and
sensible wor]d, against the intellectual life, against a
great portion of their own normal nature : and though
as regarded themselves, even their exaggeration was
pardonable and in many respects a noble error, yet
its unrestricted sway and extension would have left
man a maimed, a stunted, a distorted creature. And
it would have done more than this. By severing
the Gospel from all else that is beautiful and glorious
in creation, it would have exposed the spiritual
teacher to a resistance not only vehement but just,
and would have placed the kingdom of grace in per-
manent and hopeless discord with the kingdoms of
nature, reason, truth, and beauty, kingdoms estab-
lished by the very same Almighty Hand.
Those principles of repression, which were indis-
pensable as the medicine of man, were unfit for his
food. What was requisite, however, was not to expel
them, and thereby to revert to the mental riot and
the moral uncleanness of heathenism, but to check
their usurpations, and to keep them within their
bounds ; and this was to be effected not by prohibi-
tion or disparagement, but by vindicating for every
part, and power, and work, of human nature, and for
( 63 )
every office of life, its proper place in the Divine
order and constitution of the world. The seed of
this comprehensive philosophy was supplied by the
words of the Apostle : " Whatsoever things are true,
whatsoever things are honest, whatsoever things are
just, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things
are lovely, whatsoever things are of good report : if
there be any virtue, and if there be any praise, think
on these things." * And so the solid and fruitful
materials of the Greek civilisation came in aid, by a
wise Providence, of the humanising principles and
precepts of the Gospel, to assist in securing a well-
balanced development of the powers of the Christian
system, and to prevent the instruments designed for
eradicating the seeds of disease from subverting the
yet higher agencies appointed for the fostering and
development of life in every region of our being and
our activity.
Volumes might be written with profit to trace the
.application of the principles touched upon in this
Address to the whole history of the Church, and of
the Christian civilisation, down to the present day ;
and the more we said, the more there would remain
to say. That which I have now attempted is no
more, in effect, than a suggestion, which may open
the way for others into a wide and ever-widening
field. And if that suggestion be just it will be diffi-
cult to deny its importance. Let us glance in a few
concluding words at some of its results.
First, it places on high and safe grounds that genial
* Phil. iv. 8.
primacy of the Greeks in letters and in human cul-
ture, to the acknowledgment of which Christian
Europe has been guided not so much by a logical
process, or a definite forethought, as by a sure instinct
with the after confirmation of a long experience.
Nor can this primacy be justly disturbed by the mul-
tiplication, and the energetic and growing pursuit, of
those branches of knowledge for which this age has
been so remarkable. For Aristotle it was excusable to
regard the heavenly bodies as objects nobler than man.
But Christianity has sealed and stamped the title of
our race as the crown a"nd flower of the visible creation :
and with this irreversible sentence in their favour, the
studies, well called studies of humanity, should not
resent nor fear, but should favour and encourage all
other noble research having for its object the globe
on which we live, the tribes with which it is peopled
in land, air, and sea, the powers drawn forth from
nature or yet latent in her unexplored recesses, or
the spaces of that vast system
" Ultra flammantia mamia mundi,"
to which our earth belongs.
But more than this : we live in times when the
whole nature of our relation to the unseen world is
widely, eagerly, and assiduously questioned. Some-
times we are told of general laws, so conceived as to
be practically independent either of a Lawgiver or a
Judge. Sometimes of a necessity working all things
to uniform results, but seeming to crush and to bury
under them the ruins of our will, our freedom, our
( 65 )
personal responsibility. Sometimes of a private
judgment, which we are to hold upon the hard con-
dition of taking nothing upon trust, of passing by,
at the outset of our mental life, the whole preceding
education of the world, of owning no debt to those
who have gone before without a regular process of
proof, in a word of beginning anew each man for
himself: a privilege which I had thought was re-
stricted to the lower orders of creation, where the
parent infuses 110 prejudices into its litter or its fry.
Such are the fancies which go abroad. Such are the
clouds which career in heaven, and pass between us
and the sun, and make men idly think, that what
they see not, is not, and blot the prospects of what is
in so many and such true respects a happy and a
hopeful age. It is I think an observation of Saint
Augustine, that those periods are critical and formi-
dable, when the power of putting questions runs
greatly in advance of the pains to answer them.
Such appears to be the period in which we live.
And all among us, who are called in any manner to
move in the world of thought, may well ask who is
sufficient for these things? Who can with just and
firm hand sever the transitory from the durable, and
the accidental from the essential, in old opinions?
Who can combine, in the measures which reason
would prescribe, reverence and gratitude to the past
with a sense of the new claims, new means, new
duties of the present ? Who can be stout and earnest
to do battle for the Truth, and yet hold sacred, as he
ought, the freedom of inquiry, and cherish, as he
F
ought, a chivalry of controversy like the ancient chi-
valry of arms ? One persuasion at least let us embrace :
one error let us avoid. Let us be persuaded of this,
that Christianity will by her inherent resources find
for herself a philosophy equal to all the shifting and
all the growing wants of the time. Let us avoid the
error of seeking to cherish a Christianity of isolation.
The Christianity which is now and hereafter to flou-
rish, and, through its power in the inner circles of
human thought, to influence ultimately, in some
manner more adequate than now, the masses of man-
kind, must be such as of old the Wisdom of God was
described.
" For in her is an understanding spirit, holy, one
" only, manifold, subtil, lively, clear, undefiled, plain,
" not subject to hurt, loving the thing that is good,
" quick, which cannot be letted, ready to do good,
" kind to man, steadfast, sure, free from care, having
" all power, overseeing all things. . . .
" For she is the brightness of the everlasting light,
" the unspotted mirror of the power of Grod, and the
" image of His goodness." *
It must be filled full with human and genial
warmth, in close sympathy with every true instinct
and need of man, regardful of the just titles of every
faculty of his nature, apt to associate with and make
its own all, under whatever name, which goes to
enrich and enlarge the patrimony of the race. And
therefore it is well that we should look out over the
* ' Wisdom of Solomon,' viii. 22, 23, 26.
( 67 ,
field of history, and see if haply its records, the more
they are unfolded, do or do not yield us new materials
for the support of faith. Me at least, for one, ex-
perience has convinced that, just as fresh wonder and
confirmed conviction flow from examining the struc-
ture of the universe and its countless inhabitants, and
their respective adaptations to the purposes of their
being and to the use of man, the same results will
flow in yet larger measure from tracing the footmarks
of the Most High in the seemingly bewildered paths
of human history. Everywhere, before us, and behind
us, and around us, and above us and beneath, we
shall find the Power which
" Lives through all life, extends through all extent,
Spreads undivided, operates unspent." *
And, together with the Power, we shall find the
Goodness and the Wisdom, of which that sublime
Power is but a minister. Nor can that wisdom and
that goodness anywhere shine forth with purer
splendour, than when the Divine forethought, work-
ing from afar, in many places, and through many
generations, so adjusts beforehand the acts and the
affairs of men, as to let them all converge upon a
single point, upon that redemption of the world, by
God made Man, in which all the rays of His glory
are concentrated, and from which they pour forth a
flood of healing light even over the darkest and
saddest places of creation.
Mr. Vice-Chancellor, Professors, and Gentlemen, I
Pope's ' Essay on Man,' iv.
F 2
( 68 )
commend to your notice and your impartial research
the subject of the foregoing remarks. It is at least a
less unworthy offering than the mere commonplaces
of taking leave. Yet I claim one remaining moment
to convey to you my gratitude for your confidence,
to assure you that I shall ever feel a lively interest
in all that pertains to the welfare of your famous
University, and to bid you respectfully farewell.
69
NOTES.
NOTE I., p. 12.
This appropriating power of the Greeks is well expressed in a
passage quoted by Eusebius from Diodorus, who is describing the
view taken of that power by the Egyptians (Prsep. Evang. ii. 6)
e (fcacri TOI>S
77/30)019 re KOL Oeovs.
NOTE IL, p. 12.
These sentiments are not only contained in particular passages
of the ' Praeparatio,' but run through the whole work. See for
instance :
On the foreign origin of the Greek religion, B. i. 6, i. 10, ii. 1,
and ii. 3. The Hellenic ^vOoXoycai KdruOtv 6/o/xwvrat, iii. 4.
On the composition of the old religions, v. 3.
On the commendation of the Greek genius and the philosophers,
i. 6 (TCI cre/xva rJys ycvvatas 'EAArJvwv <iAocro<tas), i. 8, i. 10, xi. 1,
and ii. 6 (6 OavfAaa-ios UXarcav .... 6 Travrwv apioros), V. 33.
On the light of nature, ii. 6 (</>v(m Kat auToSiSa/orots evvotai?,
fj.aXX.ov Se $eoStSaKTOis), and elsewhere C^VO-LKOL eWoiat.
On the appropriations from the Hebrews, Books ix. and x.
NOTE III, p. 13.
Celsus appears to have used the same imputation of being copyists
against the Hebrews : and to have been confuted by Origen on
account of the greater antiquity of the Jewish histories. Stilling-
fleet, Orig. Sac. ch. i. (vol. i. p. 16, Oxf. ed.)
NOTE IV., p. 14.
Saint Augustine traced the prophecies of Christ in the Sibylline
Btfoks (De Civ. Dei, B. xviii. c. 23). Like the other Christian
apologists, he commonly treats the heathen deities as real spirits of
evil. He seems, in part, like Eusebius, to resolve the personages
of the Greek and Roman Mythology into, 1. Men deified after
( 70 )
death, 2. Elements or Nature Powers, 3. Daemones (De Civ. Dei.,
B. xviii. c. 14). He recognises divine aid given to the philosophers
of Greece (de Civ. Dei, B. ii. c. 7) : and in tracing the history of
the two Civitates, the Coelestis, and the Terrestris, he says (B. xvi.
c. 10), that probably there were children of the former in the latter,
as well as of the latter in the former.
NOTE V., p. 22.
Mr. Grote remarks upon this anthropomorphic genius of the
Hellenic religion, under the name of an universal "tendency to
personification." 'History of Greece,' i. 462. Mr. Euskin has
some striking observations on the same subject.
NOTE VI., p. 23.
Apollo. Mr. Max Miiller says, in his most able work on * Lan-
guage,' vol. ii. p. 433, that Apollo drew to himself the worship of
the Dorian family, Athene of the Ionian, Poseidon of the ^Eolian,
but that the worship of Zeus reached over all. I venture to doubt
the accuracy of this classification. The Greek mythology was
eminently favourable, as one of popular idolatry, to the develop-
ment of particular local worships, and the preferences were much
associated with race. But it would surprise me to see any proof
that the worship of Apollo, or that of Athene, was anything less
than universal among the Greeks. The invaluable work of Pau-
sanias, with its careful and patient enumerations, appears to form
a conclusive standard of appeal on this subject.
On the character of Apollo, see C. 0. Muller's ' Dorians,' Lewis
and Tuffnell's translation, i. 329.
NOTE VII., p. 25.
The word "jovial " appears to be one of that group of words, too
little noticed, which have come into the English tongue direct
from the Italian, and to abound in our old authors. It is explained
by Johnson as meaning, 1. Under the influence of Jupiter, 2. Gay,
airy, merry. But I do not find in any of our dictionaries or word-
books which I have consulted any notice of what appears to be its
differentia, and to make it reflect the idea of the Olympian life :
namely, that in its proper use it does not mean merriment simply,
but an elevated or royal kind of merriment. Thus Dray ton speaks
( 71 )
of the " princely jovial fowl :" and the sense is exactly touched in a
speech of Lear (Act iv., Scene 6)
What?
I will be jovial : come come, I am a king,
My masters, know you that.
This distinctive flavour of the sense has been in part rubbed out :
yet jovial is not even now synonymous with merry : we should
more properly say jovial men, merry children, than vice versa.
NOTE VIII., p. 26.
It is worthy of remark, that in Homer the political life of man is
reflected even as to some portion of its detail by the divine life.
The institution of the povXy, or council, was already well marked
off from that of the dyo/o?), or Assembly. So the ordinary meeting
on Olympus seems to be the ftovXr], but this, which precedes the
Theomachy, to correspond with the Assembly.
NOTE IX., p. 29.
The Sun in the * Iliad,' see II. xviii.
ijfXiov 6' aKapavra J3o>7ris irorvia "Hpiy-
irfp^l/'cv TT 'QKeavolo poas deKOVTo. veea-Qai.
Why being thus passive, and scarcely animate, is the planet repre-
sented as unwilling ? The answer must be founded on conjecture.
But I conceive it to be probably this. The Trojan worship seems
to have been more elemental than the Greek : so the Sun was
unwilling to cut short that famous day, which was to be the last
day of prosperity to the Trojan arms.
In the ' Odyssey ' we have no mention of the worship of the Sun
by the Greeks : and when Eurupulos in Thrinakie persuades his
companions to slay the oxen of that deity for food, he says, " when
we return to Ithaca, we can make him a rich temple and precinct,
with abundant votive gifts " (Od. xii. 346).
TTiOVa VTjOV
Tvop.v, cv de K Oel/JLev dyaXfiara TraAAa KOI ea6\d,
thus raising the inference that he had none already existing in that
very small island.
NOTE X., p. 29.
On the Invocation of Rivers.
It is probable that these may have been admitted more or less
into purely local worship : Achilles in Troja not only invokes his
( 72 )
own Spercheios, but mentions his father's prayer and vow to offer
an hecatomb to the stream, in the place where was its glebe and
altar. In this class of cases, the anthropomorphic force of the
Greek system showed itself by investing the rivers. with human
forms. Achelous, the most famous of them, fought against Hera-
kles for Deianira, sought her hand, and had many other wives.
Odysseus invokes the river in Corfu, but then he is in the sphere of
the outer geography, and of a theology differing from the Greek.
Asteropaios, a Paaonian hero, is grandson to the Eiver Axios.
NOTE XL, p. 30.
The single clear trace that I remember to have perceived in
Homer of the elemental creed is this, that, in one single passage,
he calls the sacrificial fire by the name of Hephaistos, the god of
fire. II. ii. 426.
NOTE XII., p. 37.
On this subject, as a testimony instar omnium, see the passage in
Aristophanes Ne^. 1087-1100.
NOTE XIII., p. 37.
" Philippus of Crotona was actually deified by the inhabitants of
Segeste, and had sacrifices offered to him in his lifetime on account
of his beauty. Cypselus instituted prizes for beauty : while such
was the honour conferred by its possession, that Elpinice, the sister
of Cimon, did not hesitate to sit as model to Polygnotus."
Falkener's ' Daedalus,' p. 33, note.
NOTE XIV., p. 38.
On the contrary, in the Clouds, v. 540, Aristophanes takes credit
to himself because his play made no jest upon baldness
and this is believed to be a rebuke to Eupolis for having con-
descended to ridicule Aristophanes himself on the score of baldness
(Mitchell in loc.). The conclusion I have stated in the text as to
caricature, seems to me, on the whole, to be supported by the
collection of instances in the work of Champficury. On the use of
caricature for religion, see Locky's * Eationalism,' vol. ii., p. 1.
( 73 )
NOTE XV., p. 45.
The Zeus of Phidias at Olympia is stated to have been sixty feet
high, and the Athene of the Parthenon forty. Falkener's Dseda-
lus,' p. 94.
NOTE XVI, p. 57.
It has been, perhaps, too little noticed that the expedition of
Alexander, by carrying not only the political, but especially the
intellectual, dominion of Greece through the East, was no less
signally a Preparation for the Gospel than was the growth of the
Eoman Power, which placed the civilised world under the sway of
a single sceptre (S. Aug. De Civ. Dei, B. xviii. c. 22). The dis-
solution of Alexander's empire after his death has made us take for
a short-lived, meteor-like phenomenon, what really was a great work,
with results not less permanent than wide-spread. Its importance
reached a climax in the Translation of the Jewish Scriptures
executed by the Seventy.
NOTE XVII., p. 61.
Vividly described by Lecky, ' Rise and Influence of Rationalism
in Europe,' vol. ii. p. 28. The same principle runs through Church
History : as where the admirable Mere Marie- Angelique Arnauld
describes the Infirmaries in her convent as " basses et humides
comme des caves," making the nuns ill, and yet " cela ne les
degoutoit point. Dieu nous en envoya plusieurs." (Relations du
Port Royal, p. 30.)
NOTE XVIIL, p. 61.
Saint Augustine says of the body, ad ipsam naturam hominis pec-
tinet (De Civ. Dei, i. 13). Eusebius in his account of the Hebrew
religion shows a tendency to depreciate this constituent part of
man, when he relates that they viewed it simply as a space for the
soul to dwell in (TO Se, rovrov ^wpav 7repi/3oA,?}s e7T^tv), and says
all bodily pleasures are no higher than those of the brute creation
(B. v. c. 4). Saint Augustine had felt deeply the influence of the
Greek philosophy, and hence perhaps it is that with his warmly-
coloured views he combined so much breadth of conception.
LONDON:
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SPEECHES
OF THE 1UGHT HOX.
W. E. GLADSTONE, M.P.,
DELIVERED AT
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IN OCTOBER, 1868.
LONDON:
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DELIVERED IX THE
TOWN HALL, WARRINGTOK
OCTOBER 12iiT, 1868.
MR. EIGBY and gentlemen, together with my friend, and I hope I na ay
say my future colleague, Mr. Grenfell, I have met to-day with such a
reception in Warrington as I am quite certain that neither of us will
readily forget. We are aware, gentlemen, that within the limits of the
borough a contest is in progress of no ordinary interest to you all, and
with respect to which, though it would be unbecoming in me to dwell
upon it particularly, I cannot but express the confident and sanguine belief
that some five weeks five short weeks from the time at which I now
have the honour to address you, will see the town of Warrington repre-
sented after the manner of our Constitution in the British House of Com-
mons by the free votes of the people, and in the person of my friend Mr.
Eylands. But, gentlemen, the duty which, in conjunction with MJ-. Gren-
fell, I have to perform to-night is to address you in respect to the election
for the south-western division of the county. And perhaps, gentlemen, I
may be permitted to begin by stating that, as a matter of fact, the contest
in which Lancashire men are now engaged with Lancashire men is not a
contest of our seeking. The history of its origin is this. As you are
aware, the southern division of the county is at present represented by
two supporters of the present Administration, together with myself.
Well, I think that is a distribution to which at least the supporters of
the Government a minority of the House of Commons have no great
reason to complain. However, in the exercise of their wisdom, or else of
their zeal, our opponents early in the present year began to take measures
for the modest purpose of securing to themselves the whole of the county
A 2
4 , SPEECHES OF THE RIGHT HON. W. E. GLADSTONE.
representation in this division ; and you, gentlemen, who are electors and
of Liberal opinions are to answer whether you will submit to this exclusion
which was attempted to be enforced. Perhaps you will ask me how it was
attempted, and there is no difficulty in the answer. It was not attempted
to affect your opinion or even to appeal to your prejudices. It was
attempted in a manner which it is easy to understand. It was attempted
by that most ingenious but frequently effectual method of clubbing
together to make a long purse. That being so, the Liberal party in this
division adopted such precautionary measures as appeared to be justified
/or the purpose of ascertaining its sentiments, and came to the conclusion,
first, that they would not submit to be excluded from the representation,
and, secondly, to accept the challenge which they gave, and to seek to
return to Parliament two representatives of Liberal opinions for the
county. "Well, the campaign is to begin to-day. It is not the 12th of
August, a day fatal to many of our fellow-creatures ; but it is the 12th
of October, a day on which we set out for a season in which I believe our
motives are at least as elevated as the motives of those who commonly
take to the moor on the 12th of August, and in which, I must add, that
our sport will be quite as good. We are in for it now, and we must go-
through with it. I agree with the resolution which characterises the
men of England, and, not least, the men of Lancashire. "We ought to
consider questions of public interest with a determination in no instance
wilfully to misconstrue our adversaries' intentions or their acts, but with a
firm determination to beat them if we can. The war to be carried on this
evening is a war of argument, and I rejoice to think that we have arrived
at a period when the masses of the people of this country are supplied,
through the inestimable machinery of the daily press, and, above all, of
the cheap press, with the means of bringing an enlightened judgment to
bear upon questions of public interest and policy. I cannot depart from
this subject without observing that the establishment of the cheap press
was not secured without a struggle, and that we who stand here upon this
platform are the representatives in our humble sphere of those who procured
for the people that inestimable benefit. It was, gentlemen, by many
efforts in the front both of enemies and of half-hearted friends ; it was in
the front, I am sorry to say, of the misguided action of the hereditary
branch of the Legislature, that those of us who were determined to set free
the press of this country, persevered in our purpose, and obtained for the
country the enormous advantage which they now derive from having
brought to their doors from day to day information upon public affairs,
which, although it is not in every instance infallible, yet contains within
itself the secret and means of the cure of this defect, because it is, though
not infallible, yet free ; and the errors of opinion which proceed from one
quarter are corrected by the more just judgment of another. Well, gentle-
men, that is the footing upon which we meet, so far as regards your means
of information ; and we meet likewise, as I am rejoiced to think, upon a
ground in which the borough franchise to a very large extent, and in which
the county franchise to some considerable extent, now stands upon a basis
wider than that upon which it stood when I last had the honour to submit
my claims to the constituency of Lancashire. Gentlemen, it would not be
unnatural if I were to presume to detain you upon the subject of the im-
portant change which has occurred in our Parliamentary constitution. It
SPEECHES OF THE EIGHT HON. V. E. GLADSTONE. 5
would not be unnatural even on account of the moment and the extent o
that change. There would still be more cause for it on account of another
circumstance less satisfactory I mean, the particular provisions of the
Act for amending the representation of the people, which I must say have
been perversely and wilfully so constructed as to impose upon the people,
together with the benefits of the franchise, a fine upon its exercise, to
which I have objected from the first moment when it was named, and
which I, for my part, shall be earnestly desirous to take the first oppor-
tunity of effacing from the statute-book of England. For the present,
gentlemen, I won't detain you further on that subject, which is one that
might open out into a multitude of details, because, in truth, we live in.
times when so many and such pregnant matters of public interest solicit
our attention that we must be content to take them one by one, and
endeavour to present each in turn in a clear and open light to the public
mind. I think thus we shall probably best be enabled to contribute, so far
as in us lies, to your exercising a right judgment upon the coming occasion.
Of the great questions that are now before us, that which meets me,
after the question of Parliamentary Reform, is that of the public
expenditure of the country. I have, gentlemen, notwithstanding the
crowded state of this assemblage, your patient attention ; and I think it
probable that I have the honour of addressing to-night, along with a large
body of the electors for the county, a large number also of the
electors for the town. The subject of public expenditure is one of great
and standing importance. Other questions come and go, but this is a
question that always abides. It is a question that sometimes comes
into the very first place, and absorbs the attention of all men ; but when
it does so it is commonly because the evils have become too profound and
too inveterate to admit of easy cure, and the true wisdom on all political
subjects, but especially with regard to finance and public expenditure, is to
direct the mind of the country to the consideration of them at a time before
mischief has attained to unmanageable dimensions, in order that, if possible,
a remedy, and an effective remedy, may be applied. This is the condi-
tion in which we now stand with reference to finance and to the expenditure
of the country. I ventured about six weeks or two months ago to call
attention to this subject in a meeting at St. Helen's. I stated with great
moderation of language that of which I do not intend to qualify or retract
one single iota. I intend, on the contrary, both to corroborate and enlarge
the assertions I then made ; but I did then state that within the two years
during which the present Government had been in office the sum of
3,000,000 had been added to the permanent expenditure of the country.
Now, I did not lay the exclusive blame of that augmentation upon the
existing Administration, and the reason that I did not lay upon them the
exclusive blame is that, as an observer of public affairs within and without
the walls of the House of Commons, I cannot but be sensible of these two
truths in the first place, that the people are the natural defenders of their
own purses ; and, in the second place, that the vigilance and watchfulness
with which the public mind has at some periods been directed to the
control of the public expenditure have of late years been very greatly relaxed.
You may think that is a reproach to you. You may think it a
reproach which comes from one who has no right to make it. Gentlemen,
your true friend is the man who ^ speaks openly the sentiments of his mind
6 SPEECHES OF THE EIGHT HON. W. E. GLADSTONE.
and his heart. I dare tell you this, that no Government, however well
disposed, will at any time be able to keep the expenditure within moderate
bounds unless backed up by the constant and unsleeping vigilance of
public opinion. You will ask me, perhaps, why is this ? I will tell you in
one sentence. It is because there are knots and groups, and I may say
classes, who have a constant and unsleeping interest in feeding themselves
on the produce of the public industry. The counterpoise to this perfectly
natural tendency on the part of individuals and classes is the vigilance of
the public mind. The present Government goes to sleep ; the other power
never goes to sleep. On the contrary, it is watching for every opportunity
to improve its position. And unfortunately there is an unhappy circumstance
affecting the condition of the public servants. When men in private life
improve their position, whether in commerce or manufacture, whether they
improve the produce of the soil or the mines, they improve the position of
all other classes ; but, unhappily, when those who have an interest in the
public service improve their own position they do so and I do not see
how the difficulty is to be avoided rather with reference to their own
interest than the advantage of the public. I do not say this for the
purpose of fixing a stigma on the present Government. It has been my
happy fortune to know in the public service men who have rendered labours
to the public and have served the State with a spirit as disinterested and
honourable to their station of life as any other class of men. It is the
nature of t the case that the public service should seek to improve its position,
and that this improvement must take the form of an addition to the public
burdens. I do not hesitate to say that the present Government has been
slack, and I do not presume to impute the whole of the blame to them, but
having said this much I will'proceed to point out.the blame which attaches to
the present Government, and it is for you to say whether that description
is fair or not. I ask you, gentlemen, something more. When I had the
honour of addressing the electors of St. Helen's, and of laying before them
the state of the case in very few and brief words in respect to the public
expenditure, I went the length of suggesting to them I hope it was nob
disrespectful that they should ask our opponents, our honourable and
respected opponents, Mr. Cross and Mr. Turner, what they thought of the
matter, because Mr. Cross and Mr. Turner request you to return them to
Parliament to support the men by whom this augmentation has been
brought about ; therefore I think it is a very serious matter that they
should be prepared to justify to you that which has been done. It was
with the greatest satisfaction I perceived that the public mind was ripe for
receiving a statement of that kind, and that the arrow I ventured to
discharge from the bow appeared to have gone home. It will not be my
fault, gentlemen, if that discussion is stifled or suppressed. I wish to
extend it and enlarge it. I don't wish to escape from blame. If you
think the Liberal party has been to blame, let it by all means be laid upon
us. The object really in view is that the public should receive advantage,
and I presume to tell you this the public have received advantage already.
I presume upon a prophecy let the elections go exactly in that way, in
which we don't think they will go ; let them result in the return of a
triumphant majority on behalf of the present Government, still, gentlemen,
I will venture to tell you that if you keep alive this question of the public
expenditure that fatal progression which has been established for the last
SPEECHES 01' THE RIGHT HON. W. E. GLADSTONE, 7
two or three years in the amount of the charges for the different branches
of the public service unless some great calamity should happen which
God forbid I venture now on the 12th of October to tell you, you will
have no increase of the estimates next year. I know that Mr. Cross, your
neighbour, is a man not only of high character, but of great intelligence,
and not only of great intelligence, but of great practical experience, parti-
cularly in those matters which relate to the management of pounds,
shillings, and pence. It was, therefore, with a peculiar satisfaction that I
observed that almost immediately after the meeting at St. Helen's the
mind of Mr. Cross appeared to have been impressed with observations
that had dropped at that meeting, and that he had addressed to the Chan-
cellor of the Exchequer a letter on the subject of the increase of the public
expenditure. I am so much pleased and so much encouraged by the cir-
cumstance that Mr. Cross should thus have taken the matter so to heart,
and addressed a letter to the Chancellor of the Exchequer, and, more-
over, that the Chancellor of the Exchequer should have answered that
letter, and, not only this, but that the private and personal feelings thus
gracefully expressed between these two gentlemen should have become
part of the public property by being printed in all the journals of the
country why, gentlemen, after this you cannot be surprised if I tell you
fairly that I mean to persevere in the same course, and I mean to find for
Mr. Cross, if I can, the materials of another letter to the Chancellor of
the Exchequer, and I have not the least doubt that if Mr. Cross
faithfully transmits queries that I will endeavour to put into his mouth,
the Chancellor of the Exchequer will find sufficient occasion for
another reply to Mr. Cross. Gentlemen, my charge against the
present Government is this, I did not do to them what their followers in
the country did to us. I did not mix up with their estimates for the
ordinary services of the country demands arising out of the wars that had
to be carried on in this or that quarter of the globe, but, carefully separat-
ing every item that the most impartial or the most friendly judge could
have desired to see excluded, I showed that the charges for the ordinary
service of the country had been raised by three millions during the time
for which the present Government had held office. Since that a great
number of placards have been published, and I believe that I have got a
very complete collection of them, but it does not require that I should
trouble you with the whole of them. One is just like the other ; they
contain exactly the same misrepresentations misrepresentations which I
am quite certain have proceeded from nothing but the grossest and most
absolute ignorance of the whole affair, because unless I were to interpose
that charitable supposition I should be driven to a statement far more
painful namely, that the authors of these placards had not that minute and
superlative regard for truth by which, after all, it is desirable that we
should be governed in public as well as in private life. Various answers
have been made to the statement that 3,000,000 had been added to the
ordinary expenditure of the country, and that the present Government were
in the main responsible for that charge. Let me consider what these
answers are. One of the answers is a very peculiar one, and it is the one
to which I will first refer, for it is to the fact that in former times, eight or
^.en years ago, and 15 and 20 years ago, the Conservative party were very
e conomical, and the Liberals very extravagant. Suppose that were true,
SPEECHES OP THE HIGHT HON. W. E. GLADSTONE.
would that mend the matter ? If those who were formerly extravagant
have become parsimonious, is it for you to refuse them the place of re-
pentance ? and if those who were formerly economical have become
prodigal, is it for you to be prevented from awarding to them the sentence
deserved by their guilt ? It seems to me that this answer does not mend
the matter in the least. It is wholly irrelevant. If the Liberal party
really were in former times the advocates of extravagance, and have now
become the advocates of parsimony, I can prove that by our recent conduct
there is no reason why they shouldjturn from us. Therefore the answer
is wholly irrelevant even if it were true ; but in addition
to being irrelevant it is totally untrue. Let me take the
points, and take them out of one of their own placards a placard in
Welsh and English. I hope the Welsh one is the same as the English,
but I cannot say positively. In this placard there is a discussion upon the
Income-tax, and it is stated that Lord Derby left the Income-tax at 5d. in
the pound, and that Mr. Gladstone raised it to 7d. It is true that Lord
Derby left the Income-tax at 5d. for his successors, but he never had the
Income-tax at 5d. for himself. Now, if you will bear with me for a few
moments I will give you the explanation. The placard says that in 1859,
under the Government of Lord Derby and Mr. Disraeli, the Income-tax
was 5d. in the pound. It is true that the law said 5d. in the pound, but
how was the Income-tax then levied ? You know that what you are
charged on the Income-tax you are charged on profits for the previous
year, and during the first half of that year that which is called 5d. in the
pound was levied, and the Conservative Government received the produce
not at 5d. in the pound, but at 7d. This statement which has been put
forth is one of those instances which we may charitably construe as gross
ignorance, and if we do not we must construe it as nothing less than
downright falsehood. Another ingenious method that was resorted to
was this. There is a long list of years of Income-tax, beginning at 7d.,
and going through various figures, and ending, in 1864-1865, at 6d. in the
pound, but forgetting there was such a year as 1865-6, in which we were
able honestly to reduce the Income-Tax to 4d. I say honestly to reduce it
in consequence of the growth of the public revenue and of thrift in the
public expenditure. But I go to that which is more relied upon. It is
said that in 1858-9 we had low Estimates under a Conservative Govern-
ment ; that in 1859-60 we had high Estimates under a Liberal Govern-
ment ; and in 1860-1 we had Estimates on a higher scale. I must say a
few words on each of these three points. It is perfectly true that in
1858-9 you had low Estimates, and I ask you who proposed those
Estimates ? Why, the Liberal Government. In the case of a country of
this kind, with an expenditure of 70,000,000, which amounts to one-tenth
or one-eighth part of the whole permanent income of the country, it
cannot be regulated from hour to hour, from week to week. All plans re-
lating to the public charge must be prepared and organised months before
they are put into execution. The Estimates of 1858-9 were prepared by
the Government of Lord Palmerston. I did not belong to that Govern-
ment. I objected to many things that it did. What did the Conservative
Government do when they came in ? On the llth of February, 1858, the
Government of Lord Palmerston laid on the table Army Estimates
amounting to 11,538,000. The charge for the Militia, 432,000, must be
SPEECHES OF THE EIGHT HOX. W. E. GLADSTONE.
added, making 11,970,000. That was shortly after the Liberal Govern-
ment went out. When the Conservative Government came in I heard with
great satisfaction the Budget of Mr. Disraeli. He proposed to reduce that
sum of 11,970,000 to 11,750,000 a reduction of 200,000. Sudden
reductions are too often questioned in cases of this kind. Public faith-
and honour must be kept, our soldiers must be paid, contracts must be
fulfilled. Now, what was the end of the proposed reduction ? The
expenditure was increased to 12,512,000. Now, that's a matter of fact
to which I invite your attention, and the attention of Mr. Cross, and the
attention of the Chancellor of the Exchequer. There was a saving of
288,000 in the Naval Estimates of the year, but the Army expenditure
exceeded the Estimates by more than 400,000 which we had to account
for, and ask the House of Commons to vote in 1860. So far as regards the
expenditure of 1858-9, the Estimates were in the main the Estimates of a
Liberal Government. The Conservative Government, when they came
into power, proposed somewhat to reduce them, but instead of doing so,
we found they had increased them. So much for that year. Now comes,
gentlemen, the year 1859-60, and in that year there was a great increase
of expenditure which can hardly have escaped the memory of any of those
who paid attention to such matters. In 1858-9 the expenditure had been
64,800,000 ; in 1859-60 the expenditure rose to 69,600,000 it rose, that
is to say, by 4,800,000, and that, it is said, is the work of a Liberal
Government. Now, I do not at all claim for the Liberal Government any
exemption from this responsibility. They came into office, when ? At the
end of the month of June, 1859. They proposed to Parliament the Esti-
mates which they found made ready for them. The Estimates imposing
the extension to 5,000,000 in the expenditure were the Estimates prepared
by the Conservative Government, and not only that, they were Estimates
of which, a great deal of the money had been voted and actually spent,
because the financial year of this country begins on the 1st of April, and
it was not until the month of July that a Liberal Government had an
opportunity of considering the state of the expenditure of the year. Now,
I ask you whether it is not the height of hardihood or of ignorance for the
adherents of a party who prepared those Estimates in the winter and in
the course of the spring, and who spent a great deal of money, so that it
was totally irrecoverable, to lay upon us the sole responsibility of the
increase which then occurred in the public expenditure ? Gentlemen, the
augmentation was a very great augmentation, and it was followed by
another augmentation in the year 1860, and of that also the responsibility
is laid upon us by the opposite party. Now, listen to a plain tale and a
short one. We came into office at the end of June, 1859. At the end of
June, 1859, Lord Elgin arrived at the mouth of the Peiho in China to sign
a treaty of peace with the Emperor of China, and, under the wise instruc-
tions of the Conservative Government, he went to sign this treaty of peace
with a large fleet to help him to guide the pen. The Chinese did not
understand the method of guiding a pen by a fleet, and thought that the
Ambassador might do it himself. The consequence was they laid a sort
of ambuscade for our fleet. A great disaster happened under the instruc-
tions of the Government of Lord Derby, and before we had been ten days
or a fortnight in office we found not that we found it when we had been
ten days or a fortnight in office, but before we had been ten days or a
10 SPEECHES OF THE 11IGKT HOX. W. E. GLADSTONE.
fortnight in office events had happened at the other side of the world
which launched us in another war with China, under the instructions of
the Government of Lord Derby, and that war cost us in the year 1860-61
at the very least from four to five millions of money. And now, in answer
to an attack of mine in which I have carefully separated the cost of
the Abyssinian war from the rest of the expenditure, those scribes
who support this Government go back upon the Chinese war, due
not to us, but to them, the fruit entirely of their policy and of
their instructions, and put the charge which that war entailed before the
country as a proof of our extravagance. Gentlemen, that, I think, is
a proceeding which I certainly hope never to be guilty of, and I trust that
no man in this room, however warm his feelings of partisanship may be,
ever will allow himself so grossly 'to violate the rules of fairness and
decency. And it is upon these statements, and statements like these, that
those computations are made out and placarded in the country, sometimes
in the letters which you see here, sometimes in letters a great deal larger,
saying that the Eadicals forsooth Lord Palmerston was a Eadical ! that
the Kadicals have spent 5,000,000 in the year more than the Conserva-
tives. Gentlemen, a very serious question in the minds of many is
whether the expenditure of those years was warranted by the circum-
stances. I have not in the slightest degree shrunk from telling you that in.
1859 we accepted the responsibility of proposing the estimates that had been
prepared, and providing the money that had been spent in a considerable
part by our predecessors in 1860. We had taken upon our shoulders the
Chinese war which they had brought about by their policy. Now, gentle-
men, this is a very serious question ; but again, I go back to the point.
It is impossible for an Administration to limit the expenditure if the
country is set upon it. 1 believe I am disposed to go as far as most men
in matters of thrift. But I am not disposed to say whether if I was
Chancellor of the Exchequer I should think it my duty to set my individual
will against the will of the whole country with regard to the question
whether two or three millions more should be spent in a particular year.
What you have a right to expect from a Government is this, that it shall
sedulously strive to keep down the public expenditure, and that it shall
never run in advance of the public feelings and of the public wants ; but
more than that I think you hardly can expect. But now, gentlemen,
what was our case ? I am now going to make a very serious and
deliberate charge. I will tell you what our case was. It was this that
great as was the expenditure of 1859, great as was the expenditure of 1860
great as was the expenditure of 1861, it was only by the utmost efforts and
the most desperate struggles that we kept down the expenditure where it
stood, in consequence of the constant and persevering efforts of a large
portion of the Opposition, and of many leaders of the Opposition, and of
many men who are now Ministers of State, to compel us to spend more
public money. Now, gentlemen, that is not a charge which a man ought
to make without being able to support it. I will support it. I invite to
it the attention of Mr. Cross, I invite to it the attention of the Chancellor
of the Exchequer, and I say deliberately that throughout the Government
of Lord Palmerston large portions of the Opposition never desisted by its
leaders in compelling the Government to spend more money. I say that,
on the contrary, during the period of administration of Lord Derby and
SPEECHES OF THE 1UGIIT HON. V. E. GLADSTONE. [ 11
Mr. Disraeli, instead of the Opposition endeavouring to stimulate the
Government in the matter of expenditure, we did the little we could
to check them and control them in that course. Now, gentle-
men, when you see and hear these statements about the economy
of the Conservative Government as it is called though I do not think it
is Conservative myself in former years, you would suppose they had
done their best to restrain it, or at all events, that they had remained silent
in the matter. You never would dream that they had endeavoured to force
it to a point beyond which it actually reached. Now, there is a mode by
which this matter may be brought to a statistic test. There are three
ways in which opinions are promoted and forced forward in the House of
Commons ; the one is by division, and of course you will understand that
those who divide in favour of a motion for expenditure help to press-
forward expenditure ; another way is by motions, which [have very often
great influence even though they be not pressed to a division ; and another
way is found in a very harmless operation as it looks, but I may tell you
it is sometimes a rather invidious act, that you may often have noticed
reported in the newspapers. You will see before the solid business of the
evening commences a number of gentlemen frequently get up in the House
of Commons and ask this Minister and that Minister what he is going to
do on a particular subject " Mr. So-and-so to ask the Chancellor of the
Exchequer whether he will consent to increase the salaries of the Post-
office sorters and letter-carriers in such-and-such a borough;" "Mr. So-
and-so to call the attention of the House to the case.of the Colonels of such-
and-such regiments which have been placed in such-and-such a position
of disadvantage ;" " Mr. So-and-so to move for a committee on the pay of
naval captains." These are questions which are multiplied in an indefi-
nite number of forms. Now, I say this and the Government have the
means of doing it if they like let them reckon up throughout the
Parliament of 1859-1865, all the questions which were put with a view of
increasing the expenditure ; let them reckon up all the motions that
were made with the view of increasing expenditure, and let them
reckon up all the divisions that were taken with a view of increas-
ing the expenditure ; let them see by whom those questions were
put, by whom those motions were made, and who voted in those divi-
sions. Now, that is a fair test let Mr. Cross make that proposal to the
Chancellor of the Exchequer. He would have nothing to do but to sefc
a couple of clerks to work, and in three days they would do it. I do
not say that we of the Liberal party are wholly exempt far from it ; but
the effect would be that you would find three-fourths, or perhaps nine-
tenths, of those proceedings in endeavouring to force the Government into
a higher expenditure proceeded from the Conservative party when sitting
upon the benches of Opposition. And they may understand that T am
not speaking without book. I will give you two particular instances. It
so happens that they are instances in which the motion, I believe, was made
by gentlemen who sat on the Liberal side of the House, but that is
immaterial to my purpose. I want to test the disposition of the Conserva-
tive Government of that kind of Government which you are asked to
support, by returning to Parliament men who will support it. The year
1859, it seems, was a year in which the tender consciences of the supporters
of the present Government were terribly scandalised on account of the
12 SPEECHES OF THE EIGHT HON. W. E. GLADSTONE.
greatly increased expenditure. There was at that time a most' formidable
question afloat a question connected with the proposal to create fortifica-
tions for the defence of the great arsenals of this country. We desired to
appoint a commission to inquire into the necessity for these fortifications,
and into the manner in which, if they were to be erected, they could be
erected with the greatest advantage, and at the smallest cost. But the
House of Commons were so fervent in their desire to have these fortifica-
tions, that they would not endure the delay entailed by a commission.
They required that we should proceed at once. This motion was made on
the 29th of July : " That the expense of completing the necessary works
of national defence should be met by a fund specially provided for that
purpose." That meant by a public loan, and independent of the votes of
Parliament. You see how the declaration of that act launched by the
House of Commons that it was ready to borrow money to any extent,
would have tended to increase the expenditure. The Government resisted
the motion, and it was defeated by 167 votes to 70, but in the minority
which voted for the motion I see the names of six members of the present
Government, who wanted at that very time, when the expenditure had
been so much enlarged, to force us into a loan. The six members of
the present Government who voted for the motion contained two members
of the present Cabinet, Lord John Manners and Sir John Pakington, the
latter of whom has been one of the gentlemen most connected with the
spending departments of the country, and he has shown as liberal a
disposition if it be the true essence of Liberalism to tap the pockets of
the tax-payers of this country as any Minister I have ever known. But
this was not only in relation to matters of war, it was shown in matters
of peace also. Did you ever hear of the plan for erecting harbours of
refuge ? Perhaps not ; because most of those harbours were to have
been on the eastern side of the country. But there was such a plan, and
it was proposed to spend, I think, in the first instance, 5,000,000 of
money/' out of which two-thirds were to be at the cost of the Exchequer,
and the other third was to be lent by the Exchequer. It was a scheme
which could not have failed to cost 10,000,000 or 12,000,000 to the
country. Now, what did Lord Palmerston do in those days of high
expenditure ? We set ourselves firmly against that scheme, and this
motion was made in the House of Commons on the 19th of June, 1860 :
" That, in the opinion of this House, it is the duty of her Majesty's
Government to adopt at the earliest possible period the necessary measures
to carry into effect the recommendations of the Commissioners appointed
in 1858 to inquire into the formation of harbours of refuge on the coasts
of Great Britain and Ireland." Observe the character of that motion. It
was a motion that contemplated at the very outset the spending of several
millions of public money, and the lending of some millions more ; and,
from what we know of the nature of that irresponsible expenditure, we
may be certain that amount of five millions would have been doubled or
trebled before it was over. Nine members of the present Government
voted for the motion, but I will only give you the names of those who are
in the present Cabinet, for they are entitled to that distinction. There
were three who are now Cabinet Ministers who voted for that motion
Lord Stanley, our friend Sir John Pakington, and the present guardian
of the public finances, Mr. Ward Hunt. They voted for an address in
SPEECHES OF THE RIGHT IIOX. W. E. GLADSTONE.
the House of Commons to compel the Government to spend this money, but
the Government did one of the greatest things on behalf of public economy
that I have ever known done. The motion was made, as I have told yon,
and I regret to say it was carried by 145 to 128, so that the House of
Commons addressed the Crown to have harbours of refuge made, but the
Government of Lord Palmerston, to his great credit, refused to act upon
that address of the House of Commons. There is another portion of this-
question to which I must briefly allude, reserving my right to go into ib
more fully on some other occasion. Still, I may say a few words on the
present occasion ; but I have, as it were, archa3ologically and in an anti-
quarian spirit, to relate the acts of former Governments simply for this
reason that our opponents have not been able to say anything on the
present issue, but have been obliged to disinter and disembody questions,
which in all practical reality are bygones. Now, I come back to the charge,
and I repeat it, that the Government has added to the present permanent
expenditure of the country a sum of three millions, without taking into-
account one farthing for the money expended for the Abyssinian war.
Now, I must say a word on this subject of the expenditure on the
Abyssinian war. I believe the estimate was that it would cost 5,000,000.
That was made in the month of April or May, when the war was practically
at a close, and the whole expenditure ought to have been accurately known
if there had been no gross blundering or negligence. I can only hope that
the Government has told us the whole truth, and that we know the real
estimate of the expenditure of that war. But I am told that we shall have
another bill to pay. I will not treat as a fact that which I do not know to
be a fact ; but if it be the truth the present Government has incurred a
most enormous and a most serious responsibility. But the three millions,
are supposed to be divided as follows : 1,400,000 for the army, 600,000
for the navy, and 1,000,000 for the civil service. You will soon have
most ingenious efforts to draw away the attention of the public from the
real question by seeking to show that the public services of the country are
inefficient that is, the naval and military services are in an inefficient state,
and that money must be spent to make them efficient. There is nothing-
that you ought to be more upon your guard against than the alleged in-
efficiency of the public service. It is in itself a good plea, but in the
mouth of a Government which wants to find an excuse for a great increase
of the public expenditure, it is a plea not to be admitted without a great
deal of careful scrutiny. I will tell you the result of some of my expe-
rience. When the Government wishes to raise money it is invariably done-
by saying that the public service is inefficient, that the money is spent ; and
the next thing declared is that the public service has at last been made
efficient. It would be well if this ended here. But somebody else comes in,,
who declares the public service again inefficient, and the money is again
spent. The same process goes on time after time, the public is utterly
bewildered, and at last arrives at the only certainty in the whole matter a.
large augmentation of the public charges. I have heard that the troops-
have been badly armed for the last five years ; that the late Government
did not finish the contracts for iron-plated ships, improved artillery,
and small arms. The late Government, feeling that a vast expenditure:
had been uselessly incurred for iron-plated ships and improved arms,
the last pattern being superseded by something superior before it was.
14 SPEECHES OP THE RIGHT HON. W. E. GLADSTONE.
even served out, determined to proceed cautiously, and not rashly,
to incur a vast expenditure, as the present Government have done
on the latest new invention. The lesson we taught was to proceed with
moderation. Some have heard a great deal said about the addition of
500,000 to the public charges, in order to give an additional 2d. a day to the
pay of the soldier. Gentlemen, I do not say that too much lias been done.
On the contrary, I am by no means of that opinion, but I do mean to say
that all that has been done might have been done at much less cost to the
country. But what is the defence urged by the Government ? They say
that we ought to object ; but when the Executive Government of the Crown
proposed an increase of pay to the army, it was impossible for any Opposi-
tion to step in and say no. No one who considers in the slightest degree
the relation between the Executive Government and the army, and the
right which the army has to rely on the promises and determination of
the Executive, will fail to see that the judgment of the Executive
Government was perfectly conclusive when such a proposal was made, and
as they were entitled to its merits, so, in consequence, they must bear its
responsibility. Let me give you another instance they built a number of
ships, and they said that what were called reliefs, and were intended to take
the place of other vessels on distant stations, were in an unsatisfactory and
inefficient state, and that it was necessary to put the country to a great
charge to build more of them. We endeavoured to stop this measure in
the House of Commons and failed. We could not bring the House of
Commons to see the folly of this policy. If you are to have a real retrench-
ment in your Navy Estimates you must have it by a great modification of
that antiquated system of keeping fleets all over the world, by means of
these reliefs, as they are called, or by a multitude of wooden ships, which
would be almost entirely useless for the defence of the country. There-
fore I at once say that the money had better, perhaps, have been thrown
into the sea ; but for the expenditure of it I hold no one responsible but the
Government. It is quite true that the House of Commons declined to stop
the Government in its career, but the House of Commons is a body which
had during last Session particularly, and during the Session before, the
greatest difficulties to contend with in dealing with the Government.
It has been compelled to meet the Government at every turn for
the purpose of changing its bad proposals into good ones. But
you must not expect too much from the House of Commons. This
is, I think, all I need state to you with regard to these subjects,
except that I will sum it up in one sentence, and I will tell you
this. You observe there is a million in civil expenditure that has
been added. Now, I know very well that the case set up by the
adherents of the Government will be that there were new wants that
required to be met. Who supposes that in a country which expends
65,000,000 every year it is now, I am sorry to say, beyond 70,000,000
who supposes that you can estimate down to every farthing of your
expenditure ? You cannot stereotype the wants of a great empire. New
wants are always coming forward, but where there are new wants, and pro-
vision is made for them, that provision ought to be counterbalanced by new
economies. What has been done by the present Government ? I affirm
this, that they have adopted with regard to the civil expenditure a
system to which was once applied in a different sense a phrase which is
SPEECHES OF THE RIGHT IIOX. TT. E. GLADSTONE. 15
a very expressive one a system of making things pleasant all round.
How do you understand that ? You understand that everywhere
there are demands on the public purse, and a great deal of trouble
and unpopularity to be escaped, and a great deal of political influence to
be obtained in local towns by making things pleasant all round.
I affirm this, that before the Government had been in office one
month it commenced its career of granting requests which we had
refused, of undoing and reversing decisions to which we had come
in the interests of the public purse, and of substituting for them
other decisions, at an increase of the public charge. I will give you but
one instance of the way in which this works. I read it in the address of a
candidate I will not say where ; but there is no doubt about the facts, for
they are a matter of public notoriety. The Government had advanced
20,000 for the purpose of carrying out a public work at the time of this
election. A candidate comes forward in the interests of the Government,
and he states that in the time of the Government of Earl Russell or Lord
Palmerston I forget which he proposed that the State should surrender
that debt of .20,000 upon receiving the sum of 2,500. That proposal, he
said, was opposed by the Liberal Government, and he could not carry it ;
but when a Conservative Government came in, they agreed to it. That,
I think, is an instance of making all things pleasant. The candidate pleads
the sacrifice which the Government had made of public money as a reason
why the constituency should return him to Parliament. If you meditate
upon this little matter, I think you will find it full of useful informa-
tion, and it may convince you that it arises out of a system of a very
liberal administration of the public funds and a contempt of small,
niggardly and unworthy saving.
There is another question which cannot be overlooked I mean
the question of the Irish Church. I endeavoured on a former
occasion at St. Helen's to express this opinion, which I am con-
fident is founded on fact, that the question respecting the Irish
Church as it stood during the last Session was really, whether in
Ireland you would adopt our proposal and our policy under the
circumstances of the country, and have no Church Establishment, or
whether you would have three or four. It was necessary to point
out that those who were responsible for the government of Ireland
agreed with us in the opinion that we could not stand as we were,
and they have proposed a plan, against which we have proposed
ours. Many of you probably, and a considerable number of the
people who are Protestant, feel opposed in conscience to the payment
of the grant to Maynooth College, and many who are Roman
Catholics may feel not less aggrieved at the payment of the sum of 40,000
to the Presbyterians under the name of Regium Donum. What is the
meaning of these two grants ? They are the buttresses of the Irish
National Church. The Irish Church is such a contradiction of all
the principles on which Church Establishments ever have been
founded and recommended, and of all the feelings of the country, and I
may say of the common sense of men and the judgment of the civilised
world, that it is impossible to get it tolerated except upon conditions, and
therefore the policy of those who desire its continuance has been to main-
tain and to multiply these grants which I have called the buttresses of the
Irish Church ; but it was felt that Maynooth and the Itegium Donum were
J-6 SPEECHES OP THE BIGHT HOX. W. E. GLADSTONE.
not enough, and that there must be some more of those buttresses, for
the wall was weak, and was beginning to bulge horribly outwards, so
that there was a fear that it would fall. Therefore a new buttress was
devised in the shape of a foundation of a Koman Catholic University, and
u second one viz., the increase of the Regium Donum. In the
House of Commons I read a letter, written by the authority of Lord Derby
in the year 1867, with respect to the increase of the Eegium Donum, in
which he said that he was extremely sorry it was too late to do anything
that year, but when the Estimates for the next year were framed the
matter would be considered, which is understood to mean that the prayer
would be granted. I read that letter in the House of Commons. The
First Minister of the Crown, the present Prime Minister, said that he was
not in any manner bound by what was done by the Government of Lord
Derby. I thought that rather odd considering that he was not merely a
member of Lord Derby's Government, but that he was the leader
of the House of Commons, and I thought it still more odd when I
read the address in the newspapers the other day, in which I saw that the
present Prime Minister has been upon terms of brotherly kindness with
Lord Derby for the last 20 years ; they had had but one common soul and
spirit one thought and mind in public affairs. And so it appears that
there are two faces to this deity, which may be turned about alternately as
occasion serves. When Lord Derby has made an inconvenient declaration,
then, indeed, we had nothing to do with the Government of Lord Derby; but
when there is no inconvenient declaration in the case, and when it is known
that the name of Lord Derby of which from many points of view I can
speak with cordial respect when it is known that the name of Lord Derby
is by far the best name that can be presented to the country at the approach
of a general election, then, indeed, a complete amalgamation with Lord
Derby appears to be effected, and you are invoked in his name to support
the present Government. But, gentlemen, whether it be Lord Derby, or
Mr. Disraeli, or Lord Anyone-else or Mr. Anybody-else, that is not the ques-
tion in view. The question in view is this are we, these three kingdoms
of her Majesty, to be one united kingdom, or are we not ? You have been
united with Ireland, so far as law could unite you and so far as force and
the strong hand of military power could unite you you have been united,
if you call it united, for 700 years. The union that has subsisted between
you has at no period been a source of strength or security to this country,
but has at all periods been a source of wonder and of scandal to the
civilised world. Now, gentlemen, you are the persons to whom it is to be
referred in the last resort how long these matters are to be carried on.
Do you intend, or do you not intend, that our relations with Ireland shall
continue such as they have been ? I ask you, the people of England, be
you Conservatives, be you Liberals, be you Radicals, or what you like,
do you think it is honourable to you, as civilised people or as a Christian
people, that your relations towards Ireland shall continue in this state ?
It is the strong hand of civil authority and of armed force and not the love
or respect for the law or for the British connection that preserves the peace
of Ireland. This is the question you have to answer, and this is the ques-
tion for a reply to which you wilf be responsible. We have fairly raised it
and laid it before you. You might, in other times, have laid it in a great
degree upon the governing classes of the country ; you might have laid it
SPEECHES OP THE EIGHT HON. W. E. GLADSTONE. 17
on the Houses of Parliament, but you can do so no longer ; you are about
to create that House of Parliament, the judgment of which will be all-
powerful with respect to the settlement of this great question. The next few
weeks must determine whether for years to come the present state of things
is or is not to continue. What is the policy opposed to ours ? I should like
to know that. I should like to know if there is a man out of this room who
could answer that question ? We have a right to look for the answer in
the address of the Prime Minister. If we have had for months and
months past one topic more than another reiterated beyond all endurance
it is that my conduct and the conduct of others has been mischievous
beyond measure because of our rabid desire for office. We rushed at the
Irish Church without waiting for the report of the Commissioners. "Why
did you not wait for the report of the Commission," we have been asked
" for the report of the ten wise men who were to settle all these diffi-
culties ? " Well, gentlemen, I was content to say that in my opinion the
report of the Commission could not possibly have anything to do with the
matter. The report of the Commission was a report to consider how the
Irish Establishment should be managed supposing it were to continue an
Establishment, but as I wished that it should not continue an Estab-
lishment, I very naturally wished not to give the Commissioners the
trouble of making any report at all. It is perfectly obvious that as far as
the report of the Commission is concerned it could have no value. But
how does the matter stand on the other side ? That is a very different
affair. They did wait for it, and the report has been published. Yet
what is the result? The Prime Minister publishes his address, which
contains an outline of the policy on which the three kingdoms are to be
governed, and there is not a single reference in his address to that report.
He did not even acknowledge the portentous labours by which the Com-
missioners have contrived to produce a huge mass of figures in a great
blue book. As a matter of policy, that argument of waiting for the report
of the Commission, in order that the Government might be able to
form some idea of what was required on the question of the Irish
Church, is now utterly exploded. I have said, and I am bold and
free to repeat, that I am not a reformer of the Irish Church, but
an anti-reformer. There is no use in reforming the Irish Church. In
the Irish Church you have a body which, as regards the character
of its bishops, its clergy, and its laity, deserves and has my cordial
respect. I do not want to extinguish a single Irish bishop, but I
object to their living on other people, and I am perfectly convinced that as
an ecclesiastical body, as a holy Church, a religious communion, and as a
spiritual body, when you have once by your votes put them through the
process of disestablishment they will be happier, better, and more useful,
and live more nobly than they ever did before. As to the charge of being a
promoter of the interests of the Roman Catholic Church, I do not wish to
use an argument that may be odious ; but I repel and repudiate that charge,
and I repeat that those who make it are not prepared to substantiate it.
I distinctly deny that our proposal was made in the interests of the Roman
Catholic Church, for, while I admit that the Roman Catholics refuse to
take what we offer, it gives to the Roman Catholic people of Ireland civil
justice. What is the gift of civil justice ? It is made rather to promote
the interests of Christianity and to spread the dominion of the Protestant
18 SPEECHES OF THE RIGHT IIOX. W. E. GLADSTONE.
Church. If you say that it is not so you admit that the Koraan Church
is the only true Church ; and I must say that it does the Eoman Catholic
Church some credit when I consider their readiness and determination to
rely on their ancient and unbroken traditions, on the zeal and perseverance
of their subordinates. That is to say, their choice is not to have an Estab-
lishment. They say, " We can support our own Church," and they tell the
Protestant Establishment that it must come down from its vantage-ground
and meet the challenge of its rivals. That it is replied will be the ruin
and destruction of the Protestant Church. And this, gentlemen, is said
by the friends of Protestantism ! Well, I suppose that if there be any
friends of Protestantism that are worth its having they are those who are
inspired by some belief in its truth, and if there be any men that have any
belief in its truth, I think their desire will be that the Church of Rome,
and the Church of England, and the Church of the Presbyterians, and every
other Church under the circumstances in which Ireland is placed should
meet on a fair and level field, and free from the odious recollections and
the painful associations that must attend every system where the one party
has necessarily hanging about it the sense and the spirit of ascendency, and
where the other carries with it all the recollections of wounded feelings re-
sulting from oppression that lasted for long ages. Gentlemen, the question
is a great issue for you to consider and to decide. I think that we have
done our duty in the endeavour to lay it before you. Its gravity is not to
be disguised. It is said that we, forsooth, have made it a party question.
Well, gentlemen, at all events you know this, that when we charged our-
selves with the question of Eeform, and when we found that we must
abandon the question of Eeform or our offices, we determined to abandon
our offices. After that we are not to be driven back by these idle imputa-
tions. We have made our appeal fairly, openly, in the face of day to the
people of England to abolish the Church of Ireland as an Establishment,
with every consideration that equity can give in the arrangement of the
measures necessary for the execution of our designs, to abolish along with
it every other grant that involves the State in the responsibility of con-
nection with any particular religion, and to establish no other Church and
no other form of religious teaching in its place, after we shall have done all
that equity and indulgence can require in winding up this great scheme
of policy. That, I say, is the design that we have laid before the coun-
try, and which the country does understand. There is no other scheme,
gentlemen, before you ; there is nothing but a multitude of misty, foggy,
vaporous declarations, as far as they have meaning, all in conflict. One
says he is for holding high the Protestant religion in Ireland ; another
says, "Undoubtedly the question of the Church of Ireland is difficult
and requires much consideration;" another says, "Probably it will be
necessary to give away some part of its property." Gentlemen, don't follow
any one of these narrow, obscure, and devious paths, that will lead you into
the desert, into the mists, and into the fog. Let us go straightforward on
the road of civil justice and equal rights ; giving unto others that which
we desire they should give to us, doing unto them as we, in their place,
would be done by, and confident that in serving the right we are serving
the God of right and justice, and that wherever be the truth of faith and
religion, wherever be the superior claims of this or that ecclesiastical com-
munion, the supreme interests of truth will and must be served by the
adoption of such a policy.
SPEECH
DELIVERED IN THE
AMPHITHEATRE, LIVERPOOL.
OCTOBER 14iH, 1868.
ME. CHAIRMAN AND GENTLEMEN, I hope I do not presume too much
when I express my belief that my friend Mr. Grenfell has done much to-
night within these walls to establish his title to your favour. In one
respect, if in one only, I am happier than he, and that is that I am enabled
to look back to former occasions on which I have had the honour to
address yon, and to be cheered by your approval in the conduct of questions
of great public interest and moment. Mr. Grenfell has, indeed, given
me a friendly challenge to enter to-night on the subject of retrenchment ;
but as I hold that mercy is a part of justice, and as I remember that it
was my duty to inflict a long explanation on that matter only 48 hours
ago upon a portion of this constituency, I do feel that it is but fair that a
certain time of repose should be allowed to the minds of the men of Lan-
cashire. There is no want of topics upon which it is to be desired, and,
indeed, it is urgently necessary, that there should be a free interchange of
ideas between yourselves and those who are the candidates for your
suffrages. I cannot but go back, addressing you as I now do, towards the
close of the existence of this Parliament I cannot but go back to an
occasion, two years ago, when we were engaged in the struggle for the
Eeform Bill of 1866. My friend Mr. Grenfell has told you that he was
not one of the most sanguine adherents of that Reform Bill, but he
significantly added that he voted for it on every occasion. Now, I think
that we have not much to complain of, and certainly I, for one, don't com-
plain at all of those who might have thought that we were premature in
raising the question, or who might have thought that when we did raise it
we did not take the right path to success, provided they did that which
was done by my hon. friend, namely, that when he saw the public interest
B 2
20 SPEECHES OF THE RIGHT HOX. V. E. GLADSTONE.
was involved, and that the principles of Liberal Government must either
enjoy a triumph or suffer defeat, he lent the aid of his vote on every
occasion in order to insure that triumph and avert that defeat. In the
month of April, 1866 repeating a sentiment which had been uttered by
my noble friend, Earl Russell, who was at the head of the Government re-
peating the sentiment, although in other words, I told you using a phrase
which was much ridiculed at the time that we had broken our bridges
and had burnt our boats, and that, come what might, we held ourselves
bound in faith and honour to the people, and would not recede from the
ground which we had taken. Gentlemen, I hope you think that that
pledge was honourably fulfilled. I trust you may also be of opinion that
the men who gave those pledges when they give others, and make solemn
declarations upon other subjects, do it, not for the purpose of paltering
with your feelings and serving their own interest, but because they have
great public objects in view, because they require your aid to enable them
to compass those objects, and because, in order to obtain your aid, they
know it is necessary to possess your confidence. Now, upon the subject
of Reform it is necessary that we should travel a little backwards, for, un-
happily, that question, although it has reached a position which undoubtedly
involves a great popular triumph, is not, I am afraid, to be regarded
as one of which we have completely taken leave. ( In 1867 we were
introduced to a scries of extraordinary scenes. First of all we had
a general intimation and promise that something would be done ; then
a series of resolutions, which strutted a brief hour upon the stage as they
might do on this stage and then disappear ; then there was a Bill which
we have been told, on the authority of a Gabinet Minister, was framed in
ten minutes, and which was withdrawn in very little more than ten minutes ;
and, lastly, there was a Bill which undergoing the strangest transforma-
tions in its coarse through Parliament has now, I will not say, become
the law of the land, but has been altered into something like that which
has become the law of the land. / When that Bill was introduced I frankly
stated my opinion that it was the worst Bill that was ever laid upon the
table of the House of Commons ; and, moreover, I believed then, and I be-
lieve now, and I will give you the means of judging whether I am reasonable
in that sentiment, that it was a Bill the veiy presenting of which would have
deserved and justified a vote of censure from Parliament. For what did
that Bill contain ? Under the name of a measure of progress, it was a
measure of reaction; under the name of a measure for enlarging the
political influence of those great classes who were almost excluded from
the representation, it actually narrowed and lowered the influence of those
classes. I have no doubt that what I now say appears like a revival of
ancient and forgotten history, so rapidly were the features of that measure
one by one effaced, and so anxious were its authors that the recollection of
them should not be revived. But what was the aspect with which that
Bill was presented to us ? It contained a provision which would have
enfranchised by an enlargement of the suffrage under the name of house-
hold suffrage from 100,000 to 120,000 men of the classes inhabiting houses
below 10 in value. That was the enlargement which it contained. But,
along with that, it contained a provision under the name of the dual vote
which would have doubled in the middle and the wealthier classes of this
country some 300,000 ; so that .instead of receiving from that measure, if
SPEECHES OF THE RIGHT HOX. W. E. GLADSTONE. 21
it had passed as it stood, the benefit of an enlarged share of influence in
the representation, the labouring men of the country, including those men
of Lancashire who had proved alike their intelligence and their
heroism during the terrible period of the cotton famine, would
have found themselves condemned to a still narrower sphere in
the influence they could exercise upon the representation of the country
than the sphere afforded them by the confessedly defective provisions of
the Keform Act of 1832. ( Therefore, that measure, called a measure of
Reform, was really a measure of retrogression and reaction, and, although
called a measure for conferring popular privileges, it was really a measure
for diminishing the popular privileges already conferred^ And permit me
to say that if we are to estimate the judgment of the Government, if we
are to estimate the intentions and principles of the Government, we must
estimate them not by the final form of an Act of Parliament, which ex-
hibits all the influences that the various sections of Parliament may really
have brought to bear upon it during its discussion, we must estimate them
mainly from the form of the Bill when it was laid upon the table. The
simple facts I have given will enable you, the electors of this large county
constituency, and the electors of the borough of Liverpool, to judge how
far it is true and how far it is not that Her Majesty's present advisers did
address themselves to the question of Eeform with the honest intention of
enlarging the sphere of popular influence and of representation. But,
gentlemen, over and above what I have said, there were other provisions
in the Eeform Bill almost as blameworthy as the provisions relating to
the dual vote, and these were the provisions which make me now feel it
necessary to address you for some little time upon the subject, because
they involve matters that must, necessarily, come under the early atten-
tion of the Parliament about to be chosen. I mean now the provisions
relating to compound householders. There was a fashion adopted by
members of the Government of sneering at what was termed the compound
householder, as if the compound householder was other than a British
citizen fulfilling all his duties of citizenship ; nay ,more, in utter for-
getfulness that the compound householder generally was not a compound
householder by his own choice, but by arrangement between his landlord
and his own parish. And these compound householders were two-thirds
of the whole population below the 10 line. The Bill presented to Parlia-
ment excluded the whole of those compound householders, but it allowed to
them the power of what do you think ? (A voice : Paying their own
rates.) Paying the rates ! says my friend. And what does that mean to a
man who never heard of rates, whose landlords had paid the rates and been
reimbursed in the rent without the occupant's knowing anything about the
matter ? Why, you know, there were tens of thousands even in this town,
and hundreds of thousands of such throughout the country. Now, what was
the option, what was the privilege conceded to the artisan of England in
that condition ? It was this : he might go to the most learned in the law
among his friends and inquire of them what course he was to take in order
to find out the nature and amount of his liability as a rate-payer ; he
must then find out and I am sure I do not know exactly how he would do
it what rates had been paid recently in the parish to which he belonged,
of which he had no business, as the law stood, to know anything at all.
And then he was allowed the privilege of devising a form under which
22 SPEECHES OF THE RIGHT HON. W. E. GLADSTONE.
he might apply to the parish officer to pay up the full' difference
between the rate last levied on the parish and the composition
rates which his landlord had paid for him, and of which he knew
nothing whatever. Gentlemen, it was a pure mockery. It was
little short of an insult to the labouring men of England,
engaged from morning to night in the honourable exertions whereby
they support their wives and families, to tell them that if they wished to
enjoy the privileges of citizenship they were to set about the process of
this legal inquiry to ascertain facts and learn the forms in which to pre-
sent the documents, and then to pay a sum in hard money in order to be
educated to the franchise. "Well, on the night on which that pro-
posal was made I said that it was a Bill for imposing upon the
people of England that is upon two-thirds of the people of England
below 10 a pecuniary fine, as the condition for obtaining and
exercising the franchise, and to that statement 1 now deliberately adhere.
The Liberal party in the House of Commons were accordingly dis-
satisfied with the provisions of the Bill, and they authorised and in-
structed me, at a meeting which was held at my house for the purpose, to
state the formidable objections, as we considered them, to the Bill. I will
run over these objections. The first was that while the voter of 10 was",to
reside for one year to entitle him to the franchise, the voter under 10 was
to reside for two years to entitle him to the franchise, and the Minister
who explained that clause, Sir John Pakington, the present Minister of
"War, very frankly stated in the House of Commons that the main object
of creating that distinction and imposing the condition of two years indeed,
of one was to restrain the numbers that would be admitted to the fran-
chise. Well, gentlemen, that clause disappeared, and the two years, through
the action of the Liberal party upon a division, were reduced to one year.
The second point was the dual vote, in which I have already told you that
it was estimated by the best-informed persons that while it would have
been enjoyed exclusively by those wealthier portions of the community that
were already amply represented, to them would be given an influence of
not less than 300,000 additional votes. The statement of the Minister was
that it would very largely exceed 200,000, but I know I do not speak
without book when I place that amount at 300,000. Well, gentlemen, that
clause also disappeared. The next was a set of franchises given to
persons who had obtained degrees in Universities, given to persons who
paid a certain amount of assessed taxes, or who paid a certain amount of
income-tax, all invested with the same apparatus viz., that of depressing
popular influence in the constituencies. Those clauses were powerfully
opposed by my learned friend Sir Roundell Palmer, and the Government
was compelled to withdraw them. The next point, gentlemen the fourth
of those I have named was that the Bill did not contain what is known
by the name of a lodger franchise. Now, possibly in Liverpool certainly
in many towns of the country as a general rule, each head of a family
has his own house, and where that is the case the question of the lodger
franchise is of little importance ; but in large portions of London and
London, you will recollect, contains one-third of the entire town population
of the country in large portions of London, by far the greater part of the
artisans and labouring population are not householders but lodgers ;
therefore we entirely objected to passing by this well-qualified class of
citizens; and the Liberal party required, and at length obtained, the
SPEECHES OF THE EIGHT HON. W. E. GLADSTONE. ' 23
insertion of the clause which grants the lodger franchise. Well, gentlemen,
the fifth point I will mention is this there was an ingenious provision in
the Bill that any voter might give his vote by means of a form written
upon paper ; it was represented that this would be a matter of great
convenience, and one distinguished member of Parliament very friendly
indeed to the proposal, a man of whom I never can speak but to his
honour described the proposal in this sense: The declaration upon
paper was to be made, I think, before a magistrate, and he said it would
be exceedingly convenient if it would turn the magistrate's drawing-room
or sitting-room into the polling-booth. Well, gentlemen, we did not think
that a great recommendation. It appeared to us that we especially those of
u s who object to the ballot most undoubtedly wish rather to see the British citi-
zen give his vote with his fellow-citizens at the polling-booth than carry
it to the house of the magistrate, very possibly the magistrate being his
landlord, very possibly under the conduct of the landlord's agent on his
way to the drawing-room. We deemed the provision adverse to free
election and a popular franchise, and upon a division we were able to
expunge it from the Bill. The sixth point upon which we objected was
that the county occupation vote was not sufficiently extended ; it was
proposed to fix the line at 15 of rated value. We did not obtain with
respect to that point as much as we could have wished. However, we
obtained the reduction to 12 rated value, and, undoubtedly, I hope that
any voter who happens to be of 12 rated value in the county, and not to
be of 15, and happens to hear any Tory candidate dilating on the great
generosity of her Majesty's Government in granting you this Reform Bill,
will inquire into the history of the party operation by which the 12 got
a vote in the teeth of the views of her Majesty's Government. The
seventh point related to the scheme of the redistribution of seats, and
upon that I will only say that, as it was introduced, it was miserable,
narrow, and totally unsatisfactory. By force of adverse divisions and
considerable majorities, we did obtain some enlargement of that scheme.
I own we did not obtain all the enlargement that we should have wished ;
that was not our fault ; it was the fault of the resistance with which we
were met from the Treasury benches. My eighth point was this, that
the Bill, as it was introduced, did not grant any reduction whatever upon
the leasehold franchise in the county constituencies. We deemed that it
was (most desirable to increase that class of voters, and again upon a
division we were enabled to obtain the reduction of that franchise from
10 to 5, at which it now stands. These are eight of the ten points I
mentioned which I put down to-day ; the ninth I really don't at this
moment recollect ; but the tenth related to the personal payment of rates,
on which I shall say a few more words. But I am bound also to add, for
I think they are among the very valuable provisions of the Reform Bill, that
we were enabled to introduce into that measure not, indeed, all the clauses
that are desirable for the purpose of restraining the heavy cost of Parlia-
mentary elections, which cost, depend upon it, gentlemen, is neither more
nor less, when you look at it closely, than another fine upon the exercise
of popular privilege, another limitation placed upon the freedom of your
choice we did not succeed in introducing all that we sought to introduce
for the purpose of limiting that heavy charge. Some provisions applicable
io the whole country, and some, in particular, applicable to boroughs, we
24 SPEECHES OP THE IUGIIT HON. TT. E. GLADSTONE.
did introduce, which as far as they go are of a very salutary and useful
character, but which, unfortunately, did not receive the approval of her
Majesty's Government, and were carried by that last and painful resort,
the resort to the process of counting numbers on a division. There is an-
other point I must mention, although it relates in this county more to
towns than to tlio county, and it is also a point on which I frankly own
to you there was a considerable division in the Liberal party itself; bufc
the great majority of the Liberal party did resist, and resist with increasing
energy the more they considered the matter, that clause which is called
the clause for the representation of minorities, and which, as far as I am
able to comprehend its operation, appears to be considered a common
nuisance to the towns into which it has been introduced. You will have
seen that, out of the ten points I have mentioned, eight points were either
carried wholly or in great part. The same, I believe, was the case with the
ninth, and nothing now remains of the identity of the Bill originally brought
in except the personal payment of rates. That being so, it was still a
matter of vital consequence to her Majesty's Government to show that
they were the authors of the Keform Bill which had been passed during the
period when they undoubtedly held office as Ministers of the Crown,
and for this purpose an ingenious theory was constructed by the present
Prime Minister in the speech delivered by him at Edinburgh about twelve
months ago, which is, perhaps, most commonly known by the name of the
" Education Speech." The Prime Minister on that occasion making no
reference to any of the nine points, of great importance, every one of them,
that had been in the Bill, but which had all been turned topsy-turvy by
the Parliamentary activity of the Liberal party said the Bill was founded
upon five principles, and these five principles were introduced to supply the
place of the ten points. Now here, gentlemen, were the five principles.
The first was that the whole question of Keform was to be dealt with at
once ; but the whole question of Reform was not dealt with at once, for
the Reform of Parliament for Scotland and the Eeform of Parliament for
Ireland were entirely postponed to a subsequent Session of Parliament.
Perhaps it may be meant that the redistribution of seats was to be
dealt with in the same measure as the franchise ; but what became
of redistribution of seats for Ireland? Why, that the Government
cut it out of their own Irish Franchise Bill, and it now stands over to
be taken up next year, or five years or ten years hence, or whenever
anybody pleases. So much for the first principle that the whole
question was to be dealt with at once. The second principle was
that no borough was to have its representation extinguished. That was a
very broad and manful avowal I think a most erroneous opinion, but still
one with regard to which it was bold, clear, and intelligible. So far as I
am informed as to the matter of this process of education that had been
assiduously carried on, I believe that the promise that no borough should
be extinguished was one of the many promises and inducements held out
to the Conservative party to lead them to swallow, with as good grace as
they could, the Bill of Household Suffrage. But although, in 1867,
we failed in extinguishing any of these small boroughs which certainly
are a disgrace to our representation, for they do nothing to contribute
to the vigour of that representative system I am happy to say
that in 1868, on the introduction of the Scotch Reform Bill, we did service
SPEECHES OF THE EIGHT HOX. W. E. GLADSTONE. 25
in knocking upon the head some of those small and paltry delinquents,
those peccant members of the representative system, and, along with that
decision of the House, disappeared the second of the five principles. The
third principle was that a Boundary Commissionjwas to extend the boundaries
of the principal boroughs of the country. That Boundary Commission sat.
Its recommendations were subjected to the consideration of a committee of
the House of Commons, presided over by Mr. Walpole. The committee,
which was a small one, was composed of members sitting on both sides of
the House, and that committee reported unanimously in favour of again,
knocking on the head all the principal recommendations of the Boundary
Commissioners. Liverpool, Manchester, Marylebone, Lambeth, Birming-
ham, almost all the great towns of the country, were intended to be en-
larged to remove many of you from the county, and deprive you of the
county franchise. This was one of the five points which entered into the
education of the Conservative party, and which was intended to induce
them to acquiesce in the Reform Bill by showing how complete a hold
would be given them on the county representation. The third principle
went the way of the first and second, and disappeared from the system of
Eeform. The fourth principle was that the county representation should
be increased. Well, who introduced the county representation ? The
Liberal party. We were not satisfied with the increase in the county re-
presentation given by the Bill of the Government and enlarging the scheme
of the redistribution of seats ; we gave a larger amount of county repre-
sentation than the Government had proposed to give, and I myself stated in
the House of Commons the irresistible claims of the county of Lancashire
to a much larger amount of representation than was given by the Bill.
I was unable through the opposition of the Government to procure for you
that augmentation. The fourth principle has not been effaced from the
Bill, but it was our principle and not that of the Government. We gave
augmentation to the counties beyond what the Government proposed,
which would have been further augmented if our numbers had been
sufficient to secure it. I have given you nine out of ten points, and
four out of the five principles. I now come to the tenth point>
and to the fifth principle, and that is the principle which was
described in the debate as the personal payment of rates. Now, what do
you suppose is meant by the personal payment of rates ? I can tell you,
what it does not mean. It does not mean that the rates shall be paid by
the person. There is not the least necessity that the rates should be paid
by the person ; there is not the least necessity that any man should pay
the rates in order to become a voter ; any person who pleases may arrange
with his landlord to pay the rates, and it may happen that there may be
thousands of persons under the present law who do not know there is such
a thing as a rate, and who yet come upon the register. I am most anxious
to draw your attention to this because it will show what the Government
have clung to with such tenacity, and the real sting of the Eeform BilL
When the discussion was introduced at the beginning of 1867 the personal
payment of rates did not mean the payment of rates by the person. Not only
so, but a high moral tone was adopted by the Government and their advo-
cates. It was said that it was not necessary for the occupier to pay the rate
provided the rate was but paid, and we were decried as upholders of the
doctrine which tended to demoralise the community, and we were met
"26 [ SPEECHES OF THE EIGHT IIOX. TT. E. GLADSTONE.
on the other side by the most affecting declarations to show up to how
high a pitch of virtue the householders of the country would be educated,
by being called upon three or four times a year to such an exercise of self-
denial as would enable them to lay by the money ready to give to the rate-
collector when he came. I assure you that this is the whole staple of the
argument. We said, " "What business have you to require heroism as a
condition of the franchise ? You don't require the rich man to prove that
he is a self-denying man in order that he may vote ; why are you to ask
from the poor man, in the most inconvenient form, that which he now pays
in the most convenient form ? We admit it to be desirable that he should
put by, but although he may not be able to put by, he may be able to
exercise the franchise hereafter if he can discharge the claims of the land-
lord, and enable the landlord to meet the claims of the parish." However,
gentlemen, the advocates of the Government got upon the high horse of
virtue and morality, and in their anxiety to carry the highest principles of
action through all the lowest strata of the community, they insisted upon
that personal payment of rates ; but, as I have told you before, when the
Bill was passed it was found that the whole attempt to enforce the payment
of rates by each individual would be so ridiculous, as well as so oppressive,
that on the question being put in the House of Commons as to whether the
personal payment of rates meant that the man himself must pay them, the
answer was that it was not in the slightest degree necessary. And therefore
all this virtue, all this heroism, all this self-denial, and this noble moral basis
which was laid for the Reform Act of a chivalrous Government, have been
wholly swept away ; and what remains ? I have told you that the morality
has been swept away ; but there is something else that has not been swept
away, and that is our old friend the fine. Before the Reform Act of the
present Government, it was competent for the parish and the landlords to
agree together, and for the landlords or owners to agree with the occupiers
in conformity therewith, that the landlord should pay the rates and should
receive a reasonable discount in consideration of his advancing the money
and of his running the risk. The landlord may still pay the rate, but he
must pay the rate without the discount, and that is all that remains ; but
what does that mean ? It means a fine upon the occupier. Now, listen to
me for two minutes, for I do not use the language, at least purposely, of
exaggeration. The occupier is liable, we will say, to pay 10s. in the name
of rates. Convenience makes it desirable that the landlord should pay it for
him, and the law allows it. But if the landlord is to pay it, I tell you as
a simple elementary truth of political economy, he must have some com-
mission for paying it. He will not advance the money, he will not run the
risk of not recovering it without that commission. I want to know who
is to pay that commission ? The answer is inevitable, the occupier of
the house ; and, therefore, this is the basis on which we now stand, that,
besides the inconvenience which is suffered in many cases of having the
composition broken up, the occupier has to pay to the landlord in his rent-
book the full rate, if the landlord pays it for him, and along with the full
rate a commission to the landlord for advancing the money, and for incur-
ring the risk. That, I say, is a fine which is imposed on the occupier.
Now, gentlemen, you have heard it said that a majority of the Liberal
party opposed the Reform Bill. We opposed a great many of the pro-
visions of the Reform Bill, no doubt, and I have shown you with what
SPEECHES OP THE RIGHT HON. TT. E. GLADSTONE. 27
result. We opposed the Beform Bill in the endeavour to improve it, and
.at one time those endeavours to improve it very nearly endangered the life
of the Bill itself. When we proposed to disfranchise some more small
boroughs, what did the Minister say ? He said that if the House dis-
franchised any boroughs the Government must reconsider its position and
determine whether it would drop the Bill, and I took the liberty of saying
immediately that the Bill was no longer the property of the Government,
but of the House, and I distinctly signified that if they thought fit to
drop the Bill there would be others perfectly ready to take it up.
However, there was one point on which we did go to vital issue with
the Government ; we objected entirely to the whole of those complex pro-
visions about compound householders. We saw that as the Bill was framed,
while it would be quite possible for the independent artisan to procure his
own enfranchisement, it would also be perfectly possible for the electoral
agent to do ^it, not so much in boroughs where people are numbered by
tens of thousands, but in all the small boroughs ; in those places where
the election is turned by 10, 20, or, it may be, by 100 votes. We saw that
a new fountain of corruption would be opened by those provisions ; while
they left the franchise to the independent action of the man himself, they
left it perfectly open to the local legal gentlemen who conducted the
operations of the elections to enfranchise compound householders by
hundreds to secure the success of a particular candidate. We were
determined to get rid of that mischief, and we insisted that the 500,000
whose rates were paid by their landlords should not on that account be
deprived of the franchise. That was a motion on which we took issue with
the Government ; and, though I think that 289 voted for it, we were,
unfortunately, beaten by a majority of 22. We said it was infinitely better,
if they thought fit to do it, to restrict the franchise in an open manner,
and by a plain andlntelligible process, than restrict it in [an underhand
manner by pretending to give it and then multiplying unintelligible pro-
visions that would prevent the enjoyment of the boon. There were two
ways by which the matter could be dealt with. The first, and the better
way, was by providing that the franchise should be enjoyed alike, whether
the rate was paid by landlord or by tenant, without interfering with com-
position at all ; that was the better way, and the one we recommended.
The other, and the worst way, was by providing that the landlord should
not pay the rate, and that composition should be abolished. That method
was adopted by the Government, and it was far better in my opinion than
the original provisions of the Bill, which would have left the great mass of
the people unenfranchised, except those who were enfranchised by election
trick and chicanery. But at the same time the provisions entailed a
great amount of inconvenience and of cruel vexation on a large portion of
the ratepayers of the country, and I have troubled you with this long story
because I know it is a matter of deep practical importance to the
comfort of tens and perhaps hundreds of thousands of families in
humble circumstances, and I want to show what I have objected
to from the first the absurd provisions of a law which, under pretence
of virtue and morality, by-and-by thrown aside, inflicted -that incon-
venience. T have objected to those provisions from the first, and if I
should be a member of the Parliament about to be elected, among the
objects which I shall deem to be essential to the comfort and advantage of
28 [ SPEECHES OF THE EIGHT HON. V. E. GLADSTONE.
the country will be the relief of the newly-enfranchised classes from this most
needless and most vexatious interference with their social arrangements.
My lion, friend has referred briefly to the great and absorbing ques-
tion that more than any other presses on the minds of the people of
this country the question of the state of Ireland and to proposals which
we have made in regard to the Irish Church. My lion, friend has most
justly pointed out that the proposals with regard to the Irish Church are
not the only proposals which will be requisite in order to pay the full debt
of justice to [that country, and I will add of justice to this country, for
justice to this country requires just as much as justice to Ireland that we
should establish throughout the three kingdoms of her Majesty a real
equality of rights. But, gentlemen, what I wish you to take heed of at
this moment is the real and actual state of Ireland, for I own to you that
it seems to me that the most extraordinary blindness rests upon the minds
of our opponents with reference to that subject. They persist I won't
say and I don't think it can be wilful, but yet it is that kind of ignorance
and blindness which it is impossible to comprehend they persist in
refusing to take any true and adequate measure of the great evil by which
Ireland is afflicted. I mean the estrangement of the minds of the people
from the law, from public authority, from this country ay, and even, to
a great extent, from the very Throne, under the shadow of which we are so
happy to live. Now, gentlemen, is it true, or is it not true, that there is
here a real evil to deal with ? I ventured, in an appeal to the House of
Commons in the course of last Session, to entreat those whom I saw
opposite to me to join with us in an effort to efface from the memory
of Ireland, by reparation and by justice, all that she had suffered. Well,
but what was the answer made to me, and made by a gentleman
whom I believe ^to be an upright as well as an able defender of
the opinions he holds namely, Mr. Gathorne Hardy, the present
Home Secretary ? He made to me this answer, and I beg you to
consider the terms. I had said, " Apply, if you can, a medicine to
this disaffection which exists in Ireland ;" and he answered, " It is the
mind of Ireland that is diseased, a disease caused by long traditions
of hatred to the Saxon race that have been kept alive by misrepresen-
tation and by constant agitation. It is thus you have diseased the kindly
and generous mind of Ireland, which would otherwise have been in har-
mony and peace with us." Now that is the representation made, gentle-
men, by our political opponents that there is no real mischief and no
real grievance of a serious kind in Ireland, and that all the discontent that
exists is due to what is called agitation. Why, gentlemen, the first token
of gross error that immediately meets the mind when we examine such
reasons is this that such a speaker as Mr. Hardy, seems to suppose that
when a people is well and justly governed, it is in the power of an agita-
tor to make it discontented ; and you cannot go through the length and
breadth of the world into any country where tyranny prevails without
finding that this is the very language and the very excuse of the tyrant.
The tyrant always says, " If there is no real mischief, there is no real
grievance ; it is all due to agitation." Well, but what is the state of facts
in Ireland ? On that, after all, the difference as to the matter of fact is
possibly not so very great. The state of facts in Ireland is described by
this that on four successive occasions, through three successive years, we
SPEECHES OF THE RIGHT IIOX. W. E. GLADSTONE. 29
have been obliged to suspend in Ireland the law of liabeas corpus, which
provides for the personal liberty and security of every one of you. We
have been obliged to suspend that law to provide for the maintenance of the
peace of the country. (A voice, "More shame/') A gentleman says, "More
shame." I do not agree with him. It is our duty to maintain the peace
of the country ; it is our duty to suspend that law if its suspension be ne-
cessary for such a purpose ; but it is also our duty, in suspending that
law, to look gravely and carefully at the causes which have led to the sus-
pension of the law, and obviate, if we can, the recurrence of occasions so
painful and scandalous, which oblige us, on account of the alienation and
estrangement of the public mind, to take away from Ireland one of those
guarantees of liberty which every one of us values dearer even than life.
Lord Mayo, speaking on behalf of the present Government in the House
of Commons, told us that a very large portion of the population of Ireland
of the lower classes and, unfortunately, in Ireland what we call the
lower class is an overwhelming portion of the whole that a very
large portion of that population was either in positive sympathy with
Fenianism, and ready to seize the very first opportunity of armed resist-
ance to the law, or was at all events disposed to look on with favour
or with a cold neutrality, and not disposed to render that loyalty
and that warm and firm attachment which we desire to see pre-
vailing between the whole of the subjects of the country and the laws
under which they live. Gentlemen, what I want to call your attention to
is this that it is a most remarkable picture. Lord Mayo, having de-
scribed the manner in which the educated classes in Ireland are almost
entirely, though not altogether, opposed to the mad and wild attempts of
the Fenian conspiracy, went on to say that Fenianism had its root in
another land. Well, if there were time, I should like to tell you what the
Americans think of Fenianism, for it is most desirable we should hear
what they have to say on the subject ; but for the present what I wish to
point out to you is this, the real state of the Irish mind in America;
because, if not we who are assembled here, yet many of our countrymen,
delude themselves with the idea that Fenianism in Ireland is only the fancy
of the mere scum of the community of the drunkard, of the beggar, of the
thief, of what are called the dangerous or disreputable classes ; and they
think that in America Fenianism is nothing but the result of a military
excitement which necessarily has invaded that country, engaged as it has
been in the distracting struggles of a civil war. Now, I am going to read
to you some notices which are short, but they are of the deepest interest,
from a work on which I think that full reliance may be placed. It is the
work of Mr. Maguire, the Member of Parliament for Cork, and a most
intelligent man, a very able Member of Parliament, and, I believe, a per-
fectly faithful and honest witness, and a true and warm-hearted Irishman.
No man is more opposed to Fenianism than Mr. Maguire ; but he paid a
visit to America; he published the results, and I do not believe that either
his good faith or his accuracy has been impugned. He made it his
business to ascertain what were the elements of the strength of Fenianism.
in America. Because the question is this : Is it the result of merely acci-
dental cases ? is it confined to the outcasts of society ? or is it a deeply
rooted inveterate passion that has taken hold of the mind of the people of
that country as the violent recoil from the sufferings they have undergone,
30 SPEECHES OF THE EIGHT HON. W. E. GLADSTONE.
and which is likely to become a passion as permanent as it is vehement,
unless we can apply the remedy to the fountain-head of the disease ?
Now, we are fond of thinking that a sentiment of irritation in the
Northern States of America has had to do with Fenianism. Take this
anecdote told by Mr. Maguire. He meets with an Irish Southerner
who has been crippled in the war by the loss of one of his arms,
fighting for the Southern cause, but that man holds up the other
arm, and he says, "This is the only arm I have left, and so help me God,
I'd give it and every drop of my heart's blood if I could only strike one
blow for Ireland." Mr. Maguire goes again to a mine wrought almost
entirely by Irishmen, about 300 in number, in the State of Illinois.
Among those 300 men he says there were not six drunkards, but he said
he found among them the same feeling of passionate love for Ireland
the same feeling of passionate hatred to its Government, of course
meaning the British connexion. Mr. Maguire gives his opinion in these
words generally : " My belief is that among Fenians in almost every
State or Union there are many thousands of the very cream of the Irish
population ; indeed, in several places in which I have been I have learned,
on unquestionable authority, very frequently of those who regarded
Fenianism with positive dislike and its leaders with marked mistrust,
that the most regular, steady, and self-respecting of the Irish youth, or
the immediate descendants of Irish parents, contributed its chief strength."
Gentlemen, I know not what impression such statements make on your
minds. They make a deep impression on mine. I think we, perhaps,
were pretty well aware of the state of the case ; but I would to Heaven
that those who are opposed to us, and who think as the Minister of the
Crown thinks who has the seals of the Secretary of State for the Home
Department, that all the evils of Ireland are owing to agitation I wish
they were aware of this state of feeling. Why, gentlemen, Mr. Maguire
adds this he meets with an Irishman in America who had been evicted
from his holding in Ireland 25 years ago. Mr. Maguire says he cherished
a feeling of hatred and vengeance not so much against the individual by
whom the wrong was perpetrated as against the Government by whom it
was sanctioned, and under whose authority it was inflicted. You have
read probably within the last few weeks the painful and heartrending
accounts of those attempts at eviction on the estate of Mr. Scully in
Ireland, which ended in the death of one or two policemen. Possibly
you have read in the newspapers the condition of the leases which those
holders of the land were required to accept, or else to .leave their holdings
without a hope of livelihood of any kind. If you have read those con-
ditions, if you bear in mind that such laws can be proposed to the poor
occupiers of land in Ireland without offending the law, and if you then add
to this recollection that the strong arm of the Government is ever at com-
mand to defend the enforcement of whatever is legal, I think every one
of us can well conceive cannot indeed justify but can excuse, or, if we
cannot excuse, can at least understand how it is that this deep and sullen
feeling of estrangement passive estrangement, sometimes arising into
active and burning hatred has grown up in the minds of that unhappy
people. But now, gentlemen, I am going to present to you a contrast, for
many of those gentlemen who admit in their full breadth the unhappy
effects with regard to the state of the national mind of Ireland I mean of
SPEECHES OF THE RIGHT HOX. W. E. GLADSTONE. 31
a very large portion of that people many of those who admit, the facts
dispute the causes, and they tell you with a grave face and many of them,
I believe, are conscientiously convinced, strange as it may appear that all
this is owing, not to agitation, as a Minister of the Crown thinks, but to
some unhappy, incurable perverseness of mind in the Irishman that makes
him love to live in the atmosphere of turbulence and discontent, just as
much as an inhabitant of any other country loves to live in an atmosphere
of contentment and loyalty and peace. Certainly, gentlemen, that is a
creed of astounding strangeness. I was going to say it was a libel upon
Providence. Supposing it happened that there was a particular country
on the face of the earth where all mankind were born with only one arm
and one leg instead of two arms and two legs, we should think it a most
strange and incredible circumstance until we had ocular demonstration of
the fact. Rely upon it, it is not one whit less strange, not one whit less
incredible, that there should be a people a civilised people, a Christian
people, a people engaged like ourselves in the pursuits of industry, a people
living as we ourselves do in every domestic relation of life, and fulfilling
their duties well yet that this people should have an insatiable [and inex-
tinguishable passion for turbulence and discontent and a hatred of that
state of peace which is the only road to prosperity. I might, I think,
stand for the confutation of that belief upon its rank absurdity. When
such things are told us we have a right to refuse all credit to them. They
involve revolutions of the whole course of nature and the whole order of
the world, which, many as are the imperfections of the state in which we
live, nevertheless are not to be found. But we have the confutation of
facts. Lord Mayo even has shown you the state of the Irishman in
Ireland ; Mr. Maguire has shown you the state of the Irishman in the
United States. ISTow go with me across the Canadian border and look for
a few minutes to the state of the Irishman in Canada, and here, instead of
referring to lengthened and various documents, I will quote the words but
of a single witness. Possibly the name I am going to mention may be
known to you. It is the name of Mr. D'Arcy M'Gee, a gentleman who, I
believe, was well known in Ireland during so much of his life as he passed
there, as one of the most vehement of Irish patriots, and as one of those
who either exposed himself on that account to the penalties of the law,
or else was within an ace of so exposing himself. That was the character
of Mr. D'Arcy M'Gee. He went to Canada. Canada is under the
sway of the same beloved Queen. In what does Canada differ from the
United Kingdom ? Canada has a free Parliament, and so have we, bub
Canada has not got unjust laws regulating the tenure of the land on which
the people depend for subsistence, and Canada has not got installed and
enthroned in exclusive privileges the Church of a small minority. It was
said of old that men who crossed the sea changed their climate but not
their mind ; but mark the change which passed upon the mind of Mr.
D'Arcy M'Gee. Let me read you his testimony, for it is in words more
significant and more weighty than I can give you words that cannot be
carried home too forcibly to the minds and hearts of the people. Only a
few months ago Mr. D'Arcy M'Gee spoke as follows at a public festival
given to himself and his colleague at Montreal. Speaking of Fenianism,
and of the spirit with which he was prepared to resist it, he says " I wish
the enemies of her internal peace, I wish the enemies of the Dominion, to-
32 SPEECHES OP THE RIGHT HOX. TV. E. GLADSTONE.
consider for a moment that fact, and to ask themselves whether a state of
society which enables us all to meet as we do in this manner, with the full-
est feeling of equal rights and the strongest sense of equal duties to our
common country, is not a state of society, a condition of things, a system
of laws, and a frame of self-government worthy even of the sacrifice of
men's lives to perpetuate and preserve." Such is the metamorphosis
effected on the mind of a disaffected Irishman by passing from a country
of unjust laws to a country of just laws ; but has he changed his mind
"with respect to Ireland ? He thinks and speaks of Ireland as he thought
and spoke of it before. He says, " Speaking from this place, the capital
of British America, in this presence, before so many of the honoured men.
of British America, let me venture again to say in the name of British
America to the statesmen of Great Britain, ' Settle for our sakes and your
own, for the sake of international peace, settle promptly and generously
the social and ecclesiastical condition of Ireland on terms to satisfy the
majority of the people to be governed. Every one sees and feels that
while England lifts her white cliffs above the waves she never can suffer
a rival Government, a hostile Government, to be set up on the other side
of her. Whatever the aspirations of Irish autonomy, the union is an
inexorable political necessity, as inexorable for England as for Ireland.
But there is one miraculous agency which has yet to be fully and fairly
carried out in Ireland. Brute force has failed. Proselytism has failed. Try,
if only as a novelty, try patiently and thoroughly, statesmen of the Empire,
the miraculous agency of equal and exact justice for one or two generations.' "
'Gentlemen, I wish to impress on the minds of the people of England this
advice of Mr. D'Arcy M'Gee. Since these words were uttered the man
from whose mouth they proceeded has been removed from this lower world,
arid his death due, as some think, to Fenian licentiousness has added
a melancholy dignity and an augmentation of weight and force to the
impressive sentiments which he had uttered. It is in pursuance of
these opinions that we have proposed to Parliament the policy on which
you have to pass your judgment. The first fruits of that policy are
before you. I will describe to you in few words what it is that has been
said and done what it is that you are called upon to ratify or to reverse.
The House of Commons in 1868, and the House of Commons which
still subsists, is certainly not a revolutionary assembly ; but that assembly
has declared by its vote that it is expedient that the Established Church in
Ireland should cease to exist as an Establishment ; that all appointments
to offices in that Church, of whatever character and that means all
political or State appointments should be stopped upon the first vacancy
in each case ; that all life interests and proprietary rights should be care-
fully respected ; and we should likewise put a stop, with similar reserves, to
the Regium Donum paid to the Presbyterians, and to the Maynooth Grant.
So much has been voted by the House of Commons, and as it was my fortune
to make the proposal on which that was founded, some interest has been
felt about the declarations of opinion with which, on my part, that pro-
posal was accompanied. I have st< *ed the effect of the vote apart from
those declarations of opinion, bec<: se you are well aware of the very
different order of weight and impoi .ance that must attach to one and to
the other. What the House of Commons thinks, is already far on the way
-to become the law of this great empire, but what an individual may think.
SPEECHES OP THE RIGHT HON. W. E. GLADSTONE. 33
though ifc is certainly matter most legitimate for the scrutiny of his con-
stituents, is in comparison with the former light as air. However, I do
not scruple to say that I am deeply convinced in the first place, of the
necessity of our putting an absolute stop to the system of a State
Establishment of religion in Ireland. But, on the other hand,
in doing that, over and above the declaration that the life interests
are to be respected, and that proprietary rights are not to be
invaded, I say it is a dictate alike of wisdom and of generosity
that, keeping our end steadily in view, and never failing to
march before it, we shall adopt the utmost possible measure of mildness
in the means. Everything that equity and that reasonable indulgence
could suggest without being inconsistent with the end in view, and that
does not impair the efficacy of the measure, should, in my opinion, be
favourably entertained. That I may show what I mean I will just refer
to two points on which I know great interest has been felt. I can give
no guarantee as to what will be the ultimate judgment of Parliament, but
I may express my opinion on these points. In the first place there are
in the Established Church of Ireland a certain number of endowments
which have been given by private persons, which have become in the law
public and national property, but which, nevertheless, were given by
members of the Church of Ireland for the purposes of the Church of
Ireland just as a Wesleyan Methodist might, if he thought fit, give his
money for the purposes of Wesleyan Methodism. My opinion is (that
those endowments, though technically they may have become portions,
you. may say, of the public and national property, ought to be carefully
respected. In the same way a question arises with respect to the churches
that are now possessed and used by the ministers and members of the
Irish Establishment, and the parsonages which the clergy inhabit. My
opinion, gentlemen, is that the feeling of this country, apart from logic,
never would endure that if those clergy and laity are disposed to continue
the use of those parsonages and churches for public worship never
would endure that they should be taken away from them. I give these
as samples. I must add one important illustration more, and that is,
whatever principles of equity or tenderness you may think it wise to
employ in winding-up, if I may so speak, the affairs of the Established
Church of Ireland, you must apply those same principles of equity and
tenderness to the other religious endowments of the country, in
so far as from their scope and circumstance they come within
range of the principle. I have heard of some who think that vested rights
.are very sacred things if they are found within the limits of the Establish-
ment, but not so very sacred if they are found within the limits of the
Roman Catholic College of Maynooth. If there are persons here who hold
that opinion, I must respectfully differ from them one and the same rule
of equity and liberality must be applied to the whole. Forgive me if the
word " must " has escaped from my mouth, I meant " ought " to be, in my
opinion, applied to the whole. But you will naturally say there is more
than this. After we have satisfied every fair and equitable claim, there
will be a residue of the ecclesiastical property of Ireland a residue
possibly reaching to a very considerable amount. What are we to do with
that ? I will state it to you, gentlemen, in another form. In my opinion,
.that question cannot be conclusively answered by any but those who shall
c
34 SPEECHES OF THE RIGHT HON. "W. E. GLADSTONE.
be responsible Ministers of the Crown, and shall have an opportunity of
examining all the facts that bear upon the answer. But, while I say that,
I likewise add that the funds which shall have been taken from the Church
now established in Ireland I mean the residue of funds after satisfying
every just claim upon them ought not to be applied to the teaching of
religion in any other form whatever. It will be our duty, should you
return us to Parliament and when I say " us " you will forgive me for
saying that I have in my mind and in my eye several others gathered upon
this platform besides Mr. Grenfell those who are soliciting the suffrages
of this great borough ; the gallant officer who has been to contest Birken-
head ; my friend Mr. Thompson, who is fighting, one side of this county,
towards the rising sun, that same battle which we are fighting, who look
the setting sun in the face ; and last, but not least, two other gentlemen,
one of them a respected inhabitant of this town, who are performing the
same patriotic work in a great midland borough. I earnestly hope,
gentlemen, that the goodly company that I have endeavoured to describe^
and that is now gathered together in perfect harmony upon this platform,
will not be dissociated one from the other by any accident on the hustings
or the polling booth, but that we shall be found sitting upon the same
benches, or upon benches very close together, for the purpose of setting
forward that great work, one portion of which I have endeavoured to bring
under your view. (A "Voice. : " And your son.") I am much obliged to
my friend in that quarter (pointing to the gallery), for reminding me that
I have a very near and close paternal, as well as public interest in another
election, likewise towards the rising sun on the other side of this county,
and I am very glad to think that there is any one within these walls to whom
the return of my son to Parliament is a matter of interest. Gentlemen,.
there are a number of points connected with this question which I trust
you will not think I have forgotten merely because I may have failed to-
notice them on the present occasion. What I am desirous most of all to
do is to bring into the public view the broad facts connected with the state
of Ireland. The first business of public men, and the first business of the
electors of a free country, is to bind together the whole of the country in
harmony and concord. That business has not been effected so far as
Ireland is concerned. We call upon you, gentlemen, to give us the means
and to put us in the place where we may use our utmost endeavours to
effect it. It is not enough to revile us as enemies of the Constitution in
Church and State and foes of Protestantism in disguise these are matters
on which we are perfectly willing to enter into argument. We think we are
the best friends of the Constitution; we think that those are the best
friends of Protestantism who wish that it should be justice and no more.
And as to the Constitution, when we are told that we are going to rain it,
let us bear in mind how many times it has been ruined and destroyed
before. It was destroyed I will only take what has happened within my
own recollection it was destroyed in 1828 by the repeal of the Corporation
Tests Acts. It was destroyed again in 1829 by the admission of the Eoman
Catholics to Parliament. It was destroyed a third time by the Keform Act
of 1832. It was destroyed the fourth time by the repeal of the Corn Laws
in 1846. It was destroyed a fifth time by the Kepeal of the Navigation
Laws in 1849. It was destroyed, gentlemen, if my memory does not fail
me but it is really difficult to remember, so many lives has this Constitu-
SPEECHES OF THE RIGHT HON. W. E. GLADSTONE. 35
tion had, and so sad has been its fate it was destroyed a seventh time
when the Jews were admitted within the walls of Parliament ; and it was
destroyed an eighth time when the Government of Lord Russell had the
incredible audacity to propose a Eeform Bill to Parliament, with the inten-
tion of carrying it or of dying in the attempt. And, therefore, gentlemen,
this being so, it appears that our Constitution resembles that animal which
is said to have nine lives ; but with this fortunate distinction, whereas the
cat each time that it loses one of its lives gets a step nearer to dissolution,
our Constitution, on the other hand, each time that it is destroyed, comes
forth more vigorous than ever from the process, and promises to us all,
with more and more of hope and joy, the expectation of handing it down
as a blessing to our children. Gentlemen, we ask you for your help in the
efforts that we are to make. We ask you in the name of the Constitution
not less than in the sacred name of justice. We ask you to listen to the
voice alike of policy, and of prudence, and of generosity, and of equity.
Listen to that voice the voice now of the dead, which has come to us
from across the Atlantic, and give us your strong help to drive our feeble
arms, and enable us to go fearlessly forward in the career of truth and
iustice.
c2
SPEECH
DELIVERED IX THE
TOWN HALL, NEWTON.
OCTOBER 17m, 1868.
ME. CHAIRMAN AND GENTLEMEN, I am afraid that your zeal for the cause
in which you are engaged has led you to attend this meeting in such
numbers that you cannot but be suffering some personal inconvenience,
and as that may be so, I think that the best mark of respect I can pay
you will be to make no preface at all on this occasion, but to go to work
at once upon topics that may interest you. Now, gentlemen, we have
heard a great deal during the present election, I am thankful to say, on
the subject of public expenditure, and I trust we shall hear a great deal
more. For you may rely upon it that the agitation of a question of that
nature during an election is attended with most profitable effects. Somehow
or other, I cannot tell how it is, but the questions discussed at that period
seem to sink in the minds of the candidates, as if there was a kind of
dew resting upon them, which made them accessible to genial influences:
You may rely upon it that so far as I am concerned that subject will not
be neglected ; but I have seen lately a statement made by one of those in
the field on the other side to this effect a very ingenious statement that
I have invented this subject of the public expenditure, and dragged it into
the field, in order to shirk .the discussion on the Irish Church. Well,
gentlemen, I intend, therefore, to-day, to trouble you in order to disabuse
the minds of those who entertain any such idea. I intend to speak upon
one or two practical points, which I think to be of great importance with
respect to the Irish Church. And, gentlemen, it is needful to do so, for I
hold in my hand a pamphlet which is now being circulated in the south of
England I think sent to me by an elector of the county of Surrey,
who complains bitterly of the misstatements made by the opponents of
the Irish Church. He says "To speak of these attacks as merely
exaggerated statements would be to characterise them much too faintly.
SPEECHES OF THE EIGHT HON. W. E. GLADSTONE. 37
They carry with them, in general, so little of the semblance of truth
or candour as to make it hardly possible to acquit their fabricators
of intentional deception." This, therefore, gentlemen, is the
author who desires to lift from your minds the clouds of mis-
understanding that have enveloped them. Bub how does he
set about it? In the next page bub one he says "The property
of the Church of Ireland consists of glebe land and tithe-
rent charge." And this worthy gentleman, who appears as an
oracle upon this question, a gentleman of such tender conscience and
abundant information, in quoting the intentional deception of those who
have made statements hostile to the Irish Church, coolly asserts that the
property of the Irish Church consists of glebe laud and tithe-rent charge ;
but if you have read the report of the Eoyal Commission on the Irish
Church, you will have seen that the Church of Ireland, besides glebe land,
charitable and glebe land, parsonages and incumbencies, possesses bishop
land and chapter land to an enormous extent, believed to be of far greater
value than the annual income they yield, and they are stated to yield an
income annually of between 140,000 and 150,000. Now, gentlemen,
when I mention that, I dare say unintentional, misstatement, I only do so
to induce you to be upon your guard, particularly against those gentlemen
who affect to be in possession of invaluable information, and against those
who are particularly abusive of men from whom they differ. That you
will find to be a good rule. And now, gentlemen, I think it is quite time
to have a little public discussion upon the subject of this Irish Church
Commission, which was set to inquire into the revenues of the Irish
Church; because you may bear in mind that much blame has been,
bestowed upon the members of the Liberal party, and upon myself nob the
least among them, because we were determined to raise the question of the
Irish Church during the last Session of Parliament, and because we were
deaf to the appeals that were made to us to wait until after the report of
the Commission had been issued. Now, the report of the Commission has
appeared, and what is our position with respect to the policy which is to
be pursued upon the question of the Irish Church ? That is an important
subject, upon which it is quite plain the principal issues will be taken in
the elections that are now impending. Consequently, I make no apology
in endeavouring to lay before you what I consider to be the real merits,
what I consider to be the particular points connected with that subject.
Now, gentlemen, consider the various methods of proceeding that have
been recommended with respect to the Irish Church. There is the method
of standing still. Well, it is not necessary to say much about that method.
It would be a waste of your time to show you the doctrine of standing
still ; it is an insult to your common sense ; so gross an insult to your
common sense that it is not even recommended by the opposite party in
this country, because they go from place to place saying, " We are entirely
opposed to Mr. Gladstone and his schemes, though we are for the removal
of abuses." Therefore, I will put aside the plan of standing still. The
next plan is the plan we recommend the plan of disestablishment, putting
an end entirely to the State Church in Ireland. We will not discuss that,
because the merits of it we may discuss at other times. The third plan
was the plan of multiplying Church endowments in Ireland. That was a
plan which has had great countenance in former times ; and it has had
38 SPEECHES OF THE RIGHT HON. V. E. GLADSTONE.
great countenance as late as the month of last March, because in the month
of last March was produced the plan of Her Majesty's Government. But,
somehow or other, though Her Majesty's Government had never said they
would not refer to that plan, yet unquestionably they had, for the moment
at all events, turned their back upon it, and as they have turned their
back upon it, and as for many reasons I don't approve it, I will not trouble
you at present with a discussion on that plan. Now, having disposed of
three, we come to the fourth plan to the plan that is recommended to you
by those among the Conservative candidates who have ventured to open
their mouths at all upon the subject. But these are gentlemen, it is right
that I should say, who, though they cannot endure the removal of the
Irish Church Establishment, notwithstanding that, are men who, they beg
you to believe, are very favourable to the removal of abuses, though, as far
as I know, they have given very little information on the subject. But I
have seen one or two of them who say that they wish that some of the
recommendations of this Commission should be acted upon for the removal
of abuses in the Church of Ireland. Now, I have heard of no plan for the
removal of abuses, except the plan of the Church Commission. I feel,
gentlemen, that this is one of our difficulties. We are in Opposition, we
are not the Government of the country, and yet we are in this strange and
extraordinary position, that while we are proposing a policy to direct the
Government of the country, the Government of the country the Queen's
Ministers propose no policy in answer to ours. But, although they have
not ventured to propose any policy, although they will be waiters upon
Providence, looking for the moment which way the cat is to jump, and
perfectly ready to come to any conclusion, establishment, disestablishment,
or anything else you like, so soon as it is clear that the adventure would
be likely to be a good one, for the present we must consider that to be the
plan actually before us. Let us see what is the plan of the Commission.
There are, gentlemen, a matter of 12 bishops in the Irish Church, and the
first important recommendation of the Commission is that we should bury
four of them. Not to bury the actual men themselves, but to bury what
they call " corporations." For you must know that every bishop of a see,
and every incumbent of a parish, is in law a " corporation sole," and four
or six " corporations sole " they propose to bury. Well, gentlemen, this
proposition of the Commission, I stop to say, is by no means the most
liberal bid that has been made. These are all, you will understand, gentle-
men, bids to save the residue of the property of the Irish Church. The Irish
Church, considered as a spiritual body, is certainly no richer by burying
four?of its bishops, but the residue of the Irish Establishment is. Well,
but we have had a much better bid than that in the report of the Com-
mission. A gentleman, who does not date his letter, writes a long letter
to me. He is a strong opponent of our plan, and objects extremely to the
disestablishment of the Irish Church, though he is ready to remedy
abuses. He thinks that the number of bishops ought to be reduced ; and
if anybody may seduce you from the path upon which you have entered,
from your stern and firm resolution, it is the writer of the letter I hold in
my hand it is by the liberal offer he has made to you. He proposes,
gentlemen, to reduce the whole Irish Church to one bishop. And not
only so, he says by no means shall that one bishop sit in the House of
Lords. Well, gentlemen, I admit that is a most handsome bid. It is
SPEECHES OF THE RIGHT HON. W. E. GLADSTONE. 39
Impossible to conceive, if we are to have an Episcopal Church, anything
-more liberal by way of reform than the offer to reduce that Church to
one bishop. We cannot go lower ; but even that handsome bid will not
satisfy me. I am not satisfied with it as a politician, because I object to
the Establishment of the Church in Ireland, even though they were to
go beyond my friend who writes the letter to me, and were not only to
reduce the bishops to one, but were to propose also to reduce the number
of clergymen to one, because there would still be the Establishment, and I
object to it on the principle of religious communion. But I must say
this, that from what I know of the Irish bishops and clergy, I believe
they will repel and reject this recommendation of the Irish Church Com-
mission. They don't want to be cub and carved in this way. I believe
many of them are rapidly coming to the conclusion, in the position in
which they stand, that the best thing for them is freedom, a clear stage,
arid no favour. Strong in their conscientious convictions, they are ready,
^at all events a great deal more ready than they were, and are growing
riper every day, to accept the inevitable issue, trusting to the Almighty
and their cause to meet all the chances of the future. Well, then,
gentlemen, besides these bishops being disposed of and put away m
this indecorous manner (to which I entirely object) besides this, it is
proposed to reduce the income of the bishops. Now, the income of the
bishops in Ireland is various some of them have more, and some of them
; have less and it is proposed to place them all at 3,000 a-year. But
there is a most singular proposal in the report of the Commission, and it
is this : the Irish bishops, you may be aware, sit in Parliament by turns, by
rotation ; and the proposal of the Commissioners is that any bishop who
sits in Parliament shall for the year when he sits in Parliament have 500
extra to pay his expenses. Ay, but wait a moment, don't be in a hurry
pray recollect what this is. It is our old friend the " payment of mem-
foers," one of the five points of the Charter. I certainly did not expect to
find that this plan of paying gentlemen to sit in Parliament, which has
always been objected to vehemently as far as I know by the whole Con-
servative party, and by a very large portion of the Liberal party in this
countiy, and which is not approved at all that it was first of all to come
out under a Commission appointed by the Crown, and having for its pur-
pose to save the Irish Established Church. That recommendation, gentle-
men, does not very much help the report of the Commission. Let me say,
; however, I do not blame the Commissioners. I really believe they have
done the best they could. When a man undertakes an impossible task, you
must not look too strictly to the performance of it, or judge him, too
severely. If a man says " I will jump over the Thames" (or rather I
should say the Mersey), and happens unfortunately to alight in the middle,
the result is unfortunate, although the man may 'be a very good jumper.
These Commissioners I believe to be perfectly upright, honourable, intelli-
gent men, and I have not a word of blame to cast upon them for the manner
in which they performed their functions. My object is to show you the
hopelessness of the functions themselves, and to confirm you in the adoption
of that other plain, simple, and practical alternative which we have recom-
mended to your notice. Well, the incomes of the bishops are to be
reduced; four sees are to be suppressed altogether, and a number of
^benefices are to be suppressed; where there are not more than 40
40 T SPEECHES OF THE RIGHT HON. W. E. GLADSTONE.
members of the Established Church the benefice is to be suppressed.
Now, I wonder, gentlemen, whether any of you could inform me why there
is to be a State income for a clergyman where there are 40 persons in the
parish, and why there should not be a State income where there are less
than 40 ? What do you think now has induced the Commissioners I have
not heard an intelligible explanation of it to fix upon that number ? I
own to you, I am entirely at a loss. Now, 40 won't make a congregation,
for it is only one in three that can attend church at a time, and 13, which
is one-third of 40, is hardly a congregation. I don't know if there is a
man in this room who has an idea why the number 40 was chosen. I for
my part cannot explain it. I cannot offer a reasonable solution. It did
occur to me that perhaps it was because there are 39 articles and one over,
This is not conclusive, but it is the nearest approach to a solution that as
yet I have been able to get. (A gentleman on the platform, " It is the
Jewish order 40 stripes less one.") That is a mode of representing the-
ministrations that I should be very sorry to follow, and for the present I
know of no satisfactory means for the choice of that number. It appears
to me, if it were a matter of private arrangement of gentlemen form-
ing themselves into congregations, and finding the means for their
support, nobody has any right at all to criticise the number that they
choose, whether it be two or three, or two and three hundred ; but
this is to be a State arrangement, and the national property is to be
applied wherever there are forty members, and for that reason I think we
are perfectly entitled to ask why that number is chosen, and I don't know
what the answer is to be. However, I think the report says that 20Q
parishes would be suppressed, and the ecclesiastical benefices would be
deprived of their ministry by that proceeding. Now, gentlemen, observe-
the effect of that operation/ When you argue the question of the Irish.
Church, you are constantly told that, though it may be quite true that
there are not, in all cases, congregations for the clergy of the National
Establishment, yet that, in the peculiar condition of Ireland, it is of the
highest civil consequence to her to have spread throughout the country
gentlemen who are gentlemen, who are persons of refinement by education,.
who are bound to good conduct by their profession, who are charitable
almost of necessity, and who are constantly resident in the country.
Well, now if that be a great necessity, you will observe that these
Commissioners, who are to remove the abuses of the Irish Church,
propose entirely to deprive 200 out of the 1,400 or 1,500 benefices in>
Ireland of the advantage of this resident clergy. Well, gentlemen, there
is another recommendation or two. It is recommended that a number
of chapters shall be suppressed, and it is recommended that, wherever
it is possible, the parish clerk shall be consolidated into the grave-
digger. I am of opinion, gentlemen, that we have got beyond that. It is
a great deal too late to save the Established Church in Ireland by con-
solidating parish clerks and grave-diggers. But, as they say in Scotland,
"mony a mickle maks a muckle," and all these things put together make
a considerable sum of money, from the four bishops downwards; and
you will be perfectly astonished when I tell you that the Commissioners
have not told us how much it makes. Now, I have often been surprised
at things I have found in documents, but I never was so much surprised
before at a thing that I did not find in a document. Why, if this Com-
SPEECHES OF THE EIGHT HON. W. E. GLADSTONE. 41
fl "
mission was appointed for anything in the way of removal of abuses,
what they ought especially to have done was to have shown how much
could be gathered together by the removal of those abuses, and under
what rules and to what useful purposes it could be applied. Gentlemen,
it is a very hard case. I can get no assistance from the Commission ; but
after looking roughly over the thing, and really having very few means of
accurate computation, it seems to me, as well as I can reckon, that by the
bishops they would save something between 22,000 and 25,000 a year ;,
that by the parishes they might save from 40,000 to 50,000 a year ; that
by the chapters they would save 10,000 a year ; and I cannot tell exactly,
but I think they might save 3,000 or 4,000 a year by the grave-diggers.
Now, putting all these things together, this removal of abuses would pro-
duce a fund of 80,000 a year. That is a very considerable fund ; what
is to be done with it ? Well, gentlemen, the Inquiry Commissioners have
simply said that the body which exists in Ireland a permanent body, and
which is called the Ecclesiastical Commissioners ought to have large dis-
cretion to apply it to the increase of the incomes of the clergy in places
where there are low incomes with considerable congregations. Now, it is
a most extraordinary thing to me, and I am certain that there is a
cause for it, why these Commissioners have not computed the savings
they were going to make, and why they have not described the manner
of applying them. Because, pray observe that under this application
you might give it away in sums of 10,000 a year, or 20,060 a
year, for they have said nothing as to the amount of augmenta-
tions to be made. A more extraordinary omission than this I never knew.
But they are men of sense and intelligence, and have not omitted these
things without a reason. They were afraid to put them on paper. They
were afraid, in my judgment, to say, "We are going to scatter 80,000 a
year more among these incumbents of the Irish Church." They knew
very well that the Irish Church, of all churches upon the earth, has at this
moment the most pay and the least work. Gentlemen, I don't say that in
disparagement of the Irish clergy, whom I believe to be an excellent and
self-denying set of men, but we must here consider them as public officers.
It is not their fault if they have been put in offices with little or nothing
to do, but the fault of those who continue them in those offices ; and,
gentlemen, it is the fault of the Parliament and the fault of the Ministry
if that system is allowed to subsist ; and, therefore, permit me to say, last
of all, it will be your fault, as the electors of the country, if you are so
hoodwinked and deluded as to send as your representatives to Parliament
men from whom these things are to receive countenance. Well now,
gentlemen, just to illustrate what I have said. I have made a rough
computation of the remuneration of the clergy of the Church of England,
and certainly in many cases I admit it is miserably small; but still
upon the whole, taking one office and another, it is at any rate a remu-
neration which procures for the people of this country the services of an
able, an instructed, a diligent, and a devoted class of men. There is no
doubt about that ; you may agree with or differ from them, but that
praise it is admitted on all hands they deserve. In England we have
it is a very rough computation some 20,000 clergymen, and I assume
that there are twelve millions of souls in England belonging to the
Church of England ; that also is a rough computation ; and my owa
42 SPEECHES OF THE RIGHT HON. W. E. uLADSTONE.
opinion is there are more, but to be within the line I take it at twelve
millions. The revenues of the Church of England may in round num-
bers be stated at 4,000,000, and it follows that if upon the average-
there is one clergyman for every 600 souls, that clergyman upon the
average has 200 of revenue. 1 hope you don't think that too much.
Gentlemen, I must give you this opinion, which is an opinion I candidly
entertain. Of course, there are in this country, mixed up as the revenues
of the Church are with every kind of social and domestic and political
arrangements, a great number of cases of over- paid clergymen, I have
no doubt of the existence of individual cases, but this I must say, that
when I look at the greater part of the parochial clergy of this country,
and at the many thousands of curates who are labouring in the parishes
of the land, from one end to the other, when I consider the education
these men have received and the cost of that education, and the
manner in which they give themselves to the work of consoling,
instructing, and guiding both young and old I honestly tell you
that I think the labour of what is called the working clergy compared
with other labour in this country is about the cheapest labour that any
man gives. But, however that may be, I am going to make a com-
parison. I have said that in England one clergyman with the care of 600
souls gets 200 a year. On the other hand, in Ireland there are 2,000
clergymen, or thereabouts, of the Irish Church, but I don't think it is
clearly stated in the report of the Royal Commission. There are under
700,000 souls who are members of that Church, and the revenues I take
at 600,000, which is a little below the sum put down by the Commission,
and I am bound to say very considerably below the sum at which, for the
purposes of this comparison, they ought to have been put, because, in
comparison with its resources, 700,000 would have been a more accurate
statement of the revenues of that Church. Therefore, it follows that the
clergyman in England has 200 a year for looking after 600 persons, while
the clergyman in Ireland has 300 a year and looks after 350 persons. (" Oh"
and " Shame.") At this rate, and on this basis, the clergyman in England,
instead of 200, would have about 515, which might do more, perhaps, to
warrant or, at least, to call for the utterance which we heard just now, than
the very moderate standard to which I before referred. Well, gentlemen,
if that is the case if the remuneration of the Irish clergy relatively to
work, mind, because that is the true standard for remuneration if the
remuneration of the Irish clergy is, as I believe it to be, relatively to
work, somewhere about three times that of the English clergy then, I
think, we can get a pretty good idea why it was that the Commissioners
did not tell us they were going to save by their plans 80,000 a year
that the 80,000 a year was to be distributed among those gentlemen
whose rate of pay according to work is already so favourable, compared
with the rate of pay of the clergy of the Church of England. Well, but
now, gentlemen, J want to tell you, they talk about this removal of abuses ;
but I ask you to put yourselves in the place of the peasantry of an Irish
county, mainly destitute of great towns, in the west and the south of
Ireland, and peopled mainly as the great bulk of the counties are by
Roman Catholics. The Roman Catholic, not unnaturally, recollects
that in other times the tithe of those parishes was applied directly
for the purposes of his religion. He does not desire that that should
SPEECHES OF THE RIGHT HON. W. E. GLADSTONE. 43
now be done, and I think he is wise in not so desiring. He does
not desire it, and you don't desire it, although the Government of the
country did desire, if not the tithe to be devoted to . the Koman
Catholics, yet that for Presbyterians, Koman Catholics, and for others in-
comes from the public purse should be provided. But go back with me
to the condition of the Eoman Catholic peasant. The Koman Catholic
peasant, at all events, if he has not directly had the benefit of the tithe,
yet he has seen living in his neighbourhood that which has been truly
Described, according to the account of it I cited a few minutes ago, as an
educated gentry, resident in a country that wants residents, bound to good
conduct, and usually given to benevolence and kindness. And it is always
alleged, and I, for one, do not deny it for I can believe it possible in
most cases, and in many cases it is true that the Irish peasant has
benefited largely by the goodwill of the Protestant clergymen. It is
notorious that in the time of the Irish famine the Protestant clergy of the
Established Church were the channels through which the large portion of
the bounty of England was administered to Ireland, and that in that way
and in many ways they have had an opportunity of cultivating the per-
sonal goodwill of the people. But that, in my opinion, is no apology at all
for diverting the Church property from the purposes for which it ought to
be applied, if there is to be an Establishment at all namely, the bulk and
majority of the people. But observe this, that at all events it has been
some consolation to the Irish peasant that the tithe which was taken off
the land which he cultivated has been spent in the neighbourhood, and in
his view, by the men with whom, in many instances, he had kindly rela-
tions, and from whom on many occasions he would receive secular, civil,
and even moral benefit. But now it is proposed to cure abuses, and what
is to be the cure of the abuse ? They propose where there is a parish
say, in Mayo or Galway with 5,000 or 10,000 Koman Catholics and a
mere handful of Protestants, that the tithe of that parish shall be carried
away out of the parish altogether, and, under the recommendation of the
Commission to cure abuses, the proceeds of their land and the fruits of
their labours, where will they go ? They will be carried into the suburbs
of Dublin and Belfast, where wealthy members of the Establishment
abound. Wealthy, at all events, in comparison with those from whom
they are taken, and many of them wealthy in the strictest sense of
the term. They will be exported from one portion of the country
and imported into another portion of the country. While retaining all
the odium of being applied to the Church of the minority, it will lose the
graces, recommendations, and consolations which hang about it from the
kindly relations between these Protestant clergymen and the Koman Ca-
tholic population. They may hear nothing more of it ; and, in my opinion,
I am speaking truly, you hear sometimes that we are charged with confis-
cation, but in my opinion that is confiscation. Those funds, gentlemen,
are local funds. The tithe of a parish was never given except for the pur-
pose of maintaining religion in the parish ; and to take the tithe out of a
parish of Galway or Clare for the purpose of meeting the wants of Protes-
tant populations in Dublin and Belfast I do not care who hears it is, in
my opinion, whatever the intention may be, dangerously like to an act of
public plunder. Gentlemen, I ventured to say two months ago that I was
.an anti-reformer in the Church of Ireland ; that I am not for the removal
44 SPEECHES OF THE BIGHT HON. W. E. GLADSTONE.
of these abuses, because I know that every attempt to remove one abuse-
causes another, and perhaps one more gross and more offensive, to spring
up in its place. Please to hear a short illustration of what I had in view
that when you remove the abuse of having a Protestant clergyman
planted in the midst of a large Roman Catholic population, with only a
handful of Protestant souls to whom to minister, by carrying the tithe
away altogether, and by applying it in a manner in which the peasant has
no interest whatever, approximate or remote, civil or religious, you do
away with one abuse, but you put another in its place. Now let us see,
if you have patience for a moment because this is a matter of really great
public interest and importance let us see how far this removal of abuses
would be effectual, even upon the professions with which it is set out ;
because, pray recollect that it is no satisfaction to me, gentlemen, if I am
an elector of this country, to receive those general statements, however well
they may be intended, from this candidate or that, " I am very well disposed
to remove abuses." Why, gentlemen, I could go over the whole world and
reform everything very cheaply indeed on those terms, because wherever
I find any question of evil that afflicts humanity I have only to say,
" Very well, why don't you remove the abuse ?" But here we want to
know what are the abuses and how they are to be removed, and I have
done something to exhibit to you the hopelessness, and, I cannot help say-
ing, viewed in these days in which we live, the absurdity, of attempting-
to remove those abuses. The abuse which is to be removed is the
abuse of over-paid clergymen in the midst of scanty populations and scanty
flocks, or no flocks at all. But, now, let us see how far the plan of the
Commissioners will carry us. I have told you that it is to suspend or put
an end to, all appointments or benefices in parishes where there are less
than forty members of the Established Church. What I have been speak-
ing so far I speak on my own responsibility alone, but now the figures
which I am going to give you I take from a gentleman whom I be-
lieve to be as well informed as any one in the three kingdoms
upon this subject an Irish clergyman, Dr. Maziere Brady, who for
some years has made himself conspicuous in Ireland by his courageous
advocacy of a just and manly policy in regard to the Irish Established
Church. Now, these cases I am going to mention to you will, I think,
perhaps rather surprise you. These are the cases which he gives me, and
I hope his letters will be published before many days are over, so that every
one may be able to judge of them for themselves, because error here and
there may lie hid, but whatever the facts, they cannot be shaken in the
main, they are so strong. Here are the facts. He gives me the cases and
the names of 14 benefices in Ireland. Now, in those 14 benefices, in each
of them, besides the incumbent there is a curate, and the curate upon the
average receives 100 guineas a year, and the population of the 14 benefices
is 1,332 souls of the Irish Established Church; and the 1,332 souls have
14 curates to look after them, independent of the incumbents, receiving
100 guineas a year apiece. Well, you will agree with me that where there
are 14 clergymen to look after 1,332 souls, that is a rather liberal allow-
ance, when you come to consider that if you were to apply that rule to the
town of Liverpool the town of Liverpool would be equipped with between
5,000 and 6,000 clergymen. I assume, therefore, gentlemen, that the 14
curates had the cure of those 1,332 souls. Well, but over and above the
SPEECHES OF THE EIGHT HON. W. E. GLADSTONE. 45
100 guineas apiece paid to the curates, there is an income received by the
14 incumbents of those 14 benefices ; and those incomes, according to Dr.-
Brady, amount to 8,192. And Dr. Brady says, truly, I think, and very
fairly, that you may well say, considering the 14 curates and the 1,332 souls,
that the eight thousand odd pounds is received for doing/ho work at all.
Well, gentlemen, if there are abuses in the Irish Church, I should think
-this is one of them. That is an average of 95 souls*, but it is useless to
take the average of the souls to each, because the work is done by the
curate, but the incumbent, however, receives 6 per head for doing nothing
in respect of these 1,332 human beings. Now, let me see what the Com-
missioners do, because I remember once seeing a ludicrous and most
ingenious picture of a man who was vaunting of some wonderful solution
or unguent that he had for the hair, and in order to illustrate the wonder-
ful and astonishing fertilising properties of his mixture he printed two
woodcuts. The first was the head of his victim, his patient, before he used
the mixture, and the second was the head after he used the mixture.
"When he began he was nearly bald; when he ended the course of this
application his whole head was covered with luxuriant flowing locks and
brown beard down to his waist ; in fact it was a ravishing description.
That is exactly what is proposed to be done with the Irish Church. It is
admitted there are abuses in the Irish Church ; it is now presented to you
by Mr. Cross and Mr. Turner as admittedly in a ricketty condition; bub
then it is to have this application it is to have the receipt of the Commis-
sioners applied to it, and after the recommendations of the Commissioners
have passed into law, then you are to have the Irish Church turned out as
n model Establishment. Therefore, you want to know what this model
Establishment will be, and I will tell you. You have 14 of these
churches. On the recommendations of the Commissioners nothing
will take place until one generation at least they will not take full
effect, j'ou understand until one generation has gone by, because, as
is very proper, life interests have to be respected ; but if you have the
patience to wait until after these recommendations have passed into law;
if you have patience until 30 or 40 years, the recommendations will then,
it, is probable, have taken full effect, and out of the 14 churches five will
have ceased to exfet that is to say, they will cease to exist as benefices,
and then there will remain nine, and the nine will present this picture to
you. There will be nine benefices, with 1,172 people among them, not
.1:150 apiece. There will be nine curates at 100 guineas each, to take care
of the 1,172 people that is about 130 apiece, and I think they may manage
t!i at. And there will be nine incumbents having nothing to do, because
the curates will do it, and they will receive for doing nothing 5,639 in the
Church out of which all the abuses have been removed. Now, gentlemen,
unless there be the grossest of errors in the figures that have been supplied
to me, and on which I am bound to say I rely I am convinced there may
be errors, but if there are any errors they will be trivial and slight that is
the result of the plan of the reform in the Irish Church that is now recom-
mended, and attended with all the injustice I have pointed out in trans-
ferring the tithes of Connaught and Munster to enrich the congregations
of Ulster and Leinster. That will be the result attained in the way of
curing the abuses after I and most of you are dead and gone, some 40 years
hence. Well, gentlemen, I think I may fairly say that it is not necessary
46 SPEECHES OF THE BIGHT HON. W. E. GLADSTONE.
to dwell upon the plan of the Commissioners to cure the abuses of the Irish
' Qtyi&Zti. The Commissioners themselves, and I cannot blame them, are
apparently afraid to explain them ; they keep back the principal and most
important figures that are necessary to make their plan intelligible
a plan which satisfies none of the just demands of the Irish people,
which removes none of the slight and insult offered to them through the
medium of their religion ; it would abate none of the painful difficulties
and controversies that now tear and rend that people into one party and
another party, instead of being a brotherhood of united citizenship. I
think, gentlemen, I am justified in saying we do right to reject that plan.
Now, gentlemen, before I sit down there is another point that I must
mention to you. You are told that the Irish Church is to be maintained
for the benefit of Protestantism. Now, that is not an unfair statement of
mine. You know that is a favourite argument of all those who are op-
posed to us, and you are reproached probably many of us are, at all
events, reproached-^from time to time with being the favourers of the
Roman Catholic religion. With the Koman Catholic religion, gentlemen,
we have nothing whatever to do ; the controversy in which we are en-
gaged is a controversy of civil justice. We look on the Irish people as
the Irish nation, and what we say is this we refuse to withhold justice
from them, not on the ground alleged by you namely, that they are
Soman Catholics but that they are entitled to justice as full and unre-
stricted as any man among us. I need not add they are entitled of
course they are entitled to nothing more. But the allegation is that
this Church is maintained for the benefit of Protestantism. Now, the fairest
test of that is found in the number of Protestants that have been reared
under the present system compared with the other or Eoman Catholic
population of the country. Now, you must recollect that it is utterly im-
possible for us to form a true judgment on that subject except by going back
as far as we can ; and the earliest authentic statement that we have upon that
subject is this : In the year 1672 Sir William Petty, a statesman of that
day, gave the results of an inquiry which I believe is admitted to have
been not very far from the truth into the relative numbers of Protestants
and Koman Catholics, and they were these: There were three Pro-
testants for every eight Roman Catholics in Ireland ; and in order that I
may make the comparison in an intelligible manner, I will compare these
different fractions in the way in which we used to do when we went to
school that is, I will reduce them to what is called a common denomi-
nator, and that means 45 Protestants to 120 Eoman Catholics. That was
the proportion in 1672, some 200 years ago. Ever since that time you
have had the whole ecclesiastical property of the country in the hands of a
small minority under the name of supporting Protestantism. Not only
that, but for the greater part of that time you have had in operation cruel
and abominable laws for the purpose of suppressing the Kornan Catholic
religion by means that were grossly wicked and unjust; and the strongest
Protestant among you, I am quite sure, would say, if I were to run through
the particulars of these laws, even that strong language is not too strong
to describe the laws. Now, I have got to say one thing for the Irish penal
laws that is the name by which they are known and that is this : they
were not wholly devoid of efficacy ; they applied the screw pretty closely ;
and so long as the penal laws were in operation, so far as our information
SPEECHES OF THE RIGHT HON. Tf E. GLADSTONE. 47"
goes, it does appear that to some extent they succeeded in keeping down
the Roman Catholic religion in Ireland. All I can say of the figures I
give you, gentlemen, is they are the best that can be had. They have not
the precision of a modern Census of population, but I have given them in
the House of Commons and they have never been impugned. They have
never been scrutinised and found wanting. In 1730 a Government inquiry
into the relative numbers of Roman Catholics and Protestants found that
there were two Protestants for five Roman Catholics. Well, I told you
before that in 1672 there were 45 Protestants to 120 Roman Catholics ; in
1730 there were 48 Protestants to 120 Roman Catholics ; but about that
time there was a certain Bishop Burke, a Roman Catholic prelate in
Ireland I forget of what see who made an estimate of the numbers,
and he estimated that there were two Protestants for four Roman Catholics-
that is, 60 Protestants for 120 Roman Catholics. The application of
the screw was doing, in some degree, its work. In 1672, again, Bishop
Burke computed that the Protestants were increasing. Shortly after
that the penal laws began to be relaxed. In 1784 a computation wa&
made, in a manner which I admit is a very rough one ; it was by estimat-
ing the proportions of the people of different religions in the beggars.
There was then no Poor Law in the country. What I wish you particu-
larly to observe is this, that those figures I am giving you about numbers
are what are called ex parte figures. I take them from Mr. Giffard's "Life
of Pitt," a book written in a totally different sense, and they are the best
figures I can obtain. In 1784, according to the return, which is loose, but
not very far from the mark, it is still said there were two Protestants for
lour Roman Catholics that is to say, 60 Protestants for 120 Roman Catho-
lics ; therefore, you will observe, gentlemen, that under this penal system,
beginning in 1672 with 45 Protestants for 120 Roman Catholics, that they
had by 112 years of persecution amended if it is to be called amended
the position of the Protestants so far as to have 60 instead of 45 Pro-
testants to 120 Roman Catholics. At that time we began to relax the
penal laws. In 1801 I now quote the authority of Mr. Musgrave, the
historian of the Irish revolution, who is certainly a very thoroughgoing
partisan in 1801 the penal laws having now been materially relaxed, and
the Roman Catholics even admitted to the elective franchise, he found
that the Protestants were 40 to 120 Roman Catholics, having been 60 some
20 years before. We then went on and had further relaxation. We even
admitted the Roman Catholics and I am very thankful we did to Par-
liament, and in 1834 we had another religious Census, and the proportion
was now one Protestant to four Roman Catholics, or 30 Protestants
to 120 Roman Catholics. Now, gentlemen, in 1861 it is true there
is a slight improvement it is a fractional improvement. I must get
another denominator in order to exhibit it, I cannot exhibit it well upon
the denominator of 120 that I have got. In 1834 the Protestants were a
trifle under one to four ; in 1861 they are a trifle over one to four that is
all the difference. But recollect what had happened in the meantime that
awful famine of 1847, and the enormous wholesale exportation of the poorer
population that is the Roman Catholic population of Ireland, across the
Atlantic. Therefore, gentlemen, I say that although, casually, the return
of 1861 is a trifle better than that of 1834, in reality, if you allow ever so
moderately for the operation of these powerful causes, it is a worse return.
48 SPEECHES OF THE BIGHT HON. W. E. GLADSTONE.
than that of 1834 ; and I reiterate the assertion that Protestantism, under
the influence of this system, which we did once maintain in the form of
penal laws but then there was a kind of efficacy, at any rate a kind of
brutal and bad efficacy attached to it since we have relaxed those penal
laws, while the system continues to be unjust, it has ceased to be effectual,
and Protestantism has dwindled under its operation. Now, gentlemen, I
must refer to one more point, which will, perhaps, require your attention,
because I have been greatly found fault with for this statement, and I will
enow you the answer which has been made to me. I will take it from
this pamphlet [" Short Notes on the Irish Church Question," by a
Layman] : " Mr. Gladstone insists that as a missionary Church the
Irish Church has failed." I do insist with great regret, naturally,
bub at the same time with strong conviction. " In order to prove
this he quoted Sir William Petty to show that in 1672 there were
800,000 Roman Catholics to 300,000 Protestants." Now comes the answer
to me, and I think you will be somewhat amused when I unfold the mean-
ing of it : " But Mr. Gladstone kept back the fact that of these 300,000
Protestants only 100,000 were members of the Irish Church, and the re-
maining 200,000 Nonconformists." And therefore, they say it is true that
the Protestants may have dwindled as a whole, but look at the relative
numbers of the Church and the Nonconformists, and then you will see
that the Church of Ireland has not failed at all, but has very largely in-
creased her numbers. Well now, gentlemen, I think that will be a view
of the matter entirely new to you ; I think it will be new to my friends
on the platform of all denominations. It appears, then, after all, that
the Church of Ireland does not exist in Ireland for the purpose of
maintaining the light and glory .of the Reformation, as Mr. Gathorne
Hardy says, but that the business of the Church of Ireland is to con-
vert stray Nonconformists and bring them back to the fold. Now,
gentlemen, this really is a discovery. It is a magnificent discovery.
It seems to shift the whole state and position of affairs. It gives us
a new " point of view," as they call it. It is a most serious matter if,
after all the consideration we have given to this matter, which we
thought lay mainly between the Church of Ireland and the people of
Ireland, we are to be told that it does not lie between them at all ; that it
is admitted that the Church of Ireland has failed wholly, utterly, miserably
as regards the people of Ireland the mass of the people of Ireland who
are Roman Catholics but that it has had a magnificent success, and those
unfortunate Presbyterians who were two to one to the Church people 200
years ago are now somewhat less than the Church people in number.
Therefore, gentlemen, pray consider that it is an anti-Protestant propa-
gandism you are invited to pursue. That is the answer they give ; I
believe it to be the only answer ; but I must also tell you this, that if ifc
were true it would not be a very good answer. I suspect the six or seven
millions of Nonconformists in this country in England the three millions
of Presbyterians in Scotland, and the half-million or more of Presbyterians
in Ireland, would not be particularly well pleased at this new view of the
position of the Church, the friends and advocates of which, in the days
when things are quiet are apt to turn what is called the cold shoulder to
the Presbyterians ; but of late there are a portion of them, and particularly
the active politicians, who make the most warm and moving appeals to
SPEECHES OP THE EIGHT HON. W. E. GLADSTONE. 49
the Presbyterian body, and entreat them to put shoulder to shoulder and
confront the enemy in the field in the name and for the sake of the interests
of their common Protestantism. 'Now, gentlemen, the explanation
is this but I musfc f not go at length into it. In Ireland, in the
beginning of the seventeenth century it is difficult, indeed, to trace
minutely the confused ecclesiastical history of a country which at that
time was but half- organised but it is well known that a large portion
of the parishes and incumbencies of the country, a very large
portion indeed of the province of Ulster, and some portions, I
believe, beyond it, were in the hands of Presbyterians. Of course,
therefore, the Presbyterians counted at that time as a very large
number in proportion to the numbers of the Church ; and it is perfectly
true up to a certain point that by the fact of becoming Episcopalian, by
the fact of having an Episcopalian Government placed over these parishes,
as the Episcopalian Government became uniform over the country, instead
of having a Presbyterian Government placed over them, a number of per-
sons came to be counted as Episcopalians who before that had been counted
as Presbyterians. That is the explanation of it. There is no truth in the
assertion that the Irish Church has been successful in putting down
Dissent either by force or persuasion. It has been successful in putting
down nothing ; but it has been successful in putting up something. It
has put up agitation; it has put up controversy; it has put up bitterness;
it has put up, as I have shown, in comparison with Protestantism, the
Roman Catholic religion, which has thriven, and does thrive, under that
sense of civil injustice which makes all its professors who are loyal men
rally round it with determined adherence. Gentlemen, our motto is " Be
just and fear not." Do you approve the motto or do you not ? It may
be that we have strong interests arrayed against us. Never mind. What
we shall do, gentlemen, my hon. friend near me and I we shall use the
slender means in our power to lay out the truth and the reason of the case
before you. Having done that, as we shall do it from place to place, we
shall appeal to you for aid ; we appeal to you to lay aside all timid fears
and apprehensions, to be on your guard against mistake and delusion, to
put on the courage of Englishmen nay, more, I will add, to clothe your-
selves with that spirit of equity which ought to distinguish every Christian,
and to carry our cause onwards to a speedy triumph.
SPEECH
DELIVERED IX THE
CO-OPERATIVE MILL, LEIGH.
OCTOBER 20TH, 1868.
Itf addressing you to-night, the first duty, and not the least pleasant
duty, I have to perform, is to thank you for the hearty reception you
have given us to-day, both out of doors and in doors ; and my second
duty is to express my share of gratitude to the Co-operative Society at
Leigh, which has supplied us with this spacious place of assemblage, and
1 will now, with your kind assistance and support, endeavour to do that
which would not be possible except with such aid namely, to address
you upon some of" the subjects which are at this moment of the deepest
interest to yourselves and England. Gentlemen, the na ne of the
Co-operative Society at Leigh induces me to say a few word?) upon a
question which is the subject, at the present time, of a very national
interest, and is, I think, likewise of a very needless alarm. 1 mean the
question of the relations between capital and labour. There are those
who consider that this is among the great difficulties if it be not the
greatest difficulty that clouds the future of our country. I own I am
not of that opinion. I have sufficient confidence in the good sense of
my countrymen of all classes, and especially of the two great classes
that are more immediately concerned, to feel a perfect conviction that,
not perhaps without some occasional and local difficulty, but without
any general or hopeless difficulty, they will find their way through the
meshes and the mazes of that question to a satisfactory solution.
Certainly, one class of measures to which I look with the greatest
interest for the purpose of helping the attainment of that solution are
the measures which, without removing the labouring man from the class
of labouring men, nevertheless give him some of the sentiments and
some of the interests of the capitalist. Don't suppose from what I have
said that I am one who believes that the function of the retail tradesman
SPEECHES OF THE EIGHT HON. W. E. GLADSTONE. 51
the distributor of commodities ever can be either permanently or
beneficially supplanted that I do not believe. I believe that the union
of working men among themselves in co-operative societies may be
extremely beneficial as a check upon the more ordinary method of
manufacture that of great capitalists, and of disturbing either the
wholesale or retail tradesmen ; but that it will supplant those methods
I, for one, wholly disbelieve. And I think it but fair to say two things :
on the one hand, I am convinced it is only in the very advanced of
the labouring wage-earning classes that co-operation can be carried
on to a beneficial extent, and it argues that in this particular neigh-
bourhood the labouring classes are greatly advanced ; but, on the other
hand, the risks and responsibility of joint-stock companies are serious.
I must own to you that although ever since my mind was given to
commercial subjects I have been a pretty steady adherent to the
.principles of free trade, yet I have not had that unflinching faith in the
principles of joint-stock companies, as offered to individual energy and
enterprise, which I know has been entertained by many who are far
greater authorities than I am myself. I hope, therefore, that the
greatest caution will ever be exercised by the labouring classes with
regard to joint -stock enterprise, and I may add every other class ; but
wherever their joint-stock enterprise succeeds, I heartily rejoice in it,
and bid them God-speed. There is another mode, favoured, I know, by
some highly intelligent men of this district, and to which I can't but
wish an unqualified prosperity, and it is this mode where private
individuals, or a limited number of private individuals, carry on their
business on the principle of joint-stock companies, and are enabled so
to adjust their operations and accounts that they can contrive to
give to the workpeople an interest in the proceeds. I know not,
and it would be presumptuous in me to attempt to know, when that
principle is capable of extension ; but I believe that wherever it is
capable of application it is one of the most bent-ficial methods of
dealing with the difficulty which besets the question between capital
and labour now presented to us. There is one other method to which
I can but refer, although the name of the person connected with it
most honourably connected with it a gentleman of foreign descent, is
less known in this part of the country than in the country where
he resides, and where his beneficial exertions have been particularly
felt I mean Mr. Mundella. He is a man who has devoted, at no small
sacrifice, his time, and no common abilities and energies, in organising
those methods of friendly and systematic communication between
workmen and capitalists in the form of boards of arbitration, which,
so far as the operation has yet been tried, has produced the most happy
results. Gentlemen, I refer to that not as if I were competent to give
a judgment that proceeds with much greater weight from practical men,
nor because I believe we have as jet exhausted the whole catalogue
of expedients for adjusting those difficulties which must necessarily
arise in the natural and wholesome competition for it is wholesome
competition between the capitalist and labourer in the division of the
products of industry, but because I think they are hopeful indications
of what we may expect under the teaching of experience, and that they
go to warrant the sanguine opinion I have myself expressed, that although
D 2
52 SPEECHES OF THE EIGHT HON. W. E. GLADSTONE.
this undoubtedly may be a serious problem, which would be dreadfully
aggravated by narrow views or by angry passions a problem:
demanding the closest and most careful attention that cnn be given to ifc
by the most competent persons yet it is a problem of which we may
look for a satisfactory solution, and which we need not reckon
among the difficulties that threaten the happiness and prosperity
of our country. But I pass from that subject, and I wish to take
this opportunity, seeing that we are favoured to-night, as upon former
occasions, with the assistance of that powerful agency that disperses-
over England and over the world what is addressed to local audiences
in connection with the occurrences of an election I wish to take
advantage of the presence of that agency. That purpose, perhaps, you
may think a little personal, and you may possibly think it a little selfish ;,
but it is this I am at this moment overwhelmed with communications
from correspondents of every rank and degree, of all circumstances and
conditions, with relation to matters of controversy that it would be
impossible to enumerate. Sometimes they ask me for answers which,
having but twenty-four hours in one day, it is not possible for me to-
give, and sometimes they ask me to explain the points to which they
refer at public meetings. Now, I wish to beg my correspondents, one
and all, through the medium of this assembly, to be assured that
their communications, most of which I can truly say are both friendly
and intelligent, have the best consideration I can give to them, and that
if I seem to neglect them it is only because of the greater pressure of
other subjects, and of my duty, in occupying your time as I do, to
occupy it with those questions which appear to be of the greatest and
of the most commanding interest. Now, I will make another remark
which is not personal, but local, and I can make it with pleasure because
it concerns, not only ourselves, but those against whom we are pitted
in this contest. "We, gentlemen, in South- West Lancashire, are like
our friends and our opponents in the other division, engaged for the
moment in a pretty arduous contest; but, I rejoice to say that up to this
time, so far as I can judge, in the South-Western division of the county
it has been conducted with exemplary good humour. Everybody knows
throughout Lancashire when a man enters into a contest he is in earnest,
and means to do his best. On that side, gentlemen, we shall not be
suspected ; if we are, I trust our men will redeem us from the suspicion.
But in other parts of this country I must say that it appears to me, to-
judge from placards, from letters, and from many communications that
have reached me it appears to me that the course pursued by our
opponents has gone beyond the just limits of political warfare that
truth has been too much tampered with that private life has been
violently, insolently invaded that violence and almost fury of language
has been indulged in ; and if I refer to these things it is for the purpose
of congratulating you and others, paying a debt that is due to our
opponents, when I say that whatever may take place beyond our
borders and into that I won't enter I have not seen within those
borders, on the one side or the other, the slightest disposition
to trespass beyond the fair and just bounds of public controversy;
and I humbly hope that for my own part I may do what I am
sure vou do observe those bounds with the same care for the-
SPEECHES OF THE 11IGIIT HON. W. E. GLADSTONE. 53
future. I have made this preface because I am obliged to grapple
pretty closely with the language of our opponents upon some matters
of great public interest, but I wish to do so with the most frank
expression of my personal respect, and deal with the argument, but
not with the man apart from the politician. Gentlemen, yesterday week,
in the town of Warrington, I drew attention at some length to the
subject of the public expenditure, and I pointed out what appeared to
me to be the main considerations necessary to be instilled into the
minds of the electors at this juncture. Those considerations turned
mainly upon this that the investigation of the past was of secondary
importance, but that the topics, however, which had been raised with
respect to the past in no degree diminished the responsibility of those
"who are now in pow r er for the rapid, and I think even alarming increase
that has begun to take place in our expenditure, and that as regards
that increase, not indeed the whole responsibility, but the chief
responsibility of it, was to be charged upon the Ministers of the
Crown, although it may be your opinion that the House of Commons is
likewise to blame, and although 1 do not shrink from expressing my
opinion that wherever there is sluggishness in the House of Commons
it is because there is always a corresponding lethargy in the country.
Gentlemen, I wish to take the opportunity of correcting a verbal
inaccuracy into which I fell. You must have seen it stated that there
was a great increase of expenditure in the year 1859, which is perfectly
true, and again in the year i860, which is perfectly true. In speaking
of the expenditure in the year 1800, I s:iid that that was due to a war
in China which had broken out, not under us, but under the instructions
fiven by the Government that had preceded us, and in connection, as
said, with Lord Elgin's going to the mouth of the Peiho to sign a
treaty with China. In my haste, when I said Lord Elgin, I ought to
have said his brother, Sir Frederick Bruce, and I ought to have said
that he went to ratify, not to have signed, a treaty with China. These
errors I ought to correct, because it was supposed I gave an opinion
upon the policy! I gave no opinion upon the policy whatever. That is
a large matter to discuss. What 1 wished to point out was this that
the de facto cost of that war had arisen in connection with the operations
of a former Government, and not with our Government, and the fault I
found at that moment was not with those who had given instructions, but
the fault was with those who have at this time endeavoured to persuade the
country that the cost of that war, which had grown from transactions
entirely belonging to a former Government, was due to the Government
^of Lord Palmerston instead of being due to their predecessors. But,
gentlemen, asking that you will excuse me for this digression, I come to
a matter which lies more nearly at close quarters. It is not denied that
J63,000,000 have been added to the expenditure in two years to the
permanent expenditure, gentlemen, not to the occasional expenditure,
not to the expenditure brought about by the emergencies of what we
hoped was a momentary and an incidental war, but to the permanent
expenditure of the country connected with the maintenance of its
ordinary establishments. But, gentlemen, that fact stands. I rejoice
that it stands, and not only so, but that it has been brought home to the
mind of the people of this country. For believe me, gentlemen, that
54 SPEECHES OF THE EIGHT HON. W. E. GLADSTONE.
to a question of praise or blame, whether you think censure belongs to
us, or whether you think censure belongs to our opponents, I am com-
paratively indifferent, though I do not say I am absolutely indifferent,
provided the effect of these discussions will be, as I have good hope it
will, to bring about in future, if you, gentlemen, do your duty, some
more careful stewardship of the finances of this country. Well, now,
gentlemen, one of our honourable opponents meets my charge, not by
vindicating the present Administration, but by saying that it was my
duty to have prevented this expenditure, and I have received to-day
some verses which are the production of a Conservative working man. I
think they do great credit to his ingenuity ; and, moreover, I value these
verses very much, because we ought always to value greatly all speci-
mens of a species that is rare. You know, perhaps, that a few years
ago a mammoth was discovered frozen in the ice upon the shores of the
"White Sea. An enormous value was set upon the bones of that
mammoth, and would have been set upon its flesh if it had not been that
the moment it was thawed the dogs ^ot at it and devoured it. Now, my
wish is to preserve to preserve in ice if you like, or in any way you
like the eifusions of a Conservative working man. But, however, he
is a very ingenious fellow. I recognise him as a man and a brother, of
the same flesh and blood, and he states this objection extremely well.
These are his verses, gentlemen :
<: Now you are lecturing thro' the land
And leading working- men astray,
By telling them things were not good
For which, they did their money pay.
We wish to know, Sir, how it is
To oppose these measures you did not strive,
While there was on your side, you say,
A majority of sixty-five."
I don't think Mr. Turner stated his point badly, but I think the
working man has stated it better still. Still, I must endeavour to pull
the working man to pieces a little. He says I said I had a majority of
65. When did I say so? He says so; but I never said it. It
would be very difficult, indeed, gentlemen, between the time of the
general election and the time of the Kesolutions on the Irish Church, to
state what the majority in this House of Commons was or where it lay.
" But," he says, "why did you not object to this expenditure ? " My
answer is twofold. In the first place I must tell you this, that the great
questions of expenditure connected with the maintenance of the army
and navy are questions of the life or death of the Government, and when
you challenge a hostile issue in the House of Commons upon such a
question as whether, for example, 40 new ships are to be built for the
defence of the country, it is equivalent to moving a vote of want of con-
fidence in the Government. That being so, I tell you plainly that our
resignation of office in 1866 made it our duty to give to those who
succeeded us a chance of dealing with the question of Reform ; and,
however we might object to their mode of proceeding in regard to the
public expenditure, the paramount and commanding interests connected
with the franchise and the Constitution made it impossible for us to
take issue with the Government upon questions of that order. Short
of taking issue with the Government, I tell you that we did object. I
SPEECHES OF THE EIGHT HON. W. E. GLADSTONE. 55
could show you the passages in Hansard, if you wished ifc, where I have
drawn down on myself the wrath and a terrible wrath, no doubt of
several members of the present Cabinet for finding fault with and
impeaching what I thought their most needless and wanton expenditure
in naval and military matters. Not only was it what was said by me,
but I have the happiness of sitting in the House of Commons in constant
connection with many of the ablest men in that House, and my friends
Mr. Childers, Mr. Stansfeld, and other gentlemen perfectly competent,
did arrange with me and carry on in connection with me that plan of
questioning the Government on that scheme of building 30 or 40 un-
armoured ships for the purpose of maintaining the distant services at
various parts of the globe. Gentlemen, we did endeavour to act on the
Government and to produce an impression on the House ; but the
House and I do not find fault with it was unwilling to enter into
matters which, though important, were secondary to the main question
at issue. You have heard something this year about meetings in my
sitting-room. We had meetings in my sitting-room to consider seriously
whether we should venture this year to ask the vote of the House nf
Commons on the state of the public expenditure, and we deliberately
decided that we should not, because the answer would have been this
It would have been felt impossible to interfere with the progress of the
Reform Bills, and we should have procured from the House of Com-
mons an adverse vote on questions of expenditure, which would have
been given probably from motives extraneous to questions of expen-
diture, but which would have been damaging to the permanent
prospects of the cause of public economy. I say, therefore, that on
this great question we went as far as we could as far as we dare, as
far as we should have been justified, with regard to your interests, to
go in declaring our opinion of the conduct of the Government. It is
idle and untrue to say that these views and proceedings of the Govern-
ment were not questioned, as anyone can satisfy himself who chooses to
consult the records of Parliament, while it is quite true that the sum
total of the public expenditure depends on these greater subjects. It
is also true that there are many subjects less important, but not
altogether unimportant, on which it may at times be possible to
question or challenge the proceedings of the Government. With respect
to these minor subjects, I beg to assure you that we saw the oppor-
tunity we did question them, both by debate and division. And here
I come to my answer to Mr, Turner, and my answer to my friend the
working man, and it is that whenever we did question them, there was
Mr. Turner in his place to vote against us. I will give you an example.
We had a very good opportunity offered us last year. What you have
to fear when you raise these questions of economy is that the supporters
of the Government will denounce them as party questions, and will in
that way envelope them in a cloud of prejudice. But we saw on the
notice-paper this year a notice which would have saved the country a
certain sum of money I think some 20,000 a year perhaps more.
It was to the effect that the expenses of certain Commissions relating
to copyholds, enclosure, and tithe which had been charged on the Con-
solidated Fund should be borne, not by the State, but by the persons
who took benefit from the operation of those Commissions. This
56 SPEECHES OF THE RIGHT HON. W. E. GLADSTONE.
motion, which we thought a very rational motion, was made by Mr.
Goldney. Mr. Goldney is a man of much intelligence, who sits on the
Government side of the House. Thus we had an opportunity, because,
Mr. Goldney being the mover of the motion, and not acting in concert
with us, it was not possible to cast upon it the discredit of being a
party motion. Well, what did we do ? We supported Mr. Goldney.
And what happened ? We carried our motion by one not by
sixty-five, let my friend the working man observe. We carried our
motion by one. The noes against the vote were 105 that was in
favour of Mr. Goldney's motion ; and the ayes, 104 in favour
of the Government. So keen were the Government to resist
this reduction of expenditure, that, after being thus beaten in a
division, some rumour went abroad that one or two members had come
into the House that they might, if they divided again, obtain a dif-
ferent issue. They divided again, and again they were beaten by one.
In the first division we were 105 to the Government's 104 ; in the
second division we were 106 to the Government's 105. Gentlemen, I
need not tell you I was among the 106. But who was among the 104
of the first division and the 105 of the second? Mr. Charles Turner,
member for South Lancashire. Therefore I tell Mr. Turner, with all
possible respect, that one of the reasons why we could not operate the
reductions we desired was that he was always in his place to oppose
them. But there is another form of proceeding. I have given you
one specimen because I think one practical specimen is worth a great
deal of vague and general statement. I will now go to another point
connected with the same important subject. I told our friends at War*
rington that there appeared to me to have grown under the present
Government a system of what I called, in regard to the public expen-
diture, making things pleasant all round. That means going from town
to town, granting what this community wants, granting what that
community wants, granting what the other community wants,
and leaving out of sight that huge public which unfortunately
has not got the voices and the advocates ready always to
defend it against these local and particular claims, but of which it is
our highest boast that we seek to be the advocates and the champions.
I told you that was the system pursued. I told you of a case where a
candidate in the Government interest this moment goes to a consti-
tuency, and complains that he could not get a Liberal Government to
surrender for 2,^00 a debt due to Government of 20,000, but that
when a Conservative Government came in, then, indeed, the weather
had changed greatly in his favour, and he found there was no difficulty
at all in arranging the matter. Thereupon he snys, " Return me to Par-
liament, and riot a member of the Liberal party." That is the operation
which is constant y going on, and that is the operation which I call on
you to baffle and defeat. But even since yesterday week I have had the
clearest proof, which 1 w r ill now give, of the truth of what I then said.
What I then said was that this Government and its adherents are
constantly endeavouring to create electioneering interests by means of
local expenditure defrayed out of the public puree. This is my charge.
I stated that on Monday week, and what did I hear before the week
was out ? There came to me a letter from Whitby. Whitby is a town
SPEECHES OF THE EIGHT HON. W. E. GLA.DSTOXB. 57
in the politics of which I take great interest at this moment. Whitby
is a seaport on the eastern coast, and the Conservative party in Whitby
not having a chance of winning the election by any fair means, or a
chance in any way whatever, I believe, in their desperation immediately
publish a placard, the purport of which has been sent to me, but not
the thing itself. It says, a Who prevented the creation of a harbour of
refuge at Whitby ? The Liberals. Who wanted to spend four millions
in making harbours of refuge on the eastern coast ? The Conserva-
tives." That is the sort of thing going on from time to time, aye, and
pretty constantly too. (A voice : " We'll stop it.") I am much
obliged to you, Sir ; and let me add, if it be an allowable mode of
speech, you are very much obliged to yourself, because by sending my
friend (Mr. Grenfell) and myself to Parliament you will be doing that
which is good to the public and that which is good to you as an
individual member of the public. Now, I had never said that
it was wrong to assist in the foundation of harbours of refuge. Those
Conservatives at Whitby ought to have known, if they knew anything
about it, that the Government of Lord Palmerstou passed through
Parliament a Bill for giving judicious assistance instead of wild
extravagance and lavish assistance for such purposes. At New-
castle and down to the mouth of the Tyne are probably
the most magnificent marine works that were ever undertaken by
a local community, and they have never run to such an absurd
extreme as to say that under no circumstances will the State
recognise the public interest in the formation of local works. It is
proper that local works should be properly assisted, but what I do say
is this that it is an unjust plan to stimulate local cupidity to feed upon
the public purse ; and that that plan, supported and sustained by the
Conservative party generally and by many of her Majesty's present
Ministers, was resisted by the Government of Lord Palmerston ; and
that, although the House of Commons adopted it by an address to the
Crown, we refused to act on the address of the House of Commons. It
is well to get the people of Whitby, who are acting on local interests,
to find fault with us because we stood up for the public interest; but
what is said by our friends Mr. Turner and Mr. Cro^s of their friends
the Conservatives of Whitby, who are boasting of the expenditure of
many millions of money, for the fancied and supposed purpose of doing
good to one, or two, or three, or four, or five ports, on the surface of the
coast of England at an enormous and almost extravagant charge to the
country at lar^e? If you want to be served you must draw the distinc-
tion between those who want to serve you and those who don't, and if
the electors of South Lancashire and of the country generally are
contented to allow this method of expenditure to go on, this Continental
system of feeding the desires of classes and portions of the community
at the expense of the whole it is idle for you to satisfy yourselves with
vague and general promises, such as everybody can give you by the
bushel, of being desirous to promote all reasonable economy. If that is
to be the system on which public finance is to be administered, you must
be prepared to resign all hopes of remission of taxation, even in good
years, and in bad years you must look for a steadv augmentation of the
income-tax. That is the state of the case as i'ar as it is necessary to
58 SPEECHES Or THE EIGHT HON. W. B. GLADSTONE.
enter into ifc with respect to the public expenditure. G-entlemen, I am-
afraid you have of late years suffered from the vicissitudes of trade, and
I am told that there are found those who think that trade has suffered
in consequence of the Treaty of Commerce with France. If that be so I
should not scruple to say that my solemn duty is to prosecute in all matters
of trade and commerce the interests of the country at large. There were-
places at all events there was one place, the town of Coventry with
regard to which it certainly happened that the French Treaty did arrive
at a moment which, in many respects, was a moment of severe pressure.
The great cause of the pressure was the stoppage of the American
demand in consequence of the civil war in that country. France
exports silk goods to the American markets much more largely than we
do. France being stopped from sending her goods to America when
there was comparatively no demand, did avail herself of the Treaty of
Commerce to throw considerable portions of goods on the British
markets. But what goods were they ? As far as I can understand,
they were not the goods in which you deal ; you are not producers, like
the dealers of Coventry, of light fancy goods. You are not the makers
of riband. You are not, like the weavers of Spitalfields, the makers of
goods of another class, the richest velvets and highly-figured silks. If
I am rightly informed, your trade is rather like the ytaple trade of
Manchester, consisting of solid and substantial goods. You are not
importers from France, but exporters to the world in general ; and it
France had the power of competing with you in their markets without
any difference in your favour, it is not to the admission of her goods
that you owed the distress under which you suffered, but to this, that
the door was bolted against you in America through which you had
been accustomed to find vent for your productions and the fluctua-
tions of trade. That is a question of argument as I understand it,
and scarcely can be discussed as if it were a matter of simple fact.
It is not possible to escape the fluctuations of trade, but this it
is possible to point out, that the fluctuations of trade are much les&
under a system of freedom than under a system of monopoly.
Of this we have proof in our own history. Many of us are old enough
to recollect the crises of trade brought about by trade causes. Before-
free trade was established, very frequently distress in the manufacturing,
districts used to follow bad harvests and monetary crises. You have
this advantage under the system of freedom, that you can form calcu-
lations with better security than when you trusted to artificial restric-
tions. You know not what causes may arise to bring distress upon you,
but it is experience by which in the long run these questions must be
determined ; and I speak in the hearing of those who are able to judge-
when I affirm confidently that for the last 20 years, setting aside the
cotton famine, which is a matter of a different character neither free-
trade nor any other trade could prevent civil wars but speaking of the
ordinary revolutions of trade, the vast extension of our commerce
which we have seen throughout the country has been attended,
not with an increase of fluctuation, but with an increase of stability
not less remarkable than the increase of scale.
I have hardly left myself time to say a few words on the question of
the Irish Church, which never can be omitted at an election meeting,
SPEECHES OF THE EIGHT HON. W. E. GLADSTONE. 59
like this. I cannot do more than state a summary of the leading pro-
positions on which I have presumed to dwell at other places. I made it
my first duty to point out to the people of this county that the substantial
question which you have to determine' is this, whether you will have
one Established Church or none, or whether you will have many Church
Establishments in Ireland or none. I think I showed that when the
Government proceeded to disclose deliberately its policy for Ireland,
that policy did include a regular increase of endowments to the Presby-
terian Church in Ireland, the establishment of a Roman Catholic Uni-
versity at the expense of the State, and a plain declaration that there was
no objection to place the Roman Catholics on nearly the same footing as
the Church now established, provided it were done at the public
charge, and not by withdrawing the property of the present Church
Establishment. Since I spoke Her Majesty's Government has got a
new ally in the person of the Quarterly Review. Many of you will
recollect that about this time last year there was a remarkable paper in
that review, entitled " The Conservative Surrender," in which any words-
used by the Opposition or Liberal party are watery and faint compared
with the blasting, withering, and scorching scorn which this writer in
the Review bestowed on the Government. But now the Conservative-
surrender itself has surrendered : there is a new article in the Review in
which having blackened the Government twelve months ago with every
epithet the ingenuity of man could extract from the vocabulary tc*
destroy the last rag of its character and the last hope of prosperity and
success, the article winds up by saying that now that an election is
taking place the result will be the return of a decidedly Conservative
majority for the Government. This is the state of things at which we
have arrived. I may refer to it because I do not think the judgment of
that or any other review, or the judgment of any man or of any united
body of men, can contravene the judgment of public opinion, and because
this Quarterly Review itself has been for so many years one of the
loudest and most open-mouthed advocates for paying the Roman
Catholics in Ireland, and, of course, the Presbyterian clergy along with
them. I will not raise any prejudice against any portion of my fellow-
citizens in respect of religion ; as long as they are good citizens they
ought to be dealt with in the same manner ; but this had been the
favourite nostrum of that particular political review which has been an
organ of great importance, and has spoken in past years for the mass of
the Tory party. And, gentlemen, this is your choice. Now, you will
observe, on the part of the Government no plan is opposed to our plan - f
our plan is to remove and put an end to the Establishment, the plan of the
Government is to resist our plan and nothing else. The Government of the
country has no plan and no policy to offer you. 1 say it is utterly useless
to talk of what is called reforming abuses in the Church of Ireland,
and the report of the Commissioners that has lately been presented
proves and demonstrates the total inutility of any such scheme. I have
ventured also to show this that under that system which we have
maintained for the last 300 years, and especially during the last 100
years, though we have been removing by degrees the pressure of the
unjust and even cruel laws by which we kept down for some time the
population of Ireland, Protestantism has been dwindling away, not-
60 SPEECHES OF THE EIGHT HOX. W. E. GLADSTONE.
withstanding that we maintained our Church Establishment in possession
of all the ecclesiastical property of the country. Gentlemen, this, in
my opinion, is a matter of the utmost gravity, because ifc appears to me
that it is perfectly idle to call those who would put an end to the
Establishment in Ireland the adversaries of Protestantism unless it can
be shown that the maintenance of the present system has resulted in
benefit to Protestantism. We assert the direct contrary, and we
support our doctrine not by vague and still less by unmannerly
exclamations, but by showing, from the public records that are accessible
to us at different periods, that the number of Protestants in Ireland
relatively to the Roman Catholics steadily diminished for a century or
more, and that if that diminution has been stopped within thelast fewyears,
it has been stopped owing to the operation of that fearful visitation of
Providence, the Irish famine, which decimated the Eoman Catholic
population, and owing to those social agencies which carry them by
hundreds and thousands to the shores of the United States. Gentle-
men, every other plea that has been set up is as idle as those pleas. "When
it is said that the maintenance of the Church Establishment in Ireland
mitigates religious animosity, I contend that it inflames religious
animosity. There is no country where men of the Irish race are placed
side by side with men of the English race, and where they do not get
along tolerably except in Ireland. Then it is said that the Roman Catholics
would never be satisfied, and would demand the repeal of the Union. Why,
gentlemen, that was the reason that was always urged against every
moderate and rational plan of Parliamentary reform. It was said, " The
people will not be satisfied without universal suffrage and without their
having a republic." In point of fact, it is the old principle on which our
antagonists systematically ask that you will refuse a request which is
reasonable because it may be followed by one that is unreasonable,
whereas the principle on w r hich we desire to act is this grant our
requests which are reasonable, and then you will have greater power to
resist the requests which are unreasonable. In saying this do not let
me be supposed to insinuate, for I do not believe, that there is that
disposition on the part of the people of Ireland to make these unreason-
able requests. It is in my opinion cruel to say that the people of Ireland,
alienated as a large part of them may now be, cannot be mollified, cannot
be conciliated, by justice. I know of nothing that warrants us for a
moment in treating them as unworthy to be associated with us. We
have never thought them unworthy of serving the purpose of our con-
venience. Lancashire has not been ashamed to profit by their labour.
England has not been ashamed to profit by their valour. In the best
time of your army one-half of its ranks have been filled by Irishmen,
and after thus turning them to account after thus getting out of them
all we can, are we, forsooth, brave and chivalrous England, to cast upon
them a look of scorn and say, " Reason and justice have no empire over
you. You are the creatures of passion and caprice, and therefore we
will deny to you the rights of equality and freedom " ? I repudiate with
all the force of which I am capable doctrines so unjust to them, so
unworthy of yourself, so unworthy of that glorious past of our history
on which our Conservative opponents are sometimes fond of dwelling,
and so unworthy of the glorious future towards which, as I hope and
trust, and believe, with your aid, the Liberal policy will lead us.
SPEECH
DELIVERED IN THE
TOWN HALL, ORMSKIRK
OCTOBER 21sT, 1868.
I WILL follow the example of my friend Mr. Hill, and without preface
upon matters of form or ceremony, at once proceed to say that I address
you as that portion of the South- West Lancashire constituency which
perhaps may best, upon the whole, be taken to represent the important
agricultural interest of this county, and I do not think that either my
hon. and respected friend Mr. Grenf'ell or myself have any cause to feel
abashed in appearing before those of you who are connected with the
agricultural interests of the land. There has been, indeed, a class of
politicians in England who have been called the farmers' friends, and
their great characteristic has been this, that they have always encouraged
the farmer to lean upon props that broke under his hand and pierced
it, and to call for remedies for his difficulties that were totally unattain-
able. On the other hand, there has been a class of persons known as
the adherents of free trade, who have ever held this language to the
agricultural and various other interests, that no one of them had any
right to be supported at the expense of the rest of the community. But,
nt the same time, amidst much unbelief and much mockery, they told
the agricultural interests of this country and I am bound to say that
1 don't believe the agricultural interest of Lancashire ever wanted much
telling they told the agricultural interests of the country in other
parts, where more delusion prevailed, that the true source of their
strength, as of the strength of us all, was in the utmost possible freedom
of industry and commerce. You know the state of things in this
district. You know the markets on which you depend. You know
whether the great market of Liverpool, with which the whole of this
neighbourhood is so much connected, is or is not now a larger market
i'i, \\as in times' of monopoly and restriction. It would be idle, for
62 SPEECHES OP THE EIGHT HON. W. E. GLADSTONE.
it would seem to argue a supposition on my part of your being ignorant
of matters which you know perfectly, if I were to enter into details
on these subjects, interesting and profoundly important as they
are. In considering matters that are of practical importance to the
county ratepayers, the mind of Parliament has of late years been very
much turned, and I think very naturally and properly turned, to the
question of local expenditure. Now the local expenditure of this
country is very considerable, and not only has it always been very con-
siderable, but of late it has been subjected to great and rapid increase.
I am by no means prepared to pass any general censure upon the needs
and purposes for which the additions have been made to the local
expenditure, and so far as my very limited knowledge goes, I do not
believe that you have any reason to feel dissatisfied with the spirit in
which the local expenditure, and the county rate particularly, ia
administered in this county, or in this portion of the county ; therefore
it is by no means in the Avay of censure that I have in my address to
you ventured to tell you that I think the time has come when there
ought to be a change in the law. Our law with respect to local rates
and expenditure is, like many other of our laws, far from being
symmetrical or scientific in its construction. In the parishes we all
must agree that the ultimate burden of the rates comes upon the
landlord. Whether they be parochial rates or borough rates, they will
at last find their way to the landlord. However, the sole power of
voting you know in the parish vestries is with the ratepayer, and if the
landlord happens not to be an occupier, he has no control
whatever over the rates. Well, I do not know that there is any very
great evil in that, although it appears to be a somewhat anomalous
arrangement; but, as regards the county rate, the case is notably
inverted, because there, although again the rate ultimately finds its way
to the landlord, yet in the county as in the parish, the rate comes in the
first instance upon the occupier, who is apt to feel the pinch at a time
when the rates are growing, but he would get the first benefit when the
rates are diminished. The persons who administer the rates are the
magistrates of the county, in the choice of whom he has no share or
part whatever. Now, gentlemen, I own that I am of opinion that
representation in all these matters of expenditure is a good and
sound principle. It is the old principle of our Constitution
generally, both Imperial and local. I am friendly to it, not because
there is no clamour on the subject, but I am friendly, because
it would give a control to the ratepayers in the choice of their
representatives, over the expenditure of the rates by those who pay
them. It implies no disparagement of those who have exercised their
discretion, but I believe the operation would be good, and would tend
to enlighten the public mind on some difficult and threatening ques-
tions that are coming forward as to the relation between the local arid
the Imperial expenditures and the expediency of throwing the local
rates upon the public treasury.
I now pass from that subject, and will address you upon another one
of great public interest in the present contest that which relates to the
condition of Ireland, and particularly of the Church of Ireland. Ol'ten as
I have had the honour of addressing my constituents upon this matter,
SPEECHES OF THE EIGHT HOtf. W. E. GLADSTONE. 63
the subject is by no means exhausted, for here I must own that our
opponents endeavour to make up for the want weight in their objections
by the number which they make. Therefore it is necessary for us to
make draughts on your patience to bury those objections, in the full
confidence that the result of these discussions will be the establishment
of truth. I wish to say a few words as to the view I take of the attitude
held at this time by the different influential bodies, and more especially
the different religious bodies, as to the future of this great question. If
you look first at the House of Commons, you cannot but see the manner
in which it has been treated by the present House of Commons, which
seems to many a clear indication of the events that are about to arise;
and at this moment I am not addressing you as Liberal politicians
although nearly the whole of those present may probably be Liberal
politicians but I' am endeavouring to lodge an appeal to the good sense
of my countrymen, independently of political distinctions. The Parlia-
ment that is now sitting was elected in a period of extraordinary calm.
The moderation of sentiment by which it was characterised in some
instances may have been justly thought to proceed from lethargy and
torpor, and yet that Parliament, upon receiving the appeal that was
made to it, and, in spite of the opposition of the executive Government,
has passed at once by large majorities a Bill, I will venture to say, by
far the most important of any Bill which upon a constitutional subject has
ever been passed by any Opposition in any period of our Parlia-
mentary career. And observe, gentlemen, the mode of opposition
that was adopted. The other day there was sent to me, among many
documents that reached me, a lecture delivered by a gentleman I
believe a clergyman from the sister island against the disestablishment
of the Irish Church. He had migrated to this country for the purpose
of lecturing on that subject, and you will not be surprised to learn
that the general colouring of his lecture was warm. We, gentlemen,
were pretty smartly dealt with, so far as epithets would go, in the
course of the lecture; but the climax of the lecturer's eloquence and of
his indignation was arrived at when he came to consider, not the conduct
of the assailants, but the conduct of defenders of the Irish Church. He
did not scruple to say that if our object was attained, it would be owing,
not to the skill or determination with which we had made the assault,
but to the half-hearted, feeble, and cowardly manner these are not my
words, gentlemen, they are the words, or the equivalents of the words, of
the lecturer in which what was called the defence was conducted.
Now, observe what has happened. The highest authority the Prime
Minister has said, in a written document, that the consequences of
the disestablishment of the Irish Church would be much more formid-
able to this country than those of a foreign conquest. These are the
written words of the present Prime Minister. My Resolutions, there-
fore, proposed something more formidable than foreign conquest. And
how were they opposed? They were met by a motion which was the
deliberate result of all the counsels and examinations of the Cahinet,
moved by Lord Stanley, to the effect that a question of so much import-
ance had better be postponed till next Parliament. Now, when, on the
one hand, you are told by the Government that the matter was more
ruinous and destructive than that of foreign conquest, and when the
4 SPEECHES OP THE EIGHT HON. W. E. GLADSTONE.
only remedy they had to offer was the suggestion that this question,
more formidable than foreign conquest, should be dealt with early in the
next Parliament, instead of at that time, every man of sense may see that
there is a half-heartedness, and perhaps an uncertainty of counsel, a want
of concord as to what should be the course of action on the part of those
who call themselves the defenders of the Irish Church, that would,
as my friend the lecturer says, be fatal to any cause on the face of the
earth. After speaking of the House of Commons, I must say that I do
not look with any dismay to the attitude of the House of LorJs upon
this question. I may regret, and I do regret very much, the attitude
taken by some particular peers, and even by one or two who have been
considered arid consider themselves as faithful adherents of what they
call the old Liberal creed. Lord Overstone, for example, a gentleman
of conspicuous skill and talent in the disposal of all monetary questions,
has felt constitutional scruples with respect to the Irish Church. Far
be it from me to question tor one moment the honour or character of any
man. If I did so I should only expose myself to most j ust blame ; but this
I think it fair to say, that when gentlemen claim your assent in opposing
us upon the gr >und that they adhere to the Liberal creed, I very
naturally, who have certainly no better claim to the title of Liberal than
other men, and perhaps a worse claim I very naturally look back to
those former facts of public life and history in which my name has been
associated with Liberal measures : and, as I recollect very well, at the
time of the Treaty of Commerce with France, and at the time when we
made great onward strides in the commercial and financial policy which
has received the approval even of the present Government since they
came into office, at that time Lord Overstone thought it necessary to
declare in the House of Lords that he looked upon the manner in which
the commercial legislation of this country was conducted as fat d to the
credit and prosperity of the country; and therefore if the prophecies
of Lord Overstone wtre so very considerably baulked of their effect
upon that great occasion, it is excusable in me, at any rate, who was
then, as now, the main object of the censure, to console myself a little by
looking back to the p riod, and to the results which have since followed,
and to say within my own mind, " As it then was, so it now will be, and
the present prophets of ruin and disaster will hereafter be compelled to
smile upon the beneficial results of the policy that was then opposed."
Gentlemen, I come now to two bodies, which I shall take together the
Nonconformists of this country and the Presbyterians of Scotland. I
do not include the Wesleyans, because I will refer to them separately.
I think there never was a time when the Nonconformist body of this
country and the Presbyterian body in Scotland were more heartily and
cordially united than now in the support of the policy which we profess
in reference to the E tablished Church of Ireland. I mention this for
the purpose of saying that 1 feel that the assent and adhesion of these
bodies are like an unassail ible bulwark and wall built up around us to
fortify us, it we wanted fortifications, against those who accuse us of
being the enemies, forsooth, of the Protestant religion. They pay a
very bad compliment to the instinct of the Nonconformists of England
and the shrewd and canny Presbyterians of Scotland, who think that
they have not got the power of scenting enmity to Protestantism ; for
SPEECHES OF THE EIGHT HON. W. E. GLADSTONE. 65
I apprehend, if Protestantism has determined, devoted, thorough-going
uncompromising adherents, these men seven or eight millions of them
are the very men to whom that title belongs, without any disparagement
to the others to whom it also belongs. Now, gentlemen, the Wesleyans
likewise, I believe, have assumed au attitude upon this subject on which
I may remark with some satisfaction. I will not presume to say that
there is the same unanimity among them the same approach to
unanimity because I think that would be too much to say ; but
when you recollect how very stiffly the Wesleyans in former times
have as a body adhered to the principle of national Church estab-
lishments, we must not be amazed if they do not all of them at the same
moment open their eyes to the grave and weighty considerations which
make it impolitic and unjust to maintain a State Establishment in
Ireland. Great progress has been made among them, and my belief is
that the majority probably the great majority of that very influential
body will be found supporting the candidates of the Liberal party at
the elections which are now about to be held. I do not feel that I come
upon at all more tender ground when from the Nonconformists of this
country I pass to the Irish bishops and clergy, for I do not pass to them
with the view of expressing any disappointment at the conduct which they
have in general pursued ; on the contrary, it appears to me although, of
course, there have been exceptions that we have considerable reason to
anticipate that a large portion of that body will be disposed, and dis-
posed while there is yet time, to take the path that wisdom and prudence
dictate. A very considerable number of persons aye, and some very
eminent persons in the Church of Ireland have opened their eyes fco
the certainty of that which is about to arrive, and, as I believe, are
carefully, soberly thinking in what manner they can best meet the
crisis. Now, gentlemen, no one can be more determined or uncompro-
mising in the character of the language he uses than I am when I speak
of my hostility to the Irish Church as a National Establishment. There
are no words too strong, provided they be within the limits of decorum
and propriety, to state that hostility. I draw a broad distinction
between the Establishment and the Church, but, even as regards the
Establishment, this I feel that we are bound to consult in our mode of
procedure the dictates of equity and fairness. And there is one thing,
gentlemen, that I will be no party to doing, and that is to destroying
the Irish Church Establishment by what I call, or what the doctors
would call, the method of depletion bleeding it to death. I believe
that is one of the most cruel kinds of death to which you can put a
living creature. I rather think, but I have not time to look at any books,
that in the persecutions of the most cruel periods of the Inquisition
bleeding to death was one kind of punishment that was invented, and
unless 1 am much mistaken, we have had a great discussion in the news-
papers, not many months ago, as to the method of preparing veal for
the tables of the rich, in which likewise the process of depletion was
adopted, and that is a most cruel method of operation. Greutlemen,- if
the Irish Church does not take care, that is the method in which she will
be dealt with, that is the method in which her friends are disposed to
deal with her. Forty years ago the Irish Church had 22 bishops. Now
the Irish Church has 12 bishops. The Commissioners recommend
E
66 SPEECHES OF THE EIGHT HON. W. E. GLADSTONE.
that the Irish Church shall have eight bishops, but the Com-
missioners' recommendations are not thought strong enough, and
it is probable that the Government will improve upon that a
little, and they will most likely suggest six, or five, bishops. I ask
you, gentlemen, if that is not a process of bleeding to death. Now,
that which cheers me and that which pleases me in the attitude of the
Irish clergy and I do not exclude the bishops, at any rate not all of
them is this, that I think that they are beginning to see under the
pressure of events the clear distinction that it is in their power to draw
between the national Establishment and the spiritual Church, and that
this idea is gradually planting and forming itself in their minds, that
they will not for the sake of the national Establishment have the
spiritual Church bled to death. Consequently, gentlemen, I believe
we may look forward to a considerable amount of concurrence on their
part in meeting that which I believe is inevitable, whether they
concur or not, but that which undoubtedly will be effected with much
greater satisfaction to us all in proportion as those who are the
immediate subjects of the operation shall be willing to deal with us
in an amicable manner for the adjustment and settlement of its details.
Gentlemen, I have spoken of the Irish Church, and there are certainly
some strong declarations which have been made by eminent men
among others by the present Archbishop of Dublin against the
removal of the Irish national Establishment of religion. His language
is very strong. His arguments from astronomy are particularly
pointed, and altogether his conclusions are of a somewhat appalling
character. Now, I want to quote the dead Archbishop of Dublin
against the living Archbishop of Dublin. There was a very fine story
of a man who was once famous the great Duke of Ormond whose
son was dead, who said that he preferred his dead son to any living
son on earth. And in this way I will match the dead Archbishop against
the living one. Archbishop AYhately, a man whose name was highly
respected, did not admit that in the sense of political economy the
Irish Church was a burden. I think he was wrong. But, however,
that makes his declaration the more remarkable; and this is his
declaration taken from his life, published by his daughter : " The
establishment of a Protestant Church in Ireland should be viewed,
though no burden, yet as a grievance, as being an insult." And
now for the method of bleeding to death. If you were to cut off three-
fourths of the revenue and then three-fourths of the remainder, you
would not have advanced one step forward towards conciliation as long
as the Protestant Church is called the National Church ; and my belief
is, gentlemen, that there are many of the clergy in Ireland, and that
there are some of the dignified clergy, perhaps some bishops in Ireland,
who are not very far from agreeing with that sentiment of Archbishop
"Whately. Gentlemen, in the same way it is not difficult to say that I
look hopefully, though that may appear bold, at the attitude of the
.English clergy with regard to this matter. It is quite true that in the
last Session of Parliament the body of the Bishops of England voted
against the Bill which -was introduced to stop all new appointments in
the Irish Church. '] here were two exceptions, two marked exceptions,
at the least. Some might have been absent from other causes, but there
SPEECHES OF THE EIGHT HON. W. E. GLADSTONE, 67
were two whose absence must bave been deliberate. One of them was
Dr. Thirl wall, the Bishop of St. David's, one of the most masculine,
powerful, and luminous intellects that have for generations been known
among the Bishops of England. The other was a bishop of this diocese,
the Bishop of Chester a man who is best described by a monosyllabic
epithet that epithet is "wise" a man whose wisdom, however, and
whose caution, are not greater than his loyalty, and whom the longer
he remains among you the more you will esteem and love. It is im-
possible not to perceive that the attitude of the English clergy in
general though I am thankful to say, not only with many exceptions,
but with many marked exceptions, of persons who are among the best
and among the ablest of their number the attitude of the clergy of the
Established Church in general is hostile to this measure, and it is hostile,
in my opinion, not because a very large portion of those who oppose it
can, to their own minds, justify the existence of the Irish Church,
Establishment, if it stood alone, but because they apprehend the con-
sequences of its fall upon the Established Church of England. Now,
gentlemen, don't let me pretend to say that if the consequences
of this measure were to be injurious to the Church of Eng-
land, I should on that account for one moment feel myself justified
in withholding from my fellow-subjects, the people of Ireland,
what appeared to me to be their clear rights. That is not so. I
am persuaded that such a course as that would indeed, in the long
run, be most detrimental to the Church of England ; for I believe
the existence of the Church of England to be of necessity associated
with no injustice, and very sorry indeed should I be to see it placed on
a foundation that would involve its passing over to a different character.
But I wish to point out to you that this idea that because the Irish
Established Church ought not to exist, therefore the English Established
Church is to be done away with is an idea which may have been
honestly prompted and propagated by the fears and prejudices of some,
but has no foundation in the solid judgment of the community. I
cannot go as far as those who say it is necessary to maintain an
Established Church in order to secure the possession of religious
liberty. That I look upon as an idle and baseless doctrine. The
foundations of religious liberty are laid with perfect certainty and
solidity on the principles of universal toleration and equality of
religious rights. And this is no mere opinion of mine ; for we have
only to look across the water, to look at the United States of America,
which have no Established Church either connected with the Federal
Government, or connected with the State Governments, and where,
at the same time, it is entirely undeniable that the most perfect
religious liberty is enjoyed. But if there be some who have a prejudice
against the United States because they think it is not fair to quote the
example of a Eepublic though for my part I am always ready to quote
the example of any Government whatsoever on points where it can
be made available for our instruction but if that be their feeling,
let them with me simply cross the St. Lawrence into Canada.
Canada is under a monarchical Government. Canada has no sem-
blance of an Established Church. Canada has passed Acts of
Parliament, the very preamble of which recites that it is desirable
E 2
68 SPEECHES OF THE EIGHT HON. W. E. GLADSTONE.
to put an end to all semblance of connection between Church and State
in that country, aud has acted on those principles. Yet, who is there
that for one moment will pretend to say that religious liberty does not
prevail in Canada ? That was a country somewhat resembling, but far
less aggravated somewhat resembling the case of Ireland. Resembling
it in this important point that the members of the Church of England
formed a very small proportion of the whole community. And here,
gentlemen, I must digress for one moment to revert to what I stated
just now about the case of many eminent and excellent clergymen,
and even bishops, in connection with the Anglican Church, who are
favourable to the policy which we, the Liberal party, recommend.
Among them I can't fail to notice one, little known probably to you,
for his sphere of action was far distant Bishop Eulford, of Montreal,
the Metropolitan of the Anglican Church in Canada a gentleman
I had the honour to know, and whom no one could know without
respecting or revering, or without perceiving that he was a man of most
solid and piercing understanding and of most commanding qualities.
That gentleman, who died but two months ago, is the bishop under
whom the Canadian Church has undergone this process of disestablish-
ment. I had the honour of seeing him in London during the past year,
and of hearing his opinion from his own lips. About a fortnight before
his death I received a long letter from him stating in detail what had
occurred in Canada. He had seen his Church nourish under the opera-
tion of disendowment, and had it been in his power to reverse the
proceedings nothing would have induced him to make a single retrograde
step. Leaving Canada, I ask what is the true state of the case of the
Church of England ? And here I may observe that at Southport Mr.
Cross recently delivered a challenge to me. At another place I mean
to remind him that he has carefully avoided a number of challenges that
I have given him. In order to set him a good example, and encourage
him to walk in the paths of virtue, I will take up his challenge. He
wants to know whether I will pledge myself, come what may, to support
the Church of England. I shall use my own language in answering
that question, but I will answer it so that any intelligent man may be
satisfied. I think these two things first of all, the Church of England
cannot be disestablished ; and, secondly, I think it ought not to be
disestablished ; and these two propositions taken together are my answer
to the challenge of Mr. Cross. It would rot be difficult for me to
tell you in a few words why I think it cannot be disestablished.
Even the disestablishment of the Church in Ireland, when you
look at it in the face, is like what a little man is sometimes
called upon to do in the working operations of a big job.
I do not think it is beyond our power. I think it is within our power,
and I think that, if you will support us, and put Mr. Grenfell and me
and 300 or 400 more Liberal members into the House of Commons, we
shall be able to manage that. But I own that if I were a member of
the Liberation Society, which I am not, or if I agreed with the principles
of the Liberation Society, which I do not, I should still look two or
three times at the business of disestablishing the Church of England
before I set about it. I ventured to point out in the House of
Commons that if we attempted to disestablish the Church of England
SPEECHES OP THE EIGHT HCXN". W. E. GLADSTONE. 69
on the same principles as we ought certainly to proceed in Ireland
that is, with a perfect regard for vested interests, a careful regard for
property rights, and for private and recent endowments the effect of
that would be that the Church of England, in commencing her existence
as a voluntary society, would, if they took stock, commence with
80,000.000 or 90,000,000 in her pocket. I have met with no one
who is prepared to establish a voluntary religious society, with a capital
of 80 or 90 millions to start with. But in my opinion the Church of
England ought not to be disestablished, and certainly not on account of
any argument drawn from the Church of Ireland. It is impossible to
conceive a greater contrast than that between the cases of the Church of
England and the Church of Ireland. One exception I will make ; I grant
that they are all alike in this and I am thankful that they are alike in
this that they both have bishops and clergy who are earnestly devoted
to their sacred calling, but in everything regarding their position and
situation they are not only unlike, but are directly the opposite. Look to
the past of the Church of England. All of us who are Englishmen,
who are members of the Church of England, and many who are Non-
conformists, know that the history of the Church of England has been
bound up with our national history, and that he who is in sympathy
with the Church of England founds that sympathy in a great degree
upon the honourable and noble recollections connected with it in former
times. But what is the case of Ireland ? Can the Church of Ireland open
up her past ? The very object of every champion of the Church of Ireland
is to avoid it, and the first words that proceed from his lips are these,
" Forget the past." He cannot, he dare not, open the book of history.
There is not a doubt that the Church of Ireland has been art and part
all along for two or three hundred years, throughout past generations
and I do not speak of the present generation she has been art and
part in all the worst and most shameful matters of English policy
towards Ireland. When the penal laws were passed, where were the
Irish bishops ? In the House of Lords passing those penal laws, and
not only consenting to them, but forming a large portion of that House
of Lords when they were adopted. Then remember the tithe war, when
the people were shot down for the collection of dues which were indeed
legally to be exacted, but which were to go to the ministers of an alien
religion. Is it possible you can venture to call up these recollections?
No. You are compelled to exclude the whole of the past from the case
of the Church of Ireland, in order to be able to argue for it at all.
Whereas, in the case of the Church of England, we know very well that
she has been the spiritual nurse of ourselves and of our fathers, and of
even now a very large proportion of the people of the country, but in
former times of a proportion much greater still. The past, then, of the
two Churches is totally different. Then, with regard to the future,
I cannot help feeling sanguine as to the fortunes of the Church
of England, notwithstanding what I do not at all conceal all
the difficulties arising from the internal divisions, and from
scandals that are given and offence that is taken here and there at
particular spots in the country. Still, I am quite satisfied that with an
instructed and devoted clergy, labouring from generation to generation
in their work, as the clergy do, there is every reasonable hope that the
70 SPEECHES OF THE EIGHT HOK. TV. E. GLADSTONE.
clergy of England will continue to discharge in an increasingly satis-
factory manner the responsibilities of their office. I will not trouble
you with a repetition of what you may fairly call a demonstration, in the
case of the Church of Ireland ; but I say that figures fully demonstrate
that the number of Protestants in Ireland, notwithstanding the removal
of the pressure of the penal laws, has diminished, and has not increased.
For the last few years, during which that diminution has been standing
still, it has been owing entirely to the fact that, of the Komaii Catholic
population, a large proportion have been removed from the country, or,
unhappily, removed from life, through causes which, we trust, are of a
wholly exceptional character. Neither the future nor the past of the
Church of England, however, can be for one moment compared with the
Church of Ireland. The arguments in favour of Church Establishments
are all available for the Church of England. In many portions of this
country the Nonconformists would consider, and gladly consider, that
the Church of England is the sole spiritual teacher of the people. Nor
is it only so, but between the Nonconformists and the Church of Eng-
land many kindly, social, and religious relations continue to subsist.
This is not so in Ireland, where the popular sentiment is altogether
against the Church and against everything that belongs to the Church.
But look, I say, at the relative strength of the two Establishments. I
lay down this proposition, that the weakest part of the Church of
England is stronger than the strongest part of the Church of
Ireland. The weakest part of the Church of England I am more or
less conversant with. It is in "Wales. In Wales the Church of Eng-
land is in a minority ; that minority has never been ascertained,
but in some limited districts of Wales it is very small, while in other
parts of Wales, and particularly where English is spoken, the case
approximates more to that of England. But I will assume that the
Church of England does not count more than one quarter of the popu-
lation of Wales, while the Church of Ireland counts quite a quarter or
the population of Ulster. Wales, then, may be taken as the weakest
part of the Church of England, and Ulster as the strongest part of the
Church of Ireland. One-half the proportion, or more than one-half
the people of Ulster, are Eomau Catholics, and are wholly and entirely
set against the Church of Ireland in that province. One-half of the
people are wholly opposed to the Establishment, but that is not true of
the people of Wales. There is no hostility of that character to the
Church Establishment in Wales, and there is nothing to produce
painful and irritated feelings, speaking as a general rule, between the
clergy and the Nonconformist portion of the population. It is now
long since the mass of the Welsh were Church-people. The Dissent of
the people is owing to the past neglect of the clergy. But it does not
amount to a decided religious hostility. But I will give you another
proof: look at the work of education, at'that great work which, had it
not been for the pressure of other subjects, I should have been glad to
have remarked upon concerning its bearing upon the whole country.
Now, I ask of the whole English people, who are the class that have for
the last 30 years borne the burden and heat of the day in England and
even in Wales, with respect to the education of the labouring classes
of the community ? I say they are the clergy. I do not mean to say
SPEECHES OF THE EIGHT HON. W. E. GLADSTONE. 71
that the schoolmasters have not done their duty, but I mean that the
education of the labouring classes has been conducted under the super-
intendence of the clergy, and with the co-operation of the clergy
aye, 'and in a considerable degree at the personal cost of the clergy
and it is owing to their devotion and zeal that the children
have been collected in the day-schools throughout the country.
The overwhelming portion of that work has been in their hands
that is the great moral strength of the Established Church even in
"Wales. But what is the case in Ulster ? The case in Ulster is this
that that fatal antagonism which associates, in the mind of the Irish
peasantry, the Establishment of the country with everything that is odious
and distasteful to it that fatal antagonism which affects the tenure of
land, which affects the direct administration of religion, has gone also
into the province of education ; and that when the "Whig Government of
1831, aided happily at the time by Lord Derby, endeavoured to intro-
duce into Ireland a more liberal system, which would not be odious
and offensive to the Homan Catholic population, the great opponents
of the system, who would not allow it to gain one inch of ground
in any portion of the country where they could keep it out,
were the bishops and the clergy of the Establishment. Gentlemen,
it is not for me to condemn them they were acting according to
their consciences, and they had a right to do so ; but I may point
out the hopelessness of their relation to the masses of the country, even
in the part of Ireland where their position is the best. I am comparing
it with the hopelessness of the position of the clergy in that part of this
kingdom in which the position of the clergy of England is the worst. If
you proceed to survey the country at large, that disparity between the two
cases, which is strong enough even as bet ween Wales and Ulster, becomes
almost ridiculous, at any rate so glaring that it would be a waste of time
and no great compliment to your understanding if I w r ere to dilate upon
it. Gentlemen, the truth i3, the argument of our opponents seems to be,
that between the Church Establishment which does its work in the
main and has the hope of doing it in much in which it may now fall
short between such a Church Establishment on the one hand,
and a Church Establishment on the other hand that does
not do its work, and that has not the smallest hope of doing it,
there is no perceptible difference whatever. !Now that is the argument of
our opponents, and they say if you remove the Church Establishment of
Ireland, which does not do its work, has not done, and cannot do it, the
contagion will be so fatal that you will immediately proceed to remove
the Church Establishment of England, which to a very large portion of
the community does its work already, and which its friends are sanguine
enough to believe will, through the zeal and devotion of its clergy and of
its laity, make its usefulness more and more felt from year to year, and
from generation to generation. Gentlemen, it is true that affairs of
mankind are not always governed by reason. But it is not true, on the
other hand, that they are always governed by madness ; and you really
must, it appears to me, introduce idiocy into the high places of the land
before you can say that because you have thought it right to remove
the Church which is hostile to the people, you will, therefore, take away
a Church which is loved and respected by the people ; because you have
72 SPEECHES OF THE EIGHT HON. W. E. GLADSTONE.
thought it right to remove a Church Establishment which aggravates
every social evil and political difficulty, and which itself will thrive all
the better for being so removed, and removed from the hatred of the
masses of the people, therefore you shall remove a Church which,
on the contrary, is bound up with the sympathies and the recol-
lections of that enormous mass of the people that belong to its
communion, and of no small portion of those who do not owe to it a
direct spiritual allegiance. Now, gentlemen, these are not inflammatory
topics ; they may perhaps even be rather heavy at any rate, they are of
a character that make an appeal, not to the passions, but to the under-
standing. I have not exaggerated, gentlemen, the case of the Church of
Ireland. It is not possible to appreciate all the features of that case
without entering too largely into the history of the country, but it is
summed up in this, that every step and period of that history it has been
in conflict with the Irish nation, and has exhibited the consequences
of this conflict in a thousand lamentable deformities ; for I think Mr.
Cross, in a speech which I hold in my hand, declared a night or two ago
that " he did not hesitate to say with the deepest regret that he believed
the Government of Ireland had been one great mistake for years and
years " ; that is the mode in which Mr. Cross opens his case. What
he promises is apparently a total metamorphosis. Well, but these great
transformations do not ordinarily occur, and the promise of them is far
beyond the power of human strength to fulfil. It is impossible, gentlemen,
that the Irish Church Establishment ever can perform the duties attaching
to an Establishment of national religion. It is of no advantage to
that Establishment to be kept in the enjoyment, or at least in the
possession, of emoluments which are given for services they cannot
perform. You must look also to the view that is taken of these matters
by the people of England ; their mind is quite made up, and depend
upon it the position of this question is enormously altered, or is, I should
say, enormously advanced, by the proceedings of the present year. The
proceedings of the British House of Commons in 1868 have constituted
a virtual pledge and engagement to the people of Ireland. Tour
representatives, gentlemen, have taken a very solemn step in
your name a step which may be called rash and hasty, but
which has been taken upon long, serious, and grave deliberation.
At any rate, the thing is* done. The representatives of the people
have passed a Bill which aims at putting an end to the abusive
system that has existed for centuries in the sister country. That Bill
has been taken by the natives of the sister country as a promise of
better times and better doings for the future. It has gone forth, as
the dove might go forth, bearing the olive-branch of peace. But we
are an expiring House of Commons. We, the present House of
Commons, have no power to renew our action or to fulfil our engage-
ment. The responsibility now rests with you to say by your conduct
at the coming elections whether the fond expectations of Ireland are to
be gratified, or whether once more her hopes are to be crushed and dis-
appointed, and another chapter added to the long annals of her woes.
SPEECH
DELIVERED IN THE
ROYAL MUSIC HALL, SOUTHPORT.
OCTOBER 21sT, 1868.
MR. GASKELL AND GENTLEMEN, You have been pleased, by a vote most
gratifying to my feelings, to acknowledge that in the Parliament which is
now about to expire I have endeavoured to serve you faithfully, and have
not disappointed those pledges or professions in which at the commence-
ment of the Parliament I solicited your support; but, gentlemen, you
have given a practical acknowledgment to the effect which, if possible, is
still more gratifying to me and I believe to my hon. friend. You have
manifested, as you manifest to-night, a zeal in the cause, and a determina-
tion that that zeal shall not evaporate in mere words. You have shown it
in the Eegistration Court, you have shown it in all your proceedings, and
we have only to ask you to persevere in the exertions you have made to
ensure that success which is alike necessary for the fulfilment of our com-
mon aims. Surveying the wide field of politics, we are necessarily com-
pelled to dwell in the main upon those matters which form the subject of
present contention, and I trust of early settlement. I for one have
endeavoured during this controversy to avoid imputations and indiscrimi-
nate onslaught upon the Government. I think nothing can be more worth-
less than the method of warfare which has been so powerfully exposed by Mr.
Grenfell vague, general imputations, most mischievous in character, un-
proved by facts and unsupported by evidence, resting entirely on reference to
the names of the parties with which invidious feelings and suspicions
are associated, and endeavouring to poison or darken the atmosphere of
controversy, which it ought to be the desire of every honest man to
keep clear of every such imputation and suspicion, in order that we may
deal clearly and conclusively with facts.
We have had much controversy during the election upon the subject
of finance, a controversy which I did my best to light up by a
charge of a specific and definite nature. I was so far successful in
the object I have in view that a correspondence began between Mr.
Cross, the Conservative candidate for the county, and Her Majesty's
Chancellor of the Exchequer, of which we were permitted to see the
74 SPEECHES OE T1IE EIGHT HOtf. W. E. GLADSTONE.
results in the public prints. Thereupon I endeavoured to supply Mr.
Cross, at a meeting at Warrington last week, with fresh matter for a
further correspondence ; and my belief is, although I cannot tell you as a
matter of fact, that the further correspondence has been actively
prosecuted, but that it has been thought better not to put the
results in the newspapers. However, our opponents have been active,
and I hold in my hand a tidily-printed pamphlet which assures jus that
one of the most numerous meetings during the contest was held a few nights
ago in the Town-hall of Southport. And, gentlemen, considering that the
Amphitheatre of Liverpool accommodates 4,000 people, and that we have
had the honour of attending other meetings where 3,000 at least have been
present, I marvel at the capacity of your Town-hall, which I understand to
be a building of more moderate dimensions, but which, under the enchanter's
wand of some scribe connected with the electioneering meetings of the other
party, has thus been expanded to convey to us an overpowering idea of
their activity and power. I read in the London newspapers [a day or two
ago that in the great metropolis an elderly gentleman presented himself
before one of the police-magistrates, and his object was to induce the police-
magistrates to interfere to prevent his neighbour's cock from crowing. The
police-magistrate sympathised with the feeble nerves of the applicant, and
promised to do all he could. Now, it was very natural, I think, for a can-
didate for South Lancashire to draw a kind of similitude between the cir-
cumstance in the London police-court and the circumstances in which we
are placed, but I do assure you that I am not in the smallest degree anxious
to prevent our neighbour's cock from crowing. My object is not to do as
the opposite candidates have done that is to launch out into vague and
undefined statements incapable of being confuted, because incapable of
being understood ; but to give clear, distinct, and definite propositions upon
which the intelligent electors of this county may each for himself deliver an
aye or a no with a view to guiding his conduct at the election. Now, 1
think we have had enough of discussion on the question of expenditure for
me to sum up very briefly the main propositions that have been pro-
pounded, and in some cases not challenged at all, in other cases made sub-
jects of discussion. It was stated on the part of our opponents that they
prepared moderate Estimates in the year 1858. Our answer was, " Those
Estimates were the Estimates of the Liberal Government which preceded
you fyou found them prepared when you came into office, and you added to
them as the expenditure of the year." Their next statement was that we
proposed high Estimates in the years 1859 and 1860. Our answer was
that the high Estimates of 1859, which we found upon entering office in the
month of June of that year, were the Estimates of our predecessors, and,
therefore, pre-charges which had been already incurred when we came into
office. We did not deny that we were responsible along with them
because we adopted for the remainder of the year Estimates of that de-
scription ; but we showed how absurd it was to make that a matter of charge
against ourselves. The next charge was that in 1860 those Estimates were
increased. We showed, without entering into any question of praise or
blame upon the policy of the proceedings, that, v the Estimates of 1860
were incurred in consequence of the China war, and that war had broken
out in the shape of a disaster to the British fleet at the mouth of the Peiho,
a few days after we assumed office in London, under instructions which
SPEECHES OF THE EIGHT HON. W. E. GLADSTONE. 75
were distinctly and solely the act of our predecessors. Well, gentlemen,
so far for these matters. It has been said, that if it be true that three
millions were added to the expenditure in two years, we, says Mr. Turner,
ought to have objected to it. Now, gentlemen, as regards the main
charges of the country connected with the defensive services, Mr. Turner's
political experience should have taught him this, that it is impossible for you
to keep the Government in office and at the same time to reduce by votes
of the House of Commons those amounts of force which that Government
believes to be necessary for the defence of the country. A motion to
diminish, for example, the army or the navy proposed by an Administra-
tion, is, in effect, a motion for the removal of the Administration. Had
we made the motion, we should have made a motion for the removal of the
Administration. Was it right that we should have made that motion ?
Gentlemen, in my opinion it would not be right, because the] Government
had been engaged in matters more important even than the question of a
greater or less expenditure, and it would have been factious on our part,
for the sake of any subject which, though important, was yet secondary at the
moment in comparison with the great object, to endeavour to impede them in,
their career. That is, as regards the great services of the country, from which
the principal increased charge has resulted. To the increased charge we
have objected in our places. We have endeavoured to point out in many
particulars how erroneous the policy has been, and the mode of proceed-
ings under which it has been incurred ; but as I tell you, if you want to
have economy with regard to the navy and army of the country, there is but
one way of getting it, and that is by having an economical Government.
Well, gentlemen, u challenge has been thrown out to me by Mr. Cross, and
it is this. He says that between 1852 and 1866 there was an increase of
expenditure from 1 7 millions to 30 millions, and that during almost all the
time Liberal Governments were in office. Now, gentlemen, I am very
sorry that Mr. Cross misled, no doubt, by some of those authorities in
London who practised upon his simplicity is not accurate in this and in
several instances in the statements which he makes. I am quite sure this
inaccuracy of his is unintentional. There has been a great increase in the
expenditure of the country, but the increase of the expenditure for defensive
purposes between 1852 and 1866, when we left office, was not 17 to 30
millions, but from 17 millions to between 24 millions and 25 millions
certainly under 25,000,000, or say, in round numbers, 25,000,000. It is
not desirable that the little odd sums of 5,000,000 should be laid on when
they do not exist : and I observe the same matter again, because Mr. Cross
says that Lord Palmerston's Government spent 10,000,000 upon fortifi-
cations. Again, Mr. Cross's authorities in London whose letters, as I
have said, we have not seen in the newspapers this time, but it can hardly
be the Chancellor of the Exchequer have misled him. Lord Palmerston
never spent 10,000,000 on fortifications. I do not know whether,
when Lord Palmerston died, much more than three millions
had been spent; but the plan adopted contemplated, and the Act
authorised, an expenditure of about 5,000,000, a little more or a little
less, or just one-half the sum mentioned by Mr. Cross. But Mr. Cross
asked me why there was an increase between 1852 and 1866. Well,
gentlemen, I will not now go into the question as to whether every
particular of that increase has been justified; but this is a self-govern-
76 SPEECHES OT THE EIGHT HON. W. E. GLADSTONE.
ing country, and you all know that in the interval between 1852
and 1866 there was at times a great sense of insecurity in the public mind,
and a great call for increase in the defensive resources of the country.
It will be found that these causes concurred in point of time with scien-
tific inventions which led to transformations more than once of the whole
of the munitions of war, and likewise of all the ships that compose our
fleet, and it is not the question now whether these things were in all cases
precisely right or not. My answer to Mr. Cross is very simple. What
was done between 1852 and 1866 was not the act of the Liberal Government
in office ; it was not even the act of the Tory Opposition, which always
wanted them to do more and to spend more ; it was in the main, whether
rightly or wrongly, the demand of the public opinion of the country, and I
tell you plainly that when the public opinion of the country thinks fit to set
itself in favour of expenditure there is certainly no other power upon earth
which can possibly resist it. That, I hope, is a fair answer to Mr. Cross's
challenge, and I will now point out to you the challenges which I have
given, and to which no answer whatever has been made. My first challenge
was this, that the increase which has arisen from 1866 to 1868 has not
been called for by any demands of public opinion; the Ministers have turned
the tide from an ebbing to a flowing tide of expenditure, and they have
done that by their own act and from their own view, in spite of many
remonstrances on points of great importance from the Opposition, and
without the slightest pressure from the people at large. Therefore this is
an augmentation which is in no sense to be referred to the public opinion of
the country ; it has been the pure act of the present so-called Conservative
Administration. My second challenge was this that whenever we had a
high expenditure setting in under Liberal Governments all the efforts of
the Tory Opposition were efforts to make that high expenditure higher, and
that proposition I was not content to state in general terms, but I quoted
particular instances in which it had been attempted, in regard to fortifica-
tions and with regard to other matters, by the members of the Opposition,
availing themselves of what they thought a current of opinion out of doors
favourable to expenditure, to force us into greater outlays, and into laying
greater burdens on the country. To that challenge no answer has been
given, and no notice whatever has been taken of it. When we were told that
we never objected to the extravagance of the present Government I speak
now with regard to its civil expenditure my answer was by an instance that
I have given when a motion was made, happily by a member on the Conserva-
tive side of the House, which gave us a favourable opportunity, inasmuch as it
could not be called a party motion. We voted for that motion and carried
it by a majority of one. The Government divided twice upon it, and were
twice beaten by one ; and among those who voted against us was Mr.
Charles Turner, the member for South Lancashire. It does appear to me
to show very considerable courage, on the part of those who have done
their best, by their implicit obedience to the Government, to keep up that
high expenditure when the Opposition endeavoured to reduce it, to throw
a challenge in the face of the Opposition, and say, " Why did you not keep
it down P" Well, gentlemen, I have also stated this, that ever since we
went out of office the present Government, for what purpose I will not
say I think in some instances in consequence of the disposition
that there always is to endeavour to create local political interests for the
SPEECHES OF THE EIGHT HON. W. E. GLADSTONE. 77
purpose of elections at the expense of the public purse and neither
Mr. Cross nor Mr. Turner, nor their informants in London, will venture
to question what I say that from that time to this her Majesty's pre-
sent Government has been granting, at the solicitation of individuals and
classes, sums of the public money that we had steadily refused, and has
been increasing in cases which we have granted. Now, gentlemen, T think
that all these are tolerably definite charges. I have supported them in
each case by one or more particular instances, which I cannot now endea-
vour to repeat, for the fidelity of our friends below us has already placed
them on record. These challenges have not been taken up, and it has not
been attempted to answer them, and I say, therefore, gentlemen, as we are
now approaching to the close of these electioneering controversies, that
the charge of a needless and wanton expenditure is effectually fastened
upon the heads of Her Majesty's present Government and of those who
supported them in the House of Commons. Now gentlemen, as T have
said, I do not make indiscriminate charges against Her Majesty's Govern-
ment, nor do I say that in every department its conduct of public affairs
has been without credit. It is more pleasant to me though perhaps there
are some would not believe it to notice their good deeds than their bad
ones. The conduct of foreign affairs has certainly drawn down from,
me no censure and no reproach. I believe that Lord Stanley has been
actuated in his administration'at the Foreign Office by good sense, by quiet
moderation, by a love of constitutional freedom in all parts of the world,
which we always expect from our Foreign Minister and from every Mi-
nister, and, lastly, by a steady regard for the rights of other nations and
governments as the only condition on which we can expect our own rights
to be respected. I think that the reputation of Lord Stanley as Foreign
Minister, is in no danger at all except it be from the extravagant eulogies
of men who ascribe to him the powers of magic and enchantment, and who
tell us that the peace of Europe has been preserved the peace for instance,
between France and Prussia has been preserved entirely by the authori-
tative interposition of Lord Stanley. These eulogies, gentlemen, are
extravagant caricatures, and I have not the least doubt -that a man
of his good sense laughs at them in his sleeve ; they are among the ex-
pedients which are brought into play at election times, when such
things, and a number of other odd things, too, are supposed to pass
muster. Gentlemen, I have in the House of Commons had the satis-
faction of acknowledging that the whole of the executory detail of the
Abyssinian expedition, as far as we are competent to judge of it which is
only in the same degree as you, the public was conducted by the Govern-
ment and by the Secretary of State for India in a manner that did credit
to his administrative abilities. These things, gentlemen, are pleasant to
acknowledge. There is no such a desperate love of the element of strife
and contention in the minds of public men as outside observers sometimes
suppose. But it is not because some of the departments of the country are
unexceptionally conducted that we can afford to overlook those great
questions of cardinal policy which go to affect, not the mere routine of
affairs, not the subject of a little more or a little less expenditure, but
which descend to the very root of our social and our political being ; for
the question, gentlemen, of the peace, security, and satisfaction of Ireland
is a question which touches the unity and the integrity of the Empire.
78 SPEECHES OP THE EIGHT HON. W. E. GLADSTONE.
Now, gentlemen, there are one or two points connected with this great
subject of the national Establishment of religion in Ireland which I have
yet to open, and which I will endeavour now to bring before you. At a
recent meeting I said that I would not discuss, inasmuch as it is not
possible to discuss with great advantage all things at once I stated
that I would not discuss one plan that has been .proposed for deal-
ing with the religious question in Ireland viz. the plan of creating a
number of Established Churches. Gentlemen, that has been at various
times a popular plan, and a plan supported by Government authorities,
and it was supported in March last by Her Majesty's Government, but the
emphatic expression of the displeasure of this country has driven it into
the shade. But as we never have had from the members of the Govern-
ment any disclaimer upon principle of that which they adopted and declared
as a corner-stone of their policy for Ireland when Mr. Disraeli became
First Minister, it is quite possible that, under favourable circumstances, it
may be reproduced. So I think it desirable that we should look for a
moment at the merits of that plan. The object we have in view is, as my
friend Mr. Grenfell has said, to exclude from this debate all considerations
of theological contention. These subjects are not to be idly sneered at.
They are of the deepest importance to the happiness of man, and they
touch the inmost feelings ; but it is fatal to the hopes of satisfactory
political discussion if we allow these considerations to come between us
and the fulfilment of the principle of civil justice, and that is the plain
answer to those who, because the .Roman Catholics are in a minority in
England, and because their religion is considerably different from that
which prevails with the majority, endeavour by creating a prejudice and
outcry against them to prejudice plans which have no connection whatever
with the merits or demerits of their religion, but are founded solely on
the recognition of their religious equality. I ventured to say the other
day in another place that the Church of England could not be dis-
established, and that it ought not to be disestablished two proposi-
tions perfectly distinct from one another; and so I venture to say
that the plan of all endowment, the plan of meeting the difficulty
in Ireland by multiplying the number of churches in that country
by extending the narrow grant to Presbyterians into a sufficient
endowment, and by granting a small endowment to the Eoman Catholics
I say that this plan, which was shadowed by the Government in March,
is a plan which cannot be carried into execution, and ought not to be
carried into execution. You know that pretty well yourselves ; you know
that the Episcopalians of England, the Presbyterians of Scotland, and the
Roman Catholics of Ireland are all opposed to it, and in a self-governed
country it is a difficult matter to pass a law to which all the three countries
are opposed ; but I am bound to say that, although I am not prepared to
censure Mr. Pitt and other great men who looked with favour upon
a plan of this kind, I think the Koman Catholics in objecting to
the plan have judged wisely as well as for their own interests. I
do not mean for the narrow and sectarian interests of their religion ; I
mean for the establishment of peace and goodwill between them, and
their neighbours, and between them and the State. If large sums
were given for the endowment of the Eoman Catholic Church in Ireland
there would be an expectation that in return for that endowment conces-
SPEECHES OF THE RIGHT HON. TV. E. GLADSTONE. 79
sions should be made by the Eoman Catholics and a power of interference
be allowed by the British Government in the internal affairs of that Church,
which would be a perpetual source of dissension ; and because I think that
the existence of such subjects of discord would be equally injurious and
mischievous to them and us, and alike fatal to the purpose we have in
view of establishing harmony in Ireland, I am of opinion that the plan of
all endowment, which the Government choose as the proper method of
dealing with the Irish Church, while it cannot be adopted is a plan which
ought not to be adopted. There are those who say that the plan never
was intended by the Government. I am going to read a paragraph from
a newspaper published in Borne and no newspaper is published in Rome
without the authority and approval of the Government of that city. I
wish to show the view taken by that Government of the declaration of the
British Ministry. The newspaper is the Roman Observer of March, 1868,
and the article in question is a review of the debate on Mr. Maguire's
motion. It says : " Mr. Disraeli recognised the necessity of endowing
the Roman Catholic Church in Ireland, and that it might not be supposed
that he wished to give stipends to the Catholic priests he declared that
lie rejected the idea of what is commonly called paying the clergy. He
declared accordingly that the Catholics should have the right of property
in Ireland as elsewhere. If together with the Catholic Church Mr.
Disraeli wishes that the Anglican Church should have property, we
must not forget that he is the Minister of a Protestant Government."
That was the attitude of the Government now in power, which has
raised the premature cry of " ISTo Popery," which is the promoter
of the cry of " Defender of Royal Supremacy," and the proclaimer
of all kinds of mischief from the policy of freedom and equality. That was
the aspect of the policy of the Government in March last, and you may
rely upon it that the person who wrote that paragraph did not do so from his
own opinion, but from inspiration conveyed through other channels and from
higher quarters. So much, gentlemen, for the subject of what I call the
all-endowment system. But one of the most popular charges against us
is that our policy is addressed to the encouragement of Ultramontanism
a long word, gentlemen, a difficult word, a word of which the significance
has caused a good deal of trouble to the world in former times, and may yet*
again. It is not for us, I think, in this place to pronounce any opinion
at all upon religious questions affecting the internal condition of the Roman
Catholic Church. But the question of Ultramontanism is partly religious
and partly political. I look at the political part of it exclusively.
In that light as I understand it I may be wrong, and I have no
authority to speak it is that system of opinions which includes a great
number of political and civil questions that are the very opposite of those
on which we act in these matters. In this country we say that religious
opinions ought not to be made the ground of disabilities for civil office.
"Ultramontanism, if I understand the matter aright, says that they ought
to be made such a ground. In this country we think that the circulation
of opinion should be free. Ultramontanism, if I understand it, is a system,
which states that the circulation of opinion should not be free. And so on
through a long string of propositions, nearly the whole of which were treated
of some few years ago in two documents emanating from the Roman Court,
not referring to matters of faith or belief, or I would not touch them here
80 SPEECHES OF THE BIGHT HOE". W. E. GLADSTONE.
if they did. I do not look upon them in that point'of view, but as contain-
ing undoubtedly an enunciation of opinions of which I will only say that
they are entirely opposed to the practice of this country. The charge
against us is that we are favourable to these Ultramontane opinions, and
that we are about to promote them. My answer is double. In the first
place, I say if you want to favour Ultramontanism among Eoman Catholics
among the hundreds of thousands of Roman Catholics in this country,
and among the millions of Eoman Catholics in Ireland I will give you a
recipe to do it, and it is this: treat them with civil injustice; compel
them to view themselves, not as members of this great and noble country,
having common interests and brotherly feelings with you, but as members
of a confederation apart, as men who are oppressed or discountenanced
on account of their religion, and who, being men of honour
and spirit, on that account cling to it or cling to everything that
comes to them in its name with the greatest fondness and tenacity.
That, gentlemen, in my humble opinion, is the true way to promote
Ultramontane opinions. But again, if you will allow me, I am going \ to
give you another short passage from the same source. The Roman
Observer of March, 1868, reviewing the debate in the House of Commons
on the motion of Mr. Maguire, gives an opinion expressed in Borne under
authority. Referring to the two documents that I have already mentioned
to you, and which are known in Rome and in the Roman Catholic com-
munity as the Syllabus and Encyclical Letter, the writer says :
" Among the speeches pronounced on this occasion is conspicuous that
of the First Minister, Mr. Disraeli, who pronounced so many noble truths
in defence of the proposition set forth in^ the Syllabus and Encyclical of
Pius the Ninth as should raise a blush on the faces of those pigmies in
Italy and elsewhere who pretend to be great men while they resist de-
cisions of the Pope, which have been justified, acknowledged, and pro-
claimed even by a heretic of the highest genius and the widest reputation,
such as the First Minister, Mr. Disraeli."
Now, gentlemen, I am going to put to you a question Suppose that out
of that paragraph you strike the words, " First Minister, Mr. Disraeli,'*
and put " Opposition speaker, Mr. Gladstone/' and suppose the Roman
newspaper under the Pope's authority had written of me that I had pro-
nounced so many noble truths in defence of the Encyclical and of the
Syllabus as to make those pigmies blush, who refused to admit truths
acknowledged by a heretic like myself suppose there had been such a
paper, I ask you whether it would not have been placarded 011 every wall
in this country as a damning demonstration of the Popish intentions of
myself and the Liberal party ? Oh, gentlemen, what a plume that would
have been for Mr. Turner ! Why, it would have been a stock-in-trade
enough to carry the Conservatives through the whole election ; and now I
should like to know what they will say to it when they meet next in the
Town-hall at Southport or elsewhere. What will they say of the Encyclical
and the Syllabus ? Ah ! let there be equal dealings in these matters.
Suspicions are thrown out against us daringly thrown out with not a jot
or tittle of evidence to back them, and when you hear those suspicions, or
find them in circulation, refer gentlemen, to the reports which will be made
to-night of the passage I have just read to you, and ask Mr. Turner and
Mr. Cross for their explanation. Gentlemen, Mr. Turner and Mr. Cross
SPEECHES OF THE RIGHT HON. W. E. GLADSTONE. 81
are to be felt for in different degrees ; Mr. Cross is a fortunate man, be-
cause, unlike the Church of Ireland, he has no past for which to be called
to account. Mr. Turner is an unfortunate man, because he has got to
explain that which never can be explained namely, that having been
elected as an anti-Reformer in 1865, he steadily joined in every measure to
resist Reform in 1866, and then in 1867, that his own friends might be
kept in office, gave his voice in favour of a plan agreeable indeed to the
views which prevail among us and within these walls, in its main
principles as it was ultimately shaped, but most disagreeable to the pro-
fessions, and tastes, and inclinations of himself and his party. Now,
gentlemen, I am going to do a very bold thing : I am going to suggest
to Mr. Turner the material for a speech. It is taking a great liberty,
but it refers entirely to a department which Mr. Turner is loth to
open namely, that of the past, and it is not a speech of my own
invention, or I would not venture to suggest it to him, but it is a
speech which, comprised in one sentence, is stated to have been made by
a gentleman of the name of Baggallay I believe, a distinguished
lawyer, who, for his merits, has been made Solicitor- General by
the present Government, and who has presented himself for re-
election, I believe, to his constituents at Hereford. At any rate, what
I wish to call your attention to is a sentence which, as far as I can j udge,
would suit Mr. Turner to a T. Mr. Baggallay says, " Gentlemen, I am
going to make it plain to all. I came here in 1865 and told you I would
do one thing, and I have been and done another." Now, in my opinion it
is impossible to nourish resentment against men who use plainness of
speech; it makes very short scores; it shows the people of England that no
attempt is to be made to hoodwink or delude them, and on this account I
am serious when I say, and I think you must be of the same opinion, that it
would be greatly to the permanent interests of the Conservative party and of
Mr. Turner, if he would simply take into his own mouth and publish the short
speech of Mr. Baggallay. But, gentlemen, I go on from our opponents to
the last topic upon which I shall trouble you, and that is the present con-
dition of Ireland, with regard to which though I said I had entirely done
with our opponents personally, I will say I see^in this speech that the same
gross delusion, the same thick darkness, if without disrespect I may so
speak, overspreads the minds of Mr. Cross and Mr. Turner as has been
said in former years to overspread the whole counsels of the Tory party
with respect to Ireland. Now, gentlemen, in my opinion, our friends of the
Conservative party entirely and absolutely misunderstood the condition of
that country. Mr. Cross speaks of it as having undergone very great im-
provement. He states that things have been very bad in Ireland in former
times, but he thinks now they are so much better, and, to use his expression,
so much good has been done in Ireland, that the result, as he says, has
been comparative happiness ; and his audience, I was almost going to say
his victim, greeted that statement with cheers ; and it is their opinion that
Ireland is now in a state of comparative happiness. It is only fair to them
to say that they are echoing the opinion pronounced by the Prime Minister
at a civic festival of the City of London given three months ago. Now, if
that is their opinion of the state of Ireland, what I say is that our Con-
servative friends are in a deep sleep. I do not mean as to electioneering
manoeuvres. Unfortunately, sometimes people walk in their sleep, and I
3?
82 SPEECHES OF THE RIGHT HOX. W. E. GLADSTONE.
consider that their electioneering activity is that of men walking in their
sleep. The electioneering activity refers to the question of the poll ; the
sleep in which they are involved means a total incapacity to [discern the
signs of the times and the real causes of danger to the empire. Ireland
we are told is in a state of comparative happiness at a time when for
three years, in order to maintain the peace of the country, it has been found
necessary to suspend the elementary guarantees of personal freedom. That
is the doctrine of our opponents, and I am justified in saying they are
asleep ; and I will tell you more : the most friendly service you
could do them is to give them a good, hard, and rough shake to
awake them. Some hope I have that that operation will be
performed at the time of the election ; and really I feel that it "would be not
less for their profit than for ours. I had the honour of addressing you in
this hall some ten or eleven months ago, and then told you before the
meeting of Parliament, the view that I could not but take of the condition
of Ireland and the Fenian, manifestations ; and then I signified to you the
opinion that the time had in my view arrived when we must set about the
establishment of religious equality in Ireland. Now, what is the doctrine of
our opponents ? Mr. Cross says it is true that the Habeas Corpus Act has
been suspended, but not as against the people of Ireland. He says, " I deny
that the Habeas Corpus Act was suspended in Ireland against Irish people."
Well, there is the city of Rome, and the feeling of the bulk of the Italian
people is, that the inhabitants of that city are not well affected to the civil
Government of the Papacy. I speak without touching upon any of the con-
troversies in the matter, because I am using it merely for the purposes of
illustration, to endeavour to show truly how this matter stands. Well, but
when the volunteers of Garibaldi invaded the Roman States the Roman
people did not rise, and the explanation given was this : They were too
prudent, and they dared not ; they knew that an overwhelming force would
be used to put them down ; and they determined not to shed their blood to
no purpose. I speak of that as the explanation of what has occurred among
us in this country. Apply that to the case of Ireland. The people of
Ireland have not risen ; the people of Ireland are divided in sentiment, and
so probably are the people of Rome ; but this we know, and upon the
highest authority, that a large portion of the Irish people are either hostile
in their relation or neutral to the British Throne and Government. We
know that upon the authority of the Ministers of the Crown ; we know it
by the manifestations that occur from time to time in Ireland when
criminals are tried for political offences ; we know it by the processions
which were held in Ireland and in London after the execution of, I think,
three Fenian offenders who had murdered the policeman Brett. We know
it by every kind of symptom that can meet the eye of intelligent men ;
and yet still our friends for I call our opponents also our friends except
in the political sense will cling to their delusion that Ireland is thoroughly
British in feeling, sensible of the countless blessings which they derive from
our invaluable Constitution, and that it is only the troublesome agency
of the United States of America which renders it necessary to suspend the
Habeas Corpus Act. Now, gentlemen, I want to go to that point, because
this is a subject oi' vital importance, on which I am certain you will not grudge
me a very few moments. The language which is held by our opponents
is this Fenianism is a plant of foreign growth. Ireland is not disaffected,
SPEECHES OF THE EIGHT HON. IT. E. GLADSTONE. 83
though Lord Mayo stated that as regarded a large portion of the population
it was ; but that can't be admitted during the elections. Fenianism is a
foreign importation into Ireland, and the true origin of the hotbed of
Fenianism is in America. Now, gentlemen, isn't it a most extraordinary
thing that Irishmen should become more hostile to their own country in
consequence of leaving it than they were when they dwelt in it ? Did you
ever hear of such a case ? Did you ever hear of men who lived contentedly
under a Government, and then, because they happened to go under
another Government, become in their own breasts hostile to the Govern-
ment they had left ? No such case ever was known or heard of. Now,
gentlemen, I want you to understand what is the view that the Americans
take of Fenianism ; it is quite time that you should hear them upon that
subject. Our opponents are under the gross delusion of believing that
America has a love for this pestilential plant, and fondles and rears ifc
with the utmost care in order to make it an instrument of annoyance to
us. That is their creed. I tell you, on the contrary, that Fenianism is a
plant of Irish growth, and the only reason why it is suppressed and
smoulders in Ireland and is loud and noisy in America is that it is sup-
pressed in Ireland through the fear of an overwhelming power, and that
when the shores of America are reached the fear of that overwhelming
power has ceased. This is just like what happens in many cases when
there is a fire in a mine : they close the mine to stop it, and the fire is
not observed ; but if the air be let in the fire blazes up. The Fenianism
of Ireland is the fire smouldering in the mine ; the Fenianism of America
is the fire, with an abundant supply of fresh air. And, moreover, it is
most unjust to the Americans to accuse them of loving, and fondling, and
caressing this evil growth, with which it is we who annoy them. I hold
in my hand a letter which is well worth your hearing. I am not sure that
I should be justified in mentioning the writer's name, simply because it is
a private letter sent from America and supplied to me by a dignitary of
the Church of England, who is entirely of our mind with regard to the
Church of Ireland, but it expresses opinions which do not require a name
to authenticate them, and I am sure when you know that it is an American's
view of the Fenian question you will say that the two or three minutes
occupied in reading it are the most important portion of time I have spent
since I began. I am not quite certain as to the date of the letter, but
it is a recent one, having come within the last six months. The writer
says :
" The Irish come to our country by millions, and bring with them the
hate of the British Government so intense that to gratify it they would
gladly die. Every tried friend of Great Britain ardently desires that some
wise and sufficient measures may be devised to conciliate the Irish people
and make them friends of the Government by which at present they think
themselves so deeply injured. I wish English statesmen could see this
question in the light in which we regard it from our stand-point. There
is nothing so important to our country, as well as yours, as the mainte-
nance of peace between them, and even more than.fchat the most kindly
relations. The Irish already constitute a most influential portion of our
voting population, determining to a very large extent the policy of our
Government. This population is led and controlled almost absolutely by
able and unscrupulous politicians who are themselves well known among
84 SPEECHES OP THE RIGHT HON. W. E. GL/LDSTONE.
us as being unfriendly to your country ; these men can at any moment
command the enthusiastic devotion of the entire Irish population among
us by a promise to inaugurate a policy of unfriendliness to Great Britain.
I am sure I speak the opinions of all the better part of our people when I
say that we wish to see your country prosperous and strong and her
people happy. At present we think Ireland adds very little to the power
of your nation, but regard it as an element of weakness in the event of a
war with any strong naval and military people. We are sure that the
proposed mode of dealing with the Irish Church would go far to placate
the Irish people, and, followed by other wise measures of conciliation,
would go far to reconcile the Irish to British rule. There is no more
ardent Protestant than I am than we are whose views I have endea-
voured to present but we feel confident that the Irish in this country, as
well as in yours, will always be hostile to your Government, and will de-
vise mischief to it in every possible way, without the adoption of some
measures which they think justice to Ireland demands. That God may
guide you and all your countrymen in the course best adapted to promote the
interest of your nation and the happiness of your people, is my sincere wish."
Now, gentlemen, I don't hesitate to say that that letter presents the matter
from the true point of view; The people of America wish to stand well
with us, but we discharge upon their shores every year 100,000 perhaps
more of men into whose breasts we ourselves have instilled a deep hatred
of ourselves ; and these men, finding themselves in a country abounding in
resources and in power, and carrying with them the passionate recollections
with which they have set out from their native shores, naturally enough
seek to turn the energies of America into channels hostile to us. And what
is our miserable policy ? To say that these feelings are of American growth.
It is flying, gentlemen, in the face of facts ; it is closing our eyes against the
noonday. These passions are passions born and fostered in Ireland, and
they are the unhappy children of our own misrule, and until we can by
some means awaken the minds of the English people to the perception of
these great essential facts, bearing as they do upon all the permanent
prospects of peace and of security for this empire, we never can stand in the
face of the world acquitted by the general opinion of civilised mankind of
gross injustice ; nor can we have that firm, immoveable position which we
ought to have for our own defence in times of danger as a strong, because
a united, people. Now, gentlemen, I endeavour in these words feebly to
present to you the great work which we have in hand in this election. Is
it not idle, in the face of facts like these, to talk of being governed by party
motives and the desire of office ? It is not difficult to meet such reproaches
with silence on the part of those who know they do not deserve them ; but
it is difficult with patience to think that it is by means of instruments and
pleas like these that men are content to practise on themselves the grossest
self-delusion, to encourage the Government of this great and noble empire
in a course of injustice and wrong. Gentlemen, we invoke you in the
mass you individually, every elector among you if the interests that I
have endeavoured to place before you really touch you as British citizens ;
if you really prize and cherish that which has been to us all a dear and a
sacred name, we invoke you to assist us in an enterprise which, however it
may be blackened by calumny, or more frequently by ignorance we believe,
and I think I may say we know, to be the enterprise of justice and of
truth.
SPEECH
DELIVERED IN
HENGLEE'S CIRCUS, IWIGAN.
OCTOBER 23BD, 1868.
MR. LANCASTER AND GENTLEMEN, I avail myself with the utmost
promptitude and pleasure of the introduction which you have been pleased
to give me, and I will endeavour to state my views on some points of
interest to the vast assemblage which I have the honour to witness before
me, with only this preliminary observation, that as the constituency of the
county has greatly favoured me with like opportunities at other places of
importance, I shall endeavour to avoid, as far as is in my power, repeating
the observations which it has been my duty to offer to other portions of
the electoral body, and you will, I trust, accept my apology, growing out
of the necessity of the case, if I rather endeavour [to convey to you^with
clearness and fairness, as much as is in my power, one or two points of
great importance, than attempt to travel over the whole wide field of the
political interests of the country at large. There are two subjects con-
nected with and forming branches of the great question of the Irish Church
which, as you know, absorbs at this time, far beyond every other single
topic, the general interest of the country there are two branches [of this
great question on which I have not said a word, but with respect to which,
any attempt to discuss the question in the face of the country would be
incompatible unless some endeavours were made to deal with them. One
of the allegations that are often made by the friends, or, at the least, those
who call themselves, and I have no doubt believe themselves, the friends
of the Irish Church, is this, that it operates with great power in the
mitigation of religious animosities. Well r now, gentlemen, I meet that
statement with one directly opposite, and I hold and contend that the effect
partly of the Established Irish Church, and partly of the general system
of ascendency of which that Irish Church is an important and a leading
86 SPEECHES OF THE EIGHT HON. W. E. GLADSTONE.
part, has been not to mitigate but to inflame religious animosity in that
particular country to a point higher and hotter than it has reached pro-
bably in any country in the world certainly in any portion of Her
Majesty's wide and almost boundless dominions. I will endeavour
to supply you with an illustration of what I have said, and I begin with
an anecdote from the House of Commons. In the course of last Session,
a highly respected friend of mine, an Irish representative, Mr. Cogan,
gave notice that he would ask from the Government an explanation with
respect to a speech that had been delivered in Ireland by a gentleman
whom I need not name, connected with Trinity College, Dublin, and
which he considered to be a speech directly tending to a breach of the
peace ; and, undoubtedly, in that speech the speaker did appear to con-
template pretty distinctly the use of force as a means of resisting any
measures that Parliament might adopt with a view to the destruction of the
Protestant ascendency. That recital by Mr. Cogan appeared to produce a
considerable impression, for, in point of fact, I defy you, gentlemen, in the
whole length and breadth of England unless it be within the charmed
circle occupied by a certain Murphy, who I believe is now somewhere in
these parts, and whose proceedings we really cannot recognise as belonging
at all to the character which marks the laws of English debate I defy
you to find from ordinary English debate and controversy, though we
naturally are free in our language, anything to compare to the passage to
which I now refer. But a great impression was produced upon the
opposite side. There was considerable alarm from the obviously inflam-
matory, not to say seditious, tendency of the speech of the gentleman con-
nected with Trinity College, Dublin. But what was the mode of defence
adopted ? Not to explain the speech, not to retract the speech. The
mode of defence adopted was this : Another gentleman on the other side
of the House went and found another speech just as inflammatory from
the other side of the question, and he came down and read that violent,
inflammatory, and seditious language on the other side of the question
amid the triumphant acclamations of the supporters of the Government.
They did not in the least degree think it necessary to show that their man
had not used language tending to a breach of the peace ; it was quite
enough for them to show that similar language had been used on the other
side. But this is not the way, I am thankful to say, in which discussion
on political measures is conducted in this country. I hold in my hand a
published pamphlet relating to the parishes in the North of Ireland ; I
have never seen a contradiction of the statements it contains, and I think
they are such as will put you in a position to judge whether we are right
in contending that religious animosity is inflamed, and not mitigated, by
the existence of the Established Church in Ireland and by the system with
which that Church is connected. You will all remember that the present
settlement in Ireland was reached at a period of revolution, not as in
England, peacefully, happily, and by the spontaneous action of the
mind of a free people, but in the manner of an English conquest over
the inferior forces of Ireland. The battles of William III. and
his forces put down what was undoubtedly the sense and will of the
mass of the Irish people. I am finding no fault with that at this
moment it is a question of historical discussion ; but I think you will
ageee with me that after a civil war of that nature was over, it was
SPEECHES OF THE EIGHT HON. W. E. GLADSTONE. 87
an odious and dreadful thing to keep alive by periodical processions, by
constant party dinners and celebrations, and by flags flouted in the face
of the general population of Ireland, the memory of bloodshed by which
the will and voice of the majority had been put down. You may remem-
ber that for a great length of time we did commemorate in this country
by a religious celebration, the anniversary of what was called the Gun-
powder Treason. That was a totally different matter ; that was not *
question of civil war fought out in the open field between two great partis
in the country. It was a question of returning annual thanks to th.*
Almighty for the deliverance of the Legislature from a terrible an*r
execrable plot aimed at its destruction. And yet there is no man who does
not feel that when we ceased a few years ago to maintain the usage for
that annual celebration we had done an act of justice and kindness to our
Roman Catholic fellow-countrymen. But in Ireland, where it is a question
of civil war, of which the Orange flag is the emblem, the wretched
memory of former feuds is kept up year by year, by men banded together
for the purpose sincere men, conscientious men, I doubt not, but mis-
guided men. But how misguided ? They are misguided, to a great ex-
tent, by that which gives countenance to a system of ascendency, keeping
them in the blindness of delusion under which they are labouring, But
where do you suppose there is a favourable receptacle for the Orange flag ?
It is in the House and Temple of God. In the North of Ireland, within
the very walls where men meet to lay aside their passions, and confess
their sins, and give thanks for their mercies ; even there this unhappy
flag is hung. The pamphlet to which I refer is written by the Eev.
John Kobert Greer, incumbent of Kilderton, in the diocese of Armagh.
He speaks as a man who was on the best terms with his parishioners
until he differed from g them on the matter of the Orange
flag. He does not say that they did a thing without example,
but, on the contrary, he says that Kilderton Church was the
only church in his neighbourhood where the law had not been
previously defied. He goes on to say, "You as representatives
of the principal families, did, against my express wishes and request,
and well knowing my determination that I would not go with the
multitude to do evil by officiating in my church while such emblems were
upon it, you did secretly, and in the dead of night, desecrate my church
and profane its precincts by indulging there in strong drink and revelry,
while attaching to its very walls, and even actually over the Lord's Table,
these unholy emblems of strife." And he proceeds to say that, in conse-
quence of the resistance thus offered to the will of his parishioners, a
large number determined^nojlonger to attend on his ministry as a clergyman.
We are tempted to cry " Shame," but let us pass. I want to know if there
is not something to be said for these men. When they see that the laws
are violated, when the wealthy few are set up to remind them of wealth
and civil superiority, do not things of this kind excuse or account for pro-
ceedings such as I have detailed ? and are we not in some degree respon-
sible for exhibitions and manifestations of this kind so long as we continue
to maintain the system of ascendency and the Established Church in Ire-
land? But I must give you another proof of the manner in which the
Irish Church tends to mitigate religious animosities. Gentlemen, I am
now about to quote some words used in the debate in the House of
88 SPEECHES OF THE BIGHT HON. W. E. GLADSTONE.
Lords of the Session just expired, and used, according to report in
the public journals, and, therefore, I presume substantially correct, by
a person of the highest eminence the present Primate of Ireland. He
was discussing the Bill called the Suspensory Bill, which, as you
are aware, was passed by the House of Commons during the last
Session, but which did not succeed in passing the House of Lords.
Now, this was the view which he gave of the state of matters in
Ireland, he being a prelate at the head of this Church, whose office
and whose effect, we are told, it is to mitigate religious animosity,
and 1 must say, in justice to him, being, I believe, also a good and a
kind, as well as an earnest man ; but this is his view of the con-
dition of Ireland and of the Protestants and Koman Catholics of
Ireland respectively : " Don't imagine that if you overthrow the Irish
Established Church there will not be, as there was in earlier days, a
very extensive emigration of Protestants, comprising many of the best,
the soundest, the most loyal, and most industrious of her 1 Majesty's
Irish subjects. You will put before the Irish Protestants the choice
between apostasy and expatriation, and every man among them who has
money or position when he sees his Church go will leave the country. If
you do that, you will find Ireland so difficult to manage that you will have to
depend on the gibbet and the sword." Now, gentlemen, you have heard
these words probably with some astonishment. I look upon them as the
too direct and legitimate fruit, not of personal intemperance for I
don't believe the'speaker is personally intemperate but of a bad and in-
veterate system which has been maintained up to the present day, and
which you, together with the rest of the electors of this country, have now
to determine upon, either that you will still maintain it, or that you will
bring it to the ground. I now pass on from the point to which I referred.
I think I have given you some evidence that the allegation that the Irish
Church tends to mitigate religious animosity is a statement not only un-
true, but ludicrous, when the view taken by the head of the Protestant
Church of that country is that if the Protestants were to leave it the means
of governing the Eoman Catholic population would simply be by the gibbet
and the sword. There is another charge that is made, and a plausible
charge, which I beg you to consider with me for a little. It is this : we
are told that the Irish never will be satisfied. We are told that they in-
vent one demand after another, and that any concession that is made to
them only makes them keener to agitate for the next. Well, gentlemen,
there is some truth in the statement that the concessions hitherto made
have made the Irish people agitate more keenly for what they thought still re-
mained due to them; and I ask of any of you who might happen to be a creditor
what you would do if you had a solvent debtor, and if your solvent debtor,
having full means to pay you the whole of your just claims, attempted to put
it off from time to time by 2s. or 3s. in the pound. You might take the first
3s. if you could do no better, but you would very soon demand another, and
when you had got six, perhaps you would try to have ten, and when you
had ten you would begin to think of 15. You would say, " It is want of
will ;" and that is what Ireland has a right to say to England, and Ireland
is entitled, in my judgment, to ask of England, not 5s., nor 10s., nor 15s.,
but 20s. in the pound. Now, gentlemen, our opponents would have you
believe that this matter of religious equality in Ireland is a new subject
SPEECHES OF THE EIGHT HON. W. E. GLADSTONE. 89
invented for the purpose of the present hour, and what they say is, First
of all, we began by repealing the penal laws; then they wanted the
elective franchise, and they got it; then they wanted to come into
Parliament, and they got it ; and now they are not satisfied with
anything but the destruction of the Established Church and the at-
tainment of religious equality; and after that they will demand some-
thing else more formidable. This is no novel demand at all, and
no novel policy. I beg you to attend carefully to that which I am
about to say. The statesmen of two generations ago, with Mr. Pitt
at their head, when they were parties to investing the Koman Ca-
tholics with a portion of their political rights in the shape of the
elective franchise, knew perfectly well what they were doing; and
knew perfectly well that that must be followed, and ought to be fol-
lowed, by their admission into Parliament, and likewise knew that it must
be followed by the concession of religious equality. The difference is this,
and the only difference is this. At that period the intention undoubtedly
was to grant religious equality, not by disestablishing the Church esta-
blished, but by creating Roman Catholic and Presbyterian Churches by its
side. There is no doubt at all about that. The mode of attaining the end
was different, the end itself was the same ; and I affirm that the Irish Eoman
Catholics, in now demanding religious equality, are making a demand, the
fairness and equity of which have been allowed by the greatest statesmen
who dealt with the affairs of Ireland 50, 60, and 70 years ago. But do not
let that, inasmuch as it is important, rest on my mere dictum. I want to
give you an answer to make to those who assert that the project of esta-
blishing religious equality is a novel invention. Mr. Pitt himself, in
proposing the Act of Union, used these words : " When the conduct of
the Catholics should be such as to make it safe for the Government to
admit them to a participation of the privileges granted to those of the
Established Church " and that related to the endowment of their Church
and of their clergy " and when the temper of the times should be favour-
able to such a measure, when those events should take place, it was obvious
that such a question might be agitated in a united Imperial Parliament
with much greater safety than it could be in a separate Legislature." But
it does not depend alone upon the declaration of Mr. Pitt. Lord Castle-
reagh, some 20 years afterwards, said that the reason why the policy of
England with respect to Ireland had failed, was because she had chosen to
adopt nothing but a series of half measures. As to the mode of attaining
religious equality, the views of the Eoman Catholics themselves, and the
views of the people of this country also, are different now from what they
then were. It is quite possible, too, that at that time there might have
been no objection to establishing these three Churches, the one by the side
of the other, in Ireland ; but now, on the contrary, we know that the voice
of the three kingdoms is against that method of procedure. But what I
want you to observe is that the Eoman Catholics' claim to religious
equality is no new claim ; it was recognised by Mr. Pitt, and by Lord
Castlereagh too, shortly after the Union, and recognised as a necessary
part of the policy on which that Union was based. There are many other
points connected with the Irish Church with which I will not attempt to
detain you, as I have fully explained myself at other places. I have pointed
out that those persons are wrong who think that, because we take away a
bad Church Establishment in Ireland, we therefore desire to take away the
90 SPEECHES OF TUB EIGHT HON. TF. E. GLADSTONE.
good Church Establishment in England. The Church of England, like
the Church of Ireland, must be judged by its works ; and so long as, in
the judgment of the bulk of the people of this country, the Church,
of England can abide, she has no fears to entertain for herself from allowing
justice to be done in the sister country. Your real choice is between
having no Establishment and several Church Establishments. You
cannot maintain the Church which now exists and maintain it alone.
If you choose which you do not choose to adopt the policy of
creating a number of religious establishments in Ireland for all the
denominations by which that country is peopled, you may do so.
But the idea of maintaining the present Establishment alone is
wholly out of the question. We may dismiss the plea that the Establish-
ment is maintained for the sake of [Protestantism, because we have shown
that Protestantism has dwindled under its action. We have heard much
within the last 10 or 20 years of several parishes in the west of Ireland
where several thousands of Eoman Catholics have come over to the
Established Church, but it is a most extraordinary fact that that conquest,
which appears to be the only one to which the opponents of our course can
look that conquest was made, not by the agency of the Irish Church
Establishment, but by a missionary propaganda, established and working
from England as its centre ; in fact, by the agency of the voluntary principle,
and not by the agency of the Established Church. Now, gentlemen, you
are here an assembly of Liberals, but do not suppose you can on that account
have no interest in the well-being of the Conservative party. So long as
England is England there will be a Liberal party and a Conservative party.
Ay, even if it were possible to do what I do not think we wish to do alter
the form of the Government of the country even if we had a republic, we
should still have, as there is to so great an extent in America, a Liberal party
and a Conservative party, the one wishing to move on more freely and
fearlessly, and the other more apprehensive as ,to the mischief sudden
changes might do. Therefore, gentlemen, we have a great interest in the
Conservative party. It is for the interest of each party that the other
party should be truthful and honest in its proceedings, and firm in its
principles. You may rely upon it that you cannot have great demoralisa-
tion in one party without that demoralisation tainting and infecting the
other ; and, therefore, although we are the foes of that party, yet, always
presuming they do not so far ; succeed as to impress their policy on the
Government of the country, I wish them well. In my opinion, they have
been pursuing a suicidal course ; they have forgotten the sources of their
strength, they have sought Jto create a new and fictitious strength in an
awkward affectation of liberal methods of proceeding. What is it that we
have a right to expect from the Conservative party ? Certainly not much
instruction in the way of intelligible change, but we have a right to expect
firmness and courage in the assertion and maintenance of its principles ;
and rely upon it that the Liberal party is all the better for being face to
face with another party of different shades of opinion, making it its pride
and boast to show courage and tenacity in adherence to its creed. That
is the especial work of the Conservative party ; and although ib
may be backward with regard to many objects of public utility,
it is a useful element in the composition of political society, and such a
party will never fail to attract my respect. They may expect from us that
SPEECHES OF THE EIGHT HON. W. E. GLADSTONE. 91
we should be more active in advising a policy of improvement. "We may
expect from them that they should be more tenacious in insisting on con-
sistency to creed that is not what we have had at their hands. "We [have
seen within the last two years an unparalleled manoeuvre executed by the
leaders of that party and by its followers, who perhaps had not much left to
them except what is commonly called " Hobson's choice." I am not going
to animadvert on the course of proceeding which has resulted in the
adoption of political changes from which we anticipate great benefit
to the country, and a great increase of strength to the Constitution,
but I direct my view to the future, and I ask what is the Conservative
creed at this moment? What are the prospects and intentions of
the Conservative party with regard to the policy to be pursued in the
coming Parliament? (Cries of "None!") A gentleman says "None.'*
Let us Bee if we can gain any light on this subject, which is one of an
entertaining character, if it did not suggest some melancholy reflections.
It is really singular to observe how much elbow-room in the direction
of Eadicalism is allowed at this moment by the agents of the Conserva-
tive party to those who come forward under its banner. I read not long
ago the manifesto of a gentleman who solicits the suffrages of the vast
town of Birmingham in the Conservative interest. Well, now, what
does he say ? He begins with a legal definition of Trades' Unions, to which I
do not object. He then proposes to abolish the law of primogeniture, that
is the next article of creed of this Conservative candidate ; and the third is
to make the use of the ballot optional. Next he goes out of his way to
introduce, by way of a side dish at the entertainment, the reform of the
Prayer-book, and then he proceeds to state that the last Reform Bill does
not at all correspond with his views as to the borough franchise ; and the
only thing that will satisfy him is residential household suffrage. And
that is the man, gentlemen, who is put up,*or was put up for whether he
has sunk in the political ocean or not I really do not know under the
colours of the Constitutional party, who, forsooth, oppose Mr. Bright as a
dangerous man, who ought on no account to be admitted within the walls of
Parliament. Now, gentlemen, one of the objections I have to this method
of proceeding is the extreme confusion of ideas it produces. When I hear
an address of this character I own to you I do not know whether I stand
on my head or on ray heels. Though he thinks there ought to be a wide
and extensive reform in the Irish Church, yet he objects to the policy that
we have proposed for its disestablishment and general disendowment.
Well, now, gentlemen, we should see in investigation of this interesting
question what is the Conservative creed, that, at all events, we had
hit at least upon one article of that creed. The present Government, we
will suppose, then, has great toleration and indulgence for all manner
of purely political vagaries, but one thing it cannot stand, and
that is tampering with the integrity of the Established Church of Ireland.
Well, but is this so ? Is that the ground that has been adopted by the
Constitutional party ? Is it the sine qua non of admission into its ranks,
or of admission to political office, that the integrity of the Irish Church
shall be maintained? No, gentlemen, we don't require to go far for
proof that it is not so. I believe our esteemed friend Colonel
Wilson Patten has been challenged to say whether, if Mr.
Disraeli proposes the disestablishment of the Irish Church,
92 SPEECHES OF THE BIGHT HON. W. E. GLADSTONE.
he will vote against it, and that he has declined to give a reply. And
the authority of Sir Stafford Northcote, Secretary of State for India,
has been asked whether, under the circumstances, he will resist the dis-
establishment of the Irish Church, but he says he refuses to go to Par-
liament with a pledge of that kind. What is it, gentlemen, what will-
o'-the-wisp, what phantasm is it that this Constitutional party is propos-
ing to you ? "We thought that the article of maintaining the Irish
Church was really written in their addresses, and on their understand-
ing, and in their hearts. But it does not appear that that is the case
with those gentlemen in high authority. I will take another case
relating to a person whom I cannot but name with unfeigned respect
the younger son of Lord Derby. What kind of allegiance does he
profess to the Irish Church, which it is our wickedness that we are
endeavouring to tamper with ? He says, " In the legislation which
will presumably follow upon the proceedings of the Commission, there
must, I conceive, be some considerable departure from the plan of
simply rearranging within the limits of the Established Church the en-
dowments of which she is now the recipient, and it is impossible to
avoid seeing that the present temper of the country is against making,
on the one hand, any further charge on the revenues of the United
Kingdom in aid of religious bodies unconnected with the Established
Church, while, on the other hand, there are means which in many in-
stances are undoubtedly superfluous for uses for which they had been
originally intended." JN"ow, that cuts a pretty large hole in the remaining
article in the Conservative creed, for it appears perfectly possible, with-
out losing any title to be a Conservative in North-West Lancashire, for
a man like Colonel Wilson Patten to decline to pledge himself what to
do, if Mr. Disraeli gives the word of command, against the Established
Church, and perfectly possible for the younger son of Lord Derby it
is not necessary to ask what the elder son of Lord Derby is disposed
to do plainly to proclaim to you that in his opinion the property of
the Church of Ireland cannot be, and ought not to be, confined to the
uses of that Church. So much for that half of the one article of the
Conservative creed. But there is another half to it, and it is this.
You have heard an infinity of outcry about Popery and about the
Liberals and the Nonconformists of this country, and the Presbyterians
of Scotland, as being the insidious agents and friends of Popery. The
meaning of that is a charge that they intend to give the Church property
taken from the Church to the religious uses of the Presbyterians and
the Roman Catholics. That is the charge that is insinuated under
these words. You know perfectly well how untrue it is ; you know
that we who, as public men, have taken part in this movement,
have from the time when the Government glanced at a plan of that
kind declared our insurmountable objection to it ; and you know
also that even if we had not declared that objection, even if we
had been so unwise as to fall in with that policy, the deter-
mined resistance of the people of the three countries would
have made it impossible to carry it into effect. But I am now
testing the Conservative creed, and I have shown you the Con-
servative creed allows of taking away money from the Established
Church. But let us see if it does not also allow of giving money for the
SPEECHES OP THE EIGHT HON. W. E; GLADSTONE. 93
purposes of the Koman Catholics as well. I find in the address of
Captain Stanley these words : " I should strongly resist any plan which
tended to secularise any part of revenues which have been solemnly and
deliberately devoted to religious purposes by their donors." Now,
observe those two things, gentlemen. On the one hand, money is to be
taken from the Established Church of Ireland ; on the other hand, the
money is not to be secularised. Now, as to the meaning of the word
" secularised." I should like to give you one sentence. Some gentle-
men have asked me if I am in favour of secularising this property. I
should like to ask them what is meant by to secularise Church property.
If they are governed in the exposition of the term by history and law,
they would find it rather difficult to explain, because, gentlemen, you
ought to know in ancient times in the greater part, if not the whole,
of Europe, the law of the Church divided the Church property into four
parts. Of those four parts, one, I think, if I remember rightly, went to
the bishop, one went to the clergy, one went to the fabric, and one went
to the poor. Well, but if the ancient ecclesiastical law and the ancient
canon law of Europe in the Middle Ages recognised the needs of the
people, especially the poorer part of the people, as being within the
legitimate application of Church property, then I think I have a right
to ask those who ask me whether I am for secularising the property of
the Irish Church, what they mean by the word to " secularise ; " and
whether they intend to establish a new foundation of Church law, and
to impose a stricter definition on the uses of Church property than our
forefathers in Eoman Catholic times six or eight hundred or one
thousand years ago ? But there is no doubt what Captain Stanley
means by secularising Church property. He thinks that money ought
to be taken from the uses of the Established Church and given, not to
the uses he calls secular, but to the direct purpose of teaching religion
outside the Established Church that is, to the uses of the Presbyterians
and Eoman Catholics in Ireland. Well, therefore, gentlemen, so far as
Captain Stanley is concerned, is it not perfectly idle that the men of
North- West Lancashire should be stirred up in the name of the Con-
stitution, in the name of Church and State, in the name of the Queen's
supremacy, and I know not what, but probably in the name of " No
Popery" too, to support a man who is going to do for religious bodies
in Ireland that which his opponent and my noble friend Lord Har-
tington steadily refuse to do ? And is this only an examination of the
creed of an individual ? Certainly not. The son of Lord Derby never
can be unimportant as an individual, and the son of Lord Derby is not
merely the son of Lord Derby, he is the latest addition to the official phalanx
of Her Majesty's Government. And in the very crisis andheat of this elec-
tion a man who undisguisedly and manfully proclaims his intention to take
the property of the Irish Church and to give it to other religious bodies
for their purposes as religious bodies that very man is at this moment
brought forward, and not only put forward and adopted by the party in
North- West Lancashire, but is taken into the body of the Administration
which has declared that our plan of disestablishing the Church will
inflict upon the country consequences worse than those of foreign
conquest. Now, gentlemen, is it possible for inconsistency, for
absurdity, for mockery to public understanding, to go farther than
94 SPEECHES OF THE RIGHT HON. W. E. GLADSTONE.
this ? "Well, gentlemen, we cut down the Conservative creed to one
article, then we cut off half of that article, and now we have cut out the
remaining half. And what is the Conservative or Constitutional creed ?
"Why, it is this, gentlemen. It is not to support any one measure or
any one institution ; it is not to be bound to the maintenance of any
one principle. It is simply this to this article I believe there will be
a rigid adherence it is to intend to vote for maintaining Her Majesty's
Government in power.
Having spoken of the Conservative party, I will now, if you
will allow me, say a few words upon the position of the Conserva-
tive Government, which is undoubtedly a very peculiar one. Gentle-
men, I am not here to say that I think the principles upon which that
Ministry has acted are compatible with what is called political
honour/ but I am here to say, without the smallest doubt, that
great advantage has been derived from the laxity of Jtheir creed and
practice I will not say now with regard to the question of Reform,
which is for the moment, as to most of its points at all events, set aside ;
but immense advantage has redounded to the country with respect to
this great question of the condition of Ireland and the disestablishment
of the Irish Church, from the fact that the Conservative Government
have been in office. I am thankful from my heart, on public grounds,
that at the commencement of this year it was they and not we who held
the reins of State. Being in office they were under responsibility;
when in office it was impossible for them to overlook the fact, however
little they may now try to make of it, that for three years constitutional
and personal liberty had been suspended in Ireland as an absolute
necessity for the maintenance of the public peace and the security of
life and property. They could not avoid announcing an Irish policy, and
in that they could not escape the question of education and religion.
They were compelled to declare their intentions, which were wholly
foreign and opposed to the general and deliberate decisions of the
people of this country, who, with the people of Ireland, would not
accept the policy which was shadowed out by the First Minister of the
Crown and by the Minister of Ireland. According to that policy we
were now, for the first time, to maintain out of the public purge a
University for the purposes of a particular religious denomination,
and two new Established Churches were to be created and endowed
in Ireland. An enormous strength was given to us and to our
cause by these extraordinary intentions, and by the adoption of
this policy by the Government it gave us a vantage-ground which
we have never lost. It prevented Her Majesty's Government from
appealing, as they might otherwise have appealed, to the religious
passion of the country with boldness and with effect. But suppose we
had been in office and they had been in Opposition, it would have been
our duty to propose the very same thing that we have proposed now ;
but we should have heard nothing then about the willingness of the
Prime Minister and his colleagues to establish religious equality in
Ireland. We should have heard nothing of the Roman Catholic Uni-
versity, and there would have been nothing but an animated, passionate,
spirit-stirring appeal to the Protestant feeling of the country by 280
gentlemen in Parliament, bound together for a sacred principle, firm
and chivalrous in their adherence to that principle, and deter-
SPEECHES OF THE EIGHT HON. W. E. GLADSTONE. 95
mined to defend it to the death. That would have been an oppo-
sition much more formidable for us to confront than the half-hearted,
indecisive, paltering opposition that paltering opposition that we have
met with, watered down to the extreme of debility : the Government
telling us, in a great Constitutional battle, that we should wait until
the opening of a new Parliament sometimes flying to the seventh
heaven of rhetorical exaggeration, and telling us that we were pro-
posing that which was worse than foreign conquest. All these absurdi-
ties all these refusals to be bound and pledged in matters elementary in
the creed of every practical statesman all these declarations that it is
necessary to reduce bishops, to remodel the Church all those declara-
tions, like those of Lord Stanley, that portions of its revenue must be
given to other religions what do they show ? They show the voice of
the Tower of Babel. There are scarcely two men who speak in the
same language. One man is for one policy, another man for another ;
and it is amid these disordered ranks, I am thankful and happy to say,
that the great Liberal army of the country, knowing its own mind and
purpose, approaches it from stage to stage with the firm determination
that, so far as depends on human strength and courage, our end shall be
attained. I sometimes hear it said that it is the intention of the
Government to give way, and that they will produce at the commence-
ment of Parliament a plan larger, more comprehensive, more sweeping
than that which up to this time we have been accustomed to consider
comprehensive enough, and which is now before you in the name of the
Liberal party. Now, do you think there is any foundation for that,
or do you not ? I cannot tell, but it is a legitimate subject for
political speculation. There is nothing new under the sun; and
after what has happened in former days, this may happen in the days
that are about to come. Our business is to be prepared for all con-
tingencies, and it is impossible for me to express a confident
opinion whether, when the new Parliament meets, the language of
the Government will be that the disestablishment of the Irish
Church is worse than foreign conquest, or that their objection to our
mode of proceeding was merely that it was too limited and narrow
a method ; that, instead of legislating, instead of devising great and
statesmanlike schemes, we merely pottered over the production of a
miserable abortion, but that they are the men who will make a clean
sweep of the whole concern. On that ground we challenge the adhesion
of the Liberals of this country ; these are the two alternatives, and I am
not bold or confident enough to tell you which will be presented to you ;..
but I wish to make this observation. I have said that I am thankful
the present Government were in power when we were able to produce
this great question, and bring it to a position so advanced ; but I cannot
allow this method of the passing of measures by men who, in principle,
are utterly opposed to them, to be dismissed from view without a remark.
Unfortunately, a very large number of the great measures of our time
have been passed by those parties. The repeal of the Test Act of 1828
was forced on the Government of the Duke of Wellington. Roman
Catholic Emancipation, in 1829, was forced upon the same Government.
The first plan of Reform in Parliament, which took effect in 1832 y
was resisted by the Tory party of this country until they were compelled
t)6 SPEECHES OF THE RIGHT HON. W. E. GLADSTONE.
to read the whole question in the lurid light of the fires of Bristol and
of Nottingham. That is not all. After that came the controversy on
the Corn-laws. Sir "Robert Peel determined not to wait for a popular
convulsion, and what was his reward ? that he left political life as a
man proscribed by the party which he had led. This does not exhaust
the catalogue. The same course was unfortunately pursued with
regard to the second chapter of the history of Reform. Eeform was
stoutly, tenaciously resisted throughout the Session of 1866, until we
were ejected from office, and it was again rejected when the population
of London, indignant at the manner in which the subject was paltered
with, began to meet in great assemblies, claimed the right to go to Hyde
Park and make known their grievances, and when the world was
astounded at hearing that in the centre of the English metropolis the
railings of Hyde Park had been torn down. You see the policy of the
party opposed to you. It is not that you will not get from them the
measures you get from us : it is that you will get them at that stage at
which, instead of enlightened conviction, a slavish fear has become
the motive. ]STow I aver, without fear of contradiction, that this
Constitutional party, by waiting, strikes a blow at the Constitution
such as we have never dealt to it ; that it destroys faith, destroys
confidence, destroys the ties which bind man to man in public
as well as in private life, and undermines at once the belief of the people
in the fidelity and sagacity of their rulers and their disposition to respect
even the sternest resolves of the Government ; when we know from a
long and repeated experience that all which is required of them is to be
a little more violent, a little more menacing, to take steps to violate the
laws of the country, and then that all they desire will be conceded. Do
not for one moment suppose that I mean to compare the proceedings of
the Duke of Wellington and Sir Kobert Peel with regard to Eoman
Catholic emancipation with the proceedings we have recently witnessed,
for when the Duke of Wellington and Sir Eobert Peel, foregoing their
deep and cherished convictions, frankly told the country that they
accepted emancipation, not as a good, but as the lesser of two evils, and
that if the people of this country were not prepared to accept it they
must be prepared for the risk when the Duke of Wellington and Sir
Eobert Peel made that avowal, however painful to themselves or whatever
disparagement it might imply to their political sagacity, at least they
acted the part of honest and straightforward and truth-speaking men,
and that was a great mitigation of the evil ; but the climax of mischief
is at last arrived when those who execute these extraordinary changes of
opinion and of conduct, instead of frankly confessing, after the manner
of those distinguished statesmen, that they have seen cause to change,
and therefore have changed, have to invent far-fetched and flimsy notions
about their own long-cherished opinions, about the " education " of their
party, and I know not what, and by palming upon the public all those
miserable pretexts, convert that which would at any rate be an honour-
able retreat into a retreat which is utterly ignominious. Gentlemen, as
I have said that, allow me to excej t from the scope of my proposition
one statesman. There is one statesman connected with the Govern-
ment who was a party to that great change of opinion and of policy,
but who has not attempted to disguise it and I am thankful to
SPEECHES OF THE EIGHT HON. W. E. GLADSTONE. 97
say that he is a Lancashire man I mean Lord Stanley. Lord Stanley
descended to none of these subterfuges. At the Conservative banquet
at Bristol, lie said to the assembled guests, " Rely upon it, gentlemen,
we shall not abandon the posts we were appointed to defend without
having first arrived at the clear conviction that it was necessary for the
public good." That was an honest and a manly declaration, and I
respect the man who made it. It is in my power to do little towards
placing you in a position to form enlightened judgments on public affairs,
but I rejoice to think how abundant are the aids and instruments now
supplied in every shape to the masses of the population in this country,
and especially to that which is not the least intelligent portion of our
population I mean the people of Lancashire. So, that, however I
might regret my own defective power, I feel satisfied that you will be
well supplied with adequate opportunities and means of judging the right.
And, gentlemen, it is needful that you should, for you have a great
responsibility before you. The Duke of Wellington in 1829 glanced at
civil war, and said, " You must take the policy recommended, OP else as
honest men and courageous men you must be prepared to face the
consequences." I have only to point to the actual state of Ireland to
show that in Ireland you have been obliged to put an end to personal
freedom, and that the liberty of the people depends upon the
will of the Executive Government, instead of the firm foundation
of the law. You may judge from that, and I trust you will
judge, whether there is or is not a necessity for dealing boldly and
resolutely with the case of Ireland, be it by the present Government,
or be it any other. Let the present Government propose the policy
of resistance or the policy of concession, I feel certain that I may
presume to say, on the part of the bulk of those professing Liberal
opinions, our course will be governed by no mere avidity for office
which we have on a former occasion known how to sacrifice when we
thought it would serve the interests of the country but simply by a
desire to discern in what way, of all the ways that shall be opened to us,
we ought to walk in order to promote our internal welfare. It is clear
the Church of Ireland offers to us indeed a great question, but even
that question is but one of a group of questions. There is the Church
of Ireland, there is the land of Ireland, there is the education of
Ireland : there are many subjects, all of which depend upon one greater
than them all; they are all so many branches from one trunk, and
that trunk is the trae of what is called Protestant ascendency.
Gentlemen, I look, for one, to this Protestant people to put down
Protestant ascendency which pretends to seek its objects by doing
homage to religious truth, and instead of consecrating politics desecrates
religion. It is upon that system that "we are banded together to make
war. So long as that system subsists, our covenant endures for the
prosecution of that purpose for which we seek your assistance ; and
because although, as I said early in these remarks, we have paid instal-
ments to Ireland, the mass of the people would not be worthy to be
free if they were satisfied with instalments, or if they could be contented
with anything less than justice. We therefore aim at the destruction
of that system of ascendency which, though it has been crippled and
curtailed by former measures, yet still must be allowed by all to exist. It
G
98 SPEECHES OF TilE EIGHT HOtf. W. E. GLADSTONE.
is still there, like a tall tree of noxious growth, lifting its head to heaven
and darkening and poisoning the land so far as its shadow can extend ;
it is still there, gentlemen, and now at length the day has come when,
as we hope, the axe has been laid to the root of that tree, and it noda
and quivers from its top to its base. It wants, gentlemen, one stroke
more the stroke of these elections. It will then, once for all, totter to
its fall, and on the day when it falls the heart of Ireland will leap for
joy, and the mind and conscience of England and Scotland will repose
with thankful satisfaction upon the idea that something has been done
towards the discharge of national duty, and towards deepening and
widening the foundations of public strength, security, and peace.
: It. K. 13UET, PBIIS'TEE, WJNli OlllCli tOULT, M.iliT !STELI
A CHAPTER OF AUTOBIOGRAPHY.
A
CHAPTER OF AUTOBIOGRAPHY.
BY
THE EIGHT HON. W. E. GLADSTONE, M.P.
" Blame not, before thou hast examined the truth : understand
first, and then rebuke." ECCLESIASTICUS, ch. ii.
LONDON:
JOHN MURRAY, ALBEMARLE STREET.
1868.
The right of Translation is reserved.
LONDON: FEINTED BY WILLIAM CLOWES AND SONS, DUKE STREET, STAMFOED STEEET,
AND CHAKING CEOSS.
INTRODUCTION.
AT a time when the Established Church of Ireland
is on her trial, it is not unfair that her assailants
should be placed upon their trial too : most of all, if
they have at one time been her sanguine defenders.
But if not the matter of the indictment against
them, at any rate that of their defence, should be
kept apart, as far as they are concerned, from the
public controversy, that it may not darken or perplex
the greater issue.
It is in the character of the author of a book
called ' The State in its Relations with the Church,'
that I offer these pages to those who may feel a dis-
position to examine them. They were written at the
date attached to them ; but their publication has
been delayed until after the stress of the General
Election.
CHAPTER OF AUTOBIOGRAPHY.
AUTOBIOGRAPHY is commonly interesting ; but there
can, I suppose, be little doubt that, as a general rule,
it should be posthumous. The close of an active
career supplies an obvious exception : for this re-
sembles the gentle death which, according to ancient
fable, was rather imparted than inflicted by the
tender arrows of Apollo and of Artemis. I have
asked myself many times, during the present year,
whether peculiar combinations of circumstance might
not also afford a warrant at times for departure from
the general rule, so far as some special passage of
life is concerned ; and whether I was not myself now
placed in one of those special combinations.
The motives, which incline me to answer these
questions in the affirmative, are mainly two. First,
that the great and glaring change in my course of
action with respect to the Established Church of Ireland
is not the mere eccentricity, or even perversion, of
an individual mind, but connects itself with silent
changes, which are advancing in the very bed and
basis of modern society. Secondly, that the progress
of a great cause, signal as it has been and is, appears
liable nevertheless to suffer in point of credit, if not
of energy and rapidity, from the real or supposed
8 A CHAPTER OF AUTOBIOGRAPHY.
delinquencies of a person, with whose name for the
moment it happens to be specially associated.
One thing is clear : that if I am warranted in
treating my own case as an excepted case, I am
bound so to treat it. It is only with a view to the
promotion of some general interest, that the public
can becomingly be invited to hear more, especially in
personal history, about an individual, of whom they
already hear too much. But if it be for the gene-
ral interest to relieve ' an enterprise of pith and
moment ' from the odium of baseness, and from the
lighter reproach of precipitancy, I must make the
attempt; though the obtrusion of the first person,
and of all that it carries in its train, must be irksome
alike to the reader and the writer.
So far, indeed, as my observation has gone, the
Liberal party of this country have stood fire un-
flinchingly under the heavy vollies which have been
fired into its camp with ammunition that had been
drawn from depositories full only with matter per-
sonal to myself. And, with the confidence they
entertain in the justice and wisdom of the policy they
recommend, it would have been weak and childish to
act otherwise. Still, I should be glad to give them
the means of knowing that the case may not after all
be so scandalous as they are told. In the year 1827,
if I remember right, when Mr. Canning had just
become Prime Minister, an effort was made to support
him in the town of Liverpool, where the light and
music of his eloquence had not yet died away, by an
Address to the Crown. The proposal was supported
by an able and cultivated Unitarian Minister, Mr.
Shepherd, who had been one of Mr. Canning's oppo-
A CHAPTER OF AUTOBIOGRAPHY. 9
nents at former periods in the Liverpool elections.
Vindicating the consistency of his course, he said he
was ready to support the devil himself, if it had been
necessary, in doing good. This was a succinct and
rough manner of disposing of the question in the last
resort. I hope, however, that those who sustain the
Liberal policy respecting the Established Church of
Ireland, will not be driven to so dire an extremity.
It can hardly be deemed on my part an unnatural
desire, that political friends, and candid observers,
should on grounds of reason and knowledge, and not
merely from friendly prepossession, feel themselves
warranted not to believe in the justice of language
such as by way of example I subjoin. I must,
however, suppose that the author of it is persuaded
of its fairness and justice, since he bears Her Majesty's
Commission ; and his statement is adopted and pub-
lished by a brother-officer, who is himself a candidate
for Berwick in the ministerial interest, and therefore
(I presume) not particularly squeamish on the sub-
ject of political consistency, although I entertain no
doubt that both are gallant, upright, and estimable
gentlemen.
" There is obviously no need, on the present occasion at
least, to extend this catalogue of the political delinquencies
of this would-be demagogue, whom we may accordingly leave
gibbeted and swinging in the winds of the fools' paradise !
an object of derision and contempt to those at least who
maintain that integrity of purpose and consistency ought not
altogether to be discarded from public life." *
It freezes the blood, in moments of retirement and
reflexion, for a man to think that he can have pre-
* From a placard just published at Berwick.
10 A CHAPTER OF AUTOBIOGRAPHY.
sented a picture so hideous to the view of a fellow-
creature !
One thing I have not done, and shall not do. I
shall not attempt to laugh off the question, or to
attenuate its importance. In theory at least, and for
others, I am myself a purist with respect to what
touches the consistency of statesmen. Change of
opinion, in those to whose judgment the public looks
more or less to assist its own, is an evil to the country,
although a much smaller evil than their persistence
in a course which they know to be wrong. It is not
always to be blamed. But it is always to be watched
with vigilance ; always to be challenged, and put
upon its trial. The question is one of so much in-
terest, that it may justify a few remarks.
It can hardly escape even cursory observation, that
the present century has seen a great increase in the
instances of what is called political inconsistency. It
is needless, and it would be invidious, to refer to
names. Among the living, however, who have occu-
pied leading positions, and among the dead of the
last twenty years, numerous instances will at once
occur to the mind, of men who have been constrained
to abandon in middle and mature, or even in advanced
life, convictions which they had cherished through
long years of conflict and vicissitude : and of men,
too, who have not been so fortunate as to close or
continue their career in the same political connexion
as that in which they commenced it. If we go a
little farther back, to the day of Mr. Pitt and Mr.
Fox, or even to the day of Mr. Canning, Lord Lon-
donderry, or Lord Liverpool, we must be struck with
the difference. A great political and social convul-
A CHAPTER OF AUTOBIOGRAPHY. 11
sion, like the French Revolution, of necessity deranged
the ranks of party ; yet not even then did any man of
great name, or of a high order of mind, permanently
change his side.
If we have witnessed in the last forty years,
beginning with the epoch of Roman Catholic Eman-
cipation, a great increase in the changes of party, or
of opinion, among prominent men, we are not at once
to leap to the conclusion that public character, as a
rule, has been either less upright, or even less vigor-
ous. The explanation is rather to be found in this,
that the movement of the public mind has been of a
nature entirely transcending former experience ; and
that it has likewise been more promptly and more
effectively represented, than at any earlier period, in
the action of the Government and the Legislature.
If it is the office of law and of institutions to reflect the
wants and wishes of the country, (and its wishes must
ever be a considerable element in its wants), then, as
the nation passes from a stationary into a progressive
period, it will justly require that the changes in its
own condition and views should be represented in the
professions and actions of its leading men. For they
exist for its sake, not it for theirs. It remains indeed
their business, now and ever, to take honour and
duty for their guides, and not the mere demand or
purpose of the passing hour ; but honour and duty
themselves require their loyal servant to take account
of the state of facts in which he is to work, and, while
ever labouring to elevate the standard of opinion and
action around him, to remember that his business is
not to construct, with self-chosen materials, an Utopia
or a Republic of Plato, but to conduct the affairs of
12 A CHAPTER OF AUTOBIOGRAPHY.
a living and working community of men, who have
self-government recognised as in the last resort the
moving spring of their political life, and of the insti-
tutions which are its outward vesture.
The gradual transfer of political power from groups
and limited classes to the community, and the con-
stant seething of the public mind, in fermentation
upon a vast mass of moral and social, as well as
merely political, interests, offer conditions of action,
in which it is evident that the statesman, in order to
preserve the same amount of consistency as his ante-
cessors in other times, must be gifted with a far
larger range of foresight. But Nature has endowed
him with no such superiority. It may be true that
Sir Robert Peel shewed this relative deficiency in
foresight, with reference to Roman Catholic Emanci-
pation, to Reform, and to the Corn Law. It does not
follow that many, who have escaped the reproach,
could have stood the trial. For them the barometer
was less unsteady ; the future less exacting in its
demands. But let us suppose that we could secure
this enlargement of onward view, this faculty of
measuring and ascertaining to-day the wants of a
remote hereafter, in our statesmen ; we should not
even then be at the end of our difficulties. For the
public mind is to a great degree unconscious of its
own progression ; and it would resent and repudiate,
if offered to its immature judgment, the very policy,
which after a while it will gravely consider, and after
another while enthusiastically embrace.
Yet, as it still remains true that the actual opinions
and professions of men in office, and men in autho-
rity without office, are among the main landmarks
A CHAPTER OF AUTOBIOGRAPHY. 13
on which the public has to rely, it may seem that, in
vindicating an apparent liberty of change, we destroy
the principal guarantees of integrity which are
available for the nation at large, and with these all
its confidence in the persons who are to manage its
affairs. This would be a consequence so fatal, that it
might even drive us back upon the hopeless attempt
to stereotype the minds of men, and fasten on their
manhood the swaddling clothes of their infancy. But
such is not the alternative. We may regulate the
changes which we cannot forbid, by subjecting them
to the test of public scrutiny, and by directing that
scrutiny to the enforcement of the laws of moral
obligation. There are abundant signs, by which to
distinguish between those changes, which prove
nothing worse than the fallibility of the individual
mind, and manoeuvres which destroy confidence, and
entail merited dishonour. Changes which are sudden
and precipitate changes accompanied with a light
and contemptuous repudiation of the former self
changes which are systematically timed and tuned
to the interest of personal advancement changes
which are hooded, slurred over, or denied for these
changes, and such as these, I have not one word to
say ; and if they can be justly charged upon me, I
can no longer desire that any portion, however small,
of the concerns or interests of my countrymen should
be lodged in my hands.
Let me now endeavour to state the offence of
which I am held guilty. Hie ego qui quondam : I, the
person who have now accepted a foremost share of
the responsibility of endeavouring to put an end
to the existence of the Irish Church as an Establish-
14 A CHAPTER OF AUTOBIOGRAPHY.
ment, am also the person who, of all men in official,
perhaps in public life, did, until the year 1841,
recommend, upon the highest and most imperious
grounds, its resolute maintenance.
The book entitled 'The State in its Eelations with
the Church 5 was printed during the autumn of 1838,
while I was making a tour in the South of Europe,
which the state of my eyesight had rendered it
prudent to undertake. Three editions of it were
published without textual change ; and in the year
1841 a fourth, greatly enlarged, though in other
respects little altered, issued from the press. All
interest in it had, however, even at that time, long
gone by, and it lived for nearly thirty years only in
the vigorous and brilliant, though not (in my opinion)
entirely faithful picture, drawn by the accomplished
hand of Lord Macaulay. During the present year,
as I understand from good authority, it has again
been in demand, and in my hearing it has received
the emphatic suffrages of many, of whose approval I
was never made aware during the earlier and less
noisy stages of its existence.
The distinctive principle of the book was supposed
to be, that the State had a conscience. But the con-
troversy really lies not in the existence of a conscience
in the State, so much as in the extent of its range.
Few would deny the obligation of a State to follow
the moral law. Every Treaty, for example, proceeds
upon it. The true issue was this : whether the State,
in its best condition, has such a conscience as can
take cognizance of religious truth and error, and in
particular whether the State of the United Kingdom,
at a period somewhat exceeding thirty years ago, was
A CHAPTER OF AUTOBIOGRAPHY. 15
or was not so far in that condition as to be under an
obligation to give an active and an exclusive support
to the established religion of the country.
The work attempted to survey the actual state of the
relations between the State and the Church ; to show
from History the ground which had been defined
for the National Church at the Reformation ; and to
inquire and determine whether the existing state of
things was worth preserving, and defending against
encroachment from whatever quarter. This question
it decided emphatically in the affirmative.
An early copy of the Review containing the
powerful essay of Lord Macaulay was sent to me ;
and I found that to the main proposition, sufficiently
startling, of the work itself, the reviewer had added
this assumption, that it contemplated not indeed per-
secution, but yet the retrogressive process of disabling
and disqualifying from civil office all those who did
not adhere to the religion of the State. Before (I
think) the number of the c Edinburgh Review ' for
April, 1839, could have been in the hands of the
public, I had addressed to Lord (then Mr.) Macaulay
the following letter, which I shall make no apology for
inserting, inasmuch as it will introduce one more
morsel of his writing, for which the public justly
shows a keen and insatiable appetite.
DEAR SlR, 6 > Carlton Gardens, April 10th, 1839.
I have been favoured with a copy of the forthcoming
number of the ' Edinburgh Keview,' and I perhaps too
much presume upon the bare acquaintance with you of
which alone I can boast, in thus unceremoniously assuming
you to be the author of the article entitled 'Church and
State,' and in offering you my very warm and cordial thanks
16 A CHAPTEK OF AUTOBIOGRAPHY.
for the manner in which you have treated both the work, and
the author, on whom you deigned to bestow your attention.
In whatever you write, you can hardly hope for the privilege
of most anonymous productions, a real concealment ; but if
it had been possible not to recognize you, I should have
questioned your authorship in this particular case, because
the candour and single-mindedness which it exhibits are, in
one who has long been connected in the most distinguished
manner with political party, so rare as to be almost
incredible.
I hope to derive material benefit, at some more tranquil
season, from a consideration of your argument throughout.
I am painfully sensible, whenever I have occasion to re-opsn
the book, of its shortcomings, not only of the subject but
even of my own conceptions : and I am led to suspect that,
under the influence of most kindly feelings, you have
omitted to criticize many things besides the argument, which
might fairly have come within your animadversion.
In the mean time I hope you will allow me to apprise you
that on one material point especially I am not so far
removed from you as you suppose. I am not conscious that
I have said either that the Test Act should be repealed, or
that it should not have been passed : and though on such
subjects language has many bearings which escape the view
of the writer at the moment when the pen is in his hand,
yet I think that I can hardly have put forth either of these
propositions, because I have never entertained the corre-
sponding sentiments. Undoubtedly I should speak of the
pure abstract idea of Church and State as implying that
they are co-extensive: and I should regard the present
composition of the State of the United Kingdom as a devia-
tion from that pure idea, but only in the same sense as all
differences of religious opinion in the Church are a deviation
from its pure idea, while I not only allow that they are
permitted, but believe that (within limits) they were in-
tended to be permitted. There are some of these deflections
from abstract theory which appear to me allowable ; and that
of the admission of persons not holding the national creed
into civil office is one which, in my view, must be determined
A CHAPTER OF AUTOBIOGRAPHY. 17
by times and circumstances. At the same time I do not
recede from any protest which I have made against the
principle, that religious differences are irrelevant to the
question of competency for civil office : but I would take my
stand between the opposite extremes, the one that no such
differences are to be taken into view, the other that all
such differences are to constitute disqualifications.
I need hardly say the question I raise is not whether you
have misrepresented me, for, were I disposed to anything so
weak, the whole internal evidence and clear intention of your
article would confute me : indeed I feel I ought to apologize
for even supposing that you may have been mistaken in the
apprehension of my meaning, and I freely admit on the other
hand the possibility that, totally without my own knowledge,
my language may have led to such an interpretation.
In these lacerating times one clings to everything of
personal kindness in the past, to husband it for the future,
and if you will allow me I shall earnestly desire to carry
with me such a recollection of your mode of dealing with the
subject ; upon which, the attainment of truth, we shall agree,
so materially depends upon the temper in which the search
for it is instituted and conducted.
I did not mean to have troubled you at so much length,
and I have only to add that 1 am, with much respect,
Dear Sir,
Very truly yours,
W. E. GLADSTONE.
T. B. MACAULAY, ESQ.
MY DEAR SIR, 3, Clarges Street, April llth, 1839.
I have very seldom been more gratified than by the very
kind note which I have just received from you. Your book
itself, and everything that I heard about you, though almost
all my information came to the honour, I must say, of our
troubled times from people very strongly opposed to you
in politics, led me to regard you with respect and good will,
C
18 A CHAPTEK OF AUTOBIOGRAPHY.
and I am truly glad that I have succeeded in marking those
feelings. I was half afraid when I read myself over again
in print, that the button, as is too common in controversial
fencing even between friends, had once or twice come off
the foil.
I am very glad to find that we do not differ so widely as I
had apprehended about the Test Act. I can easily explain
the way in which I was misled. Your general principle is
that religious non-conformity ought to be a disqualification
for civil office. In page 238 you say that the true and
authentic mode of ascertaining conformity is the Act of
Communion. I thought, therefore, that your theory pointed
directly to a renewal of the Test Act. And I do not re-
collect that you have ever used any expression importing
that your theory ought in practice to be modified by any
considerations of civil prudence. All the exceptions that you
mention are, as far as I remember, founded on positive
contract not one on expediency, even in cases where the
expediency is so strong and so obvious that most statesmen
would call it necessity. If 1 had understood that you meant
your rules to be followed out in practice only so far as might
be consistent with the peace and good government of society,
I should certainly have expressed myself very differently in
several parts of my article.
Accept my warm thanks for your kindness, and believe me,
with every good wish,
My dear Sir,
Very truly yours,
T. B. MACAULAY.
W. E. GLADSTONE, ESQ., M.P.
Faithful to logic, and to its theory, my work did not
shrink from applying them to the crucial case of the
Irish Church. It did not disguise the difficulties of
the case, for I was alive to the paradox it involved.
But the one master idea of the system, that the State
as it then stood was capable in this age, as it had
A CHAPTER OF AUTOBIOGRAPHY. 19
been in ages long gone by, of assuming beneficially
a responsibility for the inculcation of a particular
religion, carried me through all. My doctrine was,
that the Church, as established by law, was to be
maintained for its truth ; that this was the only prin-
ciple on which it could be properly and permanently
upheld ; that this principle, if good in England, was
good also for Ireland ; that truth is of all possessions
the most precious to the soul of man; and that to
remove, as I then erroneously thought we should
remove, this priceless treasure from the view and the
reach of the Irish people, would be meanly to pur-
chase their momentary favour at the expense of their
permanent interests, and would be a high offence
against our own sacred obligations.
These, I think, were the leading propositions of
the work. In one important point, however, it was
inconsistent with itself; it contained a full admission
that a State might, by its nature and circumstances,
be incapacitated from upholding and propagating a
definite form of religion.*
" There may be a state of things in the United States
of America, perhaps in some British colonies, there does
actually exist a state of things, in which religious communions
are so equally divided, or so variously subdivided, that the
Government is itself similarly chequered in its religious com-
plexion, and thus internally incapacitated by disunion from
acting in matters of religion ; or, again, there may be a State
in which the members of Government may be of one faith or
persuasion, the mass of the subjects of another, and hence
there may be an external incapacity to act in matters of
religion."
* 'The State in its Relations with the Church,' ch. ii., sect. 71, p. 73.
Editions 1-3.
c 2
20 A CHAPTER OF AUTOBIOGRAPHY.
The book goes on to describe that incapacity, how-
ever produced, as a social defect and calamity. But
the latter part of the work, instead of acknowledging
such incapacity as a sufficient and indeed commanding
plea for abstention, went beyond the bounds of mode-
ration, and treated it as if it must in all cases be a
sin ; as though any association of men, in civil
government or otherwise, could be responsible for
acting beyond the line of the capabilities determined
for it by its constitution and composition. My
meaning I believe was, to describe only cases in
which there might be a deliberate renunciation of
such duties as there was the power to fulfil. But the
line is left too obscurely drawn between this wilful
and wanton rejection of opportunities for good, and
the cases in which the state of religious convictions,
together with the recognised principles of govern-
ment, disable the civil power from including within
its work the business of either directly or indirectly
inculcating religion, and mark out for it a different
line of action.
I believe that the foregoing passages describe fairly,
if succinctly, the main propositions of* The State in its
Eelations with the Church ; ' so far as the book bears
upon the present controversy. They bound me hand
and foot : they hemmed me in on every side. Further
on I shall endeavour to indicate more clearly in what
I think the book was right, and in what it was
wrong. What I have now to show is the manner
in which I retreated from an untenable position. To
this retreat, and the time and mode of it, I now draw
attention, and I will endeavour to apply to them the
tests I have already laid down : Was it sudden ?
A CHAPTER OF AUTOBIOGRAPHY. 21
Was it performed with an indecent levity ? Was it
made to minister to the interests of political ambi-
tion ? Was the gravity of the case denied or under-
stated ? Was it daringly pretended that there had
been no real change of front ; and that, if the world
had understood me otherwise, it had misunderstood
me ? My opinion of the Established Church of Ire-
land now is the direct opposite of what it was then.
I then thought it reconcilable with civil and national
justice ; I now think the maintenance of it grossly
unjust. I then thought its action was favourable to
the interests of the religion which it teaches ; I now
believe it to be opposed to them.
But I must venture to point out that, whatever be
the sharpness of this contradiction, it is one from
which I could not possibly escape by endeavouring
to maintain the Established Church of Ireland on the
principles on which it is now maintained. I challenge
all my censors to impugn me when I affirm that, if
the propositions of my work are in conflict (as they
are) with an assault upon the existence of the Irish
Establishment, they are at least as much, or even
more, hostile to the grounds on which it is now
attempted to maintain it. At no time of my life did
I propound the maxim simpliciter that we were to
maintain the Establishment. I appeal to the few who
may have examined my work otherwise than for the
purpose of culling from it passages which would tell
in a quotation. I appeal to the famous article of
Lord Macaulay,* who says with truth
" Mr. Gladstone's whole theory rests on this great
fundamental proposition, that the propagation of re-
* ' Edinburgh Review,' April, 1839, p. 235.
22 A CHAPTER OF AUTOBIOGRAPHY.
ligious truth is one of the principal ends of govern-
ment, as government. If Mr. Gladstone has not
proved this proposition, his system vanishes at oncer
This was entirely just. In the protest I addressed
to the distinguished Reviewer on a particular point, I
took no exception to it whatever. My work had
used (as far as I believe and remember) none of
the stock arguments for maintaining the Church of
Ireland. I did not say " maintain it, lest you should
disturb the settlement of property." I did not say
" maintain it, lest you should be driven to repeal the
Union." I did not say " maintain it, lest you should
offend and exasperate the Protestants." I did not
say " maintain it, because the body known as the
Irish Church has an indefeasible title to its property."
I did not say " maintain it for the spiritual benefit of
a small minority." Least of all did I say " maintain
it, but establish religious equality, setting up at the
public charge other establishments along with it, or
by distributing a sop here and a sop there, to coax
Roman Catholics and Presbyterians into a sort of
acquiescence in its being maintained." These topics
I never had made my own. Scarcely ever, in the
first efforts of debate, had I referred to one of them.
My trumpet, however shrill and feeble, had at least
rung out its note clearly. And my ground, right or
wrong it matters not for the present purpose, was
this : the Church of Ireland must be maintained for
the benefit of the whole people of Ireland, and must
be maintained as the truth, or it cannot be main-
tained at all.
Accordingly my book contended that the principle
of the Grant to Maynooth, unless as a simply cove-
A CHAPTER OF AUTOBIOGRAPHY. 23
nanted obligation,* and that of the Established
Church of Ireland, could not stand together. In the
House of Commons, on the question relating to the
Grant, I am reported as having said in the year
1838, f that I objected to the Grant because it was
fatal to the main principle on which the Established
Church was founded.
And further. The Liberal Government and party
of that day proposed, in 1835 and the following
years, the famous "Appropriation Clause." The
principle of their measure was, that the surplus funds
only of the Irish Church were to be applied to
popular education, after adequate provision had been
made for the spiritual wants of the Protestants. This
principle, that adequate provision is to be made for
the spiritual wants of the Protestants, before any
other claim on the property of the Irish Church can
be admitted, was the basis of the Appropriation
Clause ; and is, as I understand the matter, the very
principle which is now maintained against the Liberal
party of 1868, by the (so-called) defenders of the
Irish Established Church. But this principle I de-
nounced in 1836 as strongly as I could now do. I
extract the following passage from a report in
' Hansard/ which, as I remember, I had myself cor-
rected, of a speech on the Irish Tithe Bill with the
Appropriation Clause : J
"A Church Establishment is maintained either for the
sake of its members or its doctrines ; for those whom it
* p. 252.
f Mirror of Parliament,' Monday, July 30, 1838. The passage, which
is full and clear, is more briefly given, but to the same effect, in ' Hansard,'
vol. xliv. p. 817.
J June 1, 1836. ' Hansard,' vol. xxxiii. p. 1317.
24 A CHAPTER OF AUTOBIOGRAPHY.
teaches, or for that which it teaches. On the former ground
it is not in equity tenable for a moment.
" Why should any preference be given to me over another
fellow-subject, or what claim have I personally to have my
religion supported, whilst another is disavowed by the State ?
No claim whatever in respect to myself. I concur entirely
with gentlemen opposite, hostile to an Establishment, that
no personal privilege ought in such a matter to be allowed.
" But if, on the contrary, I believe, as the great bulk of the
British Legislature does believe, that the doctrine and system
of the Establishment contain and exhibit truth in its purest
and most effective form, and if we also believe truth to be
good for the people universally, then we have a distinct and
immovable ground for the maintenance of an Establish-
ment ; but it follows as a matter of course from the principle,
that it must be maintained, not on a scale exactly and strictly
adjusted to the present number of its own members, but on
such a scale that it may also have the means of offering to
others the benefits which it habitually administers to them.
" Therefore we wish to see the Establishment in Ireland
upheld ; not for the sake of the Protestants, but of the people
at large, that the ministers may be enabled to use the influ-
ences of their station, of kindly offices and neighbourhood, of
the various occasions which the daily intercourse and habits
of social life present ; aye, and I do not hesitate to add of
persuasion itself, applied with a zeal tempered by knowledge
and discretion, in the propagation of that which is true, and
which, being true, is good as well for those who as yet have
it not, as well for those who have it. It is the proposition of
the noble Lord which is really open to the charge of bigotry,
intolerance, and arbitrary selection ; because, disavowing the
maintenance and extension of truth, he continues by way of
personal privilege to the Protestants the legal recognition of
their Church, which he refuses to the Church of the Eoman
Catholic."
The negative part of this passage I adopt, except the
censure it implies upon Earl Eussell and his friends ;
who, whether their actual propositions were defensible
A CHAPTER OF AUTOBIOGRAPHY. 25
or not, had the " root of the matter " in their hearts,
and were far ahead of rne in their political forethought,
and in their desire to hold up at least the banner of
a generous and a hopeful policy towards Ireland.
In this manner I prove that, while I was bound
by the propositions of my work, I was not singly but
doubly bound. I was bound to defend the Irish
Church, as long as it could be defended on the
ground of its truth. But when the day arrived on
which that ground was definitively abandoned, on
which a policy was to be adopted by the Imperial
Parliament such as to destroy this plea for the Irish
Establishment, I was equally bound in such case to
adopt no other : I had shown that justice would fail
to warrant the mere support of the Church of the
minority ; I was held, therefore, not to construct out
of rags and tatters, shreds and patches, a new and
different case for maintaining it on the ground of
favour, or, as it is termed, justice, to Protestants ;
and, if I had done anything of this kind, I should
not have escaped the responsibility of inconsistency,
but should simply have added a second and (as I
think) a less excusable inconsistency to the first.
The day for the adoption of such a policy as I have
described was not far distant.
Scarcely had my work issued from the press when
I became aware that there was no party, no section
of a party, no individual person probably in the House
of Commons, who was prepared to act upon it. I
found myself the last man on the sinking ship. Ex-
clusive support to the established religion of the
country, with a limited and local exception for Scot-
land under the Treaty of Union with that country,
26 A CHAPTER OF AUTOBIOGRAPHY.
had been up to that time the actual rule of our policy ;
the instances to the contrary being of equivocal con-
struction, and of infinitesimal amount. But the attempt
to give this rule a vitality other than that of sufferance
was an anachronism in time and in place. When I bid
it live, it was just about to die. It was really a quick-
ened and not a deadened conscience in the country,
which insisted on enlarging the circle of State support,
even while it tended to restrain the range of political
interference in religion. The condition of our poor,
of our criminals, of our military and naval services,
and the backward state of popular education, forced
on us a group of questions, before the moral pressure
of which the old rules properly gave way. At and
about the same period, new attempts to obtain grants
of public money for the building of churches in
England and Scotland, I am thankful to say, failed.
The powerful Government of 1843 also failed to carry
a measure of Factory Education, because of the pre-
ference it was thought to give to the Established
Church. I believe the very first opinion I ever was
called upon to give in Cabinet was an opinion in
favour of the withdrawal of that measure.
In this state of facts and feelings, notwithstanding
the strength of anti-Eoman opinion, it was impossible
that Ireland should not assert her share, and that a
large one, to consideration in these critical matters.
The forces, which were now at work, brought speedily
to the front and to the top that question of Maynooth
College, which I had always (rightly or wrongly)
treated as a testing question for the foundations of the
Irish Established Church ; as, in point of principle,
the Articulus stanlis aut cadentis Ecclesice.
A CHAPTER OF AUTOBIOGRAPHY. 27
In the course of the year 1844, when I was a
member of the Cabinet of Sir Robert Peel, he made
known to me his opinion that it was desirable to re-
inodel and to increase the Grant to Maynooth. I was
the youngest member of that Government, entirely
bound up with it in policy, and warmly attached, by
respect and even affection, to its head and to some of
its leading members. Of association with what was
termed ultra-Toryism in general politics I had never
dreamed. I well knew that the words of Sir R. Peel
were not merely tentative, but that, as it was right
they should, they indicated a fixed intention. The
choice before me, therefore, was, to support his mea-
sure, or to retire from his Government into a position
of complete isolation, and what was more than this,
subject to a grave and general imputation of political
eccentricity. My retirement, I knew, could have rio
other warrant than this : that it would be a tribute
to those laws which, as I have urged, must be upheld
for the restraint of changes of opinion and conduct in
public men. For I never entertained the idea of
opposing the measure of Sir Robert Peel. I can
scarcely be guilty of a breach of confidence when I
mention that Lord Derby, to whom I had already
been indebted for much personal kindness, was one of
those colleagues who sought to dissuade me from re-
signing my office. He urged upon me that such an
act must be followed by resistance to the measure of
the Government, and that I should run the risk of
being mixed with a fierce religious agitation. I
replied that I must adhere to my purpose of retire-
ment, but that I did not perceive the necessity of its
being followed by resistance to the proposal. Over-
28 A CHAPTER OF AUTOBIOGRAPHY.
tures were, not unnaturally, made to me by some of
those who resisted it ; but they were at once declined.
My whole purpose was to place myself in a position
in which I should be free to consider my course
without being liable to any just suspicion on the
ground of personal interest. It is not profane if I
say " with a great price obtained I this freedom."
The political association in which I stood was to me
at the time the alpha and omega of public life. The
Government of Sir Robert Peel was believed to be of
immovable strength. My place, as President of the
Board of Trade, was at the very kernel of its most
interesting operations; for it was in progress from
year to year, with continually waxing courage,
towards the emancipation of industry, and therein
towards the accomplishment of another great and
blessed work of public justice. Giving up what I
highly prized, aware that
"male sarta
Gratia nequicquam coit, et rescinditur," *
I felt myself open to the charge of being opinionated,
and wanting in deference to really great authorities ;
and I could not but know I should be regarded as
fastidious and fanciful, fitter for a dreamer, or possibly
a schoolman, than for the active purposes of public
life in a busy and moving age. In effect so it was.
In the month of January, 1845, if not sooner, the
resolution of the Cabinet was taken ; and I resigned.
The public judgment, as might have been expected,
did not favour the act. I remember that the * Daily
News,' then as now a journal greatly distinguished for
an almost uniform impartiality, as well as for breadth
* Hor. Ep. ii. 3. 31.
A CHAPTER OF AUTOBIOGRAPHY. 29
of view and high discernment, remarked at the time
or afterwards upon the case, as a rare one, in which a
public man had injured himself with the public by an
act which must in fairness be taken to be an act of
self- denial. I hope that reference to this criticism will
not be considered boastful. It can hardly be so ; for an
infirm judgment, exhibited in a practical indiscretion,
is after all the theme of these pages. I do not claim
acquittal upon any one of the counts of indictment
which I have admitted may be brought against the
conduct I pursued. One point only I plead, and plead
with confidence. It proved that I was sensible of the
gravity of any great change in political conduct or
opinion, and desirous beyond all things of giving to
the country such guarantees as I could give of my
integrity, even at the expense of my judgment and
fitness for affairs. If any man doubts this. I ask him
to ask himself, what demand political honour could
have made with which I failed to comply ?
In the ensuing debate on the Address (February 4,
1845), Lord John Russell, in terms of courtesy and
kindness which I had little deserved from him, called
for an explanation of the cause of my retirement. In
a statement which I corrected for ' Hansard's Debates,'
I replied that it had reference to the intentions of the
Government with respect to Maynooth ; that those
intentions pointed to a measure " at variance with the
system which I had maintained," " in a form the most
detailed and deliberate," " in a published treatise:"
that although I had never set forth any theory of
political affairs as " under all circumstances inflexible
and immutable," yet I thought those who had borne
such solemn testimony to a particular view of a great
30 A CHAPTER OF AUTOBIOGRAPHY.
constitutional question, " ought not to be parties
responsible for proposals which involved a material
departure from it." And the purpose of my retire-
ment was to " place myself, so far as in me lay, in a
position to form not only an honest, but likewise an
independent and an unsuspected judgment," on the
plan likely to be submitted by the Government. I
also spoke as follows, in more forms than one :
" I wish again and most distinctly to state, that I am not
prepared to take part in any religious warfare against that
measure, such as I believe it may be ; or to draw a dis-
tinction between the Edman Catholics and other deno-
minations of Christians, with reference to the religious
opinions which each of them respectively may hold."
Now I respectfully submit that by this act my
freedom was established ; and that it has never since,
during a period of nearly five-and-twenty years, been
compromised.
Some may say that it is perfectly consistent to
have endowed Maynooth anew, and yet to uphold on
principle, as a part of the Constitution, the Established
Church of Ireland. It may be consistent, for them ;
it was not consistent, as I have distinctly shown, for
me. The moment that I admitted the validity of a
claim by the Church of Rome for the gift, by the free
act of the Imperial Parliament, of new funds for the
education of its clergy, the true basis of the Esta-
blished Church of Ireland for me was cut away. The
one had always been treated by me as exclusive of the
other. It is not now the question whether this way
of looking at the question was a correct one. There
are great authorities against it ; while it seems at the
same time to have some considerable hold on what may
A CHAPTER OF AUTOBIOGRAPHY. 31
be termed the moral sense of portions, perhaps large
portions, of the people. The present question is one
of fact. It is enough for the present purpose, that
such was my view. From that day forward, I have
never to my knowledge said one word, in public or
in private, which could pledge me on principle to the
maintenance of the Irish Church. Nay, in a speech,
delivered on the second reading of the Maynooth
College Bill, I took occasion distinctly to convey, that
the application of religious considerations to eccle-
siastical questions in Ireland would be entirely altered
by the passing of the measure :
" The boon to which I for one have thus agreed, is a very
great boon. I think it important, most of all important with
regard to the principles it involves. I am very far, indeed,
from saying that it virtually decides upon the payment of
the Koman Catholic priests of Ireland by the State : but I do
not deny that it disposes of the religious objections to that
measure. I mean that we, who assent to this Bill, shall in
my judgment no longer be in a condition to plead religious
objections to such a project."*
True, I did not say that I was thenceforward pre-
pared at any moment to vote for the removal of the
Established Church in Ireland. And this for the best
of all reasons : it would not have been true. It is
one thing to lift the anchor ; it is another to spread
the sails. It may be a duty to be in readiness for
departure, when departure itself would be an offence
against public prudence and public principle. But
I do not go so far even as this. On the contrary, I
was willing and desirous f that it should be permitted
to continue. If its ground in logic was gone, yet it
might have, in fact, like much besides, its day of
* 'Speech on the Second Reading of the Maynooth College Bill,' 1845,
p. 44. f Ibid., p. 33.
32 A CHAPTER OF AUTOBIOGRAPHY.
grace. I do not now say that I leapt at once to the
conclusion that the Established Church of Ireland
must at any definite period " cease to exist as an
Establishment." She had my sincere good will ; I
was not sorry, I was glad, that while Ireland seemed
content to have it so, a longer time should be granted
her to unfold her religious energies through the
medium of an active and pious clergy, which until
this our day she had never possessed. My mind
recoiled then, as it recoils now, from the idea of
worrying the Irish Church to death. I desired that
it should remain even as it was, until the way should
be opened, and the means at hand, for bringing about
some better state of things.
Moreover, it was a duty, from my point of view,
completely to exhaust every chance on behalf of the
Irish Church. I have not been disposed, at any
time of life, gratuitously to undertake agitation of the
most difficult, and at times apparently the most hope-
less questions. At the period of the Appropriation
Clause, I represented to myself, and I believe to
others, that the true power of the Church as a religious
engine had never up to that period been fairly tried.
In name a religious institution, her influences, her
benefices, her sees, were commonly employed for pur-
poses, which we must condemn as secular, even if
they had not been utterly anti-national. Only within
a few, a very few years, had her clergy even
begun to bestir themselves ; and they had forthwith
found that, from the unsettled state of the law of
tithe, they were in the midst of an agitation, both
menacing to public order, and even perilous to
life. I was desirous to see what, after person and
property should have been rendered secure, and a
A CHAPTER OF AUTOBIOGRAPHY. 33
peaceful atmosphere restored, a generation of pious
and zealous men could accomplish in their actual
position. I am still of the opinion that thirty-five
years ago the religion of the Irish Church had not
to her and to our shame be it spoken had fair play.
From the days of Elizabeth downwards, with the
rarest exceptions, the worldly element had entirely
outweighed the religious one (whatever the intention
may have been) in the actual working of the eccle-
siastical institutions of Ireland. Mr. Burke has
immortalised the burning shame and the hideous
scandals of those penal laws which, perhaps for the
first time in the history of Christendom if not of man,
aimed at persecuting men out of one religion, but not
at persecuting them into another. I will not be so
rash as to enter on the field
" Per quern magnus equos Auruncas flexit alumnus."
But the time of awakening had come. The Irish
Church had grown conscious that she had a Gospel
to declare. Even with my present opinions I might
feel a scruple as to the measures now proposed, but
for the resistless and accumulated proof of impotence
afforded by the experience of my life-time, and due,
I believe, to a radically false position. For the Irish
Church has, since the tithe war of 1830-2 came to an
end, had not only fair play that is such fair play as
in Ireland the Establishment allows to the Church
but fair play and something more. She has enjoyed
an opportunity, extending over a generation of men,
with circumstances of favour such as can hardly be
expected to recur. What has been her case? She
has had ample endowments ; perfect security ; an
D
34 A CHAPTER OF AUTOBIOGRAPHY.
almost unbroken freedom from the internal contro-
versies which have chastened (though, in chastening,
I believe improved) the Church of England. The
knowledge of the Irish language has been extensively
attained by her clergy.* She has had all the moral
support that could be given her by the people of this
country ; for it was the people, and not a mere party,
who, in 1835-8, repudiated and repelled the Appro-
priation Clause. Her rival, the Church of Kome,
has seen its people borne down to the ground by
famine ; and then thinned from year to year, in hun-
dreds of thousands, by the resistless force of emigra-
tion. And, last and most of all, in the midst of that
awful visitation of 1847-8, her Protestant Clergy
came to the Eoman Catholic people clad in the garb
of angels of light; for, besides their own bounty
(most liberal, I believe, in proportion to their means),
they became the grand almoners of the British nation.
When, after all this, we arrive at a new census of
religion in 1861, we find that only the faintest im-
pression has been made upon the relative numbers
of the two bodies ; an impression much slighter, I
apprehend, than would have been due to the com-
parative immunity of the Established Church from
the drain of emigration ; and, if so, representing in
reality, not a gain, but a virtual loss of some part
of the narrow ground which before was occupied by
the favoured religion of the State.
Like others, I have watched with interest the
results of those missionary operations in the West
of Ireland which have, perhaps, been construed as of
a greater ulterior significance than really belongs to
* See ' Life of Archbishop Whately.'
A CHAPTER OF AUTOBIOGRAPHY. 35
them. They were, I understand, due not so much to
the Established Church, as to religious bodies in this
country, which expend large funds in Ireland for the
purpose of making converts : an operation in which
the Presbyterians and Protestant Dissenters lend their
aid. Let them not be undervalued. But I, for one,
recollect that this is not the first time when local
and occasional inroads have been successfully effected
by Protestants upon the serried phalanx of the
Roman Church in Ireland, and have been mistaken
for signs of permanent or a general conquest. More
than forty years ago, Bishop Blomfield no mean
authority prophesied or announced, in the House of
Lords, that a second Reformation had then begun.
And there had indeed taken place in Ireland at that
time one, if not more than one, instance of conver-
sions on a large scale to the Established Church,
such as was well calculated to excite sanguine antici-
pations, though they were dispelled by subsequent
experience. I think we ought now to perceive that
the annexation of the warrant of civil authority to
the religious embassy of the Irish Church, discredits
in lieu of recommending it in the view of the Irish
people. I do not mean that we are to put down the
Establishment for the sake of a more effective propa-
gandism. We must not for a moment forget that
civil justice, an adaptation of the state of things in
Ireland to the essential principles of political right, is
that one broad and more than sufficient justification
of the measure, in which all its advocates agree. But,
over and above this, they may also agree in reflecting
with satisfaction that the time is about to come when
in Ireland, in lieu of a system which insults the re-
D 2
36 A CHAPTER OF AUTOBIOGRAPHY.
ligion of the majority and makes that of the minority
powerless, creeds will compete upon the level, and
will thrive according to their merits. Nor will they
be offended with one another when, in the anticipa-
tion of such a state of things, each man who has faith
in freedom, faith in justice, faith in truth, anticipates
a harvest of benefit for his own.
The emancipation thus effected from the net in
which I had been bound was soon after tested. In
1846, it was suggested to me that I should oppose a
member of the newly-formed Government of Lord
John Russell. In my reply, declining the proposal,
I wrote thus : " As to the Irish Church, I am not
able to go to war with them on the ground that they
will not pledge themselves to the maintenance of the
existing appropriation of Church property in Ire-
land." This, however, was a private proceeding.
But, early in 1847, Mr. Estcourt announced his
resignation of the seat he had held, amidst universal
respect, for the University of Oxford. The partiality
of friends proposed me as a candidate. The repre-
sentation of that University was, I think, stated by
Mr. Canning to be to him the most coveted prize of
political life. I am not ashamed to own that I desired
it with an almost passionate fondness. For besides all
the associations it maintained and revived, it was in
those days an honour not only given without solici-
tation, but, when once given, not withdrawn.* The
contest was conducted with much activity, and some
heat. I was, naturally enough, challenged as to my
opinions on the Established Church of Ireland. My
* The case of Sir R. Peel, in 1829, I do not consider an exception to this
remark, as he gave back the charge into the hands of the electors.
A CHAPTER OF AUTOBIOGRAPHY. 37
friend Mr. Coleridge, then young, but already dis-
tinguished, was one of my most active and able
supporters. He has borne spontaneous testimony,
within the last few weeks, to the manner in which
the challenge was met :
" Gentlemen, I must be permitted because an attack has
been made upon Mr. Gladstone, and it has been suggested
that his conversion to his present principles is recent to
mention what is within my own knowledge and experience
with regard to him. In 1847, when I was just leaving
Oxford, I had the great honour of being secretary to his first
election committee for that university, and I well recollect
how, upon that occasion, some older and more moderate
supporters were extremely anxious to draw from him some
pledge that he should stand by the Irish Church. He dis-
tinctly refused to pledge himself to anything of the kind." *
The next Parliamentary occasion, after the May-
nooth Grant, which brought prominently into view
the ecclesiastical arrangements of Ireland, was that
of the Ecclesiastical Titles Bill in 1851. I felt bound,
as one of a very small minority, but in cordial agree-
ment with the chief surviving associates of Sir Robert
Peel, to offer all the opposition in my power, not
only to the clauses by which the party then called
Protectionist, and now Tory, Conservative, or Con-
stitutionalist, endeavoured to sharpen the sting of the
measure, but to the substance of the measure itself. I
may be permitted to observe, that for the representa-
tive of the University of Oxford thus to set himself
against the great bulk of the Liberal as well as the
Conservative party, whatever else it may have been,
was not a servile or a self-seeking course. But this
* Mr. Coleridge's speech at Exeter, August, 1868. From the Man-
chester Examiner ' of August 22.
38 A CHAPTER OF AUTOBIOGRAPHY.
is irrelevant. It is more to the present purpose to
observe that, in resisting this measure, I did not
attempt to mitigate the offence by any profession of
adhesion in principle to the maintenance of the Esta-
blished Church of Ireland ; but I spoke as follows :
" We cannot change the profound and resistless tendencies
of the age towards religious liberty. It is our business to
guide and control their application. Do this you may. But
to endeavour to turn them backwards is the sport of children,
done by the hands of men ; and every effort you may make
in that direction will recoil upon you in disaster and dis-
grace." *
The years flowed on. From 1846 forwards, the
controversy of Free Trade was, as a rule, the com-
manding and absorbing controversy, the pole of
political affairs. But from time to time motions were
made in relation to the Established Church of Ire-
land. That question remained as one asleep, but
whose sleep is haunted with uneasy dreams. These
motions were, as far as I remember them, uniformly
of a narrow and partial character. They aimed at
what is called getting in the thin end of the wedge.
All honour, however, to each one of those who made
them. The mover of any such proposal was vox
clamantis in deserto. The people of England had, in
1835-8, settled the matter for the time. The re-
proaches now made against the older leaders and the
body of the Liberal party for not having seriously
entered the struggle, appear to me to be not only
unjust but even preposterous. The Legislature had
other great subjects to deal with, besides the Irish
Church. Four years of deadly conflict on such a
* ' Corrected Speech on the Ecclesiastical Titles Bill,' 1851, p. 28.
A CHAPTER OF AUTOBIOGRAPHY. 39
matter might well be followed by five times four of
repose. But in the mean time individuals, by their
partial and occasional efforts, bore witness to a prin-
ciple broader than any which they formally an-
nounced. That principle the application of a true
religious equality to Ireland was biding its time.
No one, in my opinion, was bound to assert, by
speech or vote, any decisive opinion upon so great
and formidable a question until he should think,
upon a careful survey of the ground and the time, of
the assisting and opposing forces, that the season for
action had come. The motions actually made were
commonly motions for inquiry, or motions aimed
generally at a change. I did not enter into the de-
bates. When I voted, I voted against them ; and
against such motions, if they were made, I should
vote again.
I now arrive at the Government of 1859-65. He
who has slept long is likely soon to wake. After the
Free Trade struggles of 1860 and 1861 were over,
so it was, I thought, with the question of the Irish
Church. There was a lull in political affairs. They
hung, in a great degree, upon a single life the re-
markable life of Lord Palmerston. It was surely right
to think a little of the future. The calm was certain
to be succeeded by a breeze, if not a gale. It was
too plain to me that the inner disposition of Ireland,
relatively to this country, was not improving ; and
that, in the course of years, more or fewer, the ques-
tion of the Irish Church was certain to revive, and, if
it should revive, probably to be carried to a final
issue. My first thought, under these circumstances,
40 A CHAPTER OF AUTOBIOGRAPHY.
was about my constituents. Anxiously occupied in
other matters, I did not give my nights and days to
the question of the Irish Church. Yet the question
continually flitted, as it were, before me ; and I felt
that, before that question arose in a practical shape,
my relation to the University should be considered,
and its Convocation distinctly apprised that at the
proper time it would be my duty to support very
extensive changes in the Irish Church. My valued
friend, Sir E. Palmer, has done me the favour, of his
own motion, to state in public that I then apprised
him of my state of mind :
"There had been people who had said, * You would never
have heard anything about the Irish Church question from
Mr. Gladstone if the Tories had not been in power, and he
had not wanted to get their place.' (Hear, hear.) To his
certain knowledge that was not true. He could mention
what had taken place between Mr. Gladstone and himself,
and he did so the rather because it did justice to him, and
would show them that his own mind had been particularly
addressed to that subject, to which he had paid some degree
of attention some years before the present time. In the year
1863, at a time when no one was bringing forward this
question, or seemed very likely to do so, Mr. Gladstone had
told him privately that he had made up his mind on the
subject, and that he should not be able to keep himself from
giving public expression to his feelings. How far or near
that might be practicable, he could not foresee ; but, under
the circumstances, he wanted his friends connected with the
University of Oxford to consider whether or not they would
desire for that reason a change in the representation of the
University." *
* Sir R. Palmer's speech at Richmond, August, 1868. From the * Man-
chester Examiner ' of August 24.
A CHAPTER OF AUTOBIOGRAPHY. 41
Partly because I felt that this question might
come to the front, and partly because I saw a mani-
fest determination in a portion of the Academical
constituency to press my friends with incessant con-
tests, of which I was unwilling to be the hero, I
was not indisposed to retire without compulsion
from the seat, if it could have been done without
obvious detriment to the principles on which I
had been returned. This was judged to be un-
certain. Consequently, I remained. But in 1865,
on the motion of Mr. Dillwyn, I made a speech,
in which I declared that present action .was impos-
sible, that at any period immense difficulties would
have to be encountered, but that this was " the ques-
tion of the future." I stated strongly, though sum-
marily, some of the arguments against the Church
as it stood. I entirely abstained from advising or
glancing at the subject of mere reform, and I did not
use one word from which it could be inferred that I
desired it to continue in its place as the National or
Established Church of the country.
My speech was immediately denounced by Mr.
(now Chief Justice) Whiteside, as one intended to
be fatal to the Established Church of Ireland when
an opportunity should arise ;* and I am told that my
opponents in the University circulated my speech
among their portion of the constituency (as I think
they were quite justified in doing) to my prejudice.
My friends, however, stood by me, and resolved to
* ' Hansard,' vol. clxxviii. p. 444. " But I do complain of a Minister
who, himself the author of a book in defence of Church and State, when
one branch of the Christian Church is attacked and in danger, delivers a
speech, every word of which is hostile to its existence when the right time
comes for attacking it."
42 A CHAPTER OF AUTOBIOGRAPHY.
contend for the seat. An application was made to
me by a distinguished scholar, divine, and teacher,
the Warden of Trinity College, Glenalmond, to give
certain explanations for the appeasing of doubts. I
did so in the following letter :
" 11, Carlton House Terrace, S.W., June 8, 1865.
" DEAR DR. HANNAH,
"It would be very difficult for me to subscribe to
any interpretation of my speech on the Irish Church like
that of your correspondent, which contains so many con-
ditions and bases of a plan for dealing with a question
apparently remote, and at the same time full of difficulties
on every side. My reasons are, I think, plain. First,
because the question is remote, and apparently out of all
bearing on the practical politics of the day, I think it would
be for me worse than superfluous to determine upon any
scheme or basis of a scheme with respect to it. Secondly,
because it is difficult, even if I anticipated any likelihood of
being called upon to deal with it, I should think it right to
make no decision beforehand on the mode of dealing with the
difficulties. But the first reason is that which chiefly weighs.
As far as I know, my speech signifies pretty clearly the broad
distinction which I take between the abstract and the prac-
tical views of the subject. And I think I have stated strongly
my sense of the responsibility attaching to the opening of
such a question, except in a state of things which gave
promise of satisfactorily closing it. For this reason it is that
I have been so silent about the matter, and may probably be
so again ; but I could not as a Minister, and as member for
Oxford, allow it to be debated an indefinite number of times
and remain silent. One thing, however, I may add, because
I think it a clear landmark. In any measure dealing with
the Irish Church, I think (though I scarcely expect ever to
be called on to share in such a measure) the Act of Union
must be recognised and must have important consequences,
especially with reference to the position of the hierarchy.
" I am much obliged to you for writing, and I hope you
A CHAPTER OF AUTOBIOGRAPHY. 43
will see and approve my reasons for not wishing to carry
my own mind further into a question lying at a distance I
cannot measure.
" Yours sincerely,
(Signed) " W. E. GLADSTONE.
"Rev. the WARDEN, Trin. Coll., Perth."
The letter has been the object of much criticism
upon these three grounds. First, it contained a
statement that the Act of Union ought to entail im-
portant consequences in the formation of any measure
relating to the Irish Church. Secondly, that the
question was hardly within the domain of practical
politics. Thirdly, that I felt very uncertain whether
it would be dealt with in my time. The explanation
of the first is as follows : In contemplating the sub-
ject of the Irish Church, I did not see how to give
full effect to the principle of religious equality with-
out touching the composition of the House of Lords.
In this strait, my personal opinion was that it
would be best to retain (though in an altered form)
the Episcopal element from Ireland in the House of
Lords, lest its withdrawal should lead to other
changes, of a kind to weaken the constitution of that
important branch of the legislature ; and thus far I
was disposed to abridge the application of religious
equality to Ireland. I had not yet examined the
question so closely as to perceive that this mode of
proceeding was wholly impracticable, and that the
inconvenience of removing the Irish Bishops must be
faced. And for my part I have not been so happy,
at any time of my life, as to be able sufficiently to
adjust the proper conditions of handling any difficult
44 A CHAPTER OF AUTOBIOGRAPHY.
question, until the question itself was at the door.
This retention of the Bishops in the House of Peers
was the important consequence that I thought the
Act of Union would draw.
Among those errors of the day which may be
called singular as vulgar errors, is that which sup-
poses the fifth Article of the Act of Union with Ire-
land to refer to the endowments of the Church. Its
terms touch exclusively her " doctrine, worship,
discipline, and government." There is no violation of
this section of the Act of Union in withdrawing her
endowments, were she stripped of every shilling. But
it may be said that her " government," as distinguished
from her discipline, perhaps involves the position of
her exclusive relation to the State. So I thought;
and accordingly thus I wrote to Dr. Hannah.
The second proposition of the letter was not only
in harmony with my speech, it was simply the con-
densation of the speech into a brief form of words.
For, agreeing with Mr. Dillwyn as to -the merits of
the case, I held, as I have ever held, that it is not
the duty of a Minister to be forward in inscribing on
the Journals of Parliament his own abstract views;
or to disturb the existence of a great institution like
the Church of Ireland, until he conceives the time to
be come when he can probably give effect to his
opinions. Because the question was not within the
range of practical politics, agreeing with his sen-
timent, I voted against his motion.
But, forsooth, it is a matter of wonder that I should
have felt doubtful whether the Irish Church would
be dealt with in my time. Now, I do not complain
of this. It is an example of what is continually hap-
A CHAPTER OF AUTOBIOGEAPHY. 45
pening in human affairs, of the mythical handling of
facts, of the reflection of the ideas, feelings, and circum-
stances of one period upon the events of another, and
thus dressing the past in the garb of the present. I
abide by this, and by every word of the letter. The
question of the Irish Church was in my view, in the
year 1865, what, be it remembered, the question of
Parliamentary Reform seemed to be in the first moiety
of the year 1830 namely, a remote question. Had
any man said to me, " How soon will it come on ?"
I should have replied, " Heaven knows ; perhaps it
will be five years, perhaps it will be ten." My duty
was to let my constituents know the state of my
mind on a matter so important, because the wind was
gradually veering to that quarter, even though I
might not believe, and did not believe it to be the
most probable event, that it would reach the point
for action during the life of the Parliament just then
about to be elected. But then I referred to my own
political lifetime. On that subject I will only say
that a man who, in 1865, completed his thirty-third
year of a laborious career ;] who had already followed
to the grave the remains of almost all the friends
abreast of whom he had started from the University
in the career of public life ; and who had observed
that, excepting two recent cases, it was hard to find
in our whole history a single man who had been
permitted to reach the fortieth year of a course of
labour similar to his own within the walls of the
House of Commons ; such a man might surely be
excused if he did not venture to reckon for himself
on an exemption from the lot of greater and better
men, and if he formed a less sanguine estimate of the
46 j A CHAPTER OF AUTOBIOGRAPHY.
fraction of space yet remaining to him, than seems to
have been the case with his critics.
The reasons that, in my judgment, prove the time
now to have arrived for dealing decisively with the
question of the Irish Church Establishment, must be
treated elsewhere than in these pages.
So far as Ireland, and the immediate controversy,
and my personal vindication are concerned, I have
done. But there is matter of wider interest, which
connects itself with the subject. The change of con-
duct, the shifting of the mind of an individual,
shrink into insignificance by the side of the question,
What has been, since 1838, the direction of the public
sentiment, the course of law and administration, the
general march of affairs ?
I have described the erroneous impressions as to
the actual and prospective state of things, under
which was urged the practical application of that
system of thought embodied in my work of 1838.
It may be said my error was a gross or even an
absurd one. On that question I need not enter. But
I will endeavour to bring into view some circum-
stances relating to the time, which may help to
account for it. And here I feel that I pass beyond
the narrower and more personal scope of these pages,
if I attempt to recall some of the changes that have
taken place during the last thirty or five-and-thirty
years, in matters which bear upon the religious
character and relations of the State.
At that time, Jews, and others not adopting the
Christian name, were excluded from civil office ; and
though Roman Catholics and Nonconformists had
effected an entrance into Parliament, there still re-
A CHAPTER OF AUTOBIOGRAPHY. 47
mained an oath for the former, and a declaration for
the latter, which, if they did not practically limit
freedom, yet denoted, like the mark of chains on the
limbs of an emancipated slave, that there had been a
time when it did not exist. The Establishment of
Scotland was still entire, and animated with the
strength principally of the eminent men who after-
wards led the Free Church Secession. The attack on
the Irish Church, pushed in 1835 with earnestness
and vigour by the Liberal party, had speedily proved
to be hopeless. The State continued to make to other
persuasions certain grants, little more than compas-
sionate, and handed down from other times ; but, even
in the case of the classes especially in its charge, such
as soldiers and sailors, or such again as paupers and
criminals, it rarely permitted, and still more rarely
provided for them, the means of religious worship
according to their own religious convictions. In the
great province of popular education in England,
nothing was granted except to schools of the Church,
or to schools in which, while the Bible was read, no
religion other than that of the Church was taught ;
and he would have been deemed something more
than a daring prophet, who should have foretold that
in a few years the utmost ambition of the lay cham-
pions, and of the spiritual heads of the Church,
would be to obtain the maintenance of a denomina-
tional system in popular education, under which all
religions alike should receive the indirect, yet not
unsubstantial, countenance of the State.
But the most important of all the changes which
have taken place within the interval, has been the
48 A CHAPTER OF AUTOBIOGRAPHY.
change in the condition of the Church of England
itself.
Even for those old enough to have an adequate
recollection of the facts, it requires no inconsiderable
mental effort to travel backwards over the distrac-
tions, controversies, perils, and calamities of the last
thirty years, to the period immediately before those
years ; and to realise not only the state of facts, but
especially the promises and prospects which it pre-
sented. I am well aware that any description of it
which may now be attempted will appear to bear
more or less the colour of romance ; but, without
taking it into view, no one can either measure the
ground over which we have travelled, or perceive
how strong was then the temptation to form an over-
sanguine estimate of the probable progress of the
Church in her warfare with sin and ignorance, and
even in persuading seceders of all kinds to re-enter
her fold.
That time was a time such as comes, after sickness,
to a man in the flower of life, with an unimpaired
and buoyant constitution ; the time in which, though
health is as yet incomplete, the sense and the joy of
health are keener, as the fresh and living current first
flows in, than are conveyed by its even and undis-
turbed possession.
The Church of England had been passing through
a long period of deep and chronic religious lethargy.
For many years, perhaps for some generations,
Christendom might have been challenged to show,
either then or from any former age, a clergy (with
exceptions) so secular and lax, or congregations
so cold, irreverent, and indevout. The process of
A CHAPTER OF AUTOBIOGRAPHY 49
awakening had, indeed, begun many years before ;
but a very long time is required to stir up effectually
a torpid body, whose dimensions overspread a great
country. Active piety and zeal among the clergy,
and yet more among the laity, had been in a great
degree confined within the narrow limits of a party,
which, however meritorious in its work, presented
in the main phenomena of transition, and laid but
little hold on the higher intellect and cultivation of
the country. Our churches and our worship bore in
general too conclusive testimony to a frozen in-
difference. No effort had been made either to over-
take the religious destitution of the multitudes at
home, or to follow the numerous children of the
Church, migrating into distant lands, with any due
provision for their spiritual wants. The richer bene-
fices were very commonly regarded as a suitable
provision for such members of the higher families
as were least fit to push their way in any profes-
sion requiring thought or labour. The abuses of
plurality and non-residence were at a height, which,
if not proved by statistical returns, it would now be
scarcely possible to believe. In the greatest public
school of the country (and I presume it may be taken
as a sample of the rest) the actual teaching of Chris-
tianity was all but dead, though happily none of its
forms had been surrendered. It is a retrospect full
of gloom ; and with all our Romanising, and all our
Rationalising, what man of sense would wish to go
back upon those dreary times :
" Domos Ditis vacuas, et inania regna " ? *
v.
50 A CHAPTER OF AUTOBIOGRAPHY.
But between 1831 and 1840, the transformation,
which had previously begun, made a progress alto-
gether marvellous. Much was due, without doubt,
to the earnest labour of individuals. Such men as
Bishop Blomfield on the Bench, and Dr. Hook in
the parish (and I name them only as illustrious
examples), who had long been toiling with a patient
but a dauntless energy, began as it were to get the
upper hand. But causes of deep and general opera-
tion were also widely at work. As the French
Ee volution had done much to renovate Christian
belief on the Continent, so the Church of England
was less violently, but pretty sharply, roused by the
political events which arrived in a rattling succes-
sion. In 1828, the repeal of the Test Act. In 1829,
the emancipation of the Roman Catholics. In 1831-2,
the agony and triumph of Reform. In 1833, the
Church Temporalities Act for Ireland. There was
now a general uprising of religious energy in the
Church throughout the land. It saved the Church.
Her condition before 1830 could not possibly have
borne the scrutinising eye, which for thirty years
past has been turned upon our institutions. Her
rank corruptions must have called down the avenging
arm. But it was arrested just in time.
It would be difficult to give a just and full idea
of the beneficial changes which were either accom-
plished or begun during this notable decade of years.
They embraced alike formal, official movements, of a
nature to strike the general eye, and those local im-
provements in detail, which singly are known only
in each neighbourhood, but which unitedly transform
the face of a country. Laws were passed to repress
A CHAPTER OF AUTOBIOGRAPHY. 51
gross abuses, and the altering spirit of the clergy
seconded and even outstripped the laws. The out-
ward face of divine worship began to be renovated,
and the shameful condition of the sacred fabrics was
rapidly amended, with such a tide of public approval
as overflowed all the barriers of party and of sect,
and speedily found its manifestations even in the
seceding communions. There is no reason to doubt
that at that time at least, and before such changes
had become too decidedly the fashion, the outward
embellishment of churches, and the greater decency
and order of services, answered to, and sprang from,
a call within, and proved a less unworthy conception
of the sublime idea of Christian worship. The mis-
sionary arm of the Church began to exhibit a vigour
wholly unknown to former years. Noble efforts
were made, under the auspices of the chief bishops
of the Church, to provide for the unsatisfied spiritual
wants of the metropolis. The great scheme of the
Colonial Episcopate was founded ; and, in its outset, led
to such a development of apostolic zeal and self-denial
as could not but assist, by a powerful reaction, the
domestic progress. The tone of public schools (on one
of which Arnold was now spending his noble energies)
and of universities, was steadily yet rapidly raised.
The greatest change of all was within the body of
the clergy.* A devoted piety and an unworldly life,
which had been the rare exceptions, became visibly
from year to year more and more the rule. The
* It was, I think, about the year 1835, that I first met the Rev. Sydney
Smith, at the house of Mr. Hallam. In conversation after dinner he said to
me, with the double charm of humour and of good-humour, " The improve-
ment of the clergy in my time has been astonishing. Whenever you meet
a clergyman of my age, you may be quite sure that he is a bad clergyman."
E 2
52 A CHAFFER OF AUTOBIOGRAPHY.
spectacle, as a whole, was like what we are told of a
Eussian spring : when, after long months of rigid
cold, almost in a day the snow dissolves, the ice
breaks up and is borne away,, and the whole earth is
covered with a rush of verdure. These were bright
and happy days for the Church of England. She
seemed, or seemed to seem, as a Church recalling the
descriptions of Holy Writ ; to be " beautiful as the
sun which goeth forth in his might," * " and terrible
as an army with banners." f
Of this great renovating movement, a large part
centred in Oxford. At the time, indeed, when I
resided there, from 1828 to 1831, no sign of it had
yet appeared. A steady, clear, but dry Anglican
orthodoxy bore sway, and frowned, this way or that,
on the first indication of any tendency to diverge
from the beaten path. Dr. Pusey was, at that time,
revered, indeed, for his piety and charity, no less than
admired for his learning and talents, but suspected
(I believe) of sympathy with the German theology,
in which he was known to be profoundly versed.
Dr. Newman was thought to have about him the
flavour of what, he has now told the world, were
the opinions he had derived in youth from the works
of Thomas Scott. Mr. Keble, the "sweet singer of
Israel," and a true saint, if this generation has seen
one, did not reside in Oxford. J The chief Chair of
Theology had been occupied by Bishop Lloyd, the
old tutor and the attached and intimate friend of
* Judges, v. 31. f Canticles, vi. 4.
J Since these lines were written I have learned, upon authority which
cannot be questioned, that Mr. Keble acknowledged the justice of disestab-
lishing the Irish Church.
A CHAPTER OF AUTOBIOGRAPHY. 53
Peel : a man of powerful talents, and of a character
both winning and decided, who, had his life been
spared, might have acted powerfully for good on the
fortunes of the Church of England, by guiding the
energetic influences which his teaching had done
much to form. But he had been hurried away in 1829
by an early death : and Dr. Whately, who was also,
in his own way, a known power in the University,
was in 1830 induced to accept the Archbishopric
of Dublin. There was nothing at that time in the
theology, or in the religious life, of the University
to indicate what was to come. But when, shortly
afterwards, the great heart of England began to beat
with the quickened pulsations of a more energetic
religious life, it was in Oxford that the stroke was
most distinct and loud. An extraordinary change
appeared to pass upon the spirit of the place. I
believe it would be a moderate estimate to say that
much beyond one half of the very flower of its youth
chose the profession of Holy Orders, while an im-
pression scarcely less deep seemed to be stamped
upon a large portion of its lay pupils. I doubt
whether at any period of its existence, either since
the Eeformation, or perhaps before it, the Church of
England had reaped from either University, in so
short a time, so rich a harvest. At Cambridge a
similar lifting up of heart and mind seems to have
been goiDg on ; and numbers of persons of my own
generation, who at their public schools had been
careless and thoughtless like the rest, appeared in
their early manhood as soldiers of Christ, and minis-
ters to the wants of His people, worthy, I believe,
as far as man can be worthy, through their zeal,
devotion, powers of mind, and attainments, of their
54 A CHAPTER OF AUTOBIOGRAPHY.
high vocation. It was not then foreseen what storms
were about to rise. Not only in Oxford, but in
England, during the years to which I refer, party
spirit within the Church was reduced to a low ebb.
Indiscretions there might be, but authority did not
take alarm : it smiled rather, on the contrary, on what
was thought to be in the main a recurrence both to
first principles and to forgotten obligations. Purity,
unity, and energy seemed, as three fair sisters hand in
hand, to advance together. Such a state of things
was eminently suited to act on impressible and
sanguine minds. I, for one, formed a completely
false estimate of what was about to happen ; and
believed that the Church of England, through the
medium of a regenerated clergy and an intelligent
and attached laity, would not only hold her ground,
but would even in great part probably revive the
love and the allegiance both of the masses who were
wholly falling away from religious observances, and
of those large and powerful nonconforming bodies,
the existence of which was supposed to have no
other cause than the neglect of its duties by the
National Church, which had long left the people as
sheep without a shepherd.
And surely it would have required either a deeply
saturnine or a marvellously prophetic mind to foretell
that, in ten or twelve more years, that powerful and
distinguished generation of clergy would be broken
up : that at least a moiety of the most gifted sons,
whom Oxford had reared for the service of the
Church of England, would be hurling at her head
the hottest bolts of the Yatican : that, with their
deviation on the one side, there would arise a not less
convulsive rationalistic movement on the other ; and
A CHAPTER OF AUTOBIOGRAPHY. 55
that the natural consequences would be developed in
endless contention and estrangement, and in sus-
picions worse than either, because even less accessible,
and even more intractable. Since that time, the
Church of England may be said to have bled at
every pore ; and at this hour it seems occasionally
to quiver to its very base. And yet, all the while,
the religious life throbs more and more powerfully
within her. .Shorn of what may be called the
romance and poetry of her revival, she abates nothing
of her toil ; and in the midst of every sort of partial
indiscretion and extravagance, her great office in the
care of souls is, from year to year, less and less
imperfectly discharged. But the idea of asserting
on her part those exclusive claims, which become
positively unjust in a divided country governed on
popular principles, has been abandoned by all parties
in the State.
There was an error not less serious in my estimate
of English Nonconformity. I remember the astonish-
ment with which at some period, I think in 1851-2,
after ascertaining the vast addition which had
been made to the number of churches in the country,
I discovered that the multiplication of chapels, among
those not belonging to the Church of England, had
been more rapid still. But besides the immense
extension of its material and pastoral organisation,
English Nonconformity (in general) appears now to
have founded itself on a principle of its own, which
forbids the alliance of the civil power with religion
in any particular form or forms. I do not embrace
that principle. But I must observe, in passing, that
it is not less unjust than it is common to stigmatise
those who hold it as " political Dissenters," a phrase
56 A CHAPTER OF AUTOBIOGRAPHY.
implying that they do not dissent on religious grounds.
But if they, because they object to the union of
Church and State, are political Dissenters, it follows
that all who uphold it are political Churchmen.
The entire miscalculation which I have now endea-
voured to describe of the religious state and prospects
of the country, was combined with a view of the
relative position of governors and governed, since
greatly modified ; and the two lay at the root of
my error. These two causes led me into the ex-
cess of recommending the continued maintenance of
a theory which was impracticable, and which, if it
could have been enforced, would have been, under the
circumstances of the country, less than just. For I
never held that a National Church should be per-
manently maintained except for the nation, I mean
either for the whole of it or, at least, for the greater
part, with some kind of real concurrence or general
acquiescence from the remainder.
Against the proposals of my book, Lord Macaulay
had set up a theory of his own.*
"That we may give Mr. Gladstone his revenge, we will
state concisely our own views respecting the alliance of
Church and State. . . . .*
" We consider the primary end of Government as a purely
temporal end, the protection of the persons and property
of men.
" We think that Government, like every other contrivance
of human wisdom, from the highest to the lowest, is likely to
answer its main end best, when it is constructed with a single
view to that end
"Government is not an institution for the propagation of
religion, any more than St. George's Hospital is an institution
for the propagation of religion. And the most absurd and
* ' Ed. Rev.', April, 1839, p. 273-6.
A CHAPTER OF AUTOBIOGRAPHY. 57
pernicious consequences would follow if Government should
pursue as its primary end, that which can never be more
than its secondary end : though intrinsically more important
than its primary end. But a Government which considers
the religious instruction of the people as a secondary end,
and follows out that principle faithfully, will we think be
likely to do much good and little harm."
These sentences, I think, give a fair view of Lord
Macaulay's philosophy of Church Establishments. It
has all the clearness and precision that might be
expected from him. But I own myself unable to
accept it as it stands. I presume to think that per-
haps Lord Macaulay, like myself, made, from a limited
induction, a hasty generalisation. The difference
was, that his theory was right for the practical pur-
pose of the time, while mine was wrong. Considered,
however, in the abstract, that theory appears to me
to claim kindred with the ethical code of another
writer, not less upright, and not less limpid, so to
speak, than Lord Macaulay himself, I mean Dr. Paley.
And the upshot of it may be comprised in three words :
Government is police. All other functions, except
those of police proper, are the accidents of its exist-
ence. As if a man should say to his friend when in
the country, " I am going up to town ; can I take
anything for you ? " So the State, while busy about
protecting life and property, will allow its officer of
police to perform any useful office for the community,
to instruct a wayfarer as to his road, or tell the passer
by what o'clock it is, provided it does not interfere
with his watching the pickpocket, or laying the
strong hand upon the assassin. I doubt if it is pos-
sible to cut out, as it were, with a pair of scissors,
58 A CHAPTER OF AUTOBIOGRAPHY.
patterns of policy, which shall solve for all time and
place the great historic problem of the relation of the
civil power to religion.
It seems to me that in every function of life, and
in every combination with his fellow-creatures, for
whatever purpose, the duties of man are limited
only by his powers. It is easy to separate, in the
case of a Gas Company or a Chess Club, the primary
end for which it exists, from everything extraneous
to that end. It is not so easy in the case of the State
or of the family. If the primary end of the State
is to protect life and property, so the primary end
of the family is to propagate the race. But around
these ends there cluster, in both cases, a group of
moral purposes, variable indeed with varying circum-
stances, but yet inhering in the relation, and not
external or merely incidental to it. The action of
man in the State is moral, as truly as it is in the
individual sphere ; although it be limited by the fact
that, as he is combined with others whose views and
wills may differ from his own, the sphere of the
common operations must be limited, first, to the
things in which all are agreed ; secondly, to the things
in which, though they may not be agreed, yet equity
points out, and the public sense acknowledges, that
the whole should be bound by the sense of the
majority.
I can hardly believe that even those, including as
they do so many men both upright and able, who
now contend on principle for the separation of the
Church from the State, are so determined to exalt
their theorem to the place of an universal truth, that
they ask us to condemn the whole of that process, by
A CHAPTER OF AUTOBIOGRAPHY. 59
which, as the Gospel spread itself through the civi-
lised world, Christianity became incorporated with the
action of civil authority, and with the framework of
public law. In the course of human history, indeed,
we perceive little of unmixed evil, and far less of
universal good. It is not difficult to discern that (in
the language of Bishop Heber) as the world became
Christian, Christianity became worldly ; that the
average tone of a system, which embraces in its
wide-spreading arms the entire community, is almost
of necessity lower than that of a society which, if
large, is still private, and into which no man enters
except by his own deliberate choice, very possibly even
at the cost of much personal and temporal detriment.
But Christ died for the race : and those who notice
the limited progress of conversion in the world until
alliance with the civil authority gave to His religion
a wider access to the attention of mankind, may be
inclined to doubt whether, without that alliance, its
immeasurable and inestimable social results would
ever have been attained. Allowing for all that may
be justly urged against the danger of mixing secular
motives with religious administration, and above all
against the intrusion of force into the domain of
thought ; I for one cannot desire that Constantine in
the government of the empire, that Justinian in the
formation of its code of laws, or that Charlemagne in
refounding society, or that Elizabeth in the crisis of
the English Eeformation, should have acted on the
principle that the State and the Church in themselves
are separate or alien powers, incapable of coalition.
But there are two causes, the combined operation
of which, upon reaching a certain point of develop-
60 A CHAPTER OF AUTOBIOGRAPHY.
ment, relaxes or dissolves their union by a process
as normal (if it be less beneficial) as that by which
the union was originally brought about. One of
these is the establishment of the principle of popular
self-government as the basis of political constitutions.
The other is the disintegration of Christendom from
one into many communions. As long as the Church
at large, or the Church within the limits of the nation,
is substantially one, I do not see why the religious
care of the subject, through a body properly consti-
tuted for the purpose, should cease to be a function
of the State, with the whole action and life of which
it has, throughout Europe, been so long and so closely
associated. As long as the State holds, by descent,
by the intellectual superiority of the governing
classes, and by the good will of the people, a position
of original and underived authority, there is no abso-
lute impropriety, but the reverse, in its commending
to the nation the greatest of all boons. But when,
either by some Eevolution of institutions from their
summit to their base, or by a silent and surer process,
analogous to that which incessantly removes and
replaces the constituent parts of the human body,
the State has come to be the organ of the deliberate
and ascertained will of the community, expressed
through legal channels then the inculcation of a
religion can no longer rest, in full or permanent
force, upon its authority. When, in addition to this,
the community itself is split and severed into opinions
and communions, which, whatever their concurrence
in the basis of Christian belief, are hostile in regard
to the point at issue, so that what was meant for the
nation dwindles into the private estate as it were of
A CHAPTER OF AUTOBIOGRAPHY. 61
a comparative handful the attempt to maintain an
Established Church becomes an error fatal to the
peace, dangerous perhaps even to the life, of civil
society. Such a Church then becomes (to use a
figure I think of John Foster's), no longer the temple,
but the mere cemetery, of a great idea. Such a
policy is then not simply an attempt to treat what is
superannuated and imbecile as if it were full of life
and vigour, but to thwart the regular and normal
action of the ruling social forces, to force them from
their proper channels, and to turn them by artificial
contrivance, as Apollo turned the rivers of Troas
from their beds, to a purpose of our own. This is to
set caprice against nature ; and the end must be that,
with more or less of delay, more or less of struggle
or convulsion, nature will get the better of caprice.
But does it follow from all this, that the tone of
moral action in the State should be lowered ? Such
a fear is what perplexes serious and sober men, who
are laudably unwilling to surrender, in a world where
falsehood has so wide a range, any portion of this
vantage-ground of truth and right. I, who may
have helped to mislead them by an over-hasty gene-
ralisation, would now submit what seems to me calcu-
lated to re-assure the mind. I make an appeal to the
history of the last thirty years. During those years,
what may be called the dogmatic allegiance of the
State to religion has been greatly relaxed ; but its
consciousness of moral duty has been not less notably
quickened and enhanced. I do not say this in de-
preciation of Christian dogma. But we are still a
Christian people. Christianity has wrought itself
into the public life of fifteen hundred years. Precious
62 A CHAPTER OF AUTOBIOGRAPHY.
truths, and laws of relative right and the brotherhood
of man, such as the wisdom of heathenism scarcely
dreamed of and could never firmly grasp, the Gospel has
made to be part of our common inheritance, common as
the sunlight that warms us, and as the air we breathe.
Sharp though our divisions in belief may be, they
have not cut so deep as to prevent, or as perceptibly
to impair, the recognition of these great guides and
fences of moral action. It is far better for us to trust
to the operation of these our common principles and
feelings, and to serve our Maker together in that
wherein we are at one, rather than in aiming at a
standard theoretically higher, to set out with a breach
of the great commandment, which forms the ground-
work of all relative duties, and to refuse to do as we
would be done by.
It is, then, by a practical rather than a theoretic
test that our Establishments of religion should be
tried. In applying this practical test, we must be
careful to do it with those allowances, which are as
necessary for the reasoner in moral subjects, as it is
for the reasoner in mechanics to allow for friction or
for the resistance of the air. An Establishment that
does its work in much, and has the hope and likeli-
hood of doing it in more : an Establishment that has
a broad and living way open to it, into the hearts of
the people : an Establishment that can commend the
services of the present by the recollections and tra-
ditions of a far-reaching past : an Establishment able
to appeal to the active zeal of the greater portion of
the people, and to the respect or scruples of almost
the whole, whose children dwell chiefly on her actual
living work and service, and whose adversaries, if she
A CHAPTER OP AUTOBIOGRAPHY. 63
has them, are in the main content to believe that
there will be a future for them and their opinions :
such an Establishment should surely be maintained.
But an Establishment that neither does, nor has her
hope of doing, work, except for a few, and those few
the portion of the community whose claim to public
aid is the smallest of all : an Establishment severed
from the mass of the people by an impassable gulph,
and by a wall of brass : an Establishment whose good
offices, could she offer them, would be intercepted by
a long unbroken chain of painful and shameful recol-
lections : an Establishment leaning for support upon
the extraneous aid of a State, which becomes dis-
credited with the people by the very act of lending
it : such an Establishment will do well for its own'
sake, and for the sake of its creed, to divest itself, as
soon as may be, of gauds and trappings, and to com-
mence a new career, in which, renouncing at once the
credit and the discredit of the civil sanction, it shall
seek its strength from within, and put a fearless
trust in the message that it bears.
September 22, 1868.
LONDON: PRINTED BY w. CLOWES AND SONS, DUKE STREET, STAMFORD STRKF.T,
AND CHAKING CROSS.
[Authentic Report .]
AD D EE S S
DELIVERED AT THE
DISTRIBUTION OF PRIZES
IN THE
LIVERPOOL COLLEGE,
DEC R - 21, 1872.
BY THE RIGHT HON. W. E. GLADSTONE,
FIRST LORD OF THE TREASURY.
WITH AN INTRODUCTION AND ILLUSTRATIVE PASSAGES.
LONDON:
JOHN MURRAY, ALBEMARLE STREET.
1873.
LONDON:
PRIHTED BT WILLIAM CLOWES AND SONS, STAMFORD STREET,
AND CHASING
CONTENTS.
PAGE
INTRODUCTION .. .. .. .. .. .. .. 1
ADDRESS EELIGIOUS BASIS OF THE COLLEGE . . . . . . 5
NATURE OF THE "HIGHER EDUCATION" .. .. .. 10
ENGLISH UNIVERSITY AND PUBLIC-SCHOOL TRAINING .. .. 12
SPIRIT IN WHICH EDUCATION is PURSUED IN ENGLAND .. 14
EXAMINATIONS, HONOURS, AND PRIZES .. .. .. ..16
GROWTH OF LIVERPOOL .. .. .. .. .. ..17
UNION OF COMMERCE AND CULTURE .. .. .. ..19
EECENT MANIFESTATIONS OF UNBELIEF .. .. .. 22
THE LATEST WORK OF DR. STRAUSS .. .. .. ..23
SUGGESTIONS ON "FREE THOUGHT" .. .. .. ..26
ON " THE ADVANCEMENT OF THE AGE " . . . . ib.
ON THE DIVISIONS AMONG CHRISTIANS .. .. .. 27
ON RESPONSIBILITY FOR BELIEF .. .. .. ..28
SPEECH ON VOTE OF THANKS .. .. .. .. ..29
ILLUSTRATIVE PASSAGES 33
A 2
INTRODUCTION.
IN taking so grave a step as to animadvert strongly on the
published opinions of men of eminence and character, I
think it my duty to show, by a few citations of their own
words, where the original is English, and in the case of
Dr. Strauss, by a few translated extracts, that I do not deal
in merely vague accusations, and that I have not overstated
the gravity of the case.
And by way of commencement, in order to show the
change in the tone of the public, or the speculative mind
during the last forty years, and to supply a measure of the
distance over or down which we have travelled within that
period, I will quote a passage from a competent and well-
informed writer. In the ' Christian Advocate's ' publication
for 1829, Mr. Hugh James Kose, who then held the office at
Cambridge, when giving his reason for a partial deviation
from the usual course in the choice of his subject, observes
as follows :
" As far as I have been able to collect, no persons have
stood forward, very recently, as the avowed opponents of
Christianity, whose characters or whose works give them any
claim to consideration or reply." *
Dr. Whe well's Bridg water Treatise on Astronomy and
Physics was published in 1834 ; and the whole of that series,
given to the world about the same date, seemed to be a public
proclamation of the established harmony between Science
and Eeligion.
* Advertisement to Rose's 'Christianity Always Progressive' (London
1829).
6 INTRODUCTION.
Neither of the Universities had, as far as I know, been
disturbed for a great length of time by any controversy
affecting the foundations of belief. Dean Milman's * History
of the Jews/ which appeared about 1830, was attacked with
severity, perhaps almost ferocity, by Dr. Faussett, then the
Margaret Professor of Divinity at Oxford. The same work was
republished, with a preface fully maintaining its propositions,
in 1863. Those, who read it now, will find some assistance
towards estimating the change in our position, from observing
the slightness of the cause which then sufficed to produce
an excitement not inconsiderable.
I must add that for twenty years, or thereabouts, from
that time, according to my observation, belief was every-
where, to all appearance, progressively extended and con-
firmed. Perhaps the first note of the coming assault was
the publication of the work entitled * Vestiges of Creation.'
It obtained a wide circulation ; but in general society it was
almost universally condemned. I here purposely confine
my references to the works of men anonymous or dead. The
difference of times became observable, when the fatalistic
book of Mr. Buckle, notwithstanding its ungainly form and
the portentous width of its plan, became a favourite even
in drawing-rooms and in boudoirs. But the spirit of class
with us enters into these matters among others ; and while
unbelief well printed, well bound, and well ushered into the
world in a word, unbelief in broadcloth seems to be held
perfectly " respectable," unbelief in fustian is still almost
savagely condemned.
I wish to add that the aim of my Address is not to
preach pessimism, but to point to a specific evil for a specific
purpose. And that purpose is to warn, I will not say
to prepare for that is a much larger matter the minds of
those who heard it, against that which they cannot fail to
meet with, warned or unwarned. I named accordingly one
INTRODUCTION. 7
or two of the seductive (I am almost tempted to call them
cant) phrases of the day, and some of the thoroughly un-
sound intellectual habits which, it is strange to say, are more
or less tolerated among those sometimes described as the
thinkers of the age, sometimes by other favourite and not less
imposing titles. I am aware that many objections may be
taken to my having touched the subject. One of those I
should feel the most lies against the necessarily crabbed
and partial nature of my reference to such parts of it as I
have named. Besides, there are other heads which I should
have wished to touch, and among them the strange assump-
tion that, because God is infinite, the finite mind of man can
have no points of true contact with Him ; and the grossly
fallacious character (as I believe) of the assumption that not
only for individuals but for generations, and in the long-run
of human history, Christian morality, or the morality which
has hitherto been considered Christian, can be separated
from Christian dogma, and can permanently survive its
abandonment.
I wish to place on record my conviction that belief cannot
now be defended by reticence, any more than by railing, or
by any privileges and assumptions. Nor, again, can it be
defended exclusively by its " standing army " by priests and
ministers of religion. To them, 1 do not doubt, will fall the
chief share of the burden, and of the honour, and of the
victory. But we commit a fatal error if we allow this to
become a merely professional question. It is the affair
of all.
It is very difficult in handling such controversies to avoid
the tone of assumption and denunciation. I desire, there-
fore, once for all, to abjure all imputations against motives
or characters. Equal credit for the love of truth should
be allowed by all to all, and the endeavour made, or at
least intended, to unite plain speaking with personal respect.
8 1NTBODUCTION.
Yet this, though an obvious is not an easy duty ; for it is
impossible to view certain states of mind as other than the
results of strong, though honest, self-delusion.
This duty of personal respect is especially due at a time,
when the writers against Christian belief stand in a moral
position so different from that of its principal French assailants
during the last century. The combat is not now with the
authors of the 'Pucelle' and the ' Confessions ;' but with men
who, though they believe less than Voltaire and Kousseau,
yet either revere or sympathise more ; who for the most
part seek to avoid hard language ; who commonly confess
not only that Christianity has done good, but even that it
may still confer at least some relative benefit before the day
of perfect preparedness for its removal shall arrive, and even
the most " advanced " of whom, like the author of the
' Martyrdom of Man/ appears to be touched by a lingering
sentiment of tenderness, while he blows his trumpet for a
final assault at once upon the " Syrian superstition," and on
the poor, pale, and semi-animate substitutes for it, which
Deism has devised.
ADDRESS.
[Two passages enclosed within brackets were omitted in the delivery
on account of time.~\
MR. CHAIRMAN, LADIES AND GENTLEMEN, AND MY YOUNGER
FRIENDS ;
Thirty years have passed away since, in consequence
of the accidental disability of a worthier person, I was called
upon to deliver the Inaugural Address at the opening of
this Institution. In other words, the College has now lived
through one generation of men.
At the close of such a term, we may suitably look back, to
ascertain how far it has fulfilled or disappointed the ex-
pectations of its founders. And first I will refer to the hope
they entertained, that they would be able to secure for the
government of the Institution the services of a series of
learned, able, and earnest men. This expectation, I venture
to say, has been amply realised in the persons of Mr.
Conybeare, of your old friend now present, Dean Howson,
and of Mr. Butler.
Further, it was to be an institution having religion for
its centre and its base ; and that religion was to be the
religion of the Church of England. That the national
Church is not in less esteem now than it was then with
the nation, the immense increase, alike of her fabrics
and her ministrations, may sufficiently show. That those
who guide the fortunes of this College do not desire to
change the ground they have occupied from the first, can
10 ADDRESS.
need no proof on an occasion, when I know from the Prin-
cipal how much it is desired by them to erect a Chapel
within the precincts, in order to the more solemn and
effectual celebration of the offices of religion.
But it was also a part of the design, that with religious
teaching should be combined the practice of religious
liberty; that no compulsory lessons or observances should
be imposed, to hinder the enjoyment by the entire youth
of Liverpool of the general advantages of the College.
How has this portion of the scheme been found to fare?
The kindness of your old, respected, and indefatigable Secre-
tary enables me to answer the question. From him I learn
that no religious difficulty has impeded the working of the
plan ; that among the pupils of the College, comprehensive
with respect to nationality as well as to communion, there
were found a short time back, upon inquiries, Unitarians,
Wesley ans, Baptists, Koman Catholics, members of the Greek
Church, Presbyterians, and Jews ; and that, of the whole
number of pupils in the three schools of the College, not
less than one-fourth were of religious professions distinct
from our own.
Nor have the promoters of the College been disappointed
in their hope to furnish the people of Liverpool with easy
access to the higher forms of education at their own doors,
and to strengthen and enlarge their connection with the
old Universities of the land. The seven hundred pupils
on its books afford ample proof of the favour of the com-
munity; and the number of able men whom it has sent
to those Universities indicates the wish of Liverpool to
secure for its sons the advantages of what has been com-
monly termed the higher education.
[There is, however, some difference among us as to the
question, what really is the higher education? There
are those who think not only that our old methods of
ADDRESS. 11
training the young were too exclusive, but that they were
fundamentally bad ; who would supplant entirely, or expel
from the first place in education, the study of man in its
various branches, and would substitute for it the study of
Nature as it exists otherwise than in man : and again who,
in so much as they would admit of the human studies into
the course of education, would put aside the ancient for
the modern, whether in philosophy, history, or language.
The great faults, as I believe, of the ancient educational
studies of this country were first, that they were too
narrow ; and secondly, that they were too uniform, and did
not take heed enough of varieties both of condition and
of mind. The consequence was, in the very best men, fre-
quent ignorance of what every cultivated person ought to
know ; and in all who were unequal to the favoured studies,
or whose turn lay in another direction, a great waste of
time with little fruit, if not even a confirmed habit of idle-
ness. Therefore it is to be admitted that much wrong was
done to the natural sciences. But that wrong is not to be
redressed by giving them prospectively more than their due.
Such notwithstanding appears to be the desire of some of
their professors ; and it has been indicated by a practice
of claiming for them, in a pre-eminent or even an exclusive
sense, the name of science. So that a man who observes
and reasons upon plants or animals, the constituent parts of
the globe, or of the celestial system, is a man of science ;
but to observe and reason upon history, upon philosophy
in its older sense, or upon theology, establishes no such
title, though the very same process of collecting and digest-
ing facts, and of drawing inferences from them, is pursued
in the one case and in the other ; and though it seems suffi-
ciently absurd to hold that there is a science of the human
body, but that there can be no science of the mind or soul.
This can surely be no better than a mere fashion of the
12 ADDRESS.
hour, and with the hour it must pass away. It is the in-
cidental excess of a reforming movement, and we may
hope that while the excess will disappear the reform will
remain. Were it, from a mere caprice, to harden into an
accepted doctrine, I see not in what it could end, except in
a pure materialism.]
But, gentlemen, while freely admitting that what may be
termed utilitarian studies were in my early days too much
overlooked, that the knowledge of the material universe was
sadly neglected, that to many minds only such food was
offered as they were wholly unable to digest, and that the
upshot was a lamentable waste of power, I claim for the old
method of our public schools and colleges that it had merits
and advantages, for the loss of which no parade of univer-
sality, no increase of mere information, could possibly com-
pensate. It taught with that rigid accuracy, which is the
foundation of all really solid learning. It held thoroughness
in a few things to be better than show in many. It en-
throned in the seat of honour the most masculine studies.
I have now passed forty years of life upon an arena of com-
petition as sharp as is to be found anywhere in the world,
I have seen all forms of training, practical as well as other,
pretty fairly matched with one another; and all descrip-
tions of men, with every variety of natural gifts, bringing up
as it were the results of their various modes of education
to be tested. The best mode has to struggle with the
defects of nature, and the worst will not wholly neutralise
her bounties. Here and there, again, you may find a man
whose self-training power can dispense with all appliances
from without. But these are rare instances indeed.
"Pauci, . . .
Dis geniti, potuere." *
* Virg. ^n. vi. 120.
ADDRESS. 13
I speak, however, not of the one but of the million ; and,
as among the million, I affirm that there is no training for
the conflicts and the toils of life, so far as I have seen, which
does greater justice to the receiver of it than the old train-
ing of the English public schools and universities. I speak
of my own experience and observation, in the sphere in which
I have lived \ but probably there are few spheres, though
I will not say there are none, in which the whole making
of a man is more severely tried. And that my testimony,
which is of course limited, may at least be definite, I will
add that I speak of such training as it was at Oxford, more,
I am sorry to say, than forty years ago.
All this must be a paradox and a stumbling-block to
such as think, that the sole or main purpose of education
is to stock the mind with knowledge as a shop is stocked
with goods, and that the wants of life are to be met like
the wants of customers. And doubtless one of the purposes
of education is thus to furnish materials for future employ-
ment; but this is its lower, not its higher purpose. The
shop takes no benefit, though it may take damage, from
the wares which it receives ; but the greatest and best use
of the information, which is imported into the mind, is to
improve the mind itself. A more instructive comparison
may be drawn between education and food. As the main
purpose of food is to make the body strong and active, so the
main purpose of education is to make the mind solid, elastic,
and capable of enduring wear and tear. The studies which
are most useful, so far as utility is external to the mind,
though they are on that account the most popular, and
though they are indispensable, such, I mean, as reading,
writing, arithmetic, modern languages, or geography, are
those which do, not most but least, for our intellectual and
moral training. The studies which have it for their main
object to act on the composition and capacity of the man,
14 ADDRESS.
will, to snch as follow them with their whole heart, be found
to yield a richer harvest, though the seed may be longer in
the ground. Yet I fully admit that the test of a good
education is neither abstract nor inflexible. Such an educa-
tion must take account both of the capacity of the pupil and
of the possibilities of his future calling. All I would plead
for is, that where there is a choice, the highest shall be
preferred. In the words of our most famous living poet
" It was our duty to have loved the highest ; " *
And our duty it must ever remain.
In this institution I trust the prerogatives of " the highest "
will always be admitted ; and around it there will be mar-
shalled, each in its due order and degree, the numerous and
ever multiplying studies, of which every one has an un-
doubted title to honour in its tendency to embellish or
improve the life of man.
But indeed there is much to be said and done about
education, besides determining the relative claims, or, as it
would now be called, the due co-ordination, of the different
kinds of knowledge. Quite apart from these claims, much,
my younger friends, and more than you can as yet perhaps
fully understand, depends upon the spirit in which those
kinds of knowledge are pursued. And this again depends,
not upon the incidental advantages of birth or wealth, but
upon ourselves. The favours of fortune have both their
value and their charm ; but there is in a man himself, if
he will but open out and cultivate his manhood, that which
will be found amply sufficient to supply their place.
Now, as to this important subject, the spirit in which we
pursue education, the degree in which we turn our advantages
to account, I must say of us here in England that we do not
* Tennyson's 'Guinevere.'
ADDRESS. 15
stand well. Our old Universities, and the schools above the
rank of primary, have as a class the most magnificent endow-
ments in the world. I am well aware that this institution is
far indeed from being open to such a reproach. It may,
however, be doubted whether the amount of these endow-
ments, in England alone, is not equal to their amount on
the whole continent of Europe taken together. Matters
have mended, and are, I hope, mending. We have good and
thorough workers, but not enough of them. The results
may be good as far as they go ; but they do not go far. But
in truth this " beggarly return," not of empty but of ill-filled
boxes, is but one among many indications of a wide-spread
vice ; a scepticism in the public mind, of old as well as young,
respecting the value of learning and of culture, and a conse-
quent slackness in seeking their attainment. We seem to
be spoiled by the very facility and abundance of the oppor-
tunities around us. We do not in this matter stand well,
as compared with the men of the middle ages, on whom we
are too ready to look down. For then, when scholarships
and exhibitions, and fellowships and headships, were few,
and even before they were known, and long centuries before
triposes and classes had been invented, the beauty and the
power of Knowledge filled the hearts of men with love, and
they went in quest of her, even from distant lands, with
ardent devotion, like pilgrims to a favoured shrine.
Again, we do not stand well as compared with Scotland,
where, at least, the advantages of education are well under-
stood, and though its honours and rewards are much fewer,
yet self-denying labour, and unsparing energy in pursuit
of knowledge, are far more common than with us. And
once more, we do not stand well as compared with Germany ;
where, with means so much more slender as to be quite out
of comparison with ours, the results are so much more
abundant, that, in the ulterior prosecution of almost every
16 ADDRESS.
branch of inquiry, it is to Germany, and the works of the
Germans, that the British student must look for assistance.
Yet I doubt if it can be said with truth that the German is
superior to the Englishman in natural gifts ; or that he has
greater or even equal perseverance, provided only the English-
man had his heart in the matter. But Germany has two
marked advantages : a far greater number of her educated
class are really in earnest about their education ; and they
have not yet learned, as we, I fear, have learned, to under-
value, or even in a great measure to despise, simplicity of
life.
Our honours, and our prizes, and our competitive exami-
nations, what for the most part are they, but palliatives
applied to neutralise a degenerate indifference, to the
existence of which they have been the most conclusive wit-
ness ? Far be it from me to decry them, or to seek to do
away with them. In my own sphere, I have laboured to ex-
tend them. They are, however, the medicines of our infirmity,
not the ornaments of our health. They supply from without
inducements to seek knowledge, which ought to be its own
reward. They do something to expel the corroding pest of
idleness, that special temptation to a wealthy country, that
deadly enemy in all countries to the body and the soul of
man. They get us over the first and most difficult stages
in the formation of habits, which, in a proportion of cases at
least, we may hope will endure, and become in course of time
self-acting.
One other claim I must make on behalf of examinations.
It is easy to point out their inherent imperfections. Plenty
of critics are ready to do this ; for in the case of first employ-
ments under the State, they are the only tolerably efficient
safeguard against gross abuses, and such abuses are never with-
out friends. But from really searching and strong examina-
tions, such as the best of those in our Universities and schools,
ADDRESS. 17
there arises at least one great mental benefit, difficult of
attainment by any other means. In early youth, while the
mind is still naturally supple and elastic, they teach the
practice, and they give the power, of concentrating all its
force, all its resources, at a given time, upon a given point.
What a pitched battle is to the commander of an army, a
strong examination is to an earnest student. All his faculties,
all his attainments must be on the alert, and wait the word
of command ; method is tested at the same time with strength ;
and over the whole movement presence of mind must preside.
If, in the course of his after life, he chances to be called to
great and concentrated efforts, he will look back with grati-
tude to those examinations, which more perhaps than any
other instrument may have taught him how to make them.
General remissness, gentlemen, is not the besetting sin of
our great town communities ; least among them all of Liver-
pool. Nowhere is the pedestrian's pace more rapid than in
her streets; nowhere is his countenance more charged with
purpose. We live, gentlemen, in a wealth-making age. It
may surprise you to hear, but I believe it to be unquestionably
true, that more wealth has, in this little island of ours, been
accumulated since the commencement of the present century
that is, within the lifetime of many who are still among us
than in all the preceding ages from the time, say, of Julius
Caesar ; or any other more remote date you please. And,
again, at least as much of this wealth has been stored within
the last twenty years, as in the preceding fifty. Liverpool
has had even more than her share in this great, this almost
portentous activity. Since I knew her, she has scooped four
miles of solitary shore into teeming docks ; and I am now
told she is about to add other miles to these. Fed by the
mere overflow of her wealth and energy, the little hamlets
that faced her in Cheshire have grown into great and vigorous
town districts, larger, I believe, in population than she her-
B
18 ADDRESS.
self was at the commencement of the century. Her opulence,
I think, has grown in still greater proportion than her
numbers. If we ask, Where is this to end ? when will this
marvellous process be arrested ? when will this great flood-
tide begin to ebb ? I, for one, know not ; I am by no means
sure that we are as yet even near high-water. But with the
impetuosity of this galloping career, with the wonderful
development of such arts of life as bear directly upon enjoy-
ment, there grows up continually a correlative amount of
dangers and temptations.
" The world is too much with us ; late and soon,
Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers." *
So it is. The world, in truth, becomes more worldly.
It ties us down to earth by more and stronger cords, and to
break them requires bolder and more assiduous effort. If
we wish to secure our freedom against the perils that environ
it, this is not to be done by renouncing business, or by abating
energy in its pursuit ; it is by balancing that activity with
other activities. Yes, it may be replied, we ought to live in
the world unseen, as well as in the world we see. And that
is doubtless true ; and for many, whose opportunities are
small, it is sufficient ; but for this great community, whose
opportunities are large, though true, it is not the whole
truth. The entire nature of man is the garden, which is
given him to cultivate. We cannot, as a nation or as indi-
viduals, be well if we do not provide for the soul as well
as the body. But neither can we be well if we do not,
according to our means, provide for the mind as well as the
soul. That is the principle enshrined and represented in
this institution, as it is in every ancient university and
college, and as it must be in every institution which aspires
* Wordsworth's Miscellaneous Sonnets,' No. 33.
ADDRESS. 19
to superintend anything that deserves the name of the
higher education.
And why should not Liverpool, why should not commerce,
afford a field favourable to art, literature, and science, as
much as to philanthropy and religion ? Half a century ago,
the name of this town stood high with respect to mental
cultivation. There is nothing in the pursuit of the merchant
that ought to preclude the pursuit of mental refinement.
The day's work is not so long, nor the anxiety so constant,
as to wear out the whole stock of energy that a vigorous
English nature can command. In Greece, the State which
took its place at the head of literature and philosophy and
art was noted for its encouragement of trade. " The best
products of Sicily and Italy, of Cyprus and Egypt, of Lydia
and Pontus, and every other country, flowed," says Xeno-
phon,* " into the markets of Athens, which ruled the sea."
" Hither," says Thucydides,| " come a the products of all the
earth ; " and Pericles and Alcibiades J were not ashamed of
superintending extensive manufactories which they owned.
In Florence, the true Athens of modern times, many of
the nobles were among the most conspicuous merchants.
And when Holland took the place of Italy at the head of the
commerce of Europe, Art and Science walked in the noble
train of Liberty, and the University of Leyden, founded in
memory of the heroic efforts of the citizens, took its place,
even in that little country, among the very foremost of the
universities of Christendom. || We now speak with deserved
respect and gratitude of the learned labours of Germany :
but those who observe the German names, and the German
* Xenophon, ' De Eep. Ath.' ii. 7. f Thuc. ii. 38.
$ Boeckh, * Public Economy of Athens,' ii. 63 (Trans. London, 1828).
See also St. John, ' Manners and Customs of Ancient Greece,' iii. 276.
Hallam's ' Middle Ages ' (8th edit.), vol. i. p. 285.
|| Motley's c United Netherlands,' vol. iv. ch. liii. p. 526, ed. 1869.
B 2
20 ADDRESS.
firms, which have established themselves in the commercial
communities of England, will readily understand that no
country is making advances more marked than theirs in the
paths of enterprise.
If then, as I am persuaded, there are among you, my
younger friends, those who, though destined to the pursuits
which have made this great emporium famous, have in
tasting of the cup of knowledge acquired the desire for
longer and for deeper draughts ; if any of you can say with
Virgil of his Muses,
" Quarum sacra fero ingenti perculsus amore," *
there is no reason why he should be discouraged ; no reason
why he should regard the beginning of business as the end
of culture; but let him rather resolve that, though it be
but in fragments of his time, he will woo his studies with a
lifelong love.
And now forgive me if, using the melancholy privilege of
age, and addressing a few words especially to you who are
still so young, I seem to assume that in youth you may learn
more readily from others some lessons, which you would
acquire at greater cost and more slowly for yourselves. To
each and all I would say, that God has sent no one of you
into the world without a work ready for him to do, and facili-
ties wherewith to do it. What this work .is, reflection, or
parental guidance, or a kind of instinct, may have told you.
If it has not yet been discovered, you have only to follow
this one rule: Do your best; try to make the most of all
your faculties ; " Whatsoever thy hand findeth to do," says
the wise man,| and in like manner, whatsoever thy mind
findeth to do, "do it with thy might." You would with
justice think meanly of a boy who did not at cricket, or
football, or any other sport, try with all his heart to win, or
* Virg. ' Georgics,' ii. 476. f Eccles. ix. 10.
ADDRESS. 21
do his part towards winning. Is there not something wrong,
I would almost say something base, in our standard of action,
of which bone and muscle are thus developed, and most
properly developed, to the uttermost, if the mind is allowed
to wither and to dwindle for want of manly exercise ?
You, who have successfully shown your disposition to excel,
I congratulate you on your success. But that success would
be a misfortune and a snare to you, if you rested in it ; if,
to use a homely expression, you went to sleep upon it. It
is like the meal which the traveller enjoys upon his way, but
the purpose of which is to strengthen him for his further
journey. The prize is good, but the efforts which are made
to gain the prize are far better. What is most valuable in
these competitions, then, the defeated share with the con-
querors, nay further yet, one defeated after a hard and
bracing struggle gains more in the true work of education,
the strengthening of his mind, than some easy winner who
canters in without serious exertion. And such defeat, in a
mind of true British temper, only strengthens the resolution,
which never in the long-run fails, to try yet more manfully
next time.
For, do what you will, your life, because it is a human
life, will be, and that in many ways, a trial.
" So it is willed above, where will is power." *
And this world-old truth seems, as the world grows older,
to grow more vividly and pointedly true, with the ever-
growing strain and noise, and haste and waste, of life; a
trial which cannot be escaped by flying from it, but which
may be conquered by facing it.
On an occasion like this, I should not have desired, even
before those of you, my younger friends, who are on the very
threshold of active and responsible manhood, to dwell in a
* From Dante, ' Inferno,' iii. 95.
22 ADDRESS.
marked manner on the particular trials you will have to
encounter. But the incidents of the time are no common
incidents; and there is one among them so obtrusive, that
youth cannot long enjoy its natural privilege of unacquaint-
ance with the mischief, and so formidable, that it really
requires to be forewarned against the danger. I refer to the
extraordinary and boastful manifestation, in this age of ours,
and especially perhaps in the year which is about to close,
of the extremest forms of unbelief.
I am not about to touch upon the differences which dis-
tinguish, and partially sever, the Church of England from
those communions by which it is surrounded ; whether they
be of Protestant Nonconformists, or of those who have
recently incorporated into the Christian faith what we must
suppose they think a bulwark and not a danger to religion,
the doctrine of Papal infallibility. For handling contro-
versies of such a class this is not the time, I am not the
person, and my office is not the proper office. It is not now
only the Christian Church, or only the Holy Scripture, or
only Christianity, which is attacked. The disposition is
boldly proclaimed to deal alike with root and branch, and to
snap utterly the ties which, under the still venerable name
of Eeligion, unite man with the unseen world, and lighten the
struggles and the woes of life by the hope of a better land.
[These things are done as the professed results, and the
newest triumphs, of Modern Thought and Modern Science ;
but I believe that neither Science nor Thought is responsible,
any more than Liberty is responsible, for the misdeeds com-
mitted in their names. Upon the ground of what is termed
evolution, God is relieved of the labour of creation ; in the
name of unchangeable laws, He is discharged from governing
the world ; and His function of judgment is also dispensed
with, as justice and benevolence are held to forbid that men
should hereafter be called to strict account for actions,
ADDRESS. 23
which under these unchangeable laws they may have com-
mitted. But these are only the initial stages of the process.
Next, we are introduced to the doctrine of the Absolute and
the Unconditioned ; and, under the authority of these phrases
(to which, and many other phrases, in their proper places,
I have no objection) we are instructed that we can know
nothing about God, and therefore can have no practical rela-
tions with Him. One writer, or, as it is now termed thinker,
announces with pleasure that he has found the means of
reconciling Eeligion and Science. The mode is in principle
most equitable. He divides the field of thought between
them. To Science he awards all that of which we know, or
may know, something; to Religion he leaves a far wider
domain, that of which we know, and can know, nothing.*
This sounds like jest, but it is melancholy earnest ; and I
doubt whether any such noxious crop has been gathered in
such rank abundance from the press of England in any former
year of our literary history as in this present year of our
redemption, eighteen hundred and seventy-two.]
I will not, on this occasion, pain and weary you with a
multitude of details. I will only refer by name to one who
is not a British writer to the learned German, Dr. Strauss.
He is a man of far wider fame than any British writer who
marches under the same banner ; and I mention him with
the respect which is justly due, not only to his ability, but
to the straightforward earnestness, and to the fairness and
mildness towards antagonists in argument, with which, so far
as I have had the opportunity of judging him from his
present or former works, he pursues his ill-starred and hope-
less enterprise.
He has published, during the present year, a volume
entitled The Old Belief and the New.' t In his Intro-
* See Illustrative Passages, A.
f * Der alte und der neue Glaube : ein Bekenntniss.' Yon David Friedrich
Strauss. 2te Auflage. Leipzig, 1872.
24 ADDRESS.
duction, he frankly raises the question whether, considering
the progress which culture has now made, there is any
longer occasion to maintain religious worship * in any form
whatever. Why, he asks, on behalf of a party in Germany,
for which he speaks, and for which he claims that it answers
most fully to the state of Modern Thought, should there be
a separate religious society at all, when we have already
provision made for all men in the State, the School, Science,
and Fine Art ? In his First Chapter he puts the question,
" Are we still Christians ? " t and, after a detailed examina-
tion, he concludes, always speaking on behalf of Modern
Thought, that if we wish our yea to be yea and our nay
nay, if we are to think and speak our thoughts as honour-
able upright men, we must reply that we are Christians no
longer.! This question and answer, however, he observes
are insufficient. The essential and fundamental inquiry is,
whether we are or are not still to have a Keligion ?
To this inquiry he devotes his Second Chapter. In this
Second Chapter, he finds that there is no personal God ; ||
there is no future state : the dead live in the recollection
of survivors : this is enough for them.^l After this he has
little difficulty in answering the question he has put. All
religious worship ought to be abolished.** The very name
of " Divine Service " is an indignity to man. Therefore, in
the sense in which religion has been heretofore understood,
his answer is that we ought to have no religion any more.
But proceeding, as he always does, with commendable frank-
ness, he admits that he ought to fill with something the void
which he has made. This he accordingly proceeds to do.
Instead of God, he offers to us the All, or Universum.tt This
All or Universum possesses, he tells us, neither consciousness
* P. 7. f P. 12 and chap. i. J P. 94.
Chap. ii. p. 95. f| See Illustrative Passages, B.
f P. 372. ** P. 144. ft P. 146,
ADDRESS. 25
nor reason. But it presents to us order and law. He thinks it
fitted, therefore, to be the object of a new and true piety, which
he claims for his Universurn, as the devout of the old style
did for their God. If any one repudiates this doctrine, to
Dr. Strauss's reason, the repudiation is absurdity, and to his
feelings blasphemy.*
These are not the ravings of a maniac ; nor are they the
mere dreams of an imaginative high-wrought enthusiast
such as Comtef appears to have been ; they are the grave
conclusions, after elaborate reasoning, of a learned, a calm,
and, so far as form is concerned, a sober-minded man, who
in this very year has been commended to us, in England,
by another Apostle of Modern Thought as one of the men to
whose guidance we ought, if we are wise, to submit ourselves
in matter of religious belief.^
I would not, gentlemen, even if I had the capacity
and the time, make an attempt from this place to confute
these astonishing assertions; for I have no fear that by
their exhibition they will beguile or attract you. Neither
do I search for the hard names of controversy to describe
them; for they best describe themselves. Neither can I
profess to feel an unmixed regret at their being forced,
thus eagerly and thus early, into notice ; because it is to
be hoped that they will cause a shock and a reaction, and
will compel many, who may have too lightly valued the
inheritance so dearly bought for them, and may have
entered upon dangerous paths, to consider, while there is
yet time, whither those paths will lead them. In no part of
his writings, perhaps, has Strauss been so effective, as where
he assails the inconsistency of those who adopt his premises,
but decline to follow him to their conclusions. Suffice it
* P. 146. t Illustrative Passages, C.
J Willis's ' Life of Spinoza,' p. 26, note. See Illustrative Passages, D.
26 ADDRESS.
to say, these opinions are by no means a merely German
brood ; * there are many writers of kindred sympathies in
England, and some of as outspoken courage. But, in pre-
paring yourselves for the combat of life, I beg you to take
this also into your account, that the spirit of denial is abroad,
and that it has challenged all Keligion, but especially the
Keligion we profess, to the combat of life and death.
But I venture to offer you a few suggestions, in the hope
that they may not be wholly without their use.
You will hear in your after-life much of the duty and
delight of following free thought ; and in truth the man,
who does not value the freedom of his thoughts, deserves
to be described as Homer describes the slave; he is but
half a man.f Saint Paul, I suppose, was a teacher of free
thought, when he bade his converts to prove all things ; J
but it seems he went terribly astray when he proceeded to
bid them " hold fast that which is good ; " for he evidently
assumed that there was something by which they could
hold fast. And so he bade Timothy keep that which was
committed to his charge ; and another Apostle has in-
structed us to " earnestly contend for the faith which was
once delivered unto the saints." || But the free thought,
of which we now hear so much, seems too often to mean
thought roving and vagrant more than free; like Delos,
in the ancient legend, drifting on the seas of Greece, without
a root, a direction, or a home.
Again, you will hear incessantly of the advancement of
the present age, and of the backwardness of those which
have gone before it. And truly it has been a wonderful
age ; but let us not exaggerate. It has been, and it is, an
age of immense mental, as well as material activity ; it
See Illustrative Passages, E. f Odyss. x. 322. J 1 Thess. v. 21.
1 Tim. vi. 20. || Jude 3.
ADDRESS. 27
is by no means an age abounding in minds of the first
order, in those whom time establishes as the great immortal
guides and teachers of mankind. It has tapped, as it were,
and made disposable for man, vast natural forces ; but the
mental power employed is not to be measured by the
mere size of the results. To perfect that wonder of travel,
the locomotive, has perhaps not required the expenditure
of more mental strength and application, than to perfect that
wonder of music, the violin. In the material sphere, the
achievements of the age are splendid and unmixed. In the
social sphere, they are great and noble ; but seem ever to be
confronted by a succession of new problems, which almost
defy solution. In the sphere of pure intellect, I doubt
whether posterity will rate us as highly as we rate our-
selves. But that which I most wish to observe is this, that
it is an insufferable arrogance in the men of any age to
assume what I may call airs of unmeasured superiority over
former ages. God, who cares for us, cared for them also.
In the goods of this world we may advance by strides ; but
it is by steps only and not strides, and by slow and not
always steady steps, that all durable improvement of man,
in the higher ranges of his being, is alone to be effected.
Again, my friends, you will hear much to the effect that
the divisions among Christians render it impossible to say
what Christianity is, and so destroy all certainty as to what
is the true religion. But if the divisions among Christians
are remarkable, not less so is their unity in the greatest doc-
trines that they hold. Well-nigh fifteen hundred years
years of a more sustained activity than the world had ever
before seen have passed away, since the great controversies
concerning the Deity and the Person of the Eedeemer
were, after a long agony, determined. As before that time
in a manner less defined, but adequate for their day, so ever
since that time, amid all chance and change, more, aye
28 ADDRESS.
many more, than ninety-nine in every hundred Christians
have with one voice confessed the Deity and Incarnation
of our Lord as the cardinal and central truths of our
Keligion. Surely there is some comfort here, some sense
of brotherhood ; some glory due to the past, some hope for
the times that are to come.
On one, and only one, more of the favourite fallacies of
the day I will yet presume to touch. It is the opinion and
the boast of some that man is not responsible for his
belief. Lord Brougham was at one time stated to have
given utterance to this opinion. Whether truly, I do not
remember; but this I know, it was my privilege to hear
from his own lips the needful and due limitation of that
proposition. " Man," he said, " is not responsible to man for
his belief." But as before God, one and the same law
applies to opinions and to acts ; or rather to inward and
to outward acts; for opinions are inward acts. Many a
wrong opinion may be guiltless because formed in ignorance,
and because that ignorance may not be our fault. But who
shall presume to say that there is no mercy for wrong
actions also, when they, too, have been due to ignorance,
and that ignorance has not been guilty ? The question is
not whether judgments and actions are in the same degree
influenced by the condition of the moral motives.* It is a
question of the principle, on which judgment is to be based.
If it is undeniable that self-love and passion have an in-
fluence upon both, then, so far as that influence goes, for
both we must be prepared to answer. Should we, in common
life, ask a body of swindlers for an opinion upon swindling ?
or of gamblers for an opinion upon gambling ? or of misers
upon bounty ? And if, in matters of religion, we allow pride
and perverseness to raise a cloud between us and the truth
* See Illustrative Passages, F.
ADDRESS. 29
so that we see it not, the false opinion that we form is but
the index of that perverseness and that pride, and both for
them, and for it as their offspring, we shall be justly held
responsible. Who may be the persons, upon whom this
responsibility will fall, it is not ours to judge. These laws
are given to us, not to apply presumptuously to others;
it is enough if we enforce them honestly against ourselves.
Next to a Christian life, my friends, you will find your
best defence against reckless novelty of speculation in
sobriety of temper, and in sound intellectual habits. Be
slow to stir inquiries, which you do not mean patiently
to pursue to their proper end. Be not afraid oftentimes to
suspend your judgment ; or to feel and admit to yourselves
how narrow are the bounds of knowledge. Do not too
readily assume that to us have been opened royal roads to
truth, which were heretofore hidden from the whole family of
man ; for the opening of such roads would not be so much in
favour, as caprice. If it is bad to yield a blind submission
to authority, it is not less an error to deny to it its
reasonable weight. Eschewing a servile adherence to the
past, regard it with reverence and gratitude; and accept
its accumulations, alike in the inward and in the outward
spheres, as the patrimony, which it is your part in life both
to preserve and to improve.
A vote of thanks to Mr. Gladstone for the Address having
been carried,
Mr. GLADSTONE, in reply, said : Mr. Chairman, Ladies and
Gentlemen, and my Friends of the College, I acknowledge
with sincere gratitude the thanks you have been good enough
to offer in a manner so pleasing to me ; and I feel that they
derive an additional value, not only from the kind remarks
of the chairman, and his reference to former times, but also
from the circumstance that the proposal was seconded by one
30 ADDRESS.
whose name stands so high upon the roll of the benefactors
of this institution as our respected friend the Dean of
Chester. I can truly declare, gentlemen, that when the
Principal was good enough to propose to me that I should
undertake this office, I did not look upon it as a matter of
mere compliment or ceremony, but as one of very serious
duty ; and in that light it is that I have approached it, and
have endeavoured to perform it. Further, I must say that
it is always a source of pleasure to me to be called upon to
perform, or to feel myself able to perform which is not
always the case some act of public duty in Liverpool. I
find cause for gratification in everything which refreshes my
memory of the place, and strengthens my connection with it.
It is not unnatural that I should feel a strong interest in
Liverpool, where I have continually before me the recollec-
tion of my father, and where I also rejoice to know the
presence of my Brother ; nor is there any portion of the pro-
ceedings of this day which is more gratifying to my feelings
than the manner in which reference has been made to my
Brother, and the warmth of feeling with which that re-
ference has been received. I trust that the connection
between Liverpool and our family will long continue. Liver-
pool is, after all, but a very young place, when considered as
the seat of a great community ; but I see here some whose
names have been well known in its history almost ever since
it began to have one ; and I hope that, as time goes on,
Liverpool will have its old families like other places, famous
for commerce in other times and countries, and like other
districts of this country now. I know not why commerce in
England should not have its old families, rejoicing to be
connected with commerce from generation to generation.
It has been so in other countries : I trust it will be so in
this country. I think it a subject of sorrow, and almost a
scandal, when those families, which have either acquired or
ADDRESS. 31
recovered station and opulence through commerce turn their
backs upon it, and seem to be ashamed of it. It certainly is
not so with my Brother or with me. His sons are treading
in his steps, and one of my sons, I rejoice to say, is treading
in the steps of my Father and my Brother. I hope, there-
fore, gentlemen, you will see that we are not unfaithful to
the cause, and to the place with which we have been so long
familiar. In the task I have discharged to-day, I have not
studied the arts of flattery. I have endeavoured to practise
that plain speaking which I know is dear to Englishmen, and
I trust it will be given to many of you whom I see now
before me upon the threshold of their life, to become an
ornament and an honour to this place, and to give a good
practical demonstration to the world that the pursuit of
commerce and the interests of human cultivation are not
alien from one another, but are, on the contrary, har-
moniously allied. (Loud applause.)
ILLUSTRATIVE PASSAGES.
A. p. 23.
KELIGION AND SCIENCE.
My reference is to Mr. Herbert Spencer. See his ' First
Principles/ and especially the chapter on the " Keconciliation
of Science and Beligion." It is needless to cite particular
passages. It would be difficult to mistake its meaning ;
for it is written with great ability and clearness, as well as
with every indication of sincerity. Still it vividly recalls
to mind an old story of the man who, wishing to be rid
of one who was in his house, said, " Sir, there are two sides
to my house, and we will divide them ; you shall take the
outside."
I believe Mr. Spencer has been described in one of our
daily journals as the first thinker of the age.
B. p. 24.
THE KECENT WORK OF DR. STRAUSS.
These passages are given as specimens of the work of Dr.
Strauss, rather than as supplying the body of proof of the
propositions set forth in the text of the Address ; and I would
remind the reader that Dr. Strauss may protest against being
bound by a rendering into another language for which he is
not responsible, although I do not think any defects in the
translation will be found to affect the substance.
The " We " of Dr. Strauss in this work is not according to
the common editorial use of the pronoun, but is meant, as I
understand it, to mark the work throughout as the manifesto
of a party.
c
34 ILLUSTRATIVE PASSAGES.
I.
THE RESURRECTION.
" Seldom has an incredible occurrence been worse testified ;
never has one ill testified been intrinsically more incredible.
I have, in my l Life of Jesus/ appropriated to this subject a
searching scrutiny, which I will not here repeat. The upshot
of it alone I hold it to be my duty, as well as my right, to
declare without any sort of reserve. Viewed historically, that
is to say, when the prodigious results of this belief are taken
together with its total want of foundation, the narrative of
the Kesurrection of Jesus can only be described as a world-
wide humbug (welthistorischer Humbug)." p. 79.
n.
RELIGIOUS WORSHIP.
" Why is it, then, that we ought to have no worship in
future ? Because we have broken loose from the other con-
stituent part of Religion, which is also the untrue and, in re-
lation to the sentiment of independence, the more ignoble part
of it namely, the desire and the idea that, through our
worship, we may be enabled to extract something from our
God. We need only take the expression * Divine Service/
and acquire a perception of the grovelling anthropopathism
it involves, in order to perceive how and for what reason any-
thing of that kind is no longer admissible from our point of
view." p. 144.
in.
PIETY TOWARDS THE UNIVERSUM.
" We have been seeking to determine, whether our point
of view, from which the law-governed All, full of life and
intelligence, is the summit of thought (die hochste Idee), can
still be called a religious point of view : and we have anim-
adverted upon Schopenhauer, who loses no opportunity of
ILLUSTRATIVE PASSAGES. 35"
flying in the face of this which is our Idea. As I have said,
such outbreaks impress our understanding as absurdities ; to
our feelings, they are blasphemies. It appears to us rash and
reckless, on the part of a mere human individual, so boldly
to set himself up against the All, out of which he grows, and
from which he has the morsel of intelligence that he
misuses. We see in this an abnegation of that feeling of
dependence, which we admit to belong to all men. We
demand the same Piety towards our Universum, as the
devout man of the old fashion did for his God." p. 146.
IV.
THE BIBLE.
" Men think they understand the Bible, because they are
habituated to not understanding it. Moreover, the modern
reader brings to it as much edifying force as he derives from
it. Not even to mention books like the Kevelation of John,
and most of the Prophets of the Old Testament, surely it is
not meant to say that Lessing's ' Nathan,' or Goethe's
' Hermann und Dorothea/ is harder to understand, or con-
tains fewer " saving truths," fewer golden sayings, than an
Epistle of Paul, or a discourse of Christ according to John."
-p. 299.
v.
THE FUTURE STATE.
*' As regards the substitute, which our view of things offers
for the Church's belief in immortality, the reader may perhaps
expect from me a very lengthened explanation, but will
have to content himself with a very short one. He who in
this point cannot practise self-help, is not yet ready for our
standing-point. He for whom, on the one hand, it is not
enough to be allowed to vitalise within himself the ever-
lasting ideas of the Universum, and of the course of develop-
ment (Entwicldungsgang), and the destiny, appointed for
36 ILLUSTRATIVE PASSAGES.
humanity ; he who knows not how to create within himself,
for the dead whom he loves and honours, a continuation of
life and action in its finest form (das schonste Fortleben und
Fortwirken) ; he in whom, together with exertion for his
family, with labour in his calling, with contribution to the
welfare of his nation, as well as to the good of his fellow-
men at large, and with enjoyment of the Beautiful in Nature
and Art he, I say, in whom, with all this there does not on
the other hand arise the consciousness, that he himself can only
be called to be a temporary partner in it all ; he who cannot
prevail upon himself, finally, to bid his adieu to life with
thankfulness for having been permitted for a time to act, to
enjoy, and also to suffer in unison with all this, and at the
same time with a devout sense of liberation from wha f , in the
long-run is, after all, but exhausting day-labour; such a
man, I say, we must remit to Moses and the Prophets ; who,
to boot, knew nothing of an immortal life, yet Moses and
the Prophets still they were." p. 372.
(I have not ventured to tamper with the syntax of this
passage.)
C. p. 25.
THE SYSTEM OF COMTE.
Having given Comte credit for imagination, I must confess
that, I did not suppose him to be of " imagination all com-
pact," * but rather of imagination all diffuse. I had in view
his width of sympathies and disposition to sympathise, his
avowed regard for Veneration, his priesthood, his incorpora-
tion of the priestly vocation with the function of the poet,
his calendar, and his woman-worship, as he has developed
them in his ' Catechism of Positivism ' [I refer to the English
translation by Mr. Congreve], which he put forth as a sum-
Midsummer Night's Dream,' v. 1.
ILLUSTRATIVE PASSAGES. 37
mary of his previously published volumes, and an anticipation
of those which were to follow. (Preface, pp. 12, 37.) Strauss
appears to me to be indebted, in a certain degree, to Comte,
but to be rather shy of owning the acquaintance.
D. p. 25.
OUR KELIGIOUS GUIDES.
I quote this passage from Willis's ' Life of Spinoza/ p. 26,
note :
" An entirely truthful and authoritative interpretation of
the Hebrew Scriptures is an imperative'want of the age in
which we live, and has now become the first condition re-
quired to enable the world to escape from the slough of
superstition on the one hand, and irreligiousness on the other,
in which it is helplessly sunk, and is sinking more and more
deeply every day, despite the well-meant efforts of the pious
laity and zealous ministry of all denominations. We have
set authoritative beside truthful in the sentence above, for we
are possessed of even more than one perfectly truthful and
exhaustive, but of no authoritative interpretation of the
Hebrew Scriptures and Greek Testament ; neither can the
world at large have any such, until the hierarchies of the
Christian Churches agree to associate themselves with
Spinoza, Semler, Lessing, De Wette, E \vald, Strauss, Baur,
Kuenen, Keim, Eenan, and Colenso critics and scholars
all, men of noble lives, clear heads, and pious souls, who,
from the fulness of their hearts and depths of their under-
standings, have spoken to their fellow-men in terms which
all might understand, but which ignorance, superstition, and
false direction prevent them from apprehending in their in-
appreciable worth and importance. Authority would indeed
seem indispensable to the mass of mankind ; but no holy
reunion of cultivated men for such a purpose is possible,
unless it be based on acknowledgment of the common father-
38 ILLUSTRATIVE PASSAGES.
hood of God, and recognise the revelation He makes of His
being and attributes for all time, in no mere spoken words
or written records, but in the mind of man, the order of the
universe, and the great laws that, by His fiat, rule it neces-
sarily, changelessly, and everlastingly."
E. p. 2(3.
I have made a statement that these ideas are not a mere
German brood ; though I fear that we owe much- of their
seed to Germany, as France owed to England the seed of
her great Voltairian movement, so far as it was a movement
grounded in the region of thought. This statement, as it is
given in the text, I will support only by extracts from a
single writer, Mr. Winwood Keade. They are taken from
his ' Martyrdom of Man.' The three first bear upon creed.
I quote the fourth, with reference to the last of the three
inventions he desires and anticipates, as an instance of what
seems to me a want of sobriety of mind, exhibited in a
region where it will be better appreciated than if it bore
directly upon matters of religion.
It would have been easy to quote from other writers.
Perhaps, in sparing myself that task, I make the reference
to Mr. Reade more invidious. But my purpose is informa-
tion, not reproach. Happily we are not now as in the days
of Edward VI., when Philpot, who had himself taken what
were deemed considerable liberties with the established
religion, spat in the face of an Arian, and defending himself
in print, said : " I would I had a quantity of spittle to spattle
on them."
I must add that Mr. Eeade writes with an ability amply
sufficient to defend him from wrong.
I.
" When the faith in a personal God is extinguished ; when
prayer and praise are no longer to be heard ; when the
ILLUSTRATIVE PASSAGES. 39
belief is universal that with the body dies the soul ; then
the false morals of theology will no longer lead the human
mind astray." * The Martyrdom of Man/ p. 535.
IT.
u We teach that the soul is immortal ; we teach that
there is a future life ; we teach that there is a Heaven in
the ages far away; but not for us single corpuscles, not
for us dots of animated jelly, but for the One of whom we
are the elements, and who though we perish never dies."
p. 537.
in.
" God is so great that He does not deign to have personal
relations with us human atoms that are called men. Those
who desire to worship their Creator must worship Him
through mankind. Such, it is plain, is the scheme of
Nature." p. 537.
IV.
" Three inventions, which perhaps may long be delayed,
but which possibly are near at hand, will give to this over-
crowded island the prosperous conditions of the United
States. The first is the discovery of a motive force which
will take the place of steam, with its cumbrous fuel of oil
and coal ; secondly, the invention of aerial locomotion, which
will transport labour at a trifling cost of money and of time,
to any part of the planet, and which, by annihilating dis-
tance, will speedily extinguish national distinctions; and
thirdly, the manufacture of flesh and flour from the
elements, by a chemical process in the laboratory similar
to that which is now performed within the bodies of the
animals and plants." p. 513.
40 ILLUSTRATIVE PASSAGES.
F. p. 28.
AUTHORITY IN ITS RELATION TO REASON.
The general subject of Authority, and its place not as an
antagonist of Keason, but as an instrument of Eeason for the
attainment of Truth, is very ably handled in the opening
chapters of the work of Sir George C. Lewis, ' On the In-
fluence of Authority in Matters of Opinion.'
Though I am not able to follow him in every one" of his
applications of the principle, I could wish his reasonings
were better known to the world than, unfortunately, they
can now be, from the extreme scarcity of the work.
He remarks, in p. 35, "It is commonly said that the belief
is independent of the will," and that no man can change it
" by merely wishing it to be otherwise." But " the operation
of a personal interest may cause a man insensibly to adopt
prejudices or partial and unexamined opinions." In p. 38
he adds, " Napoleon affords a striking instance of the cor-
ruption of the judgment in consequence of the misdirection
of the moral sentiments."
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