found in harmony with the nation, while the Lords are generally in direct opposition to it. Instead of doing a little childish tinkering about life peerages, it would be well if the Peers could bring themselves on a line with the opinions and necessities of our day. In harmony with the nation, they may go on for a long time; but, throwing themselves athwart its course, they may meet with accidents not pleasant for them to think of. But there are not a few good and wise men among the Peers, and we will hope their counsels may prevail. I am sure you will forgive me if I cannot come to

your meeting.

"Believe me always very truly yours,

"Mr. H. B. S. THOMPSON, Secretary to the Birmingham Liberal Association."

"JOHN BRIGHT.

The effect of this letter, coming at so critical a moment from a Member of the Cabinet, was not a little startling both to friends and opponents of the Government. The latter denounced in indignant terms the impropriety of such comments by a man in Mr. Bright's position upon the character of one of the branches of the Legislature. The former were not a little embarrassed by the obligation which he had thrown upon his colleagues of defending the expression of sentiments which some of them doubtless regarded as offensive, and all of them probably as ill-timed. It will be seen in what manner this task was discharged by the Ministerial leaders when the letter of the President of the Board of Trade became the subject of comment in Parliament.

On the 14th June the House of Lords was the great centre of attraction. Its galleries were crowded with the wives and daughters of Peers; the steps of the throne were thronged with their eldest sons and with Privy Councillors; at the bar was collected an overflowing body of Members of the House of Commons, and the corridors and approaches to the House were filled with strangers eager to obtain admission. Every thing testified to a general feeling that a memorable passage of history was about to be transacted, and a great constitutional dilemma speedily to be solved.

The second reading of the Bill was moved by Earl Granville in a speech which fully sustained, if it did not further increase, the reputation of that nobleman for skill, judgment, and conciliatory temper in dealing with great political controversies. Few speakers in either House could have handled a most delicate subject with more ability, discrimination, and address than the noble Secretary for the Colonies displayed on this occasion. He began by observing that it was hardly necessary to argue that the Irish Church was a great anomaly, and an injustice to the Irish people, and that it had not fulfilled its ostensible purpose. That had always been his own conviction, and it had been, in fact, acknowledged by all parties, as Lord Mayo's scheme showed. With reference to the general principles of the Bill, he denied that the Act of Union, passed

seventy years ago, and which had been already infringed by the Church Temporalities Act, could be a bar to a change like this, sanctioned, as it would be, if at all, by a Parliament representing Ireland as well as England. Nor was the Bill, he argued, antagonistic to the doctrine of the Royal Supremacy, according to the basis on which Lord Kingsdown's judgment in Long v. the Bishop of Capetown had rested that doctrine. But whatever view might be adopted of the theory of the Royal Supremacy, at any rate Ireland would not be put by the Bill in a worse position than Scotland was now. How anomalous the state of things which the measure attempted to cure was, appeared from the fact that the Irish Church was, as compared with the number of its members, with possibly one exception, by far the richest religious establishment in the world. That the Bill was no attack on Protestantism was sufficiently proved by the Liberal majority at the last elections. But the great defence of the Bill was its necessity. He would not despair of the House of Lords, nor of the Episcopal Bench itself, perceiving its necessity and its justice. He combated earnestly the argument which it was supposed might weigh with the Bishops of the English Church-that if the present measure were passed, their turn would come next. Disclaiming any wish or power of dictating to the House, he would not presume that the House would take one step without considering what the next step must be. It would be absurd, in truth, to doubt the independence of the House, composed, as at the present moment it showed itself to be, of men possessing enormous property, and of men who had rendered great public and private services, and attended as it was by representatives of the Privy Council, of great foreign realms and republics, and, as the galleries testified, by that portion of humanity, too, which exercised by no means the least influence over affairs. But, free and powerful as the House was, there was one thing than which it was less powerful, and that was the clear expression of the national will. Indeed, the whole tone of the debate on the Suspensory Bill, as he showed by extracts from the speeches of Lords Cairns and Derby, had implied that the Opposition then pledged itself to abide by the will of the country whenever disclosed. Now, however, it would appear as if certain peers had taken for the keynote of their policy the school-boy's principle, "Heads I win, tails you lose." The Government had been accused of an imperious determination to admit no amendments to the Bill. The numerous bona fide amendments which had been accepted proved this was not so. Those of Mr. Disraeli, which had been rejected, were not bona fide, since, as statistics showed, they could not have been adopted except at a cost far beyond the actual resources of the Irish Church, even as now endowed. The Government could not, it was true, surrender the principle of the Bill; but, short of this, they were prepared to admit amendments not merely of detail, but which might affect the whole of the Bill. After criticizing a remark by Lord Harrowby, that the matter was one not of politics, but of the

Bible, on which he observed that, in regard to the Irish Church, religion had been always, unfortunately, too much mixed up with politics, he concluded with an earnest appeal to the House to look at the question as they would if Ireland were the stronger and England were the oppressed and the weaker country.

The Earl of Harrowby, who repudiated the character either of a leader or of a party man, moved an amendment that the Bill should be read a second time that day three months. He cast back on the Government and its friends the charge of themselves being originally of Lord Mayo's much-abused opinion as to the propriety of "levelling up;" and he quoted from a letter of Mr. Dillon in the Tablet in proof of that assertion. His own objection to the Bill was that it was revolutionary, that it implied in a certain sense a violation of the Coronation Oath, and that it was opposed to the Act of Union. Circumstances might, he confessed, be imagined when such extreme measures would be justifiable; but his complaint was that none such had been shown to exist in the present instance. How little necessary in the cause of justice was the destruction of the Irish Church Establishment, he showed by citations from Grattan, Burke, Plunket, Castlereagh, and Peel. The present measure, which he traced to a negotiation between the Roman Catholics and the Liberation Society, had been curiously anticipated in a proposal of Mr. Miall's, even down to the application of the surplus funds to the endowment of lunatic asylums and the like. But that proposal had been opposed by members of the present Government, and in regard to them it was an entirely new project. He proceeded to dilate on the inconveniences of dealing in this abrupt and violent way with sixteen millions' worth of property, and the great probability that the effect would be to diminish the number of Irish Protestants, thus depriving the Irish peasantry of kindly friends and employers, and England of its truest friends. The Bill had been rested on the argument of justice to Ireland. But, at the highest, it was only half justice to the Irish Roman Catholics, who, on the same plea, might logically claim to have their confiscated property restored to them; and it was wholly injustice to the Irish Protestants. He urged, finally, on the House its obligation, considering its place in the State, to resist this revolutionary attempt, on the ground of the already extremely democratic character of the British Constitution-more democratic, he asserted, than that of any other country, not even excepting the United States.

The Earl of Clarendon compared the expressions of feeling on this Irish Church question with the old fanatical opposition to the repeal of the Test and Corporation Acts, and the personal rancour against Mr. Gladstone with that against the late Sir Robert Peel in reference to the repeal of the Corn Laws. It was, he felt, impossible to awaken much interest in so thoroughly exhausted a discussion as this; but the one question to be considered was whether the measure was just and necessary. He referred to his own Irish experiences, sincere Protestant as he was, in proof that it

was just. How necessary it was sufficiently appeared from the clear impossibility-which, as was always the case, had only made itself evident tardily-of governing Ireland on the old principles. But the reasons for giving the Bill a second reading on account of its justice and its necessity were, in his opinion, even inferior to the reasons in its favour which might be drawn from the danger its summary rejection would cause to the House of Lords. As a majority in the House had accepted household suffrage, from which it was probably more averse than even from the present measure, so he hoped it would act now again, and not throw this Bill back on the House of Commons.

The Duke of Rutland was hostile to the Bill, as opposed to the rights of property and the Coronation Oath, and as dissolving the salutary connexion between Church and State. He cited the authority of Mr. Pitt, Sir R. Peel, and Lord Palmerston against the arguments of Lord Clarendon. The Bill had been rested on the ground that the Irish Church was the Church of a minority; but he denied that, if the United Kingdom were looked at as one, it was the Church of a minority. Then, again, it had been supported as a measure of equality; but how, he asked, could there be equality between Romanism and Protestantism, between truth and error? As for the argument that the Established Church was the badge of conquest, it was, he thought, much truer in point of history that the Roman Catholic Church in Ireland was that. He could discover no generosity in the compensation which the Bill provided for the Protestant Church. The result must be that the Church would be thrown back on the voluntary principle, which he himself thought a very objectionable one, and the success of which in Scotland had been greatly exaggerated. That the Roman Catholic Church maintained itself in Ireland on that principle was no proof that the Protestant Church, which had no doctrine of purgatory to appeal to, could be thus maintained. He denied that the House was engaged by any thing which had occurred last year to let this Bill pass. Last year they had not been informed by Mr. Gladstone that Maynooth was to be endowed out of the property of the Protestant Church.

Viscount Stratford de Redcliffe thought it was necessary to look at the question as affecting not merely the Irish Church, but also the relations between that and the other House. He considered that disestablishment as proposed by the Bill was unjust to the Irish Protestants. He thought, too, that this measure being put forward as only one part of the Irish policy of the Government, the House had a right to complain that the other two portions of their policy had not been declared at the same time. He feared, looking at the character of the Bill, that we might be sacrificing the substance to the shadow, and he treated very lightly the argument that the Bill was an act of justice to Ireland. But then, when he considered the events of last year, the place of that House in the State, and its relation to the other House, he reluctantly felt obliged to vote for

the second reading, though he should reserve his liberty to vote against the third reading, if his objections to the Bill were not removed in Committee.

Lord Romilly defended the Bill as an attempt to put all the religions in Ireland on an equality. It was in its favour, and surely not against it, that it was the spontaneous offer of England to Ireland, and not the result of direct Irish pressure. He did not see why the destruction of ecclesiastical machinery should destroy religion, as had been urged. A like series of measures in Scotland had not had that effect, and the origin of Christianity was itself a proof to the contrary. He believed the result would be the reverse of what was predicted by Lord Harrowby; there would be more zeal and less jealousy. The Irish Church, as an Established Church, had not been successful, and accordingly, on the principles on which the Court of Chancery acted, it had become the duty of the State to put an end to it, at least as a corporation of its present character. He warned the House of the danger of attempting to raise corporate to the level of private property, lest they should only in the end be lowering private property to the level of public. As for the argument from the Coronation Oath, Lord Harrowby had misapprehended the real sanction and objects of such a pledge. In conclusion, he reminded the House of the error, the effects of which still lasted, of its original rejection of the Reform Bill of 1832, and he entreated it not to repeat the blunder.

The Archbishop of Canterbury acknowledged that this was a great crisis. He and his brethren must act by the advice of neither side, but only in obedience to their own consciences. His own opinion was that they must neither accept the measure as it was, nor reject it in its present stage. He had gladly hailed Lord Granville's assurance that any amendments would be carefully considered. He could not match himself on a purely legal question against Lord Romilly's authority-although he doubted the correctness of his view as to the rights of corporate property-but he was entitled to contest Lord Romilly's advice to the Irish Church to accept disendowment gratefully as a benefit. He did not believe that it could be for the advantage of a Church to make the maintenance of its ministers proportionate to their displays of fanaticism. But it was a very different question whether the House ought summarily to cast back the measure without attempting to amend it. However much the Bill might, by disestablishing the Irish Church, separate it from the Church of England, it could never break off the true connexion in spirit between the two Churches. But amendments, and essential ones, it did need. In its present state it held out no adequate inducements to the Irish Church to re-incorporate itself. Whatever the Bill gave to the members of that Church, in the shape of the power of holding property, of buying back their own houses, and the like, they could do equally well without the powers under the Bill. It was but a petty amount which the Bill offered, in addition to the life incomes of the present incumbents,