Gladstone, William Ewart
Speeches of the Right Hon
W. E. Gladstone
c
SPEECHES
OF THE RIGHT HON.
W. E. GLADSTONE, M.P.,
DELIVERED AT
WARRINGTON, ORMSKIRK, LIVERPOOL, SOUTHPORT,
NEWTON, LEIGH, AND WIGAN,
IN OCTOBER, 1868.'
LONDON:
SIMPKIN, MARSHALL, & Co. KENT & Co.
PRICE ONE SHILLING.
LONDOIT:
fiOBEBT K. BtJRT, PRINTEB, WINE OFFICE COUBT, E.C.
SPEECH
DELIVERED IX THE
TOWN HALL, WASHINGTON,
OCTOBER 12TH, 1868.
MR. RIGBY and gentlemen, together with my friend, and I hope I may
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.
Ry lands. 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 OP THE EIGHT HON. W. E. GLADSTONE.
representation in this division ; and you, gentlemen, who are electors antf
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 RIGHT HON. W. 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 Beform, 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 BIGHT 1ION. 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 4 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 not
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 Oi' THE EIGHT 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 1
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 earned 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 tho
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
ten years ago, and 15 and 20 years ago, the Conservative party were very
economical, and the Liberals very extravagant. Suppose that were true,
8 SPEECHES OP THE RIGHT HOX. 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 should^turn 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 BIGHT HOX. W. E. GLADSTONE. 9
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 OP THE RIGHT HON. 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 Eadicals 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 EIGHT HON. W. 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 a 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 set
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, 1 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
Tvas 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 HON. 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 you,
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 uport
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 it
more fully on some other occasion. Still, I may say a few words on the
present occasion ; but I have, as it were, archasologically 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 110 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, 600,00a
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 OF THE RIGHT HOX. 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 thepublic charges, in order to give an additional 2d. aday to the
pay of the soldier. Gentlemen, I do not say that too much has 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 bod}' 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. No\v, 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 HOX. W. 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 Kussell or Lord
Palmerston I forget which he proposed that the State should surrender
that debt of 3$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 riot 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 Reyium Donuin. 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 Regium Donum were
16 SPEECHES 01' THE RIGHT UOX. 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
n second one viz., the increase of the Beyium 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 Regium Donum y m
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 Eadicals, 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 will 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 OF THE EIGHT HON. W. E. GLADSTONE. 1<
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
Avhat 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 Eoman 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 Eoman
Catholic Church, for, while I admit that the Roman Catholics refuse to
take what we offer, it gives to the Eoman 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 EIGHT HOX. TT. E. GLADSTONE.
Church. If you say that it is not so you admit that the Koman 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 Eome,
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 Keform, and when we found that we must
abandon the question of Keform 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 ths mists, and into the fog. Let us go straightforward on
the road of c^vil justice and equal rights ; giving unto others that which
we desire they should give to us, doing unto them as \ve, 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 14TH, 1868.
MR. 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 lam enabled
to look back to former occasions on which I have had the honour to
address you, 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
Reform 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. !N"ow, 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. TT. 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 series 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 Cabinet 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 course 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 laud. 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 very 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 HON. \V. 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 Eeform Act of 1832. Therefore, that measure, called a measure of
Eeform, 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.
be 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 RIGHT HOX. 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
us 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 Eeform 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
to the whole country, and some, in particular, applicable to boroughs, we
24 SPEECHES OP THE EIGHT HON. W. 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 the county, and it is also a point on which I frankly own
to you there was a considerable division in the Liberal party itself; but
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 Eeform 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 Keform Bill, we did service
SPEECHES Of TUB RIGHT 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 Eeform 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
Keform. 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 Reform 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 RIGHT HOX. W. 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 Keform 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 OF THE RIGHT HON. V. E. GLADSTONE. 27
result. We opposed the Eeform 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 andjintelligible 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. I 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 HOX. 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 debfc
of justice to L 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 k 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 HON. W. E. GLADSTONE. 29
have been obliged to suspend in Ireland the law of habeas 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; be 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 OP 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 P
ISTow, 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^eave 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 HON. ~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. Now 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, but
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 HIGHT HOX. TT. 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,
and 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 Reginm Donuin 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 opini< -n with which, on my part, that pro-
posal was accompanied. I have sit 'ed the effect of the vote apart from
those declarations of opinion, bee;: 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 OF THE RIGHT HON. W. E. GLADSTONE.
33
though it 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 j'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 Yoice. : " 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 ruin 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 Roman
Catholics to Parliament. It was destroyed a third time by the Reform 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 Repeal 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 Coustitu-
SPEECHES OF THE EIGHT HON. W. E. GLAJDSTONE. 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 Reform 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
Justice.
c2
SPEECH
DELIVERED IN THE
TOWN HALL, NEWTON.
OCTOBER 17TH, 1868.
IVTa 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 11IGIIT 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. But how does he
set about it? In the Tiext page but 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 Royal 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 aa
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 not 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 haji
38 SPEECHES OF THE RIGHT HON. W. 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 OP THE BIGHT 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 nob
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 cut 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,
and 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 in
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 ifc
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-
bers," 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
country, 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 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 ? Ii
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 011 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 ; bub
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 wo
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 200
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 i&
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 RIGHT HOX. W. E. GLADSTONE. 41
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 20,000 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 own
42 SPEECHES or THE EIGHT noy. w. E. GLADSTONE.
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, bub 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, I 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
Eoman Catholics. The Eoman 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 lie 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 Roman
Catholics, yet that for Presbyterians, Roman Catholics, and for others in-
comes from the public purse should be provided. But go back with me
to the condition of the Roman Catholic peasant. The. Roman 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 Gal way with 5.000 or 10,000 Roman 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 Roman 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 j SPEECHES Ol 1 THE RIGHT HOX. 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 Eomaii 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,
" Yery 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 110 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; but
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
a 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, you 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 exist that is to say, they will cease to exist as benefices,
find 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
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
that. 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. TV. E. GLADSTONE.
to dwell upon the plan of the Commissioners to cure the abuses of the Irish-
Church. 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 Roman 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
Roman 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 Roman 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 Roman 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 Roman 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 Roman 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 OP THE RIGHT HON. W 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 nofc
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 Eoman 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 was
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
four 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 RIGHT HOX. 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
show 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,
but 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. Ifc appears, then, after all, that
the Church of Ireland does not exist in Ireland for the purpose of
maintaining the light and glory r 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
<ire 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 th-ey give; I
believe it to be the only answer ; but I must also tell you this, that if it
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 ; bub of late there are a portion of them, and particularly
the active politicians, who make the most warm and moving appeals to
SPEECHES OF 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 must 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
Eoman 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-OPERATIYE MILL, LEIGH.
OCTOBER 20TH, 1868.
IN 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 ia doors ; and my second
duty ia 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 name of the
Co-operative Society at Leigh induces me to say a few words 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. 1 have sufficient confidence in the good sense of
nay 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.
Cerl&inly, 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 1 have
said that I am one who believes that the function of the retail tradesman
SPEECHES OF THE EIGHT HOST. TV. 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 beneficial 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
lie 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 1 believe we have as yet 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 can 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 bee i use
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 t > 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 lias 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 you do observe those bounds with the same care for the
SPEECHES OF THE RIGHT HO3\ 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 power 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 I 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 1860, I said that that was due to a war
in China which had broken out, not under us, but under the instructions
given by the Government that had preceded us, and in connection, as
I 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 I 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
.3,000,000 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
.urind 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 oppoueuts, 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 ray 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. Tou 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 got at it and devoured it. Now, my
wish is to preserve to preserve in ice it' you like, or in any way you
like the effusions of a Conservative working man. But, however, ho
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, bub 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 Resolutions on the Irish Church, to
state what the majority in this House of Commons \vas or where it lay.
<c 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 w r ith 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 OP THE EIGHT HON. W. E. GLADSTONE. 55
could show you the passages in Hansard, if you wished it;, 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 uu-
arrnoured 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 of
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. 1 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 ib 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-
tunitywe 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 oiFered 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 EIGHT HON. W. E. GLADSTONE.
motion, which we thought a very rational motion, was made by Mr.
Goldney. Mr. Goldney is a mau 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 1o 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 f 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 says, " Return me to Par-
liament, and not a member of the Liberal party." That is the operation
which is constantly 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 I will 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 purse. This is my charge.
I stated that on Monday week, and what did I hear before the week
was out ? TLere carne to me a letter from Whitby. Whitby is a town
SPEECHES OF THE EIGLT HON. W. E. GLADSTONE. 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, " Who prevented the creation of a harbour of
refuge at "Whit by ? 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 arid 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 w r e stood up for the public interest ; but
what is said by our friends Mr. Turner and Mr. Cross 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 larjie ? 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. It 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 steady augmentation of the
income-tax. That is the state of the case as far as it is necessary to
58 SPEECHES OP THE EIGHT llOtf. W. T. GLADSTONE.
enter into it with respect to the public expenditure. Gentlemen, I am
afraid you have of late years suffered i'rom 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 maker*
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 otaple trade of
Manchester, consisting of solid and substantial goods. You are not
importers from France, but exporters to the world in general; audit
France had the power of competing with you in their markets without
any difference in your favoar, 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 hud
been accustomed to find vent for your productions and th-3 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 less
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 yon,
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, bub 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 OP THE EIGHT HOS. W. E. GLADSTONE. 59
like thio. I cannot do more than state a summary of the leading pro-
positions on which I have presumed to dwell at other place?. 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 Homan 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 com pared
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 mouths ago with every
epithet the ingenuity of man could extract from tho vocabulary to
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 Boman
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 ;
our plan is to remove and put an end to the Establishment, the plan of the
Government is to resist onr plan and nothing else. The Government of the
country has no plan and no policy to offer you. I 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-
150 SPEECHES OF THE EIGHT HON. 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 it appears to me
^fchat 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 beenstopped within thelast fewyears,
it has been stopped owing to the operation of that fearful visitation of
Providence, the Irish famine, which decimated the Roman 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 which 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 alter 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 3 ou 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
hoii. and respected friend Mr. Grenfell 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 ia 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,
at the same time, amidst much unbelief and much mockery, they told
the agricultural interests of this country and I am bound "to say that
I 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
thar. it ^as in times of monopoly and restriction. It would be idle, fir
<52 SPEECHES OF THE RIGHT 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, is
administered in this county, or in this portion of the county ; therefore
it is by no means in the way 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 n 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 and
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. Often as
1 have had the honour of addressing my constituents upon this matter,
SPEECHES OF THE EIGHT HON. 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 1'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.
Tee 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,
lias 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. \Ve, 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,
tout 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.
J^ow, 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
(k'libera'e result of all the counsels and examinations of the Cabinet,
moved by Lord Stanley, to the effect that a question of so much- import-
une^ 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
64 SPEECHES OF 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 ahalf-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 Lords 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 and 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 Uhurch. Ear
be it from me to question for one moment the honour or character of any
man. If I did so 1 should only expose myself to moat j ust blame ; but this
I think it fair to say, that when gentlemen claim your assent in opposing
us upon the ground 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 wor^e 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 were 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 period, and to the results which have since followed,
and to say within my own mind, u 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."
G-entleinen, 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 Established 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 unassailable bulwark -and wall built up around us to
fortify us, if 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 OP 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, gentlemeo, the Wesleyans
likewise, I believe, have assumed aii attitude upon this subject on which
I may remark with some satisfaction. 1 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 ot 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 doirg, 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 OP THE EIGHT HO^. TV. 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 fur 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 Whately, 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. r J 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 have been deliberate. One of them was
Dr. Thirlwall, 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 .Republic 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, and 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 Irelaud, 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 at'empted to disestablish the Church of England
SPEECHES OP THE EIGHT HON. AV. 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 HON. W. 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 Eoman 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 01
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 Eoman 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 lioman 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 between 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 were to dilate upon
it. Gentlemen, the truth ia, 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. JNow that, is the argument of
our opponents, and they say if you remove the Church Establishment of
Ireland, which does not doits work, has not done, and cannot do it, the
contagion will be so fatal that you will imme'diately 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, SOUTHPOET.
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 Registration 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 OJf THE EIGHT HON. 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, I
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
youj'you 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^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, a 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 OP TUB EIGHT HOIST. 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 ?" 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 OP 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 administrationTat 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 Roman 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 Roman Catholic Church in Ireland
there would be an expectation that in return for that endowment conces-
SPEECHES OF THE EIGHT HON. W. K. GLADSTONE. 79
sions should be made by the Roman 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 Rome 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
he 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 Or THE EIGHT 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 Roman Catholics
among the hundreds of thousands of Roman Catholics in this country,
and among the millions of Roman 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 Rome 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 on 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, ife 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 OP 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-Eeformer 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 judge,
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 whicl though I said I had entirely done
with our opponents personally, I will say I see in this spsech 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
82 SPEECHES OF THE EIGHT HON. 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 Borne, 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 Koman 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 of 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. V. 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 ifc 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 that 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 EIGHT HON. W. E. GLADSTONE.
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
HENGLER'S CIKCFS, WIGAN
OCTOBEK 23RD, 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 sto 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 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 OP 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 tho 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 \vill 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 tk
Almighty for the deliverance of the Legislature from a terrible aiw,
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 Rev.
John Robert 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-
qiience 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 EIGHT 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 I 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 dueto 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 Roman 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 Eoman 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 THE EIGHT HON. W. 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 showri
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 soughtjto 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 it
may be backward Avith 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 BIGHT HOST. 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 see if we can gain any light on this subject, which is one of an
entertaining character, if ib 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 Eeform 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 my 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 EIGHT 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." Now, 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 Eoman Catholics. That is the charge that is insinuated under
these words. Tou 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 OF THE EIGHT HON. W. E. GLADSTONE. ; 92
s
purposes of the Eoman Catholics as well. I find in the address oi
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
COD quest. Now, gentlemen, is it possible for inconsistency, for
absurdity, for mockery to public understanding, to go further than
94 SPEECHES OF THE EIGHT HOIS'. TV. 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
")ne 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 [their creed and
practice I will not say now with regard to the question of Eeform,
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 nave 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 ail 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,
was resisted by the Tory party of this country until they were compelled
96 SPEECHES OP THE RIGHT HON. TV. 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. Reform 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. Now 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 Robert Peel with regard to Roman
Catholic emancipation with the proceedings we have recently witnessed,
for when the Duke of Wellington and Sir Robert 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
Robert 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 except 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 OP THE EIGHT HON. W. E. GLADSTONE. 97
98 SPEECHES OF THE BIGHT HON. 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 nods
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.
B. K. BVKT, TEINTEB, WINE OiTICE COUKT, FLEET STBEtT
DA
563
15
1868
Gladstone, William 3wart
Speeches of the Right Hon,
W. E. Gladstone
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