and challenged him to bring his charges formally before the House.

Mr. Gladstone's resolutions affirming the necessity for disestablishing the Irish Church, and abolishing the grant to Maynooth and the Regium Donum, were reported to the House on the 8th of May. In answer to the address presented to her, the Queen replied that she would not allow her interest in the temporalities of the Church in Ireland to stand in the way of the consideration of the proposed measure, and on the 13th Mr. Gladstone introduced his Irish Church Suspensory Bill. The debate on the second reading took place on the 22nd, when the chief speakers were Mr. Gladstone, Mr. Gathorne Hardy, and Mr. Disraeli. On a division, there appearedFor the second reading, 312; against, 258; majority, The bill passed through its remaining stages without difficulty.

54.

When the measure came before the House of Lords, it was debated with unusual ability and eloquence on both sides. The speeches of Lords Granville, Derby, Carnarvon, and Salisbury, the Duke of Argyll, the Bishop of Oxford, and the Lord Chancellor were especially powerful. The second reading was negatived on a division by 192 to 97; the rejection of the measure by the Lords did not come with surprise upon the Opposition, who now looked forward to the impending general election, anticipating that the country would pronounce unmistakably in favour of Mr. Gladstone's disestablishment policy.

Meanwhile, Mr. Bright actively pleaded the cause of justice to Ireland in the country. On the 3rd of June, 1868, he was present by invitation at the annual meeting of the Welsh National Reform Association, held at Liverpool. Mr. W. Williams, a member of the Liverpool Town Council, presided, and the object of the gathering was to assist the progress of Reform in the Principality, and in particular the more equitable distribution of Parliamentary representation.

Mr. Bright began his address by saying that the chairman was not far wrong when he described Liverpool as the capital city of the Principality of Wales, for although geographically it was in the county of Lancaster, it contained not less than sixty thousand natives of Wales-a larger number than were found in any purely Welsh town. Referring next to the great question of the continuance or removal of the Protestant State Church in Ireland, he said he hoped one of the results of that meeting would be that the verdict of the nation should not be given without the voice of Wales being heard in it. The Welsh were geographically nearest to Ireland; they had themselves had a remarkable experience in Church matters, and they had a strong wish that justice should be done to Ireland. The speaker said that there had never been any real union between Great Britain and Ireland, and the inevitable result of three hundred years of government such as Ireland had experienced had been three hundred years of misery, of discontent, of conspiracy, and of insurrection. It

was only about one hundred years ago that the cruel rule of the English Government had relaxed, and not until 1829 that a Roman Catholic was permitted to take his seat in the House of Commons. Since 1829 there had been a much more merciful and just administration. But the supremacy had been continued, and the sign and symbol of it was the Protestant Establishment in Ireland.

The real question before the country, said Mr. Bright, was not the question of State establishments. It was one purely and wholly political. The House of Commons, by an absolute majority of all the members of the House, had declared against the Irish Establishment; and whether a man accepted the principle of State Churches as a wise one, or whether he rejected it on his (Mr. Bright's) grounds, they must reject the Irish Establishment. Still more so on the principle of equal justice in the nation, on the principle of what is best and what is beneficial for the empire, we must in either case equally and emphatically condemn the Irish State Church. Suppose it were proposed for the first time to found a State Church in Ireland, is there one single being out of Bedlam-I doubt if there is one in Bedlamwho would even suggest that the State Church to be founded in Ireland should be of the Protestant Episcopal creed?' The speaker then went on to observe that out of a population of six million persons in Ireland, 4,500,000 belonged to the Roman Catholic Church. Half a million belonged to the Protestant

Episcopal Church, and about half a million to the Presbyterian Church. The census gave under 700,000 of Church Protestants, but this overstated the numbers. Now, if we knew, being these four and a half millions, that this little Church of half a million was planted among us by those who had conquered our fathers, if we knew also that this little Church was associated with everything that had been hostile to our national interests and national prosperity, and if we knew further that it absorbed incomes amounting to not less than £700,000 or £800,000 sterling per year, these incomes being derived from national property amounting to probably £13,000,000 or £14,000,000 sterling, I say that if we were of those four and a half millions, let me ask every man of you whether we should not feel that we had a just cause of complaint, and that there was a national grievance in our country that required to be speedily redressed.'

The Church in England or Wales, he continued, was not a symbol of conquest: but the Irish Church was a great imperial question. It was a question of the empire, of union, or of civil strife; it was a question of strength or weakness to the nation. Who wished to make the Irish Church permanent? The Tory party in Parliament and the country. This party had been opposed to almost every measure of wisdom and of justice that had been proposed in regard to either England or Ireland. Mr. Bright then showed that in 1833 there were in connection with the Irish Church not less than twenty-two bishops, receiving

an income of more than £130,000 a year, and from 1,500 to 2,000 clergymen,-all to teach a form of Protestantism to a population not larger than the population of Liverpool. The number of bishops was ultimately reduced from twenty-two to twelve, but not without a great outcry. He then went on to remark that at St. James's Hall recently the archbishops and bishops of the Church of England had been on the 'stump,' as they described it in America; and when so admirable a man as the Dean of Westminster began in his speech to approach the question in a moderate and rational manner, he was positively hissed down. He (Mr. Bright) was only sorry that the Dean mistook his duty in finding his way to that meeting. There were various ideas as to the object of the meeting. One said it was a meeting of a trades union; another, not less ingenious or less accurate, said it was a meeting of shareholders in a very lucrative concern, who fancied by some possibility their dividends might be reduced. Now he had no objection to these important and dignified persons discussing public questions; he wished they would do it oftener. But he never knew them meet to promote peace and to condemn war. When the great question of slavery agitated the country, there was no combined and unanimous movement in regard to it. The archbishops and bishops never deemed it their duty to express an opinion upon the Corn Laws. Nor had they come forward in any combined manner to expose the sufferings and denounce the wrongs practised