on which Burke disturbed those party relations of the misery which we should bring upon ourwhich he deemed so important, and bore witness selves and our institutions if we ever regarded that they can at best be only means to an end. races and nations as articles of merchandise. If Whether he took the right way of accomplishing there had not been some who took this measure the end is another question; I said at the of our duties when they first devolved upon us, beginning of my lecture that I was far from could India have received any of the blessings thinking that he passed unhurt through the con- which we boast of having conferred upon her? flicts of factions. I hoped that we might learn | If we had been generally aroused to the sense of from his biography what are the great and what our obligations, should we have needed a plague are the little transactions in which public men of fire and of blood to tell us that no one of us are engaged; what are their own greatnesses can any longer deny his share of the guilt or of and littlenesses. If we compare the events in the penalty? which the Old and the New World are equally interested with these squabbles about Lord Shelburne, and Mr Fox, and Lord North, how beggarly these last appear! If we compare Burke himself returning from Bristol in 1780, with Burke the organiser of a new party in 1783, how great he looks in the hour of defeat, how poor in the hour of success! It is no little satisfaction to remember that that hour of success did not last long. The Fox and North ministry was broken up. Mr Pitt became Premier, and Burke continued out of office for the rest of his life. One great occupation of these later years he entered upon while he was connected with the ministry. He had given his mind to the relation of England with her colonies in the West. When she was separated from them, he devoted himself as vigorously to her relations with that mighty empire in the East which had been won by her soldiers and was ruled by her merchants. This subject has become to us one of such deep and awful interest, that I have scarcely courage to speak of it merely as illustrating the life of an individual man. And one may rejoice that among the solemn and terrible associations which the name of India awakens in every one of us at this moment, we may quite forget all the bitter animosities and court intrigues which gathered about the bills of Mr Fox and Mr Pitt; all that was merely personal in the prosecution of Warren Hastings. We may rejoice still more, though not without trembling, to believe that some of the allegations which we read in Burke's speeches about the British rule in India-allegations, it is to be feared, derived from only too accurate knowledge-some of his comparisons of the older government which had supplanted it, would have been retracted if he had had the experience of another seventy or eighty years. But the substantial part of these speeches remains, after all these deductions, a study and warning for the English statesman and the Englishman, which now less than ever he can afford to forget. It was the greatest honour and glory of Burke's life, that which raised his politics so far above the level of ordinary politics, that he was awake himself, that he did strive to awaken his countrymen, to a sense of the tremendous responsibility under which the possession of such an empire laid us; to a sense I have left myself no time for speaking of the last eleven years of Burke's life, and of that series of his work which opens with his "Reflections upon the French Revolution." It is better that I should have done so, for there is comparatively little difference of opinion in this day about his conduct in the American War. There is a general disposition to acknowledge that he did good service ultimately, if not immediately, to India. But a thousand questions arise respecting his views of the events in France, which are mixed with all the controversies and heats of our own age. The little which I say upon this subject will be for the purpose of illustrating the character of the man, and for the further purpose, which I have kept before me throughout this lecture, of showing how we may profit by his wisdom, even if we have fallen upon times which require a higher guidance than that which he can give us, and if we have had some experience which may enable us to correct the conclusions which he deduced from his. It is notorious that his opinions respecting the French Revolution separated him from some of the friends to whom he had been most attached, especially from the one upon whom he had bestowed so splendid a panegyric in his speech on the Indian Bill. "Thus ended" (this is his own pathetic narrative of the separation, in the "Annual Register")-"thus ended a friendship which had lasted a quarter of a century. The House proceeded to the order of the day, and shortly afterwards adjourned." Though he wished to restore what he called the old Whig party, he did in fact prove the great render and confounder of parties. Nevertheless I think that any one who observes that characteristic of his speeches respecting America which I have dwelt upon-I mean his assertion that there are actual relations existing between nations and between all the orders in a particular nation, and that the whole happiness of society depends upon the acknowledgment of these relations and upon the fulfilment of the mutual duties which they involve-will not wonder or think him inconsistent if he complained of a revolution which seemed to him to set aside all relations, to reduce society into its original elements, and to rebuild it upon the assertion of individual rights, not of obligations. It seems to me that in protesting against the voluntary flicts, through efforts at a universal anarchy or He He adoption of such a system, he was doing a great service to every country, most of all to the toiling and suffering people of every country. He was asserting a principle which they can the least afford to part with; since every wrong that has been done to them has arisen from the forgetfulness of it. He was right, I think, to say that our English constitution is precious, because it asserts the obligations and responsibilities of the different portions of society to each other, and that it never can be expanded or improved by setting up any maxim which makes one class or another suppose that it has a power which can break through them. Where he seems to me to have failed, is in not sufficiently recognising the width and the depth of these assertions. If it is true that society is constituted of these mutual relations and obligations, then we must look upon every dissolution of society as a divine sentence and judgment upon the indifference or contempt of them. The agents may have worked blindly, often madly. Their blindness and their madness were themselves parts of the sin for which the Judge of all was calling those who had the means of opening their eyes and making them sane, to give account. The sufferings which they produced may well make us tender and charitable to the sufferers. But they must not tempt us, as I think they did very naturally tempt Burke, to overlook the enormous corruptions and the frightful heartlessness which could have no other catastrophe than this, and which, if they had been allowed to fester undisturbed, would have been immeasurably more fatal than any such catastrophe. Nor can I help feeling very strongly that Burke, because he did not judge the sins of the passing age with sufficient severity, looked upon the coming age with far too little hope. He took, it seems to me, a truer measure of the greatness of the events in which he was moving than any of the men about him of either school. He saw that the results of these events could not be calculated by the horoscopes of ordinary politicians. He felt that it was an utter mistake to apply phrases that were borrowed from old classical times or from English history to the French movement. He saw that that was not what is called a constitutional movement in any sense of that word; that it was not an attempt to recover any of the old traditions or principles of French society; that it was a violent defiance of them all. He did not see that it might be an effort to assert that there is an order for human beings, a fellowship for men simply as men, which constitutional maxims are by their very nature too limited, too national, to uphold. He did not see that there was no necessary contradiction between such a human, such a universal fellow-power in his later works. His eloquence pership, and those national institutions of which no one understood the worth so well as himself. He did not see that through tremendous con with the fear of a man who understood that they were to be most awful, who did not understand that the more awful they were the more they bore witness of the guidance of Him in whom all awe dwells-were to teach us that no seemly phrases which mean nothing can stand the shock of a mighty crisis; but that such a crisis may bring to light that which lay hidden and half-dead beneath them, may bring us face to face with realities to which they pointed. I believe that all history has become more grave, and terrible, and full of significance, since that time, because the present has become more grave and terrible also; but that if we have faith to look upon both, to see in each the interpretation of the other, we shall not shrink from the thought of the future, because it must compel us to meet the whole problem of human society, because it must compel us to seek for a divine solution of that problem. Burke died in the year 1797; he belongs emphatically to the last age. He left no successor, as he once dreamt that he might, who should maintain his principles and support his name in the coming age. He died childless. It was the loss of his son, on whom he had looked with an affection which belonged to his character, with an exaggerated admiration which was a most pardonable exercise of his fancy, which struck the final blow to his spirit as well as to his body. There is no decline of intellectual haps reaches its highest point in them; but there is the irritation and despondency which I have endeavoured to account for. There is the lesson to us, that each man has his appointed work to do, that more than that work he cannot do; that if he does it as ever in his great Taskmaster's eye, the times to come may bless his memory and give thanks for his wisdom; but that we are not to expect from men past, present, or coming, that which we may look for and shall find in Him who is, and was, and is to come. LORD BEACONSFIELD. THE IRISH CHURCH.* 1805 [MR DISRAELI'S first appearance in the House is thus cleverly sketched in "Random Recollections in the House of Commons," published in 1838: "Mr Disraeli, the member for Maidstone, is perhaps the best known among the new members who have made their debût. . His own private friends looked forward to his introduction into the House of Commons as a circumstance which would be immediately followed by his obtaining for himself an oratorical reputation equal to that enjoyed by the most popular speakers in that assembly. . . . When he rose, which he did immediately after Mr O'Connell had concluded his speech, all eyes were fixed on him, and all ears were open to listen to his eloquence; but, before he had proceeded far, he furnished a striking illustration of the hazard that attends on highly-wrought expectations. After the first few minutes he met with every possible manifestation of opposition and ridicule from the ministerial benches, and was, on the other hand, cheered in the loudest and most earnest manner by his Tory friends; and it is particularly deserving of mention that even Sir Robert Peel, who very rarely cheers any honourable gentleman, not even the most able and accomplished speakers of his own party, greeted Mr Disraeli's speech with a prodigality of applause which must have been severely trying to the worthy baronet's lungs. . . . "At one time, in consequence of the extraordinary interruptions he met with, Mr Disraeli intimated his willingness to resume his seat, if the House wished him to do so. He proceeded, however, for a short time longer, but was still assailed by groans and undergrowls in all their varieties; the uproar, indeed, often became so great as completely to drown his voice. "At last, losing all temper, which, until now, he had preserved in a wonderful manner, he paused in the midst of a sentence, and looking the Liberals indignantly in the face, raised his hands, and opening his mouth as wide as its • From a speech delivered in the House of Commons, April 3, 1868, in the debate on going into committee on the Irish Church Bill. dimensions would permit, said, in remarkably loud and almost terrific tones, 'I will sit down now, but the time will come when you will hear me.' Mr Disraeli then sat down amidst the loudest uproar, which lasted for some time. "Mr Disraeli's appearance and manner were very singular. His dress also was peculiar; it had much of a theatrical aspect. His black hair was long and flowing, and he had a most ample crop of it. His gesture was abundant; he often appeared as if trying with what celerity he could move his body from one side to another, and throw his hands out and draw them in again. At other times he flourished one hand before his face, and then the other. His voice, too, is of a very unusual kind: it is powerful, and had every justice done to it in the way of exercise. His utterance was rapid, and he never seemed at a loss for words."] Sir, the right hon. gentleman the member for South Lancashire has moved that we should go into committee of the whole House upon the subject of the Irish Church, in order that he may propose resolutions which he has placed upon the table. We have not at present to discuss those resolutions, which would lead us into matters of great detail, of constitutional interest, and of legal difficulty, which might divert us from the general topic which now engages our attention. I apprehend that so far as the right hon. gentleman is concerned, there is no mistake as to his general meaning; for, although he has not yet had an opportunity of moving his resolutions, he has expressed the outline of the policy which he proposes that this House and the country should adopt. I apprehend that I am not in any way misrepresenting his meaning, or misinterpreting his expressions, a thing most foreign from my intention, when I say that the right hon. gentleman proposes to terminate the connection between the State and the Church, so far as Ireland is concerned, which in neological phrase is styled disestablishment; and that he proposes a policy which first partially, and in the end completely, would accomplish the disendowment of the Church in Ireland. I believe I have correctly expressed what the right hon. gentleman has stated, or rather intimated, and what if opportunity offered he would in be made in the temporalities of that Church, more detail bring under our consideration. Well, sir, this question having been brought before the House and the country somewhat suddenly, as all will admit, the Government had to consider what was the proper mode in which to encounter it. They might have moved the "previous question" to the motion for going into committee. That is a course which upon the same subject was, I believe, adopted by our predecessors three years ago, and it is a course which is much approved by those who have experience of parliamentary life when they deal with difficult questions. It might have been prudent three years ago to meet this motion by moving the previous question; but I think myself, considering the circumstances under which this question is now brought forward, not by an isolated and independent Member of Parliament, but by a party of considerable power, by the leader of the Opposition in this House, and under circumstances, as it appears to us, of precipitation, and, consequently, being a question which attracts and even alarms the public and the House-it would have been unwise of us to have taken refuge in a course at all times ambiguous, and not altogether satisfactory. Well, sir, a motion to consider the condition of the Irish Church, or, strictly speaking, to go into committee for that purpose, we might have met with a direct negative; but what would have been the inevitable inference which would have been drawn from such a course on our part? It would have been said we were of opinion that no change, no improvement, no modification was necessary, expedient, or desirable in the condition of the Church in Ireland. That was not the conclusion we wished to express. That was not our opinion; and I will meet in due course the demand of the right hon. gentleman who has just sat down on this subject that, so far as we are concerned, there shall be a clear and intelligible issue. But if it were our opinion that the condition of the Church in Ireland was susceptible of beneficial changes, how could we, without exposing ourselves to the grossest misrepresentation of our views, have met the motion with a direct negative? Who can doubt what would have been the inference drawn? In their speeches, hon. gentlemen would have asked, "Is the old reign of bigotry never to cease? Are you resolved to oppose all improvements? Are you prepared to deny that there are any anomalies to be corrected in arrangements which were settled-hastily settled-at a period of great political excitement forty years ago-are you doggedly determined to say that there is no possible room for improvement in the condition of the Irish Church?" We know that would have been the general tenor of the speeches of hon. gentlemen opposite; and, sir, not only towards those reproaches, but because we are of opinion that considerable modifications may highly to the advantage of the Church herself, we could not take the course of meeting a motion of this kind with a direct negative. What was the third means open to us? To move an amendment. An amendment has been moved by my noble friend the Foreign Secretary, which has been the object of much criticism, as has been every amendment moved since I have sat in this House, but I am prepared to maintain that this amendment is drawn in strict accordance with parliamentary experience and precedent. We took that course, acting on the example of the most eminent men that ever controlled the affairs of the House of Commons, and we took it, believing that it was the one most advantageous to the public interests. Now, sir, when Sir Robert Peel was the leader of the Opposition-of that long opposition, the opposition of seven years-during the Seven Years' War-when the circumstances of the House were not very different from those which now prevail, when there was, as there has now been for many years in this House, a balanced state of parties, and when every year there was not one but more than one struggle for power between the great parties, on one occasion when, as on the present occasion, a motion was to be met by an amendment, the invariable advice of Sir Robert Peel was this: "If you are obliged to have an amendment, never attempt to express your policy in an amendment. If you attempt to express it fully, you will produce a long and cumbrous document, which will open an immense number of issues, and which must bring about very protracted discussions. If, on the other hand, you adopt concinnity of expression and condensation, you will be accused of ambiguity and equivocation. The province of a party is to express and vindicate its policy in debate. Your amendment should never be inconsistent with your policy, but you must fix on some practical point, which, if carried, would defeat the motion of your opponent." Now, sir, I think that very sound advice, and it has been invariably followed, not only by Sir Robert Peel's friends, but by his distinguished opponents. If you look to all the amendments drawn up upon all great occasions by Sir Robert Peel's party and by Lord Russell's party, you will find that the adoption of that advice has been the invariable rule. Well, with this view, in drawing the amendment, her Majesty's ministers fixed on two points-which they thought essentially practical, which, if the House accepted them, would defeat the motion of the right hon. gentleman, and which are perfectly consistent with the policy I am prepared to explain, expound, and uphold. These two points have already been mentioned to the House in the observations which I took the liberty of making when the hon. member for Cork brought forward his motion on the state of Ireland. I mentioned then that in our opinion, so far as the Church in Ireland was concerned, it was most expedient that we should await the report of the Royal Commission which has been recently appointed, and which has been extremely industrious, as we have reason to believe, in its labours. That report, we believed, would be in our possession, I will not say in an early part of the session, but in the spring of this year. That was one position I took up. There was another. I denied the moral competence of this House of Commons to enter on a discussion of this question with a view to its settlement. I did not, as the right hon. gentleman the member for London [Mr Goschen] the other night stated-I did not resist the motion on the ground that this was what he called a moribund Parliament. Nothing of the kind. Although this might be the last session of the present Parliament, and although when an election takes place for a future Parliament the appeal may be made to a larger constituency, I do not for a moment bring forward those circumstances as the basis of the argument that this House was not morally competent to deal with the question. I rested it precisely on another reason, I said that when a fundamental law of the country was called into question, though technically and legally this House had a right to do anything within the sphere of the House of Commons, it was not morally competent to decide a question if those who had elected it had not, in the constitutional course of public life, received some intimation that such a question was to come before it. That is what I said. It is very different from the misrepresentation-unintentional, of course-of the member for the city of London. thing which he writes at the moment he writes it, and I have not the slightest doubt that that was as honest a letter as even the right hon. gentleman ever wrote. I do not throw the slightest suspicion on that letter. But, after all, what was the character of it? Is it not a record of the fact that only three years ago the right hon. gentleman treated the question of the Church in Ireland as one which was totally without the pale of modern politics-that he thought it could never be revived or restored, and that, if it were, he saw immense difficulties arising from the Articles of Union? But if it were revived or restored, and if these difficulties were mooted, his imagination could not conceive the possibility that in such a subject he should be mixed up. Well, that is evidence of what our leading men-men who guided the opinion not of their party only, but of the countrythought of this great question. If that is not complete evidence of the view taken by Lord Palmerston and one of his chief ministers in this House with regard to the question of the Church in Ireland and its political position, I say that no evidence can satisfy any person. Notwithstanding all this, the question is suddenly brought before us. Now, sir, I take no exaggerated view of even the Articles of Union. I have not for a moment pretended that the Articles of Union between the two nations are irreversible. I have not for a moment pretended that the Articles of Union, and the great Acts of Parliament which were passed to carry them into effect, cannot, by the consent of the sovereign and of the estates of the realm be changed or modified. And this I will venture to say, that they are, as I think all must acknowledge, among the most solemn muniments of the nation, and I do say that it is preposterous that we should be asked to reverse such solemn muniments at eight days' notice. In the course of this debate I have heard hon. gentlemen, referring to the Articles of Union and these Acts of Parliament, make remarks which seemed to me to strike at the root of all social security and political stability. We have been told that these Articles were negotiated between a Protestant Parliament in Dublin and a Protestant Parliament in London. Well, now I ask, had the country the slightest intimation during the last few years-previous to or during the period of the political existence of this House, has it had the slightest intimation that this important, this all-important question, not only from its specific nature, but also from the ulterior consequences which it may induce, would be brought under discussion in Parliament? I appeal to the programme of the Prime Minister of the time, which recommended a dissolution of Parliament, and explained his policy to the country. There is not the slightest Sir, you cannot trifle with the history of our allusion to the state of the Irish Church in that country in that way. What was the Bill of programme. We know very well from the cor- Rights? Are you prepared to give up the Bill respondence which has taken place between a of Rights because it was passed by a Parliament prelate of the Irish Church, himself a man of of boroughmongers? If you adopt the principle eminent abilities and accomplishments - and of analysing so finely the constituent elements the right hon. gentleman—although the letter of the public bodies that have negotiated and appeared to take the right hon. gentleman by agreed to the great documents which are the surprise the other night-we know that the charters of the people's rights, you may invaliright hon. gentleman, at the time of the dissolu- date our prime liberties and level a blow against tion, had not the remotest idea that the Irish the security of property and order, which has Church would become the great subject of dis- hitherto been the pride and the boast of this cussion. Sir, it is impossible to suppose that country. Taking these two points, we endeathe right hon. gentleman is not sincere in any-voured to comprise them in the amendment. |