high offence against our own sacred obligations.

These, I think, were the leading propositions of the work. In one important point, however, it was inconsistent with itself; it contained a full admission that a State might, by its nature and circumstances, be incapacitated from upholding and propagating a definite form of religion.[2]

The book goes on to describe that incapacity, however produced, as a social defect and calamity. But the latter part of the work, instead of acknowledging such incapacity as a sufficient and indeed commanding plea for abstention, went beyond the bounds of moderation, and treated it as if it must in all cases be a sin; as though any association of men, in civil government or otherwise, could be responsible for acting beyond the line of the capabilities determined for it by its constitution and composition. My meaning I believe was, to describe only cases in which there might be a deliberate renunciation of such duties as there was the power to fulfil. But the line is left too obscurely drawn between this wilful and wanton rejection of opportunities for good, and the cases in which the state of religious convictions, together with the recognised principles of government, disable the civil power from including within its work the business of either directly or indirectly inculcating religion, and mark out for it a different line of action.

I believe that the foregoing passages describe fairly, if succinctly, the main propositions of 'The State in its Relations with the Church;' so far as the book bears upon the present controversy. They bound me hand and foot: they hemmed me in on every side. Further on I shall endeavour to indicate more clearly in what I think the book was right, and in what it was wrong. What I have now to show is the manner in which I retreated from an untenable position. To this retreat, and the time and mode of it, I now draw attention, and I will endeavour to apply to them the tests I have already laid down:—Was it sudden? Was it performed with an indecent levity? Was it made to minister to the interests of political ambition? Was the gravity of the case denied or understated? Was it daringly pretended that there had been no real change of front; and that, if the world had understood me otherwise, it had misunderstood me? My opinion of the Established Church of Ireland now is the direct opposite of what it was then. I then thought it reconcilable with civil and national justice; I now think the maintenance of it grossly unjust. I then thought its action was favourable to the interests of the religion which it teaches; I now believe it to be opposed to them.

But I must venture to point out that, whatever be the sharpness of this contradiction, it is one from which I could not possibly escape by endeavouring to maintain the Established Church of Ireland on the principles on which it is now maintained. I challenge all my censors to impugn me when I affirm that, if the propositions of my work are in conflict (as they are) with an assault upon the existence of the Irish Establishment, they are at least as much, or even more, hostile to the grounds on which it is now attempted to maintain it. At no time of my life did I propound the maxim simpliciter that we were to maintain the Establishment. I appeal to the few who may have examined my work otherwise than for the purpose of culling from it passages which would tell in a quotation. I appeal to the famous article of Lord Macaulay,[3] who says with truth—

"Mr. Gladstone's whole theory rests on this great fundamental proposition, that the propagation of religious truth is one of the principal ends of government, as government. If Mr. Gladstone has not proved this proposition, his system vanishes at once."

This was entirely just. In the protest I addressed to the distinguished Reviewer on a particular point, I took no exception to it whatever. My work had used (as far as I believe and remember) none of the stock arguments for maintaining the Church of Ireland. I did not say "maintain it, lest you should disturb the settlement of property." I did not say "maintain it, lest you should be driven to repeal the Union." I did not say "maintain it, lest you should offend and exasperate the Protestants." I did not say "maintain it, because the body known as the Irish Church has an indefeasible title to its property." I did not say "maintain it for the spiritual benefit of a small minority." Least of all did I say "maintain it, but establish religious equality, setting up at the public charge other establishments along with it, or by distributing a sop here and a sop there, to coax Roman Catholics and Presbyterians into a sort of acquiescence in its being maintained." These topics I never had made my own. Scarcely ever, in the first efforts of debate, had I referred to one of them. My trumpet, however shrill and feeble, had at least rung out its note clearly. And my ground, right or wrong it matters not for the present purpose, was this: the Church of Ireland must be maintained for the benefit of the whole people of Ireland, and must be maintained as the truth, or it cannot be maintained at all.

Accordingly my book contended that the principle of the Grant to Maynooth, unless as a simply covenanted obligation,[4] and that of the Established Church of Ireland, could not stand together. In the House of Commons, on the question relating to the Grant, I am reported as having said in the year 1838,[5] that I objected to the Grant because it was fatal to the main principle on which the Established Church was founded.

And further. The Liberal Government and party of that day proposed, in 1835 and the following years, the famous "Appropriation Clause." The principle of their measure was, that the surplus funds only of the Irish Church were to be applied to popular education, after adequate provision had been made for the spiritual wants of the Protestants. This principle, that adequate provision is to be made for the spiritual wants of the Protestants, before any other claim on the property of the Irish Church can be admitted, was the basis of the Appropriation Clause; and is, as I understand the matter, the very principle which is now maintained against the Liberal party of 1868, by the (so-called) defenders of the Irish Established Church. But this principle I denounced in 1836 as strongly as I could now do. I extract the following passage from a report in 'Hansard,' which, as I