234 THE IRISH CHURCH. 



political arrogance of the church ; abolish the purely factitious grades 

 of dignity within the church, which tempt clergymen to assume a 

 worldly importance, and with it personal vanities and affectations un- 

 becoming philosophy, and at open hostility with religion ; convert 

 tithe property into a government fund, thus providing for the liberal 

 though not luxurious maintenance of a parochial clergy ; admit of no 

 pretence for pluralities; such alterations as these, accompanied by 

 the removal of all offensive restrictions upon dissenters in every de- 

 partment of the state, would rid the principle of a church establish- 

 ment of that unfriendly scepticism towards it which now exists, and 

 is increasing. But Lord Stanley, the church-Tory, is essentially 

 aristocratic, and devoted to the showy and magnificent. He has no 

 regard for any institution without splendour and dignity, and will 

 abet the czwV-Tories in maintaining the worldliness of the church 

 against the sense of almost all the laity of the kingdom. Hence the 

 unpopularity of the established church. 



But from Ireland the English establishment has nothing to fear. 

 Should amendments in Ireland go even the length of leaving epis- 

 copal Protestantism to shift for itself, as well as Presbyterian or any 

 other form of Protestantism ; still the cases are not sufficiently parallel 

 for inference, that the like would one day be the fate of the English 

 church. On the contrary, the Irish church might be swept away, 

 and leave the English church stronger rather than weaker in conse- 

 quence, by ridding it entirely of the chief instance of its intolerance 

 and injustice. 



In the first place, Protestantism, though at the outset forced upon 

 the multitude in England, originated with natives, and soon acquired 

 the character and rights, which national adoption alone can bestow. 

 The church of England, however dissenters may disapprove of it, 

 is at all events Protestant, and so far in theoretic accordance with 

 their fundamental principle of dissent. All that can in England be 

 fairly urged against the church, on religious grounds, when divested 

 of its abuses, amounts to this : that a certain portion of various deno- 

 minations of dissenters, differing with each other in most respects, 

 agree in disliking the ascendancy of the elder and larger sect. Before 

 the dissenters can succeed in displacing the church of England by 

 fair means, they must prove it to be inseparable from political abuses, 

 and prove also, that a high average of mental cultivation is of no use 

 in a religious functionary, or can be insured by voluntary sub- 

 scription. 



But the Irish Catholics can fairly argue, that the Protestant church 

 amongst them is based upon the sandy, unhallowed foundation of 

 national conquest ; that it has gained nothing but through power, and 

 oppression of an " enemy," for history forbids us English to call our 

 ancestors friends to the Irish ; that national and most justifiable risings 

 amongst them have in past ages been hailed as excuses for settling 

 Protestants on confiscated property ; that, in the course of years, the 

 prospect of wealth and protection of power have added other Scottish 

 and English settlers to the descendants of the interlopers; that hence 

 has gradually accumulated a church Protestant population, of im- 

 portance no doubt, considered merely with regard to its disreputably 



