432 MY LIFE [Chap. 



a step which I fear would retard freedom of thought for 

 centuries. This would inevitably be its effect if any similar 

 proportion of its revenues, as in the case of the Irish Church, 

 was handed over to the disestablished Church of England, 

 which would then still retain much of its prestige and 

 respectability, would have enormous wealth, which might be 

 indefinitely increased by further private endowments, and 

 might have a ruling episcopacy with absolute power, who 

 would keep up creeds and dogmas, and repress all freedom 

 of thought and action, and thus do irreparable injury to the 

 nation. Besides this, we should lose a grand organization 

 for education and a splendid endowment which might confer 

 incalculable benefits on society if only its recipients were 

 rendered absolutely free. What might have been the result 

 if, during the last hundred years, the twenty thousand sermons 

 which are preached every Sunday in Great Britain, instead 

 of being rigidly confined to one monotonous subject, had 

 been true lessons in civilization, morality, the laws of health, 

 and other useful (or elevating) knowledge, and if the teachers 

 had been the high class of men who, if unfettered, would have 

 gladly entered this the noblest of professions } 



I so much fear that Miall's premature agitation may force 

 some future Government to (carry) disestablishment on any 

 terms, that I think it of the greatest importance to point out 

 what may be lost by such a step." 



The passages referred to in the beginning of the above 

 letter were both omitted by Sir Charles, being thought, 

 apparently, rather out of place. The book did not appear 

 till the following summer, and from that time till his death 

 he undertook no more literary work. My remarks on the 

 question of disestablishment, however, seemed to me so 

 important that I elaborated my ideas into an article, which 

 appeared in Macmillan's Magazine (April, 1873), and is 

 reprinted in the second volume of my " Studies," under the 

 title, Disestablishment and Disendowment : with a proposal 

 for a really National Church of England." In putting this 

 suggestion before the country I have done what was in my 



