LANCASHIRE AND THE IRISH.

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that fling it had along the whole line. The anti-Irish candidate was at the head of the poll for Manchester and for Stockport. The antiIrish candidates carried the election at Liverpool, Preston, Blackburn, Salford, Ashton, Bolton, Clitheroe, and Stalybridge. At Oldham, traditionally radical of the radicals, the Liberals got in by only six votes out of more than twelve thousand. In the remaining boroughs the Liberals had evidently lost their old force, and the whole of the county divisions went unanimously anti-Irish. In the South-Western Division (the Liverpool district), which Mr. Gladstone had previously represented, he was beaten by about three hundred, and was indebted for his seat to Greenwich.

Considering that the whole country went so largely in favour of Mr. Gladstone's Irish policy, and that Lancashire went so dead against it, there is no room for doubt as to the motive that then pervaded Lancashire. That episode is very instructive as regards the past and suggestive for the future. That election proved that Lancashire (despite the expressed boast to the contrary) cannot govern England, but that county is a powerful and justly powerful element that can never be left out of important representative account, and there, more than anywhere else-for the sake of Lancashire as well as of Ireland -the Irish problem most urgently needs thoroughly working out.

On that occasion, though the majority of Lancashire voted one way, the majority of the whole country voted the other; so Mr. Disraeli resigned on the 2nd of December, Mr. Gladstone, for the first time, became Premier, and Mr. Bright, for the first time, a Cabinet Minister. Those two right honourable gentlemen, especially, were then put on their trial. What was the verdict?

CHAPTER XLIV.

THE DISESTABLISHMENT ACT.

ACCORDING to his implied promise, Mr. Gladstone lost no time in carrying his resolutions into effect. As early as the Ist of March, in the session of 1869, he introduced his bill for the disestablishment of the Irish Church. The bill was that day read the first time without a division. On the 18th Mr. Gladstone moved the

second reading. Mr. Disraeli was the first speaker against the motion, and a long and warm debate ensued, which did not end until the 23rd, when the amendment was lost by 368 to 250, and the bill was read a second time without a division. The committee was exceedingly long and laborious. The opposition in the Lords was powerful but insufficient, and, after innumerable attempts at amendments and actual amendments, the royal assent was reached on the 26th of July.

This was the most revolutionary Act ever passed by the United Parliament. As pointed out in our earlier pages, this Act, according to the strict letter of the Act of Union, abolished the Union, and was and is, from that point of view, completely subversive. The title reads thus:-"An Act to put an end to the Establishment of the Church of Ireland, and to make provision in respect of the temporalities thereof, and in respect of the Royal College of Maynooth." It provided that, after the 1st of January, 1871, the Union "created by Act of Parliament between the Churches of England and Ireland shall be dissolved, and the said Church of Ireland shall cease to be established by law." All the Irish Archbishops and Bishops were deprived of the seats they were previously entitled to in the House of Lords. All the property of the Church of Ireland was made over to the "Commissioners of Church Temporalities in Ireland," which body was made to supersede the previous Irish Ecclesiastical Commissioners. All Irish Church

COMPENSATION TO THE CLERGY.

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patronage was abolished. Lay patrons of Church preferments were entitled to compensation for the sacrifice of their privileges.

The Act suggested and provided for the incorporation of the Protestant Church of Ireland by united action of the clergy and congregations of the Church as existing on the 1st of January, 1870. In accordance with that provision a charter of incorporation was duly executed, and the succeeding provisions of the Act govern the connection between the Commissioners and the Church. The Commissioners are empowered, with reference to ecclesiastical buildings that have ceased to be used for church purposes, either to sell the property or to make over such buildings to the Irish Commissioners of Public Works to be preserved as public monuments. Ecclesiastical buildings, in use for church purposes on the 1st of January, 1871, are subject, under the Act, to one of two provisions. 1. Every such building, registered before July 1, 1871, by the corporate church, as required for church purposes, is hence the property of such corporate church; or, 2, Every such building, not being so registered, the Commissioners are required to sell, and to add the proceeds to their common fund, unless it is proved to be private property of individuals or subscribers, who are entitled to their property therein as though it had not been a church or church building. The Commissioners have power to grant land to attach to any church residence retained by the corporate church. The quantity of land is limited to thirty acres for a see house, or ten acres for any other ecclesiastical residence.

Tithe rent charges, as referred to in previous chapters, become the property of the Commissioners. They are entitled to require payment thereof as previously, or to commute the same for a capital sum equal to 221⁄2 years' purchase, payable down or by instalments and interest on balances of purchase money, such instalments not to extend over more than 52 years.

Every bishop, beneficed clergyman, permanent curate, schoolmaster, clerk or sexton, actually holding and fulfilling the duties of each office respectively on the 1st of January, 1871, so long as he continues to hold his office, is entitled to payment from the Commissioners of the same amount of net income as he was previously entitled to under the establishment in virtue of such office. Such net income to be regarded as a life annuity, with power to each recipient to commute for a capital sum equal to the value of his annuity. The

effect of this has been to induce the clergy and others to retain office only so long as was necessary to obtain the commutation money, and then, either to make terms with the church for a separate salary in addition, or else to resign and walk off with their spoil. The excessive weakness of the Act in this respect (weakness that appears to be inherent in all Union legislation) has opened the door to many grievous scandals in the Irish Church, and one of the effects has been to overrun the Church of England with recreant Irish curates, who, in virtue of their commutation money, are able to take duty at a lower stipend than the English curates can possibly accept, or otherwise they are endowed with a leisure that places their English brethren at a manifest disadvantage in many respects.

This exhibits in one of its worst aspects the real truth with regard to the Irish Church. Regarded in its national or collective aspects it was never anything but a plundering imposture, almost as great an imposture as the political union between the two countries, but not quite. While pretending to exist in the interests of a legitimate religious community, it was to the last, and after its dissolution, a mere confederacy of clergy, constituting a privileged body, absorbed in the appropriation of the State loaves and fishes with which it has always been baited and bribed. Such has been the case all through. Year after year, and almost every year for half a century before the disestablishment, Acts have been passed for the greater advantage of this body of clergy. Most of the Acts have been for their greater aggrandisement and to degrade their offices more and more into mercenary sinecures. The ruling principle of its life was strong in death, and the weakness of the Act has tended to continue the evil after its dissolution.

The residue of all the property falling into the hands of the Commissioners under the Act, after being plucked and pulled at in the manner just noticed, is anticipated and described as the "ultimate surplus." This surplus is declared to be legitimately available for 66 the relief of unavoidable calamity and suffering, yet not so as to cancel or impair the obligations now attached to property under the Acts for the relief of the poor." But it is "further enacted that the said proceeds shall be so applied accordingly, in the manner Parliament shall hereafter direct." As this fund may ultimately run into several millions sterling, there never was money that more required looking after with a keen eye.

"THE ULTIMATE SURPLUS."

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As before mentioned, this Act also put an end to the Maynooth Grant and to the Regium Donum, with corresponding provisions for compensating individuals for any apparent disadvantage caused to

them.

During the discussion of the Irish Church Act, leading members of the Government repeatedly made known their intention to supplement it with a new Land Act for Ireland. An Act of some pretensions, but little or no performance, had been passed in 1860. It was made much of at the time, and proved to be, like so many other puny mice that the legislative mountain so lugubriously labours with, only too much like its predecessors, which either did nothing for the tenants or did much more for the landlords. In acknowledgment of the inadequacy of all previous legislation of the kind, the Act referred to in the next chapter was brought forward professedly as a new departure. Both the Church Act and the Land Act, as succeeding Fenian activity, lay the Government that introduced them open to the charge of yielding to extreme violence what had been denied to constitutional agitation.