11 APRIL 1868, Page 15

THE IRISH CHURCH.

[To THE EDITOR OF THE "SPECTATOR."]

SIR, —I am glad you acknowledge that the popular argument against the Irish branch of the United Church—the argument, viz., that it ought to be disendowed because it is disliked by the

majority of the Irish people counting heads—is worthless. Your own argument against it, however, appears to me liable to precisely the same objection which you seem to recognize as being decisive against the popular one.

" The true argument," you say, " against the Irish Church is, not that it is unpopular, but that it applies national property to a purpose in no sense national, but purely sectional, if not sectarian." Here again, granting for a moment that Church property is simply national property,—a doctrine which will hardly please Bishop Moriarty and the Irish priests,—does not this argument, too, over- shoot its mark, and prove too much ? Is not the property of the English branch of the United Church applied to a purpose " sec- tional, if not sectarian ?" I think English and Welsh Dissenters are saying pretty loudly that it is.

Can any Establishment, in fact, resist this argument for the confiscation of its property unless it comprises the whole popula- tion? The question seems to me to lie in a nutshell. If Ireland and England are really to be considered one country, according to the intention and tenor of the Act of Union, then the Estab- lished Church, being the Church which, on the whole, expresses the religious sentiments of the majority, taking Ireland and England together, is perfectly defensible, and ought to be maintained by all who think that Establishments, under such cir- cumstances of dissent as must exist wherever there is freedom of thought and action, are good things. But if England and Ireland are not to be deemed one country, if Ireland is to be governed, as Mr. Gladstone amusingly promised he would if he had the opportunity, according to Irish ideas, or in other words, in obedience to the dictates of the priests, then the sooner the Act of Union is repealed the better. It is national hypocrisy to keep an Act upon the Statute Book the whole drift and purpose of which is to be systematically violated.

The only consistent enemies of the Irish Establishment are Irish Repealers on the one hand, like " the calm men of Limerick," who hate the Church because it is one of the links that fetter them to England, and English voluntaries on the other, who hate all Estab- lishments on principle, and think, as Mr. Goldwin Smith avowed some years ago, in his brilliant but one-sided book on Irish liberty and Irish character, that the Irish Church is the best subject on which they can " raise with effect the great question of Church and State." Whatever is done in the matter of the Irish Establish- ment, I repeat, let it be done by men who know what they are doing, and why they are doing it.

Thanking you for the courtesy with which you have allowed an Irish clergyman to put what he believes to be the true issue before [Union on the principle of establishing English interests in Ireland at the cost of the Irish, is not a sort of Union which any true Liberal justifies or wishes to perpetuate. As for the argument that, if Ireland is to be governed as we govern Scotland, with habitual respect for the interests and wishes of the majority of the people, the Act of Union ought logically to be repealed at once,—we may wait to consider its value till the same logic is pressed in the case of Scotland.—ED. Spectator.]