14 NOVEMBER 1885, Page 1

On Wednesday afternoon Mr. Gladstone delivered his first lengthened speech

in Edinburgh, in the General Assembly Hall of the Free Church, a speezli devoted principally to the question

of Disestablishment. His first point was that it is a totally different thing to wish to bring any proposal before the nation, and to wish to make of it a test-question. To make it a test- question, means virtually to postpone all other questions to it; and nothing could be less reasonable than to postpone to an issue not practically before the nation at all, a number of other most important issues which are not only before it, but are urgently in need of solution. As to the English Church, he said :—" It is a Church with regard to which its defenders say that it has the support of a very large majority of the people, and I confess I am very doubtful whether the allegation can be refuted. It is a Church which works very hard. It is a Church which is endeavouring to do its business; a Church that has infinite ramifications through the whole fabric and structure of Society ; a Church which has laid a deep hold on many hearts as well as many. minds. The Disestablishment of the English Church would be a gigantic operation?' So little was that Dis- establishment an issue of practical and present urgency that he would repeat now, what he had said. in 1869 on occasion of Dis- establishing the Irish Church, that he could not tell "whether the man breathes the air of Parliament" who could carry into effect such a measure. "Many of those who talk about Disestab- lishment in England, I think, know but little of the subject they are writing about. They frame plans of Disestablishment, plans utterly impossible to be entertained either at the present or at any other time. I speak of a plan which has appeared in a work called 'The Radical Programme.' There is a plan of Disestablishment there, which, even if the people of England made up their minds to disestablish, never could be adopted. But they have not made up their minds." It would be the greatest folly, Mr. Gladstone said, to make such a question as this a test question overriding the convictions of representatives on all the practical matters which are really ripe, not only for consideration,—which as yet this is not,—but for legislation.