After a short speech (interrupted by cries of "Divide ")
from Mr. MacLaren, who seconded the motion and main- tained that the Voluntary system was much more productive of energy and zeal in Scotland than an Establishment, in proof of which he stated that in the thirty years since 1843 the Free Church had raised more than £10,000,000, and this, too, in a poor country of not more than 3,000,000 inhabitants, of which only a section belonged to the Free Church, Mr. Gladstone rose to reply. He denied, as far as the Disestablished Church of Ireland was concerned, that the example of Disestablished Churches was encouraging to those who eared for freedom, and he declared that he was not likely to be lured into a so-called " free " Church by the spectacle of the felicity and tranquillity which the Disestablished Church of Ireland was now enjoying. He would rather stay as he was. He denied that it would be possible to take a great his- torical Church like the Church of England and place it suddenly in the position of a private religious community. Small and quiet communities lived under different conditions from powerful and conspicuous communities. Switzerland has long been happy, said Mr. Gladstone, as a republic, but if you try to supplant and overthrow the ancient forms of govern- ment in great and powerful States, and to set up a republic, the difficulties are innumerable. An express appeal to the constituencies on the policy of Disestablishment, would inevitably return to Parliament a much smaller number of followers of Mr. Miall than he has even at present. Mr. Gladstone quoted Dr. Dollinger's criticism on the English Church to show how favourably its excellences impressed a really impartial foreigner, and once more he urged the impossibility of giving a free Church an endowment of £90,000,000, to which, by the analogy drawn from the case of the Irish Disestablished Church, she would be entitled. "A young lady" turned out to begin the world for herself with such a fortune as that would be a very formidable person. Liberals were not called upon to enter upon a crusade for such a purpose, even though Mr. Miall liked to fill the part of Peter the Hermit in preaching it.
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