THE TRUE IRISH CHURCH POLICY.
IT is high time that politicians of all kinds took up a clear and distinct line on the one Irish subject which is already ripe for settlement,—the question of the Church. That is,. assuming as a basis the principle of ecclesiastical equality for Ireland as between the various religions there prevailing, it is time a clear decision should be pronounced as to the rela- tive merits of the three different solutions,--(l) the elevation of the Roman Catholics to an equality with the Protestants, the plan suggested by Lord Hardwicke and Lord Ellenborough,— in other words, the raising of a huge endowment of certainly not less, probably more, than 3,000,000/. annually for the- Roman Church ; (2) the depression of the Protestants to the level of the Roman Catholics by the diversion of six-eighths of their endowments to Roman Catholic purposes ; (3) the depression of the Protestants to the level of the Roman Catholics, by the application of the Protestant endowments to general national purposes. These are, we take it, the only conceivable practical alternatives. The Tory party has. shown some indications of intending to adopt the first solu- tion,—Lord Russell and the Whigs the second,—the Radicals. and the Nonconformists the third. Before discussing the relative advantages of the three schemes, let us, however, say- s word on what we conceive to be the true principle of an Established Church, by which the discussion must be more or less regulated. It is really for want of agreement about this principle that so many excellent men beat the air in contro- versy with each other on this subject. Here, for instance, is that excellent and liberal man, the Very Rev. W. C. Magee, Dean of Cork, in a reply to Mr. Maurice which appears in the new number of the Contemporary Review, apparently satisfied to accept as the condition of a national Church that it ought to be "the assertion of free national life as against the anti-national despotism of the Papacy." That is only another way of assuming that in a country which is devoted to the Papacy, like Ireland, a national Church must be, if it. exist at all, a struggling institution dear only to a minute- minority. And, of course, with such premisses it is delightfully easy work to satisfy yourself that the Protestant Church in Ireland is as good a national Church as can, in the nature of things, exist there. That, however, seems to us an assump- tion quite inconsistent with all that gives value to the idea of an Establishment amongst the English people. What we want from an Establishment,—what, on the whole, we get from both the English and Scotch Establishments,—is an institution that. carries the highest principle of civilization—the religious principle of Christian faith and compassion,—into the poorest. and most helpless parts of the country,--an institution that fights to the best advantage with the moral barbarism of poor and desolate regions unequal to the effort of civilizing themselves. If wealth and comfort and faith were everywhere, the Govern- ment might fairly leave the support of Churches to the voluntary zeal of those who have wealth and comfort and faith. But just where the faith is most needed to humanize, the means of spreading it are, without an Establishment, the most deficient. For this purpose, then, the State singles out a special form of faith,—obviously it should be as wide as is con- sistent with real vital energy, and sufficiently adapted to popular feeling to be a great popular weapon,—and endows it sparingly with the means of existence and of self-dependence in all parts of the kingdom, makes it, as we once before called it, the residuary legatee of our moral and spiritual interests in all regions where there is no voluntary church or sect strong enough to do the work without help. Unless the Establishment does as much as this, it does no national service at all. In Ireland it does not do this, and cannot do this. It is the Roman Catholic populations which are the most necessitous, the most ignorant, the most barbarous, and the most helpless. We send them Protestant clergymen, which is about as useful for the purpose of getting at their consciences and influencing their lives, as it would be to publish the "Secret of Hegel" among the dens of our own thieves and burglars. If there is to be a residuary legatee of moral and spiritual interests in Ireland at all, it must clearly be some body of men whom the Irish poor will not distrust, and reject.
Now, starting from this idea of what we ought to require in every Establishment, let us consider the three possible modes of achieving a remedy of the gross anomaly now existing in Ireland,—public funds, national funds, for this (saving all vested interests) the tithes and rent-charges un- doubtedly are,—applied for a purpose which is in relation to the condition of Ireland the furthest possible from a national pur- pose, scarcely in any sense a public purpose. Will the Tory proposal do, to leave the Protestant Church undisturbed, except as regards a better internal distribution of its revenues, -to leave the Presbyterians, with their Regium Donum, undis- turbed also,—but to raise a proportional revenue for the Roman -Catholics, i.e., something varying from three millions sterling a year upwards, and to be, in any case, six times whatever the revenue of the Protestant Establishment may prove to be We .confess we can imagine no scheme more impossible of achieve- ment, more questionable in result if achieved. Where is the money to be got? Is the taxation of Ireland to be increased by that amount? If so, we should have a rebellion, instead of extinguishing one. Supposing Ireland were as rich as any -other part of the United Kingdom in proportion to her popu- lation,—which, of course, she is not,—her share of our total Tevenue would be about 11,000,0001., and is very much less -than that, probably a third less. To add to such a sum a taxation of 3,000,000/. annually,—probably at the very least -one-third of what Ireland now pays,—would clearly be a remedy -of a very aggravating kind indeed. Should England and Scotland pay it for her ? The proposal to increase our income- tax, say, by threepence in the pound, to support a new Roman -Catholic Establishment in Ireland, could scarcely be a measure -which a sane statesman would bring forward in order to fuse the two countries more nearly into one. It would be better cal- -culated to irritate English and Scotch feeling into the fury of an anti-Irish crusade. The no-Popery feeling is not as strong :as it was ; but a heavy tax deliberately imposed to support Ultramontane Roman Catholicism,—" Popery" in its strictest sense and worst form,—would be the signal for such a revival -of religious passions as no wise man could contemplate with- -out horror. We think, then, as the money cannot fall out of -the skies, and there are no imaginable ways of conjuring it out -of the purses of the Irish or English people, we may dismiss the statesmanship of Lord Hardwicke and the Earl of Ellen- borough till they explain to us the resources from which they -propose to elevate the Roman Catholic Church into temporal equality with the Protestant Establishment in Ireland.
Lord Russell's proposal to divert six-eighths of the revenue -of the Protestant Church to Roman Catholic uses is, no doubt, more feasible than this. It demands no new taxation either of Ireland, who is too poor to bear it, or of England and Scot- land, who are too Protestant to endure it, for Roman Catholic -objects. In principle it has always appeared to us,—vested interests being of course reserved,—perfectly just. If the Roman Catholics desired and would accept it, we would go farther, and say that this would be the wise solution ; but it is not merely the difficulty of forcing revenues on an unwill- ing Church, but the anti-national spirit,—the pro-Papal spirit, —which has dictated the refusal, which inclines us to reject *his solution. The refusal is symptomatic of more than it says. it indicates a belief that the spirit of Roman Catholic faith and the spirit of British government are too hostile for more than the merest truce. This would, probably, have been far other- wise had we done justice earlier, in the days of Archbishop Murray, and before the days of Archbishop Cullen. We have -ourselves stimulated the Ultramontane spirit which now spurns ,our help. Still we must now adapt our measures to the times -we live in. If, as the signs indicate, the Roman priesthood -only acquiesces sullenly in British rule, and regards all offer of aid in its religious organization as a mere bribe to gag its own conscience, it would be both unstatesmanlike and useless to force its hand. To tempt a religious organiza- tion to act in a way it deems unworthy of itself, is a -very dubious moral and political experiment. If we succeed in breaking down its scruples by the mere force of the temptation, we probably do more to diminish its moral influence over the people, — its civilizing power there- fore,—than to swell the civilizing influences at work. That is, since to exert this residuary moral and spiritual influ- ence in all poor and helpless districts, is the one great func- tion of an establishment, by bribing a reluctant priesthood :among a people who share the suspicions felt by these priests of our motives, we may sacrifice instead of securing our true end. Moreover, though we do not agree with the Dean of Cork that "to assert a free national life as against the anti-national -despotism of the Papacy" is the one cardinal duty of an Estab- lishment,—or anything like it,—we do think that unless an Establishment can do something to strengthen the tie between -the nation for whom it is established and the government which establishes it, one very important use of it is wholly lost. The attitude of the Catholic priesthood leads au! .to believe that, in Ireland, this would not be the case,— that it would more easily create a gulf between the priest- hood and the people, than conciliate the people through the priesthood,—and that even the priests who took our money might do so with so much reluctance and self-contempt, that it would rather increase than diminish their disposition to foment the discontent with British rule. Under circumstances of this kind, we confess we see the minimum of good with the maximum of evil in this solution. We might be found- to have stimulated instead of allaying disloyal feelings by our suspected and distrusted gift.
The third solution,—of secularizing (with perhaps as much of a reserve as Mr. Bright proposes for breaking the fall of the established religions without injustice to Roman Catholics), seems to us, therefore, on the whole, the one best fitted even for effecting the purpose we have described as the true purpose of an Establishment. It is true that if we secularize the property of the Protestant Church (as one by one the different livings fall in), we shall have no religious institution pledged by the State to civilize and teach the most uncivilized and barbarous corners of Ireland. The conditions of the case seem to forbid this, because the only religious body which could accept the duty with the least prospect of success, is one already too widely estranged from the State to act in hearty sympathy with it. But if we apply, as we ought to apply, the revenues so secularized, to the next in importance of all civilizing agencies,—sound primary education,—we should, in effect, relieve the various parishes of a considerable pressure on their means, and so liberate a considerable sum for the more efficient voluntary support of the Roman Catholic Churches. And in return for this public aid to the teaching machinery of Ireland, we should be able to insist on an inspection and control of the funds supplied, which in the case of their being applied to Roman Catholic religious purposes we clearly could not in any way insist upon. On the whole, then, we hold that, under the peculiar conditions of the case, the work proper to be done in England and Scotland by an Established Church would probably be as well done in Ireland as it can be done by Government means at all, by an educational administration which should supply Ireland with well inspected primary schools at little expense to the people. This would really supply a substantial, though not the most efficient of all civilizing instruments for the poorer districts, and would liberate the means for a more effi- cient voluntary support of the Roman Catholic Church, without sowing new distrust between the people and the Government. To say that this must react upon us in England and destroy our Established Church here, is to use an argument which requires steady resistance if we are to govern Ireland well at all. For if we are to govern Ireland well, we must adapt our government to the peculiar conditions of Irish life,—which are not those of English life,—and would not be applicable to England without the most disastrous results.
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