THE DIFFICULTIES OF DISESTABLLSHMENT.
THE problem before the present Government will certainly not be lightened to them, by any deficiency of criticism. Whatever they do, they will be told that they ought to have done otherwise. If they declare their plans for the use of the property -to be taken from the Irish Church, they will be told they have been needlessly rash, and ought to have delayed the dis- closure ; if they postpone their decision on that head they will be told they are not acting frankly by the country, and -certainly ought to have expounded their plan as a whole. If they give the Church which they disendow a temporary government, to enable it to decide on the appropriation of its remaining property and on its operations for the new future before it, they will be rebuked for egging on a Church to do something which might probably wish to do nothing ; and if they give it no such government, they will be assailed for pretending to set a Church free which they try to keep dumb. If, as Mr. Lowe suggests, they pay out all the clergymen of the Established Church at once, commuting their incomes as beneficed clergymen for diminished life-annui- ties for which no duty is to be required, they will be told that they are adding insult to injury ; if they continue their livings and duties for their lives, and consequently continue to treat the present incumbents as still under the State, they will be -told that they have fastened on the Church all the misery of a provisional and hybrid condition, in which it is neither bond nor free, and can have no homogeneous and united life. Con- sidering that all these difficulties are exclusive of the great -difficulty of all, what to do with the revenues they take away from the Establishment,—it is obvious that Mr. Gladstone's Administration will have to use all its strength, —which is, .we believe, great,—in weathering the dangerous point, or series of points, now ahead. If we estimate so far as we can the wisdom of the various courses open, it is not with the view of adding to the number of discordant counsels now poured into the ear of the Government, but for the more modest reason of giving a precise shape to the ques- tions which must before long be hotly discussed in Lords and Commons, dining-rooms and drawing-rooms, all over the kingdom.
The first point likely to be mooted is whether or not the Government will be wise in attempting to disendow without deciding,—or at least without declaring their decision,—as to the appropriation of the revenues which the Church will lose. On this point we confess our own strong opinion that the frankest and completest policy will be the best. It is very true that the scheme for appropriating the endowments to be resumed by Parliament in the name of the Irish nation will offer doubtless an exposed point to the attacks of the enemy.
Still, we believe that the Government's attempt to delay and -withhold their views on this subject would be a point still more exposed to attack, and above all, still more exposed to just attack,—that it would be a confession of weakness cer- tain to reanimate the foe, and almost a confession of reluct- ance to let the proposed new appropriation of the public property so reclaimed come into close comparison with the old appropriation now to be discontinued. The Ministry ought to be able, and we believe sincerely, will be able, to challenge a comparison between the two uses proposed, to show how national and how directly subservient to the public good is the one dedication of public property, how sectarian and special is the other. If they cannot do this, their decision as to the appropriation of the misappropriated property will be wrong. If they can, it will not only be right, but the contrast will be a new source of moral strength for their case. Mr. Gladstone has constantly and very justly asserted that it would not be possible for any man, without the command of official help to aid him, and the full stim- ulus of official responsibility to strengthen him, to decide rightly on this point. But with this aid and this stimulus he is not the 'man to shrink from forming a judgment, and if he did, it would not, we think, be an act of prudence, but an act of weakness. As was rightly said of the proposal to separate the Franchise Bill from the Redistribution Bill in 1866, the two Bills, whether or not separated in form for convenience' sake, are really and truly parts of one whole and it is not fair to the Legislature to ask it to form an 'opinion on the practical duty of taking away from a sect, till it can form one on the national character of the claim which is to be substituted. Moreover, the strongest and most self- reliant and sell-respecting course is always, in the end, the most politic. The new Administration ought at least to have confidence in itself, and to exhibit a frank trust in the party which has won so great a victory under the magic of one single war-cry, faithfulness to Mr. Gladstone in the work of disestablishing and disendowing the alien Church in Ireland.
The next issue, except with regard to the application of the endowments themselves, on which we some time ago made a suggestion, and only the Government can give a grave opinion, will be as to the mode of disestablishing,—the policy of declar- ing what the Church is to be after disestablishment, what its freedom is to mean, to whom its remaining endowments are to be trusted, and what power the Church will have to deal with them. We believe that the course suggested by the Times, to vest the remaining funds in a Commission for the "common worship of the congregations attending the Episcopal Churches according to the liturgies prescribed in the Book of Common Prayer for the English Church, and for the edifi- cation of such congregations in the doctrines defined by the Articles and formularies of the English Church," is, as a mere temporary measure, satisfactory. As a trust, it is no more than the Court of Chancery would enforce, so long as the Irish Church professed to remain in communion with the Church of England. Under Lord Hominy's judgment in the Natal case, this is the trust which even the civil courts of the Colonies would be bound to enforce on voluntary churches professing to be in communion with the Church of England, and to be guided by her doctrine. But while it would be perfectly safe to vest the remaining funds in such a Commission under such a trust for the moment,—it seems to us perfectly clear that the Church must be given the power of dealing freely with those funds, as regards their redistribution under the new circum- stances of the disestablished Church, and that it would at once be unfair and impossible to leave in a Commission appointed by Government the right to decide at its own discretion how the disestablished Church should apply its remaining resources to its future work. There may be no reason to give the Church a constitution merely for the sake of altering its doctrinal basis. We do not suppose it is at all likely, at first, at any rate, to wish to simplify the doctrinal basis of the English Church, any more, at all events, than the Episcopal Church of Scot- land or America has done, or the Episcopal Church of South Africa. We wish there were more signs than there are of a desire to simplify and adapt to the present state of intellectual culture the code of dogma drawn up two centuries ago. But quite apart from the freedom to decide on its own doctrine, —which, of course, it ought to have, if it is to be free, whe- ther it uses it or not,—it will need and will undoubtedly demand freedom to decide on its best future organization, on the most economical way of using the endowments which remain to it, and the wisest way of raising and distributing new ones. For this purpose, it seems to us that the disestab- lished Church musthave a provisional organization assigned it by the State,—one which it may have power to alter for itself if it pleases,—but at least a fair starting-point for its new career. We can think of no better precedent than that offered by the reor- ganization of the Episcopal Church of America after the Revo- lution. The first reorganization in that case was, we believe, founded on this principle, that the Churches then existing elected an equal number of lay and clerical deputies to a General Assembly,—the laity electing the lay deputies, and the clergy the clerical,—in which the laity and clergy delibe- rated in common, but voted separately, the vote of either laity or clergy being enough to defeat any proposal. After the Church was furnished with bishops, which at first it was not, the bishops sat together in an upper House, as we suppose the Irish Bishops would claim their right to do. But the General Assembly is the essential point, and there can be no real difficulty in getting one elected on some such principle as this,—the clergymen and laymen of every county in Ireland to elect two deputies each,—(or, perhaps, three, with only two votes each, for it would not be a bad thing to exer- cise them in constitutional principles by trying the minority principle on them), to a General Assembly in which the laity and clergy should deliberate together, but vote separately. Such an assembly would have in the first instance to deli- berate on the best measures for the first start of the Church and the appliance of the revenues ; and failing new directions from it, the Commissioners could only apply the funds vested in them to the old uses. But to give no power of changing the uses at a moment of such critical importance to the Church, would be like tying the Church hand and foot just when you are casting it out of doors.
With regard to the last point we have raised, the policy of the State towards the present incumbents of livings, it seems to us that it is not a question which the Government ought to decide without feeling the pulse of the Church. If it be, as Mr. Lowe asserts, that the Church would greatly prefer total and immediate disestablishment, in order to avail itself of the enthusiasm of the moment for a new effort, then, of course, it would be in the highest degree wise for both Catholic and Protestant interests to complete at once the work to be commenced, to substitute lower life-annuities with- out the obligation of work, for livings with the work, and leave the clergymen free to re-enlist as clergy of a free Church if they please. But if it were otherwise,—if, as we are rather inclined to believe,—the clergy would regard this abrupt dismissal as a new grievance, and as tending to dis- organize still further a Church in great danger of com- plete disorganization, then it is obvious to us that no purpose can be answered by so arbitrary a step at all pioportionate to the annoyance and resistance it might create. The Catholics will be amply satisfied by the final notice of a disestablishment that must be concluded within the lifetime of men now living, and beyond this question of justice, we owe, as Mr. Gladstone has so often and so justly stated, every consideration to the feelings of the Church which is to lose much of its dignity and much of its wealth. The relations of the State to the surviving clergy of the Irish Establishment, so long as they survive, is not really a question of principle. It is a question of moral expediency, and should be decided in the way most likely to remove the difficulties and facilitate the process of the great work in hand. If the Church, like a courageous patient, says to its surgeon, Operate at once, if you must operate at all,' so let it be. If not, let the operation be as gradual and as little ex- hausting to the nervous strength of the sufferer as it is con- sistent with political justice to make it.
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