Speeches and Addresses. By the late W. C. Magee, D.D.
(Isbister and Co.)—The first of these "Speeches and Addresses" is the famous oration—for no less stately a name will fitly describe it— which. Dr. Magee delivered in the House of Lords against the Second Reading of the Irish Church Bill. What force there is in the words which he puts into the mouth of the Lords when they are supposed to be about to yield to popular menace :—
" Spare us, we beseech and entreat you! Spare us to live a little longer as an order is all that we ask—so that we may play .M being statesmen, that we may sit upon red benches in a gilded house, and affect and pretend to guide the doctrines of a nation, and play at legislation. Spare us, for this reason—that we are absolutely contemptible, and that we are entirely contented with our ignoble poeition 1 Spare us, for this reason—that we have _never failed in any case of danger to spare ourselves! Spare us, because we have lost the power to hurt any one ! Spare us, because we have now become the mere subservient tools in the bands of the Minister of the day—the mere armorial bearings on the seal that he may take in his hands, to stamp any deed, however foolish and however mischievous 1 "
There is a very able argument against "Disestablishment" in the second speech ; while the third is devoted to the subject of the " National Education Union." But perhaps the most interesting part of the volume is the group of speeches, &c., which are put together under the heading of "The Temperance Question." The first is the famous speech, delivered a little more than twenty Tears ago, in which he made the oft-quoted declaration : "If I must take my choice—and such, it seems to me, is really the alter- native offered by the Permissive Bill—whether England should be free or sober, I declare, strange as such a declaration may sound, coming from one of my profession, that I should say it would be better that England should be free than that England should be compulsorily sober." (It is only fair to add the con- vincing argument which follows : "I would distinctly prefer free. dom to sobriety, because with freedom we might in the end obtain sobriety; but in the other alternative, we should inevitably lose both freedom and sobriety.") Four years afterwards be made explanatory speeches, one in the House of Lords, the other at a public meeting at Northampton. The letter in which he declined to appoint a Day of Humiliation for the sin of drunkenness is admirably expressed. The speech on the Reform of the Church Patronage LaWB is full of vigour. That, indeed, is a characteristic of all. Nor is humour wanting,—in that the Bishop excelled, Here is a specimen from the speech on the "Parish Churches " I cannot ask your lordships to join with me in the exciting pastime of abolishing the old historic Church of England, and substituting for it a modern and brand-new State establish- ment for the teaching of morality without distinctive religious doctrine, a sort of common denominator for all the religious fractions of the country."
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