TOPICS OF THE DAY.
THE PROGRESS OF THE BILL.
T' muddle in the Lords is much more apparent than real. As might have been expected, in a House full of indi- vidualities, there is a medley of Amendments, a string of propositions, some important, some futile, some needless, and some simply Billy, and from every one of them somebody or other hopes something, and consequently every one of them is pressed until Lord Granville must lament that the art of swearing gracefully in public has been so completely lost. Nevertheless, when the situation is carefully examined from the outside, it will be found that the smoke is clearing off, and that the battle really rages round two propositions,—that of the Duke of Cleveland to give every clergyman in Ireland a house and ten acres of ground, and that of the Earl of Car- narvon to calculate the life interests at fourteen years' pur- chase, hand over the sum to the Episcopal Synod or Church Body, and let them—subject always to the right of the clergy to their annuities—do the best they can with the money. All the other amendments are either lost in those, or are rejected in advance. For instance, half of them involve concurrent endowment, but the spectre of concurrent endowment—which frightens some of our Liberal friends as much as the Red Spectre frightens the governments of the Continent—has been laid once more by Mr. Gladstone. In his dignified and guarded speech of Wednesday at the Mansion House, a speech which irritated the Times because it was so want- ing alike in "wickedness" and buffoonery, the Premier declared that concurrent endowment was contrary to the pledges made to the people at the elections, and from that moment the plan became in the eyes of all but fanatics hope- less. No one but Mr. Gladstone could have even hoped to carry it through the House of Commons, and even his genius for exposition might in the face of the vast mass of prejudice have been overstrained. With the Liberal Left and the Tory Left, the Nonconformists and the Orangemen both opposed, with the middle-class of Great Britain still half convinced that the Pope is a magician who can convert them by incanta- tions, and with no genuine support from the householders, any inferior statesman who makes the attempt will be ground to powder. The House of Lords may accept the plan unani- mously if they like, and will only find the nation unanimous in supporting Mr. Gladstone to reform the Constitution, which their own especial friends will think they have betrayed. We write, as our readers are well aware, in no spirit of exulta- tion, believing, as we do, that concurrent endowment would, of all plans for settling Irish religious difficulties, have been the most statesmanlike and satisfactory ; but we hate to see energy wasted in pursuit of the unattainable, and admit, therefore, at once that the discussion on this point has ended for ever. We doubt if there will be more of it in the Lords, but if there is, it will be merely debate for the sake of intellectual relief. The House as a House is certainly not going to fling itself on the bayonets of the Liberals and the Radicals and the Orange- men, all in serried ranks together, for the sake of an abstract idea, or to see its last relics of power torn from it by an anti- Catholic cry.
There remain the two amendments specified, one of which, the Duke of Cleveland's, proposes to endow the clergy of all creeds with decent dwellings ; and the second, Lord Car- narvon's, to give the disestablished Church a sum which, as we are informed, will exceed two millions, as a nest egg for the tiustentation fund. The first, we are told, will be carried by an enormous majority, greater perhaps than any majority ever seen on an amendment to a Government Bill ; the second has been carried by 155 to 86, and both, therefore, may be taken as subjects for conference between the Houses. As to the first, we do sincerely hope that the Premier will not be compelled to confuse a gift of decent manses to the teachers of the people with endowment, whether of truth or error. It is not an endowment in any sense in which that word should offend the strictest Nonconformist. It will not limit or diminish in the smallest degree the dependence of the clergyman upon his flock, or save him from dismissal, or exonerate him from the necessity of giving full return for the money he gets. All it will do is to render the lives of the clergy a little happier, to make it a little more possible for educated men to take orders, and to show the teachers of religion of all denominations in Ireland that while the State regards all alike, it regards all alike with kindness and consideration. It must be remembered that the grant is out of Irish money, and is distinctly desired by every Irishman alive. The Episcopalians are ready to take the parsonages and ten acres in lack of larger things, the Moderator of the Presbyterian Assembly has written to say the clergy of his organization desire the boon, and it is known that the Catholics are longing for fixed and decent habita- tions. It will be a most dangerous question on which to fight the Lords, supported as they will be by the whole Irish vote, and we heartily hope Mr. Gladstone may find it in hia conscience to give way.
Lord Carnarvon's proposition is a less difficult, but in some- ways, a more vexatious one. He has, no doubt, made out so good a colourable case, that Mr. Gladstone may, if he likes, give way, and still keep strictly within his pledges. May- nooth, no doubt, is to get fourteen years' purchase, and the Establishment in asking for as much only asks ap- parently for equality alone. It would, too, we quite admit, be very much more expedient to leave the Synod to squabble with individual clergymen, than to do all the squabbling for ourselves. Talk of being preached to death by wild curates! that were a comfortable death compared with the one prepared for Lord Monck, and Mr. Hamilton, and Mr. Justice Lawson by the Bill. But, on the other hand, the equality apparently secured is only an apparent equality. Lord Carnarvon knows the use of that terrible arithmetical solvent an "average," and is using it avowedly to gain.
a very considerable advantage for the Church. The old lives in an establishment are the rich lives, and_ to calculate them all, Bishops, Deans, and Canons alike, at fourteen years, is to give the Church an advantage
greater than Maynooth can obtain. Still we readily admit that there are the elements of a compromise in the vote of Thursday, that the question reduces itself rather to one of amount than one of principle. Mr. Gladstone made a point in his Mansion House speech of his pledge to be very " liberal " with the Church, and nobody that we know of has any particular disposition to be harsh. That the Church ha& any right to sixpence beyond the mathematical value of the life interests, we emphatically deny. The property entrustedl to her use did not belong to her, but to the State, and her function ending for reasons assigned, the State does but resume its own, and would be perfectly just, though very unwise, if it employed its own to lighten the burden of the Debt, as the Catholic countries have all done. But still,. there is no breach of faith in a present made of free grace out of the tenderness the Government was pledged to exhibit ; and if Lord Carnarvon will leave out one or two features in his proposal,—strike off the Bishops, for example,—and al/ beneficiaries over sixty-five, or in some other way reduce the money to about a million or a million and a half, —we see no serious objection to its acceptance as a lubricator for the Bill. But here, as we conceive, the limit of concession should be fixed. If every clergyman gets a house and lawn, and the Church her nice little purse of a million—may we recommend Indian Console —the influence of the Lords upon the Bill will be quite per- ceptible enough to save their dignity, nobody will be very much hurt, and the measure itself will still remain a magnifi- cent act of imperial justice, performed with all kindness, but performed effectually. But there must be no more pottering, and patching, and attempts to snatch here twopence and there a guinea, and above all, there must be no concession as to the seats of the Irish Bishops. Establishment exists as long as the Established Church has representatives in the Legislature sitting of right, while the other Churches have none. The argument about life interests does not apply to them, any more than to the members for extinguished boroughs, and to keep them on is to maintain an insufferable inequality. Be- sides, the amendment is dangerous to the religious character of the Peers. Endurance has limits even in the Upper House, and a debate a night for the next thirty years on the grievances of every curate in Ireland who gets the tenth of a farthing less than he thinks himself entitled to, may drive the Peers into Nonconformity, or worse.
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