Source.—Speeches of John Bright, edited by J.E. Thorold Rogers, pp. 219, 220. (Macmillan and Co., 1869.)

Speech on Mr. Gladstone’s Resolutions for Disestablishing the Irish Church.

Now I challenge any hon. gentleman on the other side to deny this: that out of half a million Episcopalians in Ireland there are many—there are some in the Irish nobility, some landed proprietors, some magistrates, even some of the clergy, a great many Irishmen—who believe at this moment that it is of the very first importance that the proposition of the right hon. gentleman, the Member for South Lancashire, should be carried. I am not going to overstate my case. I do not say that all of them are of that opinion. Of that half-million say that one-fourth—I will state no number—but of this I am quite certain, that there is an influential, a considerable, and, as I believe, a wise minority, who are in favour of distinct and decided action on the part of Parliament with regard to this question. But if you ask the whole Roman Catholic population of Ireland, be they nobles, or landed proprietors, or merchants, or farmers, or labourers—the whole number of the Catholic population in Ireland being, I suppose, eight or nine times the number of Episcopalians—these are probably, without exception, of opinion that it would be greatly advantageous and just to their country if the proposition submitted on this side of the House should receive the sanction of Parliament. Now, if some Protestants and all Catholics are agreed that we should remove this Church, what would happen if Ireland were 1,000 miles away and we were discussing it as we might discuss the same state of affairs in Canada? If we were to have in Canada and in Australia all this disloyalty among the Roman Catholic population owing to the existence of a State Church there, the House would be unanimous that the State Church in those Colonies should be abolished, and that perfect freedom in religion should be given.

But there is a fear in the mind of the right hon. gentleman the Home Secretary that the malady which would exist in Ireland might cross the Channel and appear in England; that, in fact, the disorder of Voluntaryism, as he deems it, in Ireland, like any other contagious disorder, might cross the Channel by force of the west wind, lodging first in Scotland, and then crossing the Tweed and coming south to England. I think the right hon. gentleman went so far as to say that he was so much in favour of religious equality that if you went so far as to disestablish the Church in Ireland, he would recommend the same policy for England. Now, with regard to that, I will give you an anecdote which has reference to Scotland. Some years ago I had the pleasure of spending some days in Scotland at the house of the late Earl of Aberdeen after he had ceased to be Prime Minister. He was talking of the disruption of the Church of Scotland, and he said that nothing in the course of his public life had given him so much pain as the disruption and the establishment of the Free Church in that country; but he said he had lived long enough to discover that it was one of the greatest blessings that had ever come to Scotland. He said that they had a vast increase in the number of churches, a corresponding increase in the number of manses or ministers’ houses, and that schools had increased, also, to an extraordinary extent; that there had been imparted to the Established Church a vitality and energy which it had not known for a long period; and that education, morality, and religion had received a great advancement in Scotland in consequence of that change. Therefore, after all, it is not the most dreadful thing in the world—not so bad as a great earthquake—or as many other things that have happened. I am not quite sure that the Scottish people themselves may not some day ask you—if you do not yourselves introduce and pass it without their asking—to allow their State Church to be disestablished.

I met only the other day a most intelligent gentleman from the north of Scotland, and he told me that the minister of the church he frequented had £250 a year from the Establishment Funds, which he thought very much too little, and he felt certain that if the Establishment were abolished and the Church made into a Free Church, the salary of the minister would be immediately advanced to at least £500 a year. That is a very good argument for the ministers, and we shall see, by-and-by, if the conversion of Scotland proceeds much further, that you may be asked to disestablish their Church.