Chapter of Autobiography

The emancipation thus effected from the net in which I had been bound was soon after tested. In 1846, it was suggested to me that I should oppose a member of the newly-formed Government of Lord John Russell. In my reply, declining the proposal, I wrote thus: "As to the Irish Church, I am not able to go to war with them on the ground that they will not pledge themselves to the maintenance of the existing appropriation of Church property in Ireland." This, however, was a private proceeding. But, early in 1847, Mr. Estcourt announced his resignation of the seat he had held, amidst universal respect, for the University of Oxford. The partiality of friends proposed me as a candidate. The representation of that University was, I think, stated by Mr. Canning to be to him the most coveted prize of political life. I am not ashamed to own that I desired it with an almost passionate fondness. For besides all the associations it maintained and revived, it was in those days an honour not only given without solicitation, but, when once given, not withdrawn.11 The contest was conducted with much activity, and some heat. I was, naturally enough, challenged as to my opinions on the Established Church of Ireland. My friend Mr. Coleridge, then young, but already distinguished, was one of my most active and able supporters. He has borne spontaneous testimony, within the last few weeks, to the manner in which the challenge was met: —

"Gentlemen, I must be permitted – because an attack has been made upon Mr. Gladstone, and it has been suggested that his conversion to his present principles is recent – to mention what is within my own knowledge and experience with regard to him. In 1847, when I was just leaving Oxford, I had the great honour of being secretary to his first election committee for that university, and I well recollect how, upon that occasion, some older and more moderate supporters were extremely anxious to draw from him some pledge that he should stand by the Irish Church. He distinctly refused to pledge himself to anything of the kind."12

The next Parliamentary occasion, after the Maynooth Grant, which brought prominently into view the ecclesiastical arrangements of Ireland, was that of the Ecclesiastical Titles Bill in 1851. I felt bound, as one of a very small minority, but in cordial agreement with the chief surviving associates of Sir Robert Peel, to offer all the opposition in my power, not only to the clauses by which the party then called Protectionist, and now Tory, Conservative, or Constitutionalist, endeavoured to sharpen the sting of the measure, but to the substance of the measure itself. I may be permitted to observe, that for the representative of the University of Oxford thus to set himself against the great bulk of the Liberal as well as the Conservative party, whatever else it may have been, was not a servile or a self-seeking course. But this is irrelevant. It is more to the present purpose to observe that, in resisting this measure, I did not attempt to mitigate the offence by any profession of adhesion in principle to the maintenance of the Established Church of Ireland; but I spoke as follows: —

"We cannot change the profound and resistless tendencies of the age towards religious liberty. It is our business to guide and control their application. Do this you may. But to endeavour to turn them backwards is the sport of children, done by the hands of men; and every effort you may make in that direction will recoil upon you in disaster and disgrace."13

The years flowed on. From 1846 forwards, the controversy of Free Trade was, as a rule, the commanding and absorbing controversy, the pole of political affairs. But from time to time motions were made in relation to the Established Church of Ireland. That question remained as one asleep, but whose sleep is haunted with uneasy dreams. These motions were, as far as I remember them, uniformly of a narrow and partial character. They aimed at what is called getting in the thin end of the wedge. All honour, however, to each one of those who made them. The mover of any such proposal was vox clamantis in deserto. The people of England had, in 1835-8, settled the matter for the time. The reproaches now made against the older leaders and the body of the Liberal party for not having seriously entered the struggle, appear to me to be not only unjust but even preposterous. The Legislature had other great subjects to deal with, besides the Irish Church. Four years of deadly conflict on such a matter might well be followed by five times four of repose. But in the mean time individuals, by their partial and occasional efforts, bore witness to a principle broader than any which they formally announced. That principle – the application of a true religious equality to Ireland – was biding its time.

No one, in my opinion, was bound to assert, by speech or vote, any decisive opinion upon so great and formidable a question until he should think, upon a careful survey of the ground and the time, of the assisting and opposing forces, that the season for action had come. The motions actually made were commonly motions for inquiry, or motions aimed generally at a change. I did not enter into the debates. When I voted, I voted against them; and against such motions, if they were made, I should vote again.

I now arrive at the Government of 1859-65. He who has slept long is likely soon to wake. After the Free Trade struggles of 1860 and 1861 were over, so it was, I thought, with the question of the Irish Church. There was a lull in political affairs. They hung, in a great degree, upon a single life – the remarkable life of Lord Palmerston. It was surely right to think a little of the future. The calm was certain to be succeeded by a breeze, if not a gale. It was too plain to me that the inner disposition of Ireland, relatively to this country, was not improving; and that, in the course of years, more or fewer, the question of the Irish Church was certain to revive, and, if it should revive, probably to be carried to a final issue. My first thought, under these circumstances, was about my constituents. Anxiously occupied in other matters, I did not give my nights and days to the question of the Irish Church. Yet the question continually flitted, as it were, before me; and I felt that, before that question arose in a practical shape, my relation to the University should be considered, and its Convocation distinctly apprised that at the proper time it would be my duty to support very extensive changes in the Irish Church. My valued friend, Sir R. Palmer, has done me the favour, of his own motion, to state in public that I then apprised him of my state of mind: —

"There had been people who had said, 'You would never have heard anything about the Irish Church question from Mr. Gladstone if the Tories had not been in power, and he had not wanted to get their place.' (Hear, hear.) To his certain knowledge that was not true. He could mention what had taken place between Mr. Gladstone and himself, and he did so the rather because it did justice to him, and would show them that his own mind had been particularly addressed to that subject, to which he had paid some degree of attention some years before the present time. In the year 1863, at a time when no one was bringing forward this question, or seemed very likely to do so, Mr. Gladstone had told him privately that he had made up his mind on the subject, and that he should not be able to keep himself from giving public expression to his feelings. How far or near that might be practicable, he could not foresee; but, under the circumstances, he wanted his friends connected with the University of Oxford to consider whether or not they would desire for that reason a change in the representation of the University."14

Partly because I felt that this question might come to the front, and partly because I saw a manifest determination in a portion of the Academical constituency to press my friends with incessant contests, of which I was unwilling to be the hero, I was not indisposed to retire without compulsion from the seat, if it could have been done without obvious detriment to the principles on which I had been returned. This was judged to be uncertain. Consequently, I remained. But in 1865, on the motion of Mr. Dillwyn, I made a speech, in which I declared that present action was impossible, that at any period immense difficulties would have to be encountered, but that this was "the question of the future." I stated strongly, though summarily, some of the arguments against the Church as it stood. I entirely abstained from advising or glancing at the subject of mere reform, and I did not use one word from which it could be inferred that I desired it to continue in its place as the National or Established Church of the country.

My speech was immediately denounced by Mr. (now Chief Justice) Whiteside, as one intended to be fatal to the Established Church of Ireland when an opportunity should arise;15 and I am told that my opponents in the University circulated my speech among their portion of the constituency (as I think they were quite justified in doing) to my prejudice. My friends, however, stood by me, and resolved to contend for the seat. An application was made to me by a distinguished scholar, divine, and teacher, the Warden of Trinity College, Glenalmond, to give certain explanations for the appeasing of doubts. I did so in the following letter: —

"11, Carlton House Terrace, S.W., June 8, 1865.

"Dear Dr. Hannah,

"It would be very difficult for me to subscribe to any interpretation of my speech on the Irish Church like that of your correspondent, which contains so many conditions and bases of a plan for dealing with a question apparently remote, and at the same time full of difficulties on every side. My reasons are, I think, plain. First, because the question is remote, and apparently out of all bearing on the practical politics of the day, I think it would be for me worse than superfluous to determine upon any scheme or basis of a scheme with respect to it. Secondly, because it is difficult, even if I anticipated any likelihood of being called upon to deal with it, I should think it right to make no decision beforehand on the mode of dealing with the difficulties. But the first reason is that which chiefly weighs. As far as I know, my speech signifies pretty clearly the broad distinction which I take between the abstract and the practical views of the subject. And I think I have stated strongly my sense of the responsibility attaching to the opening of such a question, except in a state of things which gave promise of satisfactorily closing it. For this reason it is that I have been so silent about the matter, and may probably be so again; but I could not as a Minister, and as member for Oxford, allow it to be debated an indefinite number of times and remain silent. One thing, however, I may add, because I think it a clear landmark. In any measure dealing with the Irish Church, I think (though I scarcely expect ever to be called on to share in such a measure) the Act of Union must be recognised and must have important consequences, especially with reference to the position of the hierarchy.

"I am much obliged to you for writing, and I hope you will see and approve my reasons for not wishing to carry my own mind further into a question lying at a distance I cannot measure.

"Yours sincerely,(Signed) "W. E. Gladstone."Rev. the Warden, Trin. Coll., Perth."

The letter has been the object of much criticism upon these three grounds. First, it contained a statement that the Act of Union ought to entail important consequences in the formation of any measure relating to the Irish Church. Secondly, that the question was hardly within the domain of practical politics. Thirdly, that I felt very uncertain whether it would be dealt with in my time. The explanation of the first is as follows: – In contemplating the subject of the Irish Church, I did not see how to give full effect to the principle of religious equality without touching the composition of the House of Lords. In this strait, my personal opinion was that it would be best to retain (though in an altered form) the Episcopal element from Ireland in the House of Lords, lest its withdrawal should lead to other changes, of a kind to weaken the constitution of that important branch of the legislature; and thus far I was disposed to abridge the application of religious equality to Ireland. I had not yet examined the question so closely as to perceive that this mode of proceeding was wholly impracticable, and that the inconvenience of removing the Irish Bishops must be faced. And for my part I have not been so happy, at any time of my life, as to be able sufficiently to adjust the proper conditions of handling any difficult question, until the question itself was at the door. This retention of the Bishops in the House of Peers was the important consequence that I thought the Act of Union would draw.

Among those errors of the day which may be called singular as vulgar errors, is that which supposes the fifth Article of the Act of Union with Ireland to refer to the endowments of the Church. Its terms touch exclusively her "doctrine, worship, discipline, and government." There is no violation of this section of the Act of Union in withdrawing her endowments, were she stripped of every shilling. But it may be said that her "government," as distinguished from her discipline, perhaps involves the position of her exclusive relation to the State. So I thought; and accordingly thus I wrote to Dr. Hannah.

The second proposition of the letter was not only in harmony with my speech, it was simply the condensation of the speech into a brief form of words. For, agreeing with Mr. Dillwyn as to the merits of the case, I held, as I have ever held, that it is not the duty of a Minister to be forward in inscribing on the Journals of Parliament his own abstract views; or to disturb the existence of a great institution like the Church of Ireland, until he conceives the time to be come when he can probably give effect to his opinions. Because the question was not within the range of practical politics, agreeing with his sentiment, I voted against his motion.

But, forsooth, it is a matter of wonder that I should have felt doubtful whether the Irish Church would be dealt with in my time. Now, I do not complain of this. It is an example of what is continually happening in human affairs, of the mythical handling of facts, of the reflection of the ideas, feelings, and circumstances of one period upon the events of another, and thus dressing the past in the garb of the present. I abide by this, and by every word of the letter. The question of the Irish Church was in my view, in the year 1865, what, be it remembered, the question of Parliamentary Reform seemed to be in the first moiety of the year 1830 – namely, a remote question. Had any man said to me, "How soon will it come on?" I should have replied, "Heaven knows; perhaps it will be five years, perhaps it will be ten." My duty was to let my constituents know the state of my mind on a matter so important, because the wind was gradually veering to that quarter, even though I might not believe, and did not believe it to be the most probable event, that it would reach the point for action during the life of the Parliament just then about to be elected. But then I referred to my own political lifetime. On that subject I will only say that a man who, in 1865, completed his thirty-third year of a laborious career; who had already followed to the grave the remains of almost all the friends abreast of whom he had started from the University in the career of public life; and who had observed that, excepting two recent cases, it was hard to find in our whole history a single man who had been permitted to reach the fortieth year of a course of labour similar to his own within the walls of the House of Commons; such a man might surely be excused if he did not venture to reckon for himself on an exemption from the lot of greater and better men, and if he formed a less sanguine estimate of the fraction of space yet remaining to him, than seems to have been the case with his critics.

The reasons that, in my judgment, prove the time now to have arrived for dealing decisively with the question of the Irish Church Establishment, must be treated elsewhere than in these pages.

So far as Ireland, and the immediate controversy, and my personal vindication are concerned, I have done. But there is matter of wider interest, which connects itself with the subject. The change of conduct, the shifting of the mind of an individual, shrink into insignificance by the side of the question, What has been, since 1838, the direction of the public sentiment, the course of law and administration, the general march of affairs?

I have described the erroneous impressions as to the actual and prospective state of things, under which was urged the practical application of that system of thought embodied in my work of 1838. It may be said my error was a gross or even an absurd one. On that question I need not enter. But I will endeavour to bring into view some circumstances relating to the time, which may help to account for it. And here I feel that I pass beyond the narrower and more personal scope of these pages, if I attempt to recall some of the changes that have taken place during the last thirty or five-and-thirty years, in matters which bear upon the religious character and relations of the State.

At that time, Jews, and others not adopting the Christian name, were excluded from civil office; and though Roman Catholics and Nonconformists had effected an entrance into Parliament, there still remained an oath for the former, and a declaration for the latter, which, if they did not practically limit freedom, yet denoted, like the mark of chains on the limbs of an emancipated slave, that there had been a time when it did not exist. The Establishment of Scotland was still entire, and animated with the strength principally of the eminent men who afterwards led the Free Church Secession. The attack on the Irish Church, pushed in 1835 with earnestness and vigour by the Liberal party, had speedily proved to be hopeless. The State continued to make to other persuasions certain grants, little more than compassionate, and handed down from other times; but, even in the case of the classes especially in its charge, such as soldiers and sailors, or such again as paupers and criminals, it rarely permitted, and still more rarely provided for them, the means of religious worship according to their own religious convictions. In the great province of popular education in England, nothing was granted except to schools of the Church, or to schools in which, while the Bible was read, no religion other than that of the Church was taught; and he would have been deemed something more than a daring prophet, who should have foretold that in a few years the utmost ambition of the lay champions, and of the spiritual heads of the Church, would be to obtain the maintenance of a denominational system in popular education, under which all religions alike should receive the indirect, yet not unsubstantial, countenance of the State.

But the most important of all the changes which have taken place within the interval, has been the change in the condition of the Church of England itself.

Even for those old enough to have an adequate recollection of the facts, it requires no inconsiderable mental effort to travel backwards over the distractions, controversies, perils, and calamities of the last thirty years, to the period immediately before those years; and to realise not only the state of facts, but especially the promises and prospects which it presented. I am well aware that any description of it which may now be attempted will appear to bear more or less the colour of romance; but, without taking it into view, no one can either measure the ground over which we have travelled, or perceive how strong was then the temptation to form an over-sanguine estimate of the probable progress of the Church in her warfare with sin and ignorance, and even in persuading seceders of all kinds to re-enter her fold.

That time was a time such as comes, after sickness, to a man in the flower of life, with an unimpaired and buoyant constitution; the time in which, though health is as yet incomplete, the sense and the joy of health are keener, as the fresh and living current first flows in, than are conveyed by its even and undisturbed possession.

The Church of England had been passing through a long period of deep and chronic religious lethargy. For many years, perhaps for some generations, Christendom might have been challenged to show, either then or from any former age, a clergy (with exceptions) so secular and lax, or congregations so cold, irreverent, and indevout. The process of awakening had, indeed, begun many years before; but a very long time is required to stir up effectually a torpid body, whose dimensions overspread a great country. Active piety and zeal among the clergy, and yet more among the laity, had been in a great degree confined within the narrow limits of a party, which, however meritorious in its work, presented in the main phenomena of transition, and laid but little hold on the higher intellect and cultivation of the country. Our churches and our worship bore in general too conclusive testimony to a frozen indifference. No effort had been made either to overtake the religious destitution of the multitudes at home, or to follow the numerous children of the Church, migrating into distant lands, with any due provision for their spiritual wants. The richer benefices were very commonly regarded as a suitable provision for such members of the higher families as were least fit to push their way in any profession requiring thought or labour. The abuses of plurality and non-residence were at a height, which, if not proved by statistical returns, it would now be scarcely possible to believe. In the greatest public school of the country (and I presume it may be taken as a sample of the rest) the actual teaching of Christianity was all but dead, though happily none of its forms had been surrendered. It is a retrospect full of gloom; and with all our Romanising, and all our Rationalising, what man of sense would wish to go back upon those dreary times:

"Domos Ditis vacuas, et inania regna"?16

But between 1831 and 1840, the transformation, which had previously begun, made a progress altogether marvellous. Much was due, without doubt, to the earnest labour of individuals. Such men as Bishop Blomfield on the Bench, and Dr. Hook in the parish (and I name them only as illustrious examples), who had long been toiling with a patient but a dauntless energy, began as it were to get the upper hand. But causes of deep and general operation were also widely at work. As the French Revolution had done much to renovate Christian belief on the Continent, so the Church of England was less violently, but pretty sharply, roused by the political events which arrived in a rattling succession. In 1828, the repeal of the Test Act. In 1829, the emancipation of the Roman Catholics. In 1831-2, the agony and triumph of Reform. In 1833, the Church Temporalities Act for Ireland. There was now a general uprising of religious energy in the Church throughout the land. It saved the Church. Her condition before 1830 could not possibly have borne the scrutinising eye, which for thirty years past has been turned upon our institutions. Her rank corruptions must have called down the avenging arm. But it was arrested just in time.

It would be difficult to give a just and full idea of the beneficial changes which were either accomplished or begun during this notable decade of years. They embraced alike formal, official movements, of a nature to strike the general eye, and those local improvements in detail, which singly are known only in each neighbourhood, but which unitedly transform the face of a country. Laws were passed to repress gross abuses, and the altering spirit of the clergy seconded and even outstripped the laws. The outward face of divine worship began to be renovated, and the shameful condition of the sacred fabrics was rapidly amended, with such a tide of public approval as overflowed all the barriers of party and of sect, and speedily found its manifestations even in the seceding communions. There is no reason to doubt that at that time at least, and before such changes had become too decidedly the fashion, the outward embellishment of churches, and the greater decency and order of services, answered to, and sprang from, a call within, and proved a less unworthy conception of the sublime idea of Christian worship. The missionary arm of the Church began to exhibit a vigour wholly unknown to former years. Noble efforts were made, under the auspices of the chief bishops of the Church, to provide for the unsatisfied spiritual wants of the metropolis. The great scheme of the Colonial Episcopate was founded; and, in its outset, led to such a development of apostolic zeal and self-denial as could not but assist, by a powerful reaction, the domestic progress. The tone of public schools (on one of which Arnold was now spending his noble energies) and of universities, was steadily yet rapidly raised. The greatest change of all was within the body of the clergy.17 A devoted piety and an unworldly life, which had been the rare exceptions, became visibly from year to year more and more the rule. The spectacle, as a whole, was like what we are told of a Russian spring: when, after long months of rigid cold, almost in a day the snow dissolves, the ice breaks up and is borne away, and the whole earth is covered with a rush of verdure. These were bright and happy days for the Church of England. She seemed, or seemed to seem, as a Church recalling the descriptions of Holy Writ; to be "beautiful as the sun which goeth forth in his might,"18 "and terrible as an army with banners."19