Excerpt from The Irish Church From the Point of View of One of Its Layman

Whatever is right to be done (and I am far from saying it is right much should not be done), surely this is not a question to be settled by a leap in the dark like that attempted last session. It is for the good of both Roman Catholics and Protestants, no less than of the whole nation, that the momentous interests concerned should be fully taken into account and settled on some large View of fairness to all, instead of for the gratification of religious ill-will or the party requirements of the day. The opposite of wrong is by no means always right. It may be true that the Established Church in Ireland is unjust, but it is easy in applying a remedy to commit a still greater injustice, and make the change, instead of a benefit, the source of worse mischief.

There is a preliminary point on which it is necessary men's minds should be made up before the main question is reached. Is the question to be settled for the good of Ireland and the contentment of her people, or to please English voluntaries and for their contentment?

It may seem a matter of course to say that the question is to be settled for the good of Ireland and the contentment of her people, but it is not so in fact.

No doubt in theory the motive for the proposed change is to conciliate Roman Catholics and to make them more contented. But the whole manner of the change, and the frequent declara tions against any gain in a pecuniary sense to the Roman Catholic Church (however otherwise desirable or reasonable) out of the surplus ecclesiastical funds, which it is over and over again asserted are the property of the whole Irish people, is nothing less at best than, whilst granting a favour, to accompany it with so many insulting slaps in the face The case of those who contend that the Anglican Church should continue as it is may be bad, but assuredly it is not half so bad or so absurd as the case of those who in one breath contend that the ecclesiastical endow ments belong to the Irish people at large, and yet that the object in favour of which the great majority would wish to apply those endowments is on no account to have any share of them.

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