The Church in lrelaml. By Right-Hon. J. Whiteside, M.P. (Murray
: Dublin. Rivingtons.)—Mr. Whiteside has been requested to publish
two lectures delivered by him before an association in Dublin, on the subject of the Irish Church. If he intends them to have a bearing upon the controversy of the day, he mistakes altogether the point at issue. He endeavours to prove, in the first instance, that St. Patrick was a Pro- testant; he then proceeds to show the connection that has existed from the time of the Reformation between the Irish Establishment and the English Government. All this may be admitted, and yet nothing is gained. The Irish Church may be the purest, the most ancient, and the most useful that ever existed, but it is not the Church of the Irish peo- ple, and by the principles of constitutional government, in the full light of the Scotch precedent, there is tyranny in forcing it upon them. It may be true that the landowners who contribute to its maintenance are for the most part members of its communion, but have they the right to dictate to the farmers and tradesmen to whom the constitution extends the suffrage what shall be the form of the State religion ? It is a wretched state of things when there is this separation in creed between the owners of land and the other classes in a community ; there is some- thing invidious in the position of the former, which one would think they would rather seek to assuage by concession than to make promi- nent by the maintenance of what is really a trophy of conquest.
Previous page
