it and preaching it up, first fair, then righteous, then the only
righteous, then at last necessary to salvation. This is the plan for
remedying the Nonconformists' divorce from contact with the national
life by divorcing churchmen too from contact with it; that is, as we
have familiarly before put it, the tailless foxes are for cutting off
tails all round. But this the other foxes could not wisely grant,
unless it were proved that tails are of no value. And so, too,
unless it is proved that contact with the main current of national
life is of no value (and we have shown that it is of the greatest
value), we cannot safely, even to please the Nonconformists in a
matter where we would please them as much as possible, admit Mialism.

But now, as we have shown the disinterestedness which culture
enjoins, and its obedience not to likings or dislikings, but to the
aim of perfection, let us show its flexibility,--its independence of
machinery. That [lii] other and greater prophet of intelligence, and
reason, and the simple natural truth of things,--Mr. Bright,--means
by these, as we have seen, a certain set of measures which suit the
special ends of Liberal and Nonconformist partisans. For instance,
reason and justice towards Ireland mean the abolishment of the
iniquitous Protestant ascendency in such a particular way as to suit
the Nonconformists' antipathy to establishments. Reason and justice
pursued in a different way, by distributing among the three main
Churches of Ireland,--the Roman Catholic, the Anglican, and the
Presbyterian,--the church property of Ireland, would immediately
cease, for Mr. Bright and the Nonconformists, to be reason and
justice at all, and would become, as Mr. Spurgeon says, "a setting up
of the Roman image." Thus we see that the sort of intelligence
reached by culture is more disinterested than the sort of
intelligence reached by belonging to the Liberal party in the great