was once unfelt and unsatisfied. They place the legislature of the
country in the condition, as it were, of one called to do penance for
past offences; but duty remains unaltered and imperative, and abates
nothing of her demand on our services. It is undoubtedly competent, in a
constitutional view, to the Government of this country to continue the
present disposition of Church property in Ireland. It appears not too
much to assume that our imperial legislature has been qualified to take,
and has taken in point of fact, a sounder view of religious truth than
the majority of the people of Ireland in their destitute and
uninstructed state. We believe, accordingly, that that which we place
before them is, whether they know it or not, calculated to be beneficial
to them; and that if they know it not now, they will know it when it is
presented to them fairly. Shall we, then, purchase their applause at the
expense of their substantial, nay, their spiritual interests?

"It does, indeed, so happen that there are powerful motives on the other
side concurring with that which has here been represented as paramount.
In the first instance we are not called upon to establish a creed, but
only to maintain an existing legal settlement, when our constitutional
right is undoubted. In the second, political considerations tend
strongly to recommend that maintenance. A common form of faith binds the
Irish Protestants to ourselves, while they, upon the other hand, are
fast linked to Ireland; and thus they supply the most natural bond of
connection between the countries. But if England, by overthrowing their
Church, should weaken their moral position, they would be no longer
able, perhaps no longer willing, to counteract the desires of the
majority tending, under the direction of their leaders (however, by a
wise policy, revocable from that fatal course) to what is termed
national independence. Pride and fear, on the one hand, are therefore
bearing up against more immediate apprehension and difficulty on the