chapter of autobiography were two--first, there was "the great and
glaring change" in his course of action with respect to the Established
Church of Ireland, which was not due to the eccentricity or perversion
of an individual mind, but to the silent changes going on at the very
basis of modern society. Secondly, there was danger that a great cause
then in progress might suffer in point of credit, if not of energy and
rapidity, from the real or supposed delinquencies of the author.

He stated that "The author had upheld the doctrine that the Church was
to be maintained for its truth, and that if the principle was good for
England it was good for Ireland too. But he denied that he had ever
propounded the maxim _simpliciter_ that we were to maintain the
establishment. He admitted that his opinion of the Church of Ireland was
the exact opposite of what it had been; but if the propositions of his
work were in conflict with an assault upon the existence of the Irish
Establishment, they were even more hostile to the grounds upon which it
was now sought to maintain it. He did not wish to maintain the Church
upon the basis usually advanced, but for the benefit of the whole people
of Ireland, and if it could not be maintained as the truth it could not
be maintained at all."

Mr. Gladstone contended that the Irish Episcopal Church had fallen out
of harmony with the spirit and use of the time, and must be judged by a
practical rather than a theoretic test. In concluding the author puts
antithetically the case for and against the maintenance of the Church of
Ireland: "An establishment that does its work in much and has the hope
and likelihood of doing it in more; that has a broad and living way open
to it into the hearts of the people; that can command the services of
the present by the recollections and traditions of the past; able to
appeal to the active zeal of the greater portion of the people, and to