Church on the ground that it had already more funds than were
required for the full discharge of its duties among those who attended
its ministrations. But then the resolution also assumed the right of
the State to institute an inquiry into the application of the revenues
and the needs of the surrounding population, and would necessarily
carry with it the assertion of the principle that the Irish State
Church existed only to minister to the wants of the Protestants of
Ireland. It is clear that if once this principle were recognized by
the State the whole theory of the Established Church in Ireland could
no longer be maintained. That theory was that the State had a right to
uphold and a duty to perform in the maintenance of a Protestant
Establishment in Ireland for the purpose of converting to its doctrines
that vast majority of the Irish population who could not be driven,
even at the bayonet's point, to attend the {214} services conducted by
a Protestant pastor. Only a few years after this time the great
statesman who was afterwards to obtain from Parliament the
disestablishment of the Irish Church was arguing, in his earliest
published work, that the fewer the Protestants in Ireland the greater
was the necessity for the State to be lavish of its money with the
object of converting the outer population of Ireland to the established
religion. Mr. Ward, in his speech, set himself to make it clear to the
House of Commons that the collection of tithes in Ireland was, at that
time, the principal cause of the disturbance and disaffection which
brought so much calamity on the unhappy island, and prevented any
possibility of its becoming a loyal part of the British dominions. He
showed by facts and figures that the opposition to the collection of
tithes was not any longer confined to the Catholic population alone,
but had spread among the Protestants of dissenting denominations, and
was showing itself in the North of Ireland, as well as in the provinces
of the South and the West and the Midlands. He pointed to the fact
that it was found necessary to maintain in Ireland, for the purpose of
collecting the tithes, an army larger than that which England needed
for the maintenance of her Indian Empire, and that, nevertheless, it
was found impossible to collect the tithes in Ireland, and that the
Government could suggest nothing better than a project for the payment
of the tithes out of the pockets of the national taxpayer. M