of Ireland without
expressing his amazement that such an establishment should exist among
reasonable men?

And those who speak thus of this Church speak justly. Is there anything
else like it? Was there ever anything else like it? The world is full
of ecclesiastical establishments: but such a portent as this Church
of Ireland is nowhere to be found. Look round the Continent of Europe.
Ecclesiastical establishments from the White Sea to the Mediterranean:
ecclesiastical establishments from the Wolga to the Atlantic: but
nowhere the Church of a small minority enjoying exclusive establishment.
Look at America. There you have all forms of Christianity, from
Mormonism, if you call Mormonism Christianity, to Romanism. In some
places you have the voluntary system. In some you have several religions
connected with the state. In some you have the solitary ascendency of a
single Church. But nowhere, from the Arctic Circle to Cape Horn, do you
find the Church of a small minority exclusively established. Look round
our own empire. We have an Established Church in England; it is the
Church of the majority. There is an Established Church in Scotland. When
it was set up, it was the Church of the majority. A few months ago, it
was the Church of the majority. I am not quite sure that, even after
the late unhappy disruption, it is the Church of the minority. In our
colonies the State does much for the support of religion; but in no
colony, I believe, do we give exclusive support to the religion of the
minority. Nay, even in those parts of empire where the great body of the
population is attached to absurd and immoral superstitions, you have not
been guilty of the folly and injustice of calling on them to pay for a
Church which they do not want. We have not portioned out Bengal and the
Carnatic into parishes, and scattered Christian rectors, with stipends
and glebes, among millions of Pagans and Mahometans. We keep, indeed,
a small Christian establishment, or rather three small Christian
establishments, Anglican, Presbyterian, and Catholic. But we keep them
only for the Christians in our civil and military services; and we leave
untouched the revenues of the mosques and temples. In one country alone
is to be seen the spectacle of a community of eight millions of
human beings, with a Church which is the Church of only eight hundred
thousand.

It has been often said, and has been repeated to-night by the honourable
Member for Radnor, that