THE CONDITION OF IRELAND. CHAP. IV.] 315 duce Catholics into corporations was defeated at a guild of Dublin merchants; and the majority made ostentatious rejoicings under the eyes of their new ruler. In the country, no man's house was secure; and those of the gentry were so many garrisons. Bands of Whiteboys-hundreds in a band besieged these garrisons, fought, plundered, murdered, in defiance of police and soldiery. The soldiers, indeed, found themselves powerless against a foe so light-footed, so familiar with the country, and so utterly reckless and desperate as the peasantry of the south of Ireland. In the north, as usual, all was comparatively quiet; but at length symptoms of disorder appeared there also. It became necessary to empower the viceroy to proclaim any part of the country which might be disturbed; and in February two bills were passed, one to reimpose the Insurrection Act, and the other to suspend the Habeas Corpus till the ensuing 1st of August.1 In the course of the month of April, after a dreadful season of disorder and its punishments, comparative quiet seemed to settle down on that unhappy country; but to rebellion and its retribution now succeeded famine.2 As in later times, excessive rains rotted the potatoes in the ground; and, as in later times, the people were taken unprepared. They ate their potatoes till no more were to be had; and then they took to oatmeal, till they had no means of purchase left; and then they crowded the roads and towns to beg, or stole away into hiding-places, to die of hunger. As in later times, no seed-potatoes were left, to give some hope of a harvest the next year; and again, as so often before, did typhus fever follow upon the famine, quelling rebellion itself in destitution and woe. The next year's crop of potatoes, however, was good; there was a decline of insurrectionary movement; and the influence of the liberal viceroy did perhaps all that it could under the circumstances. But the opinions and temper of the viceroy can effect but little in such a case, while the laws and the conduct of surrounding officials proceed on principles that he does not hold. That the Marquess of Wellesley was favorable to the claims of the Catholics was gratifying to them; but it did not enable him to do them or their country much good while the laws, and almost every one concerned in the administration of them, were anti-Catholic. The true field of Irish amelioration was the floor of Parliament, where oppressive and insulting laws could be remodelled or repealed. To this end, Mr. Canning directed what he believed would be his last efforts for his country, before going to the distant dependency where he was henceforth to live and work. On the Mr. Canning's 30th of April of, as he supposed, his last session in motion on Parliament, he moved for leave to bring in a bill to peers. 2 Annual Register, 1822, p. 35. 1 Hansard, vi. p. 220. Catholic annul the disabilities of Catholic peers to sit in the House of Lords.1 He professed to have hope that a measure so limited as this might be obtained; and he saw how its adoption must open a way to further concessions. The bill was carried successfully on its way, as far as to the second reading in the House of Lords, when it was thrown out by a majority of 42. 4 Till the enlarged liberality of the laws should enable him to do more, Lord Wellesley did, from his own resources of wisdom and humanity, what he could. He greatly improved the police of Ireland; 2 he completed the revision and amendment of the list of magistrates; he suppressed the offensive demonstrations of the Orange party, forbidding the procession of the 5th of November, and the decking out of the statue on College Green; and he received with magnanimous good-humor the evidences of unpopularity which he thus brought upon himself. The Dublin corporation censured him, under cover of a censure of the lord mayor, who had coöperated zealously with him. The "Protestant" newspapers abused him. The "Protestant " public mobbed him at the theatre; 5 some fraction of that loyal public throwing a bottle at him on one such occasion. The turbulent people under him might behave as they would; it did not deter him from attempting to do them good. The secret of success in that endeavor has not yet been found; but there can be no doubt that the administration of Lord Wellesley was a benefit to Ireland in many ways. Never before, perhaps, were the affairs of Ireland so copiously discussed in the legislature as in this season, when her saddest disorder and misery called forth only the more of the paternal element in the mind and heart of her excellent ruler.6 Sir John Malcolm wrote of him, a year later than this time, that he " was glad to find the extreme Catholics as much out of humor with the lord lieutenant as the extreme Orangemen ; and that "that strange scene, Ireland, appeared to be just at that crisis when all his highest qualities, if allowed their scope," must do "essential good." If we see, as yet, but too little of this " essential good," we must remember that Ireland has improved since the times prior to Lord Wellesley's rule; improved in resources, and even bad as matters yet are in principle and temper; and there is no saying how much worse she might have been now but for him, how her Orangemen might have raved, and her factions have fought and jobbed, as before his day. But there is so little to be said yet of hope and gratulation about Ireland, that it is a welcome change to turn to any other scene of strife. 1 Hansard, vii. p. 211. 3 Ibid. p. 53. 5 Ibid. p. 54. 2 Annual Register, 1822, p. 42. 4 Ibid. p.53. even Life of Lord Sidmouth, iii. p. 386. CHAP. IV.] THE PETERBOROUGH QUESTIONS. 317 A strife took place in the Church at this time which requires notice from its connection with both past and future Peterborough states of religion in England. Throughout its whole ex- questions. istence, the Church of England has included three parties of religionists; men who naturally class themselves under one of three methods of regarding and receiving the religion which is equally precious to them all. These sections are the High Church, the Calvinistic, and the Moderate; or, as we call them at the present day, the Catholic, the Evangelical, and the Liberal. By the constitution and principle of the Roman Catholic Church, men of all tendencies of mind are retained in harmony within its pale. Under the authority of that Church, every diversity of mind, manners, and morals may repose, without further strife than must arise wherever the inquisitive and active mind of man has scope and interest. But a similar repose and harmony are not possible in a Protestant Church, whose appeal is to the Scriptures themselves, or in other words, to some other interpretation of the Bible than that of an infallible authority. In the framing of the thirty-nine articles, openings were left for the liberty of scrupulous minds and strict intellects; and by the spirit of the Church itself, it has always been understood that the various human mind was to be liberally and gently dealt with, in regard to difficult matters of doctrine. The mischief to be apprehended is, that bigots who have the power will think it right to close such openings, which they consider openings to error; and the hope in such cases is, that the instinct and principle of liberty which wrought the Reformation will ever watch over the rights and privileges it was intended to secure. Every one knows how much it cost Wesley to leave the Church; and all can understand how men who followed soon upon his time might not only share his reluctance in that particular, but take warning against dissent, from the spectacle of the Methodist hierarchy, established with great and threatening power outside the limits of the Church. Some individuals of strong Calvinistic tendencies had applied themselves for a considerable period before our present date to rouse the Church from its indolence and carelessness; from what has been called its "avoidance of all collision with controverted points,1 its study of ease and repose, its dealings in truisms and generalities, and subsidence into a calm ethical view of Christianity." This rousing, it was naturally thought, would be best effected by the placing in the pulpits of the Church the greatest possible number of earnest men, of sentiments called, in the language of the time, evangelical. Mr. Wilberforce and his friends did much in furtherance of this object; and their efforts no doubt caused a great 1 A Retrospect of the Religious Life of England, p. 122. revival of life in the Church, and of personal religion in the higher classes of society. But, as was sure to happen, they roused something else besides religious earnestness. They awoke the old High-Church spirit of domination and exclusiveness, which wrought at first in single instances, and gradually enlarged its scope, till the attention of the whole of society was fixed on that movement, called Tractarian, which we shall have occasion to survey at a future time. The first striking instance of the awakening of the old High-Church spirit of domination over faith occurred at this time, and made no little noise.1 On the 14th of June, 1821, a petition was presented to the House of Lords by Lord King, from the Rev. Henry W. Neville, rector of Blatherwick. The story was this; and it was presented to Parliament only because the petitioner had no other appeal. This rector was under obligation to present a curate to a living in the diocese of Peterborough; and he did accordingly present the Rev. John Green, a man of unquestionable character and ability, who had signed the thirty-nine articles, and was ready to sign them again. The bishop of Peterborough (Dr. Herbert Marsh) sent to him a printed paper, containing eighty-seven questions drawn up by himself, requiring answers to these such answers as should be satisfactory to the bishop as a condition of the curate being licensed. Mr. Green declined this new test; and the bishop refused his license. An appeal to the Archbishop of Canterbury being unsuccessful, the petitioner had no choice but to apply to the House of Lords for a judgment as to whether every bishop might frame new tests as a condition of entrance upon the offices of the Church. The matter was gone into at greater length the next year,2 when another petitioner, the Rev. Mr. Grimshawe, on behalf of the Rev. Mr. Thurtell, complained that the bishop would not even permit to the respondent any choice as to the mode, even in regard to length, in which he should reply to the questions. The questions were in a brief, even an abbreviated form: printed so as to leave only a certain blank space within which the answers must be comprehended. Mr. Thurtell answered the questions, appending, on separate sheets, his statements of his opinions, and the reasons and authorities for them. But the bishop wanted "short, plain, and positive answers," that he might "know whether the opinions of the persons examined accorded with those of the Church." The points proposed were some of the most difficult and intricate to be found in the whole compass of theological science; and the wisest persons saw the most immediately and clearly that these were matters which could not be pronounced upon, except without any of the due reservations, in 1 Hansard, v. p. 1166. 2 Ibid. vii. p. 824. CHAP. IV.] NEW MARRIAGE ACT. 319 the compass of a few inches of paper. The bishop pleaded his legal right to examine his clergy in any manner he chose; and if this legal right could not be denied, the inference was that some further security for liberty of opinion was needed than at present existed. He asserted that his method was not an innovation, that it was not even unusual; but the indignation and sorrow that it roused seem to show that society was surprised at his proceedings, and quite indisposed to acquiesce in them. He pleaded, also, that there was nothing in his questions which was not in plain and direct accordance with the articles of the Church the clear answer to which was that his fellow-clergy might think otherwise; and that if they did not, his questions were purely needless. On both occasions, the House of Lords refused to entertain the subject; but it was long before the country let it drop. On neither occasion was a word uttered by any bishop but the one appealed against. Lord Carnarvon expressed his astonishment at their silence,1 and did not conceal his contempt of it. He declared that these spiritual peers, whose ample presence that night was certainly ornamental, though not apparently useful, were ready enough to give their opinion on constitutional questions, but had not a word to say on a matter so peculiarly within their province. The truth was, they were unprepared. The great subject of liberty of opinion was coming up again before they were trained and habituated to its discussion, or even to its consideration. If, as is probable, they all believed that their Episcopal brother had a legal right to do as he had done, but had yet been morally guilty of oppression, and therefore, functionally, of imprudence and mischief-making, they had better have said so. They gained nothing by their silence; for the country said it for them, through the press, the pulpit, and all private conversation. Something was gained to the cause of liberty of opinion, in and out of the Church; and much was done towards that clear marking out of the three great religious parties which have since been as prominently distinguished allowing for the softened spirit of the times as in the days when Laud pilloried the Puritans, and "the ever-memorable Mr. John Hales" was "bidding Calvin good-night." 2 A new Marriage Act passed this session, which was of considerable importance as the first great step towards a New Marreturn to that freedom of marriage which was abso- riage Act lutely unlimited prior to the legislation of 1753. The evils arising from nullity of marriages had long been found to be so great, that the Commons had, within five years preceding this time, passed three bills granting some relaxation. These bills had been thrown out by the Lords, who now, however, so 1 Hansard, vii. p. 846. 2 Ibid. p. 1455. 3 Annual Register, 1822, p. 88. 3 |