1870. Exeter did Dr. Temple, a singularly fearless man, 1969. announce that if there were another edition of Feb. 11, Essays and Reviews, as in fact there never was, his own paper would be excluded from it. But in saying this he declined to withdraw anything he had written, or to imply any censure upon the other essayists. The book might, he observed, like Luther's writings, have done some harm. It had, however, done far more good, and he was wholly unrepentant. The best that could be said of Dr. Hampden as a Bishop was that he gave no further trouble. The worst that could be said of Dr. Temple was that his untiring energy fatigued ordinary men. He proved one of the ablest, strongest, and most respected prelates who ever presided over an English diocese. demand. With all his passion and excitement Dr. Pusey saw the main point clearly enough. It was the Establishment, and the Establishment alone, which made the appointment of Dr. Temple possible, and enabled Mr. Gladstone to enforce his choice of a Bishop upon a recalcitrant clergy through the inherent right of the Crown. Dr. Pusey therefore Dr. Pusey's demanded the liberation of the Church from the patronage and control of the State. Yet his logic, though irrefragable, was not convincing. Even if he had himself been seriously prepared to sacrifice the emoluments as well as the dignity of the National Church, and to put her in the same position with her Irish sister, he would not have carried with him one in a hundred of those who denounced Bishop Temple as a wolf thrust into the fold. They would have been glad, and perhaps satisfied, if the Chapter of Exeter had faced the penalties of præmunire, which would probably not have been inflicted, and compelled the Minister to nominate Dr. Temple by letters patent. They would have been, of course, still more pleased, and com 1870. The Metaphysical Society. pletely triumphant, if all the prelates had followed the example of Wilberforce, and refused to consecrate the intruder. But they were more Erastian than they knew. Most of them set a far higher value upon their ancient and traditional connection with the Sovereign, and with Parliament as the representatives of the English people, than either Pusey or Gladstone. While a few High Churchmen, rational and clear-sighted, with minds and wills of their own, would have deliberately sacrificed privilege to freedom, the main body of the clergy, high or low, shrank from that supreme ordeal, and preferred a bondage so much disguised by ceremonial formalism that its true character seldom appeared. Many of them must also have reflected that when Temple, in a manly and reverent fashion, pleaded for free inquiry, from which true. religion had nothing to fear, he showed more confidence in the Gospel which he preached than the advocates of suppression and exclusion. For there were men in those days, belonging to all Churches, and to no church at all, who had an enthusiastic, some might say a fanatic, belief in the prospect of attaining harmony by personal intercourse and friendly debate. The Metaphysical Society, founded in 1869 by the enterprise of Mr. Knowles,' editor of the Contemporary Review, was a practical expression of this idea. Wondrous indeed, and no less distinguished, was the company which Mr. Knowles brought, and for many years kept, together. Gladstone joined the Society, and Tennyson, and Manning, and Huxley, and the Duke of Argyll. Dr. Ward, the Ultramontane editor of the Dublin Review, the most pugnacious of controversialists and most genial of men, sat side by side, or face to face with Dr. Martineau, the apostle of Unitarianism, most learned, eloquent, and philo 1 Afterwards Sir James Knowles. sophic of all living Nonconformists. Bishop Magee 1870. of Peterborough, a consummate orator and brilliant humourist, but anything rather than a thinker, was unequally matched in the play of mind with Mr. Henry Sidgwick of Cambridge, who applied the Socratic method to the sophists of his own age. But of all that famous band, some of whom had no right to be called metaphysicians, not one approached in metaphysical genius Professor Clifford of University College, who had a reputation more than European for the acute subtlety and the daring originality of his intellect. The Society was a failure. There was neither equality of powers nor community of ground. Although candour and openness of mind are excellent gifts, they will not take the place of capacity and knowledge. A statesman in metaphysics, like a metaphysician in politics, may be a mere child. The most that such promiscuous gatherings could do was to illustrate the insignificance of the alarm about vestments, or the outcry against heresy, as compared with the radical differences which do not prevent men from acting together in common things. 1870. The Irish CHAPTER V THE CLIMAX OF LIBERALISM THE session of 1870 was distinguished by the enactment of two principal measures: one great in its consequences, the other great also in itself. The former was a Land Bill for Ireland, and the latter an Education Bill for England. Having cut down the first branch of the upas tree, Mr. Gladstone now attacked the second. This was a more difficult task. All Englishmen interested in politics, if indeed the qualification be required, understood the Irish Church, and were either for it or against it. Not one Englishman in ten thousand knew anything about Irish land. "You will have observed,' wrote Mr. Gladstone to his Irish Secretary, "the total difference in the internal situation between this case and that of the Irish Church, where upon all the greater points our measure was in a manner outlined for us by the course of previous transactions." The recent history of the question was an almost blank record of Parliamentary indifference and neglect. The Devon Commission had reported in 1845 that improvements in Ireland were made by the tenant; that the landlords had appropriated them by raising the rent; and that this constituted a grievance which resulted in crime. 1 Mr. Chichester Fortescue. 2 Morley's Life of Gladstone, vol. ii. p. 289. 8 So called because the Earl of Devon was its chairman. A Bill introduced by Lord Stanley in the House 1870. of Lords as a consequence of this Report was so ill received that the Government dropped it, and then came the famine. Since that terrible calamity, and the subsequent emigration, which between them reduced the inhabitants of Ireland to little more than half their former number, two Acts had been passed which were conspicuous examples of English ignorance in Irish matters. The Encumbered Estates Act of 1849 relieved insolvent landlords by finding them purchasers for their estates, who extorted the highest rents they could obtain without regard for the custom of the country or the equity of the case. On the other hand, Cardwell's Act of 1860, which laid down the principle that Irish tenants were simply contractors with Irish landlords, was so flagrantly opposed to the plainest facts that it had no result at all. Yet, if Ireland had been tranquil and pacific, the question might for an indefinite period have slumbered. The English people were aroused to the necessity of reform by Fenianism, not because they were afraid of the Fenians, but because they became suddenly aware of the discontent with which Ireland was seething. Although Mr. Gladstone had not hitherto studied the subject, he now devoted the whole powers of his mind to a practical solution of the problem. He had plenty of amateur assistance. Writers and thinkers outside Parliament, of whom Mr. Mill was the most distinguished, contributed pamphlets, articles, and letters. Even those who had thoughtlessly sneered at Protestant ascendency as a merely sentimental grievance could not well say the same about the appropriation of a tenant's improvements by his landlord. Before the subject was considered by the Cabinet in October 1869, Mr. Gladstone had recourse to the skill and experience of the Chief Secretary, the |