You have your wrongs to complain of--wrongs centuries old,
and wrongs that long ago the people of Ireland, and, I venture to say,
the people of Great Britain united with Ireland----My friend up there
will not listen to the end of my sentence. I say that the people of
Great Britain, acting with the people of Ireland, in a fair
representation of the whole, would long ago have remedied every just
grievance of which you could complain.
I will take two questions which I treated upon the other evening. I will
ask about one question--that is, the question of the supremacy of the
Church in Ireland. Half the people in England are Nonconformists. They
are not in favour of an Established Church anywhere, and it is utterly
impossible that they could be in favour of an Established Church in an
island like this--an Established Church formed of a mere handful of the
population, in opposition to the wishes of the nation. Now take the
Principality of Wales. I suppose that four out of five of the population
there are Dissenters, and they are not in favour of maintaining a
religious Protestant Establishment in Ireland. The people of Scotland
have also seceded in such large numbers from their Established Church,
although of a democratic character, that I suppose those who have
seceded are a considerable majority of the whole people--they are not in
favour of maintaining an ecclesiastical Establishment in Ireland in
opposition to the views of the great majority of your people.
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