Gladstone's speech was thoroughly consistent in its opposition to Lord John Russell's resolution on the ground that that resolution, if pressed to its legitimate conclusion, assailed the whole principle on which the State Church in Ireland was founded. "I hope," he said, "I shall never live to see the day when such a system shall be adopted in this country, for the consequences of it to public men will be lamentable beyond all description. If those individuals who are called on to fulfil the high function of administering public affairs should be compelled to exclude from their consideration the elements of true religion, and to view various strange and conflicting doctrines in the same light, instead of administering those noble functions, they will become helots and slaves." The weakness of Mr. Gladstone's case was found in the fact that he insisted on regarding the State Church in Ireland as resting on precisely the same foundations as those which upheld the State Church in England. The truth was afterwards brought home to him that every argument which could be fairly used to justify the maintenance of the State Church in England was but another argument for the abolition of the State Church in Ireland--a work which it became at last his duty to accomplish. "I shall content myself," said Daniel O'Connell in his speech in the debate, "with laying down the broad principle that the {249} emoluments of a Church ought not to be raised from a people who do not belong to it. Ireland does not ask for a Catholic Establishment. The Irish desire political equality in every respect, except that they would not accept a single shilling for their Church."