It nevertheless required no small degree of courage on the part of Mr. Miall to give notice so soon as a year after the passing of the Irish Church Act that he would, in the following session, ask Parliament to apply the principle of that measure to the other Established Churches of the kingdom, and we are not surprised to know that the time selected was, in part, determined by accidental circumstances, as much as by deliberate choice. It is true that the honourable member was not a novice in the matter; seeing that in 1856 he had submitted a motion which similarly aimed at the extinction of the Irish Establishment. But the Irish question, even in 1856, was, so far as public sentiment was concerned, more advanced than the English Church question is now; for Protestant ascendancy in Ireland had long been condemned by English Liberalism, though the mode of bringing it to an end occasioned a wide divergence of opinion. Nobody could and nobody did, then deny Mr. Miall's facts, however much they dissented from his practical conclusions; while the absence of concurring circumstances gave to the debate an air of languor strangely in contrast with the excitement occasioned by the same topic in after years. It is true that the recent disestablishment motion is not the first which has been submitted to the House of Commons, even in regard to the Church of England. For nearly forty years ago--on the 16th of April, 1833--Mr. Faithfull, the member for Brighton--a borough then, as now, intrepidly represented in Parliament--moved: 'That the Church of England, as by law established, is not recommended by practical utility: that its resources have always been subjected to parliamentary enactments, and that the greater part, if not the whole, of those resources ought to be appropriated to the relief of the nation;' but on this occasion the question excited too little interest to subject the mover to any sharp antagonism; Lord Althorpe declining to reply to Mr. Faithfull's speech, and moving the previous question, while the motion was negatived without a division. Mr. Gladstone's memorable declaration, in 1868, that 'in the settlement of the Irish Church that Church, as a State-Church, must cease to exist,' required high moral courage; but the speaker knew that he was the mouthpiece of a party powerful within, as well as without, the walls of Parliament, and that he was sounding the tocsin for an immediate, and a comparatively brief struggle, in which success was already assured. Mr. Miall, on the contrary, knew that he would have no powerful backing in the House of Commons, however great the moral strength which he represented, and he knew also that he headed a skirmishing party, rather than led a final attack; while he must also have been conscious that the wisdom of his procedure would, by friendly, as well as hostile, critics, be judged by the measure of success.