And further. The Liberal Government and party of that day proposed, in 1835 and the following years, the famous "Appropriation Clause." The principle of their measure was, that the surplus funds only of the Irish Church were to be applied to popular education, after adequate provision had been made for the spiritual wants of the Protestants. This principle, that adequate provision is to be made for the spiritual wants of the Protestants, before any other claim on the property of the Irish Church can be admitted, was the basis of the Appropriation Clause; and is, as I understand the matter, the very principle which is now maintained against the Liberal party of 1868, by the (so-called) defenders of the Irish Established Church. But this principle I denounced in 1836 as strongly as I could now do. I extract the following passage from a report in 'Hansard,' which, as I remember, I had myself corrected, of a speech on the Irish Tithe Bill with the Appropriation Clause:--[6] "A Church Establishment is maintained either for the sake of its members or its doctrines; for those whom it teaches, or for that which it teaches. On the former ground it is not in equity tenable for a moment. "Why should any preference be given to me over another fellow-subject, or what claim have I personally to have my religion supported, whilst another is disavowed by the State? No claim whatever in respect to myself. I concur entirely with gentlemen opposite, hostile to an Establishment, that no personal privilege ought in such a matter to be allowed. "But if, on the contrary, I believe, as the great bulk of the British Legislature does believe, that the doctrine and system of the Establishment contain and exhibit truth in its purest and most effective form, and if we also believe truth to be good for the people universally, then we have a distinct and immovable ground for the maintenance of an Establishment; but it follows as a matter of course from the principle, that it must be maintained, not on a scale exactly and strictly adjusted to the present number of its own members, but on such a scale that it may also have the means of offering to others the benefits which it habitually administers to them.