The entire miscalculation which I have now endeavoured to describe of the religious state and prospects of the country, was combined with a view of the relative position of governors and governed, since greatly modified; and the two lay at the root of my error. These two causes led me into the excess of recommending the continued maintenance of a theory which was impracticable, and which, if it could have been enforced, would have been, under the circumstances of the country, less than just. For I never held that a National Church should be permanently maintained except for the nation,--I mean either for the whole of it or, at least, for the greater part, with some kind of real concurrence or general acquiescence from the remainder. Against the proposals of my book, Lord Macaulay had set up a theory of his own.[21] "That we may give Mr. Gladstone his revenge, we will state concisely our own views respecting the alliance of Church and State.... "We consider the primary end of Government as a purely temporal end, the protection of the persons and property of men. "We think that Government, like every other contrivance of human wisdom, from the highest to the lowest, is likely to answer its main end best, when it is constructed with a single view to that end.... "Government is not an institution for the propagation of religion, any more than St. George's Hospital is an institution for the propagation of religion. And the most absurd and pernicious consequences would follow if Government should pursue as its primary end, that which can never be more than its secondary end: though intrinsically more important than its primary end. But a Government which considers the religious instruction of the people as a secondary end, and follows out that principle faithfully, will we think be likely to do much good and little harm."