political liberty, and combined them with order. We achieved complete religious liberty, and we united it with a national faith. These two immense exploits have won for this country regulated freedom and temperate religion.... Speaking now not as a partisan, I believe the Tory party, however it may at times have erred, has always been the friend of local government, and that _the instinct of the nation made it feel that on local government political freedom depended_.”[101] “It is said,” he remarked three years afterwards, after commenting on the historical union between Church and State--“two originally independent powers,” and the fact that their alliance has prevented the spiritual power from “usurping upon the civil and establishing a sacerdotal society,” as well as the civil power from invading “the rights of the spiritual,” and from degrading its ministers into “salaried instruments of the Government.”--“It is said,” he continued, “that the existence of Nonconformity proves that the Church is a failure. I draw from these premises an exactly contrary conclusion; and I maintain that to have secured a national profession of faith with the unlimited enjoyment of private judgment in matters spiritual is ... one of the triumphs of civilisation.” Nonconformity he considered a misfortune, though it was a symptom of national freedom. With Nonconformists, however, he sympathised. It was with indifference that he warred. Let me illustrate these points. In an earlier speech he addresses himself to prove that the Church is none the less truly national because millions of the nation are not in communion with it; and he analyses Nonconformity.