But if we want a practical comment on the speech of 1844, we have it in an utterance of 1868. In 1868 he defined the position: “... I said the other night, as I say now, that I think you might elevate the _status_ of the unendowed clergy in Ireland.... My opinion is, that if this system of conciliation, founded on the principle that in Ireland _you ought to create and not destroy_, had been pursued, you might have elevated the Irish Church greatly to its advantage. You might have rendered it infinitely more useful.... I do not think it impossible that you might have introduced measures which would have elevated the _status_ of the unendowed clergy, and so softened and terminated those feelings of inequality which now exist, _so that you might have had the same equality in the state of Ireland which you have in England_. There is perfect equality in the state of the Dissenter in England, although his is no established Church. That state of things might exist in Ireland, if you had taken measures which would, among a sensitive people, have prevented a sentiment of humiliation.... Without disestablishment, without the difficulties and dangers of concurrent endowment, there might have been a system of Government grants both to Romanists and Dissenters for education and other public objects. That is how I interpret the ‘ecclesiastical equality’ of 1844; ‘to create and not to destroy.’”[140] And, speaking again of his desire to supplement the educational means for the Roman Catholics, he said: “... That is in accordance with our uniform policy, ... a reconciliation between creeds and classes.”