He objected to it on principle--the principles outlined in my second chapter. The union of Church and State is a symbol of the Divine nature of government, which is the only truth underlying the obsolete fiction of the “Divine Right of Kings.” He objected to it on policy. Divorce the religious principle from that of government, and it is the State that will suffer most. The result must be disorder. One day that might take a peculiar form. The political power once separated from the spiritual, a crisis might arise where the two might collide; and where, though the political power might be right, the spiritual would appeal in haste to both passion and prejudice. As regards the _Disendowment_. He objected to it on principle. The plunder of public corporations was nothing new, but where the trust for which the corporation had been endowed was not observed in the application of the spoil by the State, which was a trustee, it was indefensible. It became confiscation. “Irish purposes” were vaguely hinted as the destination, but the repeal of the whisky duty might be an “Irish purpose;” and where was the sense of dedicating some of this annexed property to Irish pauper lunatics? Moreover, historically, he had always noticed that the spoil of the Church went eventually to enrich the large landed proprietors. He objected to it on policy. One of the causes of discontent was alleged to be that a particular Church was not connected with the State. Mr. Gladstone proposed to regenerate the country by having _three_ Churches not connected with the State. Discontent, however, would still remain smouldering, and Disraeli prophesied that its next phase would threaten the tenure of land. What would be the effect in this relation of having three Churches disconnected from the State? The land question would, he predicted, assume many threatening forms with one purpose--a purpose against the rights and the duties of property. One Church was to be deprived of property which none of the others claimed. Three sets of clergy were to be equally apart from the State. A class in the first place, therefore, and that a class of resident proprietors, was to be destroyed; when it was agreed that one of the evils in Ireland was the want of a variety of classes and of resident proprietors. In the second, one of the avowed evils, the curse of Ireland, was poverty; but here was an Act to confiscate property, and that property in its nature popular--the appanage of the people.