Modern Leaders: Being a Series of Biographical Sketches — John Shaqi
Modern Leaders: Being a Series of Biographical SketchesMcCarthy, Justin
History
Modern Leaders: Being a Series of Biographical Sketches
McCarthy, Justin
Biography
Church will inflame to iconoclastic fervor the movement of the English
Dissenters against all Church establishments. I do not stop just now to
inquire whether the movement is likely to be successful or how long it
may take to accomplish the object. To me, it seems beyond doubt that it
must succeed; but I do not care to assume even that for the purpose of
my present argument. I only ask my readers to consider the condition of
things which will exist in England when a movement resting on a suffrage
which is almost universal, a movement which will have already overthrown
one State Church within Great Britain, proceeds openly and exultingly to
attack the English Church itself, within its own dominions. I ask
whether it is likely that the institution which is supposed to be bound
up inseparably with that Church, the Monarchy which is based upon, and
exists by virtue of religious ascendency, is likely to escape all
question during such a struggle, and after it? The State Church and the
Aristocracy, if they cannot always be called bulwarks of the throne, are
yet so completely associated with it in the public mind that it is hard
even to think of the one without the others, and yet harder to think of
the one as existing serene and uninjured after the decay or demolition
of the others.
Now, the Aristocracy have, as Mr. Bright put it so truly and so
effectively the other day, already capitulated. They have given up all
notion of any longer making the laws of the country in the interest of
their own class. One of the first things the Reformed Parliament will
do, when it has breathing-time to think about such matters, will be to
abolish the purchase system in the army, and throw open promotion to
merit, without reference to class. The diplomatic service, that other
great stronghold of the Aristocracy, will be thoroughly reorganized and
made a real, useful department, doing solid work, and open to talent of
whatever caste; or it will be abolished altogether. Something will have
to be done with the House of Lords. It, too, must be made a reality, or
dismissed into the land of shadows and the past. Efforts at reforming
it, while it stands on its present basis, are futile. Its existence is,
in its present form, the one great objection to it.
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