The High Churchmen, who grew strong as their rivals declined, called themselves Catholics again, and abjured the name of Protestant. To unprotestantise the Church of England had been the confessed purpose of the first Tractarians, and the work had been effectively done. Mr. Gladstone was the most distinguished of their lay adherents. The purity of his life, the loftiness of his principles, his well-known because slightly ostentatious piety commended him generally to the national confidence, English statesmen with strong religious convictions having been recently uncommon articles. Thus, in addition to the ordinary Radical forces, Mr. Gladstone had the support of a great body of influential clergy, who, although tried at times by his questionable associations, continued to believe in him and uphold him--to uphold him especially in his onslaught upon their unfortunate Irish sister. The Irish Church had refused to follow in the new counter-Reformation. The Irish Church was Evangelical to the heart--actively, vigorously, healthily Evangelical--a Church militant in Luther's spirit. 'We have no Tractarians here,' said the Bishop of Cashel to me. 'We have the real thing, and know too much about it.' The life which was showing was of late growth too, and was therefore likely to continue. The Church of Ireland as a missionary institution had not been a success. Established by Elizabeth for political reasons, it had existed for two centuries and a half, making no impression on the mass of the population. Such Protestant spirituality as remained was confined to the Presbyterians of Ulster and the few Southern Nonconformists who were descended from the Cromwellian colonists. The bishops, secured after the Revolution by the Penal Laws, had received their large incomes and consumed them with dignity; but when they exerted themselves it was to persecute Protestant dissenters and drive them out of Ireland. The ancient churches fell to ruins. Incumbents ceased to reside where they had no congregations, left their parishes to underpaid curates, or more commonly to the tithe proctor. So things went on till the long negligence had borne its inevitable fruit. The Nonconformists were then let alone. The rebellion of 1798, the rapid growth of the Catholic population, the immediate contact with the Catholic system in an aggressive form, and the relaxation of the Penal Code gradually roused the clergy to exertion. The ruined churches were repaired or others provided, and before the middle of the present century the Protestant ministers in Ireland were showing a sincerity, a piety, a devotion to the work of their calling of exceptional and peculiar interest. I was myself at that time brought in contact with many of the Established clergy in the southern provinces. They had more of the saintly character of the early Christians than any clergy of any denomination that I had ever fallen in with.