_Regium Donum_, or annual subvention of the Presbyterians. As Mr. Horsman said, Lord Mayo seemed to be looking everywhere for a policy without being able to find it. Inaction as regards the Church, procrastination as regards the Land, reaction as regards Education--such was the Irish policy of the Government. The idea of “levelling up” the endowments of the Catholics was felt to be impracticable, for it would have involved an expenditure of about £3,000,000 a year. If this sum were raised by Irish taxation, the Irish Catholics would naturally object to pay to their priests through the State the stipends which they already paid them as free-will offerings. If it were raised by Imperial taxation, it was hopeless to expect the Protestants of England and Scotland to endow an Ultramontane Catholic Church in Ireland. The scheme for a new Catholic University was equally objectionable. It was to have no connection with the State. Hence it would be a standing challenge to the accepted national policy of education, which links State control with State aid. As a remedy for Irish grievances, Mr. Bright likened it to the pill which Addison’s quack sold “to cure the earthquake.” Mr. Gladstone attacked the Government with all the eloquence of action. His policy he declared to be the disestablishment and disendowment of the Irish Protestant Church, and he announced that he would take the opinion of the House on a definite proposal for carrying it out. For that purpose he produced three Resolutions on the 23rd of March, which affirmed the necessity for creating no new interests in the Irish Church, “pending the final decision of Parliament.” In a letter to Lord Dartmouth, Mr. Disraeli met the attack by raising a false issue. It was not, he said, the Irish Church that was at stake. What Mr. Gladstone challenged was really “the sacred union of Church and State, which has hitherto been the chief means of our civilisation, and is the only security of our liberty.” It was obviously indiscreet for a Tory Minister to assert that the principle of a State Church was involved in the maintenance of an ecclesiastical establishment which served no State purpose whatever, save that of making the Irish people hate England. Mr. Gladstone’s scheme was to terminate the existence in Ireland of any salaried or stipendiary clergy paid by the State, whether Catholic or Protestant; though, by way of compensation for life-interests, he promised to leave three-fifths of their endowments in the hands of the Anglican clergy. Lord Stanley moved an amendment which pleaded for delay. After a new Parliament had been elected, the Government, he said, would bring in a scheme to reform the Church of Ireland. Coupled with his admission that “considerable modifications in the temporalities” of the Irish Church would be necessary, his speech disgusted Mr. Disraeli’s Orange supporters, and dispirited his English followers. What, asked