A third cry, which used to be loud and general, but is now greatly reduced in volume, is the disestablishment of the Church of England. A large and powerful society has been working for this end for many years. Members have been sent up to the House, pledged to bring about these results. Yet the Church remains. When the Irish Church was disestablished, nearly thirty years ago, every one said that the English Church would go next. What excellent prophets we are. How many similar predictions do I remember! The Irish Church was disestablished because it was not the Church of the people, but of a small section. The English Church remains, because it is the Church of the majority, and is without doubt becoming more so every year. The Churches are crammed with people--of the better sort: the working-man, though as a rule he does not go to Church, has learned during the last sixty years to regard the Establishment with friendliness and respect, if not with gratitude and affection. [Illustration: KENSINGTON PALACE IN 1819] We see in this country at the present day a loyalty to the Crown, to equal which we must go back to the reign of Queen Elizabeth; and for the same principal reasons, a Sovereign personally respected and beloved, a period of marvellous expansive prosperity and advancement of every kind. We see the Republican form of Government no longer advocated; the House of Lords no longer attacked; the old cry for the disestablishment of the Church growing daily weaker; the See of Canterbury extending everywhere its authority, and promising to become the Rome of the Episcopal Church. I call attention to another point. Everybody knows that a great part of the history of this country consists of the long and never-ending struggles of the King to extend his prerogative, and of the people to maintain their rights. To observe that the reign of Queen Victoria presents not one single instance of a desire on the Queen’s part to extend her powers--those powers are much less than those of the President of the United States--she has been contented with them. Again, she has welcomed every act of reform; she has always shown a perfect trust in the whole people; she has clung to no small clique of families; she has admitted no reservation of aristocratic caste; she has willingly received as her ministers such men as Gladstone, Disraeli, John Morley, James Bryce, and others who have no pretensions whatever to aristocratic descent; she has been, in a word, entirely loyal to the Constitution: she has lived, not for herself, but for the Empire.