By this measure, the withdrawal of tithes and land rents and other properties amounted to sixteen millions; and after paying ministers and actual incumbents their stipends of between seven or eight millions, there would remain a surplus of seven or eight millions, with which Mr. Gladstone proposed to endow lunatic and idiot asylums, schools for the deaf, dumb, and blind, institutions for the training of nurses, for infirmaries, and hospitals for the needy people of Ireland.

There can be no rational doubt that this reform was beneficent, and it met the approval of the Liberal party, being supported with a grand eloquence by John Bright, who had under this ministry for the first time taken office,—­as President of the Board of Trade; but it gave umbrage to the Irish clergy as a matter of course, to the Presbyterians of Ulster, to the Catholics as affecting Maynooth, and to the conservatives of Oxford and Cambridge on general principles.  It was a reform not unlike that of Thomas Cromwell in the time of Henry VIII., when he dissolved the monasteries, though not quite so violent as the secularization of church property in France in the time of the Revolution.  It was a spoliation, in one sense, as well as a needed reform,—­a daring and bold measure, which such statesmen as Lords Liverpool, Aberdeen, and Palmerston would have been slow to make, and the weak points of which Disraeli was not slow to assail.  To the radical Dissenters, as led by Mr. Miall, it was a grateful measure, which would open the door for future discussions on the disestablishment of the English Church itself,—­a logical contingency which the premier did not seem to appreciate; for if the State had a right to take away the temporalities of the Irish Church when they were abused, the State would have an equal right to take away those of the English Church should they hereafter turn out to be unnecessary, or become a scandal in the eyes of the nation.

One would think that this disestablishment of the Irish Church would have been the last reform which a strict churchman like Gladstone would have made; certainly it was the last for a politic statesman to make, for it brought forth fruit in the next general election.  It is true that the Irish Establishment had failed in every way, as Mr. Bright showed in one of his eloquent speeches, and to remove it was patriotic.  If Mr. Gladstone had his eyes open, however, to its natural results as affecting his own popularity, he deserves the credit of being the most unselfish and lofty statesman that ever adorned British annals.

Having thus in 1869 removed one important grievance in the affairs of Ireland, Mr. Gladstone soon proceeded to another, and in February, 1870, brought forward, in a crowded House, his Irish Land Bill.  The evil which he had in view to cure was the insecurity of tenure, which resulted in discouraging and paralyzing the industry of tenants, especially in the matter of evictions for non-payment of rent, and the raising