possessions, or as inconsistent with the doctrine that they are national property, bestowed by the nation on the Church for the service and advantage of the people; deeply interested not only in the maintenance of an Established Church, but in that Church being in the highest possible degree efficient for its holy objects.  Being so bestowed and appropriated, that property must, on every principle of the constitution, be subject to the control of the national Parliament.  And surely that control could never be more legitimately exerted than in carrying out the recommendations of a commission which numbered among its members several of the prelates of the Church, whose profession and position were a guarantee for their anxiety to preserve all the rights of the Church which contributed to its credit or efficiency; while their matured experience enabled them better than any other men to judge how to reconcile the maintenance of its dignity with the extension of its usefulness.

Notes: 

[Footnote 226:  The second resolution affirmed that “this House looks forward to a progressive improvement in the character of the slave population, such as may prepare them for a participation in those civil rights and privileges which are enjoyed by other classes of his Majesty’s subjects.” (Stapleton’s “Life of Canning,” iii., 98, where also large extracts from the minister’s speech are given.)]

[Footnote 227:  Trinidad, St. Lucia, and Demerara were the only British islands which had not separate Legislatures.]

[Footnote 228:  Miss Martineau.  “History of the Thirty Years’ Peace,” book iv., c. viii.]

[Footnote 229:  Alison, “History of Europe,” 2d series, c. xxxi., sec. 74.]

[Footnote 230:  In the debate on the Registration Bill, in 1836, Lord John Russell stated that two hundred and twenty eight unions had already been formed in England and Wales, and that it might be calculated that when the whole country was divided into unions the entire number would amount to something more than eight hundred.]

[Footnote 231:  See Lord Althorp’s speech, of parts of which an abstract is given in the text.—­Parliamentary Debates, xxii., April 17.]

[Footnote 232:  Lord Althorp made the following frightful statement of the crimes committed in the province of Leinster alone in the last three months of 1832 and the first three of 1833:  207 murders, 271 cases of arson.  The assaults attended with grievous personal injury were above 1000; burglaries and robberies, above 3000.]

[Footnote 233:  It was often asserted that fourteen-fifteenths of the land in Ireland belonged to Protestants, but this estimate was, probably, an exaggeration.]

[Footnote 234:  “Memoirs of Sir Robert Peel,” ii., 3, 19.]

[Footnote 235:  “Memoirs of Sir Robert Peel,” pp. 31, 32.]

[Footnote 236:  “One important question I found practically, and perhaps unavoidably, decided before my arrival, namely, the dissolution of the existing Parliament.  Every one seemed to have taken it for granted that the Parliament must be dissolved, and preparations had accordingly been made almost universally for the coming contest.”—­Peel’s Memoirs, ii., 43.]