For instance:  culture leads us to think that the ends of human perfection might be best served by establishing,—­that is, by bringing into contact with the main current of the national life,—­in Ireland the Roman Catholic and the Presbyterian Churches along with the Anglican Church; and, in England, a Presbyterian or Congregational Church of like rank and status with our Episcopalian one.  It leads us to think that we should really, in this way, be working to make reason and the will of God prevail; because we should be making Roman Catholics better citizens, and Nonconformists,—­nay, and Churchmen along with them,—­ larger-minded and more complete men.  But undoubtedly there are great difficulties in such a plan as this; and the plan is not one which looks very likely to be adopted.  It is a plan more for a time of creative statesmen, like the time of Elizabeth, than for a time of instrumental [liv] statesmen like the present.  The Churchman must rise above his ordinary self in order to favour it; and the Nonconformist has worshipped his fetish of separatism so long that he is likely to wish still to remain, like Ephraim, “a wild ass alone by himself.”  The centre of power being where it is, our instrumental statesmen have every temptation, as is shown more at large in the following essay, in the first place, to “relieve themselves,” as The Times says, “of troublesome and irritating responsibilities;” in the second place, when they must act, to go along, as they do, with the ordinary self of those on whose favour they depend, to adopt as their own its desires, and to serve them with fidelity, and even, if possible, with impulsiveness.  This is the more easy for them, because there are not wanting,—­and there never will be wanting,—­thinkers like Mr. Baxter, Mr. Charles Buxton, and the Dean of Canterbury, to swim with the stream, but to swim with it philosophically; to call the desires of the ordinary self of any great section of the community edicts of the national mind and laws of human progress, and to give them a general, a philosophic, and an imposing expression.  A generous statesman may [lv] honestly, therefore, soon unlearn any disposition to put his tongue in his cheek in advocating these desires, and may advocate them with fervour and impulsiveness.  Therefore a plan such as that which we have indicated does not seem a plan so likely to find favour as a plan for abolishing the Irish Church by the power of the Nonconformists’ antipathy to establishments.

But to tell us that our fond dreams are on that account shattered is inexact, and is the sort of language which ought to be addressed to the promoters of intelligence through public meetings and a commendable interest in politics, when they fail in their designs, and not to us.  For we are fond stickers to no machinery, not even our own; and we have no doubt that perfection can be reached without it,—­with free churches as with established churches, and with instrumental