FORE:The Hanoverian dynasty and the Walpole Ministry made rapid strides in popularity, and carried all before them. The new Parliament met in January, 1728, and Walpole's party had in the House four hundred and twenty-seven members, all staunch in his support. So strong was the party in power, that several measures were carried which at other times would have raised discontent. It was proposed by Horace Walpole that two hundred and thirty thousand pounds should be voted for maintaining twelve thousand Hessians in the king's service. The Duke of Brunswick was, by treaty, to be paid twenty-five thousand pounds a year for four years for the maintenance of five thousand more troops.But all this was but preliminary to the great battle which commenced on the 30th of this month and decided the fate of the Ministry. Lord John Russell, after the House had been called over, moved, "That the House should resolve itself into a committee of the whole House, to consider the temporalities of the Church of Ireland, with a view of applying any surplus of the revenues not required for the spiritual care of its members to the general education of all classes of the people, without distinction of religious persuasion." This resolution was skilfully framed to secure the support of all the Liberal party, and of the English Dissenters as well as the Irish Catholics; all of them being able to agree upon it, and to act together without inconsistency, though each might act from different motives and with different objects. The discussion was particularly interesting, as it turned very much upon the great question of religious establishments. Lord John Russell, Lord Howick, and Mr. Sheil, while fully admitting that an establishment tends to promote religion and to preserve good order, contended that it ought not to be maintained where it fails to secure these objects, and that it must always fail when, as in Ireland, the members of the Established Church are only a minority of the nation, while the majority, constituting most of the poorer classes, are thrown upon the voluntary system for the support of their clergy. Concurring with Paley in his view of a Church establishmentthat it should be founded upon utility, that it should communicate religious knowledge to the masses of the people, that it should not be debased into a State engine or an instrument of political power,they demanded whether the Church of Ireland fulfilled these essential conditions of an establishment. They asked whether its immense revenues had been employed in preserving and extending the Protestant faith in Ireland. In the course of something more than a century it was stated that its revenues had increased sevenfold, and now amounted to 800,000 a year. Had its efficiency increased in the same proportion? Had it even succeeded in keeping its own small flocks within the fold? On the contrary, they adduced statistics to show a lamentable falling off in their numbers.
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