Sir R.N. Inglis was
secure in his seat, and so the contest lay between Mr. Gladstone and Mr.
Round, who was of the ultra-Protestant and Tory school. The contest
excited the keenest interest and was expected on all hands to be
very close.
Mr. Gladstone in his address to the electors of his _Alma Mater_
confessed that in the earlier part of his public life he had been an
advocate for the exclusive support of the national religion of the
state, but it had been in vain; the time was against him. He said: "I
found that scarcely a year passed without the adoption of some fresh
measure involving the national recognition and the national support of
various forms of religion, and, in particular, that a recent and fresh
provision had been made for the propagation from a public chair of Arian
or Socinian doctrines. The question remaining for me was whether, aware
of the opposition of the English people, I should set down as equal to
nothing, in a matter primarily connected not with our own but with their
priesthood, the wishes of the people of Ireland; and whether I should
avail myself of the popular feeling in regard to the Roman Catholics for
the purpose of enforcing against them a system which we had ceased by
common consent to enforce against Arians--a system, above all, of which
I must say that it never can be conformable to policy, to justice or
even to decency, when it has become avowedly partial and one-sided in
its application.
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