ereign
to be less than at the conduct of unworthy sons of the church of England
within her own gates. He wound up by declaring that the great mass of
the nation looked with contempt upon the mummeries of superstition.
Justified indeed was Bright's stern rebuke to a prime minister of the
Queen who thus allowed himself to offend and to indict eight millions of
his countrymen, recklessly to create fresh discords between the Irish
and English nations, and to perpetuate animosities that the last
five-and-twenty years had done so much to assuage. Having thus
precipitately committed himself, the minister was forced to legislate.
'I suspect,' wrote Mr. Gladstone to his great friend, Sir Walter James,
'John Russell has more rocks and breakers ahead than he reckoned upon
when he dipped his pen in gall to smite first the pope, but most those
who not being papists are such traitors and fools as really to mean
something when they say, "I believe in one Holy Catholic Church."' There
was some division of opinion in the cabinet,[259] but a bill was
settled, and the temper of the times may be gauged by the fact that
leave to introduce it was given by the overwhelming majority of 395
votes to 63.

In his own language, Mr. Gladstone lamented and disapproved of the
pope's proceeding extremely, and had taken care to say so in parliament
two and a half years before, when 'Lord John Russell, if he had chosen,
could have stopped it; but the government and the press were alike
silent at that period.'[260] His attitude is succinctly described in a
letter to Greswell, his Oxford chairman, in 1852: 'Do not let it be
asserted without contradiction that I ever felt or counselled
indifference in regard to the division of England into Romish dioceses.
So far is this from being the truth that shortly after I was elected,
_when the government were encouraging the pope to proceed_, and when
there was yet time to stop the measure (which I deplore sincerely) by
amicable means, I took the opportunity in the House (as did Sir R.
Inglis, I _think_ a little later), of trying to draw attention to it.
But it was nobody's game then, and the subject fell to the ground.
Amicable prevention I desired; spiritual and ecclesiastical resistance I
heartily approved; but while I say this, I cannot recede from one inch
of the ground I took in opposing the bill, and I would far rather quit
parliament for ever than not have voted against so pernicious a
measure.'

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