thus inherited from an immemorial past, were
secured to her by the Act of Disestablishment. For the rest, the
endowments which she enjoys at the present time have been created since
1870 by the self-denial and generosity of her clergy and laity. Under
British law, her position is secure. But would she be secure under Home
Rule? Those of her advisers who have most right to speak with authority
are convinced that she would not. The Bishop of Ossory, in an able and
very moderate statement made at the meeting of the Synod of that
Diocese, last September, showed that both the principal churches and the
endowments now held by the Church of Ireland have been claimed
repeatedly by prominent representatives of the Church of Rome. It is
stated that the Church sites and buildings belong to the Roman Communion
in Ireland because, on Roman Catholic principles, that communion truly
represents the ancient Irish Church, and no lapse of time can invalidate
the Church's title; and that the endowments belong to the same communion
because they "represent moneys derived from pre-Disestablishment days,
which were, in their turn, the alienated possessions of the Roman
Church" (see Bishop of Ossory's Synod Address, p. 7). As regards this
last statement, it must be noted that the only sense in which it can be
truly said that the endowments represent moneys derived from
pre-Disestablishment days is that the foundation of the new financial
system was laid by the generosity of the clergy in office at the time.
They entrusted to the Representative Body of the Church the capitalised
value of the life-interests secured to them by the Act. The money was
their private property, and their action one which involved great
self-denial, for they gave up the security offered by the State. The
money was so calculated that the whole should be exhausted when all
payments were made. By good management, however, it yielded considerable
profit, and meanwhile formed a foundation on which to build. It was,
however, in no sense an endowment given by the State, nor was it a fund
on which any but the legal owners (_i.e._ the clergy of the time) had a
justifiable claim.

The Bishop of Ossory's statement excited much discussion, but, though
many Roman Catholic apologists endeavoured to laugh away his fears as
groundless, not one denied the validity of his argument. The fact that,
as he showed, the Church of Ireland holds her churches by exactly the
same title as that by