policy involved in the Committee, we see daylight; and the ambiguity in the terms of the reference, of which I have been complaining, disappears. At what price success in this object would be purchased I proceed to indicate.
The first inevitable result would be the alienation—more or less overt, but real and hardly unjustifiable—of that High Church section of the Church in England whose wishes, goodwill, and sympathetic co-operation would be of the highest value to the Irish Church during the progress of its re-settlement. The second result would assume one out of two forms. The alterations must, upon the whole, be favourable either to the Low or to the Broad Church section. If the Low Church should get the advantage, the consequence would be that the Broad Church section would look to its own position, which is as antagonistic to the positive dogmatic assertions—whenever sharply and distinctly advanced—of the Low as of the High Church system, and shape its policy accordingly. This policy would without doubt be one of co-operation with High Churchmen in giving the cold shoulder to the re-cast Irish Church. If, on the other hand, the Broad Church come out victors, the Low Church would, in course of time, find itself drawn into an understanding, confessed or acknowledged, with its older antagonist in favour of the principle of specific doctrine, which would bode no good to a latitudinised Irish Church. The third result would be that even the victorious party, whether Low or Broad, would discover that the contingent patronage of its own re-adjusted Irish Church would not be so simple a procedure, as either or both would find its support under the actual condition of uti possidetis. As the Prayer Book and Articles stand, each section has a colourable pretext for claiming the support of the entire body while it sustains, as a whole, that Church whether in England or Ireland, with the tacit but recognised reservation—the more cheerfully acknowledged
