Church Association. He spent no money on his contest. His committees conducted their meetings with prayer, and he startled the electors by discussing with them spiritual topics, but he found himself, with Ernest Jones [q. v.] the chartist, at the bottom of the poll. In 1852, however, he succeeded Sharman Crawford in the representation of Rochdale.
In the House of Commons he was not, except upon questions which bore upon disestablishment, a frequent speaker. He was the advocate of voluntaryism in the debates on the Oxford University Bill, the Canadian Clergy Reserves Bill, the Bill for the Abolition of Church Rates, and the Parliamentary Oaths Bill. In 1853 appeared his ‘Bases of Belief, an Examination of Christianity as a Divine Revelation,’ which reached a third edition in 1861. Failing health obliged him to visit Switzerland in August 1854.
In 1856 the Liberation Society resolved on a more aggressive policy, and on 27 May Miall, on its behalf, introduced resolutions in the House of Commons in favour of Irish disestablishment. He was defeated by 163 to 93. At the general election of 1857 he lost his seat like many others of the radical party who had opposed Palmerston. Though he soon contested Tavistock and Banbury, he remained out of parliament for twelve years. Lord Salisbury, president of the council, nominated him, however, in June 1858, a member of the royal commission on education, and the work occupied him for nearly three years. He represented the dissenters on the commission, and opposed state education. Accordingly he and Goldwin Smith presented a joint minority report in March 1861, though he also signed the general report. In 1862 he prepared for the Liberation Society a polemical handbook called ‘The Title Deeds of the Church of England to her Parochial Endowments,’ reprinted from the ‘Nonconformist,’ being an examination into the history and conditions of the tenure of ecclesiastical endowments from the disestablishment point of view. This reached a sixth edition in 1865. After the sixth triennial conference of the Liberation Society in 1862 he received a testimonial of 5,000l. and a service of plate. In 1863 he was the author of the new policy adopted by the Liberation Society, which aimed at inducing the liberal party in the large towns to adopt a programme of disestablishment without qualification. In the autumn of 1866 he carried out a tour of propaganda in Wales. In 1867 he first contested Bradford; but the liberal party was not united, nor were Miall's the views to unite them, and he was defeated by 2,210 votes to 1,807, at a cost of 1,335l. He contested the place for a second time on 18 Nov. 1868. William Edward Forster [q. v.] headed the poll and Miall was last, but the second candidate was unseated for bribery, and at the contest for the vacant seat, 12 March 1869, Miall was returned.
In the house he soon found himself in conflict with his colleague, W. E. Forster, whose Education Bill, 1870, was not as hostile to the established church as Miall, who had at length accepted the principle of state education, desired, and the terms in which he denounced the bill on the third reading brought upon him the strong censure of Mr. Gladstone. With the concurrence of the Liberation Society, he gave notice at the end of the session of 1870 to move for a committee on English disestablishment. After addressing numerous meetings during the winter, he brought on his motion on 9 May 1871, and secured 89 votes to 374. He renewed the motion in the former year and in July 1872, but his supporters only numbered 96 on the first occasion and 61 on the second. His contention throughout was that his motion was as much in the interest of the church of England as in that of the voluntary bodies, and that his hostility was not to the church but to what he regarded as the fatal incubus of state patronage.
But his health was failing. In 1873 ten thousand guineas were subscribed for him, and he announced that he would not again contest Bradford. In 1874 he retired from parliament. Almost his last public appearance was at a liberation conference in Manchester in that year. The death of his wife in January 1876 shook him severely, and though he continued to edit the ‘Nonconformist,’ he lived in retirement. He quitted Honor Oak, near London, where he had lived since 1864, for Sevenoaks in Kent early in 1881, and died there on 29 April 1881. By his wife Louisa, daughter of Edward Holmes of Clayhill, Enfield, whom he married on 25 Jan. 1832, he had two sons—including Arthur, the author of his biography—and three daughters. Apart from the question of disestablishment Miall had few interests, and sought few distractions. For many years he was a contributor to the ‘Illustrated London News,’ and on the income from this source, combined with his stipend as editor of the ‘Nonconformist,’ which was not financially successful, he depended for his livelihood. He was in private life genial, pious, and unassuming, and hardly deserved the reputation for narrowness and bitterness which his public career brought him. As a writer he
