Price, Fifty Cents. 
 
 It^elandand 
 
 The Pope. 
 
 A BRIEF HISTORY 
 
 OF 
 
 PAPAL INTRIGUBS 
 Against Irish Liberty 
 
 FROM 
 
 Adrian IV. to Lieo Xlll. 
 
 By James G. Maguire, 
 
 JUDGE OF THE SUPERIOR COURt OF SAN FRANCISCO, CALrFORNIA. 
 
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. 
 
 @I|Hjt* ^J^MJrfit 3n* 
 
 Shelf i.f£t 
 
 UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 
 
Il^elcind and 
 
 The Pope. 
 
 A BRIEF HISTORY 
 
 OF 
 
 PAPAL INTRIGUBS 
 Against Irish Liberty 
 
 FROM 
 
 fldman IV. to lieo XIII. 
 
 By James G. Maguire, 
 
 > V 
 JUDGE OF THE SUPERIOR COURT OF SAN FRANCISCO, CALIFORNIA. 
 
 " The Rescript jnust be obeyedy 
 
 J. Cardinal Simeoni. 
 
 "Aye, 
 They can crush us as in ages flown. 
 What to them is a nation's anguish ? — 
 Nothing more than a dying groan." 
 
 Una. 
 
 SAN FRANCISCO: 
 
 JAMES H. BARRY, 429 MONTGOMERY STREET, 
 
 1888. 
 

 Copyright, 1888, by James G. Maguire. 
 
 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. 
 
DEDICATION. 
 
 To the heroes who, in spite of popes and kings, 
 poured their blood on the altar of Irish liberty, and 
 thus kept alive the patriot flame, through the long 
 centuries of Ireland's night of slavery ; and to all 
 the living priests and people who believe that Ire- 
 land's struggle for liberty should not be postponed 
 to await the pleasure of any foreign potentate, this 
 book is affectionately dedicated. 
 
 The Author. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 Page. 
 Dedication 3 
 
 Preface 5 
 
 Chapter I — Introduction 9 
 
 II— Bull of Adrian IV 14 
 
 III — The Bull of Pope Alexander III. and the Synod 
 
 of Cashel 20 
 
 IV — Humiliating the Irish Priests and People 26 
 
 V — Papal Interference with Irish Struggles for 
 
 Liberty after the Conquest 38 
 
 VI— The Religious Wars 41 
 
 VII — A sop to Cerberus 45 
 
 VIII — The Repeal Movement killed by a Rescript. ... 49 
 IX — The Young Ireland Movement killed by Bishops 
 
 and Priests 57 
 
 X — The Fenian Movement Opposed by the Church 71 
 XI — The Home Rule Movement Opposed by the 
 
 Church 73 
 
 XII — ^The Land League Opposed by the Pope 76 
 
 XIII— The Last Rescript 83 
 
 XIV — Plan of Campaign and Boycott vs. Rack Rent, 
 
 Eviction and Rules of Estate 84 
 
 XV— Pope Leo's Boycott on Dr. McGlynn 96 
 
 XVI — Vatican Politics — the Italian Ring 100 
 
 XVII— Conclusion 110 
 
 List of Authorities 114 
 
 Appendix A — Full translation of the Bull of Pope Adrian IV. 
 
 granting Ireland to King Henry II 115 
 
 Appendix B — Full translation of the Bull of Pope Alexander 
 
 III. confirming the grant of Adrian 116 
 
 Appendix C— The text of the last Rescript 117 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 This book is written to supply what I conceive 
 to be not only a demand but a real necessity. Its 
 purpose is to show the wrong and injustice of 
 papal interference with the struggles of the Irish 
 people to regain the national independence which 
 they lost through the treachery of an English 
 pope. 
 
 To show the extent, persistence and deadly 
 character of that interference. 
 
 And to point out the necessity, and the patriotic 
 duty of firmly and constantly rejecting and resist- 
 ing every political edict, issued by a pope or inqui- 
 sition, respecting Irish affairs. 
 
 I am painfully aware of the extreme difficulty, if 
 not impossibility, of exposing and condemning 
 the political errors and faults of one who is the 
 spiritual head of a church, without working some 
 injury to the church which he represents. 
 
 To the delicacy and difficulty of this position, I 
 attribute the otherwise remarkable circumstance 
 that the very interesting and important facts 
 herein set forth have never before been presented 
 in any collected or connected form. 
 
 But the occasion demands that those facts be 
 now given to the world fully and fairly, without 
 either malice or timidity. Whatever the reader 
 
O PREFACE, 
 
 may think of the conclusions, which I have freely 
 and candidly stated, he will find the statements of 
 fact to be reliable and can readily verify all the 
 more important of them by referring to the author-, 
 ities which I have fully cited. 
 
 I conceive it to be a most marvelous record of an 
 alliance of centuries, which has been characterized 
 by constant and simple faith and confidence, on 
 one side, and equally constant duplicity, ingratitude 
 and tyranny on the other. 
 
 To the ultramontanes who may read this book 
 and whose stereotyped criticism I may now fairly 
 anticipate, I have but to say, that it is not my 
 fault that the spiritual heads of the Catholic 
 Church claim also to be, by divine right, temporal 
 rulers, theoretically, over all nations, and in ter- 
 rible reality over Ireland. 
 
 It is not my fault, but more shame to them, if 
 the publication of the political history which they 
 have made, shall disadvantao-e the church whose 
 spiritual interests were confided to them, and 
 should have been their first and constant care. 
 
 On this subject I can only add that I am not 
 in the business of proselyting and disclaim any 
 such purpose. 
 
 I speak neither as a friend nor as an enemy of the 
 Catholic religion, and have said not a word con- 
 cerning its doctrines, its principles, its sacraments 
 or its forms. 
 
 The truth or falsity, the soundness or unsound- 
 ness of the articles and rules of faith of that reli- 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 gion have nothing to do with Ireland's right to in- 
 dependent nationality or to Home Rule. 
 
 I desire, above all things, to separate those two 
 questions by a wide and unmistakable line, and to 
 distinguish, as well as I may, between the dual 
 — religious and political — capacities which the 
 Pope, unfortunately, occupies. 
 
 I speak as an American descendant of the 
 Irish race; as an admirer of the Irish character; 
 as a sympathizer in the struggles and trials of the 
 Irish people and in their hereditary aspirations for 
 liberty. 
 
 That a man may be a good Catholic and at the 
 same time an Irish patriot, seven centuries of so- 
 called "sedition," in which the people were often 
 led by their soggartJis aroon, attest. 
 
 That a man may reject the tenets of the Catho- 
 lic religion and yet be an equally good Irish 
 patriot, bear witness: Grattan, Emmet, Wolfe 
 Tone, Davis, Mitchel, Parnell, and all the brave 
 leaders and soldiers of Protestant faith, who, for 
 more than a century, have graced and glorified the 
 political and military struggles for Irish liberty. 
 
 While I believe and declare that religion has 
 and should have nothing to do with Irish poli- 
 tics, I have, in writing this book, a purpose which 
 the public mind will not wholly disconnect from 
 religion, principally because the art and finesse of 
 religio-political Italian statesmanship have so 
 interwoven questions of religion and politics. 
 
 That purpose is to assist in raising rhy father's 
 
O PREFACE. 
 
 countrymen and my own kinsmen above that 
 groveling- fear of the Pope, which makes so 
 many of them nerveless when he strikes a blow at 
 their country and their race, and above their 
 present discreditable confidence in men who have 
 proved themselves " the veriest slaves of treach- 
 ery." 
 
 There is no other people on earth that the Pope 
 would treat as he is treating, or as he has treated, 
 the Irish; and this is simply because there is no 
 other people on earth — not even one of the half- 
 Indian states of South America — that would tol- 
 erate such political interference at his hands. 
 
 The Pope, in this respect, enjoys the unenviable, 
 not to say infamous, distinction of being dangerous 
 only to those who confide in him. I confidently 
 expect that my work will meet with the approval 
 not only of Irish patriots, of all shades of religious 
 belief, but that it will be acceptable to the think- 
 ing Catholics of every country, who cannot fail to 
 realize how greatly the true interests of the Catho- 
 lic Church would be advanced by relieving it of 
 the incubus of political intrigue against which my 
 blows are aimed. 
 
 James G. Maguire. 
 
 San Francisco, June 4th, 1888. 
 
CHAPTER I. 
 
 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 " The Holy Father must have been misinformed 
 by evil advisers, or he would never have taken 
 sides with English tyranny and landlord robbery 
 against our sorely oppressed and long suffering 
 people/' said a devout Catholic and brave but dis- 
 heartened Irish patriot to me a few days since. 
 "Do you think," I asked, "that Archbishop 
 Walsh, who has been for some time in Rome con- 
 sulting with the Pope on the Irish question, made 
 false statements to the detriment of his people ?" 
 "Oh, no, indeed," he replied. "I refer to the 
 Duke of Norfolk, Errington, Monsignor Persico 
 and other anti- Irish aristocrats and Castle Catho- 
 lics, who are, unfortunately, nearer to His Holi- 
 ness than are the friends of Ireland." * 
 
 This good man is but one among thousands, 
 aye millions, who firmly believe that the Pope has 
 been imposed upon by false information concern- 
 ing the Irish question. 
 
 The absurdity of this theory must be at once ap- 
 parent to all who stop to think that there are in Ire- 
 
lO IRELAND AND THE POPE. 
 
 land about twenty-eight bishops and archbishops, 
 and thousands of priests, all in the immediate ser- 
 vice of, under the control of, and in direct com- 
 munication with, the Vatican, and that this great 
 and intelligent body of men are thoroughly con- 
 versant with the minutest details of the every-day 
 life of the people of all parts of Ireland. 
 
 To say that he is ignorant of the true state of 
 Irish affairs is to assume that he does not think 
 the Irish priesthood worth consulting; and, to say 
 that he has been deceived by a few English and 
 pro-English intriguers, is to assume that he at- 
 taches more value to the statements of a few 
 secret emissaries than he does to the solemn offi- 
 cial testimony of this great body of pious and de- 
 voted bishops and priests. 
 
 No, the Pope is not misinformed concerning 
 the Irish question. He has acted deliberately, 
 upon full knowledge, and upon a resolution 
 formed more than one year ago, and, like his 
 sudden support of Bismarck, " the arch enemy 
 and persecutor of the Catholic Church," this act 
 had a political price, which it is to be hoped Lord 
 Salisbury may never be able to pay. 
 
 But, you may ask : "What evidence have you 
 to support the statement that the present papal 
 blow at the Irish national movement was premed- 
 
INTRODUCTION. . I I 
 
 itated for more than a year ? " To this question 
 I answer by presenting the two principal and all- 
 sufficient facts, namely: 
 
 1, Monsignor Persico, in his letter of Octo- 
 ber last to the Pope, expressly shows that he was 
 sent to Ireland to pave the way for the destruc- 
 tion of the Irish National League. 
 
 2. The edict is in perfect harmony with the 
 course of the Vatican concerning Irish political 
 affairs for more than seven hundred years. 
 
 Monsignor Persico was not sent to Ireland 
 "for the purpose of learning, by actual observa- 
 tion, the true condition and political methods of 
 the Irish people," as the telegraph informed us at 
 the time of his visit, but for the purpose of cajol- 
 ing and coercing the Irish priesthood into leaving 
 and opposing the Irish National League. 
 
 This purpose was disclosed by the publica- 
 tion at Rome of a letter sent by him to the 
 Pope, in October last, in which he expressed re- 
 gret that his mission thus far had been a failure, 
 because "the Irish priests would not abandon the 
 political struggle of their countrymen, even when 
 urged to do so in the name of the Pontiff and for 
 the good of the Church." 
 
 While this treacherous ecclesiastical statesman, 
 *' this genial confidante and general spy," who, ac- 
 
12 IRELAND AND THE POPE. 
 
 cording to his own confession, was in Ireland as a 
 secret enemy of the Irish cause, doing the work of 
 *' Bloody Balfour " and his Tory master, he was 
 winning loud applause from the Irish people by 
 praising "with mimic openness of soul," their de- 
 votion and submission to the Holy Father, and 
 assuring them of the latter's deep and unwavering 
 love. 
 
 It is said that when Cortez, with his little band 
 of freebooters, entered the populous and hospitable 
 districts of Mexico, he won his way largely by 
 teaching the divine truths of Christianity to the 
 people whom he had come to rob and outrage, to 
 enslave and murder. 
 
 I believe it was Lawrence Sterne who said: 
 " Of all the cants that were ever canted in this 
 world, the cant of hypocrisy is the worst." 
 
 But the whole history of Vatican interference 
 with Irish politics shows an unbroken line, for 
 seven hundred years, of acts hostile to the liber- 
 ties and natural rights of the Irish people. 
 
 The subjugation of Ireland to English rule, as 
 is well known to all students of Irish history, was 
 not accomplished by the force of English arms, 
 but by the decree and grant of Pope Adrian IV.,* 
 
 * See full translation of bull, Appendix A. 
 
INTRODUCTION. 1 3 
 
 supplemented and enforced by the decrees and 
 orders of Pope Alexander III.* 
 
 While, as I have said, these facts are well 
 known to all students of Irish history, and while 
 they are fully attested by every Irish historian 
 worthy of the name.clerical influences have always 
 kept the great masses of the Irish people in igno- 
 rance of them, so that to-day not one among a 
 hundred of the Irish people knows how their coun- 
 try lost her nationality, and still fewer are aware 
 of the persistent efforts of the successors of Adrian 
 and Alexander to keep Ireland in the slavery to 
 which their infamous bargain delivered her. 
 
 I shall, therefore, commence with the beginning, 
 and make a plain, brief statement of the facts in 
 chronological order, giving specific reference to 
 my authorities, so that those who have the leisure 
 and desire may conveniently test the accuracy of 
 my statements, or study the details of events and 
 transactions of which I can here give but a gen- 
 eral outline. 
 
 Finding the standard Irish and Catholic histo- 
 ries sufficiently full and accurate upon these ques- 
 tions for my purpose, I have rejected all others, 
 save in the matter of Lord Palmerston's intrigues 
 withthe Vatican, the most satisfactory evidence of 
 
 * See full translation of bull. Appendix B. 
 
14 IRELAND AND THE POPE. 
 
 which I find in his biography ; and in the matter 
 of the later intrigues of Pius IX. and Leo XIII., 
 which have not yet reached the pages of authentic 
 Irish history, but which are fresh in the minds of 
 all sympathizers with the cause against which they 
 were aimed. 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 BULL OF ADRIAN IV. 
 
 In the year 1152 Ireland was a prosperous and 
 independent nation, holding " her place among 
 the nations of the earth." 
 
 Then it was that: " Argosies, laden with riches 
 the rarest, gracefully dipped their proud ensigns " 
 to her banner. 
 
 Her people were Catholics, and had for many 
 generations looked lovingly to the Pope of Rome 
 as their spiritual father, but they neither owned 
 nor recognized any political allegiance to him. 
 Then, as now, the Irish people were noted for 
 their bravery, chivalry and generosity; but, then, 
 they were learned* and respected for that most 
 priceless quality of respectability — political inde- 
 pendence — whilst now, and, alas, through all the 
 dark and cruel centuries that have intervened, they 
 have been crushed in ignorance, humiliation and 
 
 * Pope Adrian himself was "instructed in philosophy and divinity by 
 Marianus O'Gorman, an Irish professor." O'Halloran's Hist., Bk. XIII, 
 Ch. Ill, p. 307. . 
 
BULL OF ADRIAN IV. 1 5 
 
 dependence between the upper and the nether 
 millstone of Italian intrigue and British tyranny. 
 
 In that fatal year Cardinal John Paparo appeared 
 in Ireland* as the special legate of Pope Eugenius 
 III. He was the first Italian legate ever sent to 
 Ireland — may Persico be the last! Resummoned 
 the bishops and principal priests to the Synod of 
 Kells, and there delivered palliumst to the arch- 
 bishops, taking their oaths of obedience to the 
 Pope. 
 
 From that hour dates the downfall of Irish 
 nationality. The spirit of Clontarf never ceased 
 to animate them, but from that hour the children 
 of Erin, though foremost and bravest in the 
 armies of liberty throughout the world, have been 
 slaves at home The people who had over- 
 whelmed the powerful Danes and driven them 
 from their shores, tamely bowed their heads to re- 
 ceive the yoke of the Saxons. Why.'^ We need 
 
 * Haverty's Hist. Ireland, Chap. XVI., p. 162. 
 
 + The pallium is " a band of white wool, worn on the shoulders. It 
 has two strings of the same material and four purple crosses worked on it. 
 It is worn by the Pope and sent by him to patriarchs, primates, archbishops, 
 and sometimes, though rarely, to bishops^ as a token that niey possess the 
 'fullness of the episcopal ofifice'. Two lambs are brought annually to the 
 church of St. Agnes at Rome, by the Apostolic sub-deacons, while the 
 'Agnus Dei' is being sung. These lambs are presented at the altar and 
 received by two canons of the Lateran Church. From this wool the pallia 
 are made by the nuns of Torre de Specchi. The sub-deacons lay the pallia 
 on the tomb of St. Peter, where they remain all night." 
 
 Catholic Dictionary, Addis & Arnold, Tit. "Pallium." 
 
l6 IRELAND AND THE POPE. 
 
 not seek far for the answer. With the coming of 
 Cardinal Paparo, his palliums and his oaths of 
 obedience, came also the claim of temporal sov- 
 ereignty asserted by the Pope. 
 
 This temporal power was speedily turned to the 
 Pope's financial and political advantage. In the 
 year 1 1 54 Henry 1 1 . became King of England, and 
 shortly afterwards sent John of Salisbury to Rome 
 as a Royal emissary.'^ The King desired to add 
 Ireland to his kingdom, and the Pope desired to 
 put Ireland under tribute to the Vatican ; the 
 Irish people having previously "paid those 
 small dues called Peter's pence to the See of 
 Armagh, which the rest of Europe paid to Rome."t 
 
 In the year 1156 Pope Adrian IV. gave to 
 Henry II., King of England, a bull granting to 
 him the political sovereignty of Ireland; address- 
 ing him as " my dearest son in Christ, the illustri- 
 ous King of England;" authorizing him " to enter 
 Ireland, to reduce the people to obedience under 
 the laws, and to extirpate the plants of vice," on 
 condition that he would " pay from each (meaning 
 from each Jrish family) a yearly pension of one 
 penny to St. Peter, and that you will preserve the 
 rights of the churches of this land inviolate."J 
 
 * Haverty'sHist., Chap. XVIII., p. i88. 
 
 + O'Halloran's Hist. Ireland, Bk. XII., Chap. VI., p. 286. 
 
 t This bull, copies of which are in the ancient Vatican records, is pub- 
 
BULL OF ADRIAN IV. 1 7 
 
 The genuineness of this bull is "attested by all 
 of the Irish historians, except Abbe MacGeoghe- 
 gan"^ and Thomas Mooney, from Geraldus Cam- 
 brensis in 1178, to the Nun ofKenmare in 1876^ 
 and the last edition of Haverty by Thomas 
 Kelly in 1885.! 
 
 The Nun of Kenmare says of this bull: 
 " There can be no reasonable doubt of the authen- 
 ticity of this document. Baronius publsihed it 
 from the Codex Vaticanus\ John XXII. (Pope), 
 annexed it to his brief addressed to Edward II. 
 (Edward 111.); and John of Salisbury (Catholic 
 Bishop of Chartres, then secretary to the Arch- 
 of Canterbury, states distinctly in his Metalogicus, 
 that he obtained this bull from Adrian."^; 
 
 To the same effect, citing further proofs, is 
 Haverty, II while Dr. O'Halloran ("The Irish 
 
 lished in full, in the original Latin text, by Dr. O'Halloran (Hist. p. 310), 
 and full translations are published by O'Halloran (Hist. p. 305); Haverty 
 (Hist. p. 189) ; Wright (Hist. Ireland, p. 85) ; Ferguson (The Irish Before 
 the Conquest, p. 288); and Walsh (Irish Hierarchy, p. 662.) See Ap- 
 pendix A. 
 
 * In his histoiy of Ireland, as translated by Dr. Kelly (p. 18), the Abbe 
 states that the bull was procured from Adrian, but he subsequently makes 
 an argument to discredit its genuineness. 
 
 + O'Halloran's Hist., pp. 305 to 311 ; Haverty's Hist., pp. 1S7 to 193 ; 
 McGee's Hist. Ireland, Vol. I, p. 136; Carew's Ecclesiastical Hist. Ire- 
 land, pp 282-3-6; Cusack (Nun of Kenmare) Hist. Ireland, pp. 274-5; 
 McCarthy's Outlines of Irish Hist., p. 24; O'Callaghan's Notes and 
 Illustrations in "Macariae Excidium" ; Wright's Hist. Ireland, p. 85; 
 Walsh's Irish Hierarchy, pp. 661-2. 
 
 X Hist., p. 275, note. 
 
 II Hist., p. 190 and note. 
 
1 8 IRELAND AND THE POPE. 
 
 r 
 
 Livy") and Dr. O'Callaghan very conclusively 
 prove its genuineness. 
 
 St. Lawrence O'Toole and other leading^ bish- 
 ops of Ireland conversed with Pope Alexander 
 III. about this bull, and his own confirmatory bull, 
 at the third general council of Lateran in 1179^ 
 and the Pope "became at length convinced that in 
 the confirmatory bidef which he had drawn up for 
 Henry, he had been grossly deceived, and that the 
 terms that were employed in that official document 
 were as severe as they had been unmerited and 
 uncalled for."* He was justly indignant, but he 
 did not recall the bull. 
 
 Gerald de Barri (Geraldus Cambrensis,) a lead- 
 ing Catholic prelate of the time of Popes Adrian 
 and Alexander, noted for having preached the 
 principal sermon before the Synod of Dublin in 
 1 1 77, published in the year 1178, during the life- 
 time of Alexander, a history of Ireland in which 
 he inserted, in full, the bulls of both Adrian and 
 Alexander in the Latin text, and their genuineness 
 was not challenged. t 
 
 In addition to the frail denials of iVIacGeoghegan 
 and Mooney, following him, I have before me a 
 very ingenious but radically defective essay by 
 
 * Walsh's Irish Hierarchy, pp. 663-4. 
 
 tO'Halloran Hist., Bk. XIII., Chap. III., pp. 306-7. 
 
BULL OF ADRIAN IV. 1 9 
 
 Bishop Moran of Ossory,* written" to prove that 
 the alleged bull of Adrian was "a great Norman 
 forgery." He discredits the statement of Cardi- 
 nal Baronius, made three hundred years ago, that 
 he had copied the bull of Adrian from the "Vati- 
 can Manuscript," because he (Moran) could not 
 find the same manuscript three hundred years 
 later. 
 
 He also discredits the Bullarmm Romanum (a 
 collection of papal bulls made under the authority 
 of the Holy See), printed over one hundred and 
 fifty years ago. 
 
 He also discredits the statement of John of 
 Salisbury, Bishop of Chartres, made and pub- 
 lished over seven hundred years ago, that he 
 (John) had personally received the bull from 
 Adrian and delivered it to Henry 1 1. 
 
 Verily, ''faith will move mountains" of histor- 
 ical evidence. There are other very conclusive 
 proofs of its genuineness, to which he does not 
 refer at all. 
 
 Father Burke's statement that this bull was a 
 forgery is based entirely on this essay of Dr. 
 Moran, and may be dismissed with it.f 
 
 * Irish Am. Library, "English Misrule in Ireland," p. 224. 
 + English Misrule in Ireland, pp. 27-8. 
 
20 IRELAND AND THE POPE. 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 THE BULL OF POPE ALEXANDER IH. AND THE 
 SYNOD OF CASHEL. 
 
 Henry II., for various reasons connected with 
 the vicissitudes of England, did not make any use, 
 now known to us, of the Bull of Adrian for fifteen 
 years after receiving it. Adrian being then dead, 
 Henry applied to Pope Alexander HI. for a con- 
 firmation of the grant of Ireland. I«n the year 
 1 1 72 Pope Alexander issued a bull addressed to 
 his '' most dear son in Christ, the illustrious Kinof 
 of England," and commencing thus : " For- 
 asmuch as these things which have been, on good 
 reasons, granted by our predecessors, deserve to 
 be confirmed in the fullest manner; and consider- 
 ing the grant of the Dominion of Ireland by the 
 venerable Pope Adrian, we, pursuing his foot- 
 steps, do ratify and confirm the same, reserving to 
 St. Peter and to the Holy Roman Church, as well 
 in England as in Ireland, the yearly pension of 
 one penny from every house."* 
 
 That everlasting yearly "penny from every 
 house" again — the price of poor Ireland's liberty ! 
 
 * O'Halloran's Hist., p. 306; Wright's Hist., p. 86; Haverty's Hist., p. 
 191. 
 
THE SYNOD OF CASHEL. 21 
 
 It 'has been faithfully paid. England's promise 
 to the Vatican has been faithfully fulfilled to the 
 letter; but alas, every penny of the tribute has 
 been stained with the blood and tears of Erin's 
 subjugated children. 
 
 Armed with these bulls, King Henry, who, 
 before receiving the last, had entered Ireland 
 (October i8th, 1171), claiming it under that of 
 Adrian IV., immediately summoned the principal 
 clergy of Ireland to meet in conference at Cashel. 
 
 This conference is historically known as the 
 " Synod of Cashel." Here the Bulls of Adrian 
 and Alexander were read, and, "in the name of 
 the Sovereign Pontiff, the clergy and people of 
 Ireland were called upon to receive Henry the 
 Second of Eno-land as their king-."* 
 
 At this Synod the Pope's Legate presided, St. 
 Gelasius, the Primate of Ireland, having refused 
 to attend.f 
 
 Mooney (who attempts to prove the bulls for- 
 geries, to shield, as far as possible, the honor of 
 the Vatican) says that they were read at this 
 Synod, and thus graphically describes their effect: 
 " Each man looked at his neighbor, not knowing 
 wnat decision to make. The ecclesiastics were 
 
 * O'Halloran's Hist., p. 305; Mooney's Hist., p. 561, et seq. 
 + O'Halloran's Hist., pp. 310 and 313; Walsh's Irish Hierarchy, p. 195. 
 et seq. 
 
2 2 IRELAND AND THE POPE. 
 
 seized with panic and indecision. Some of the 
 clergy inclined to the admonitions of the Pope and 
 submitted to Henry, whilst others went their ways 
 to their respective provinces, as much in grief as 
 in anger. Some of the secondary chiefs of the 
 south gave up their territories to Henry, receiving 
 the same back to hold as his vassals; and, as this 
 act of submission appeared not humiliating, owing 
 to the acquiescence of so many of the clergy in the 
 ordinance of the See of Rome, Henry obtained 
 the adherence of seven counties without striking a 
 blozv^* 
 
 Martin Haverty, while admitting the genuine- 
 ness of the bulls, also attempts to shield the Popes, 
 by claiming that the bulls had very little to do 
 with the submission of the Irish people to the rule 
 of England. This is contrary to the proofs of all 
 contemporaneous history, and is simply absurd. f 
 Five hundred and seventy-three years ago, when 
 the details of her subjugation were fresh in the 
 public and private annals of Ireland, and in the 
 full traditions of her sorrowing people, Donnell 
 O'Neill, King of Ulster, wrote his celebrated, 
 learned, and statesmanlike letter to Pope John 
 XXI L, protesting against the great injustice done 
 to Ireland by the Vatican, and declaring that 
 
 * Mooney's Hist., p. 561. 
 t Hist., p. 189. 
 
O NEILL S LETTER TO POPE JOHN. 23 
 
 Ireland was subjugated solely by the bull of 
 Adrian, 
 
 Here is a striking passage from his letter . 
 
 " During the course of so many ages (three 
 thousand years) our sovereigns preserved the in- 
 dependency of their country; attacked more than 
 once by foreign powers, they wanted neither force 
 nor courage to repel the bold invaders: but that 
 which they dared to do against force ^ they could not 
 do against the simple decree of one of your prede- 
 cessors — Adrian r"^ 
 
 Whether the bulls of Adrian and Alexander 
 were forged or genuine is a matter of small conse- 
 quence compared with the doubly established fact 
 that the claim of temporal, kingly authority (as 
 distinguished from religious authority) over Ire- 
 land by the popes, and the acknowledgment of that 
 claim by the Irish people, caused the subjugation 
 of Ireland to English rule. If that claim had not 
 been acknowledged, the bulls, whether forged or 
 genuine, would have been repudiated, and the 
 armies of Henry would have been driven into the 
 sea.f 
 
 But the genuineness of these bulls is over- 
 whelmingly proved by historical evidence, and 
 
 * O'Halloran's Hist., p, 307; Mooney's Hist., p. 564; Haverty's Hist., 
 P- 255- 
 
 + O'Halloran's Hist., p. 305; Mooney's Hist., pp. 560-2-4-8. 
 
24 IRELAND AND THE POPE. 
 
 that which I have cited is, for the present, quite 
 sufficient. 
 
 The contradictions amonof recog-nized Irish 
 historians, concernino- the reading of the bulls at 
 the Synod of Cashel, results, probably, from the 
 fact that no formal action was taken on them by the 
 Synod as a body. 
 
 But that they were read and that there were in- 
 dividual submissions of the clergy to King Henry, 
 in consequence, is well attested. 
 
 Henry's only ostensible purpose in summoning 
 the Synod of Cashel was to make a pretense of 
 carrying out the church reforms confided to him 
 by the bulls, and his only real purpose was to se- 
 cure, upon the strength of the bulls, the submission 
 of as many of the political and religious leaders of 
 the country as possible. 
 
 Strange indeed, if he failed to produce or men- 
 tion documents from which he expected, and had 
 good reason to expect, so much. He did produce 
 them and the people were paralyzed by them. Just 
 as the Roman populace was paralyzed with terror 
 by the excommunication of the gallant Rienzi, 
 who had led them in driving the plundering Orsini 
 and Colonna families and their brigand followers 
 from the Eternal City. 
 
 But the efforts of the Vatican in aid of King 
 
SYNOD OF DUBLIN. 2$ 
 
 Henry's conquest of Ireland did not end with the 
 Synod of Cashel. 
 
 In the year ii 77 a Synod was summoned in 
 Dublin by, and was held under, Vivian, the Pope's 
 Legate for Ireland. 
 
 "In this Synod," says Rev. P. J. Carew, 
 Professor of Divinity in the Catholic College of 
 Maynooth, Ireland (citing Dr. Lanigan's Hi&tory), 
 "the Legate set forth Henry's right to the sover- 
 eignty of Ireland, in virtue of the Pope's author- 
 ity, and inculcated the necessity of obeying him 
 under pain of excommunication!"^ 
 
 Until that time the Catholic Churches were in- 
 violable sanctuaries into which the hunted people 
 might flee, and in which their lives were safe 
 from murder and their property from spoliation. 
 At this Synod of Dublin, the Pope through his 
 Legate made Ireland an exception to this rule, 
 and gave leave to the English soldiers to enter 
 the churches and strip the people of the food 
 brought there for safety. t Since these things were 
 done by the Vicar of Christ, how terrible to con- 
 template what the Vicar of Hell would have done 
 under similar circumstances. 
 
 * Carew's Ecclesiastical Hist. Ireland, p. 437 ; Walsh's Irish Hierarchy, 
 p. 109; Dolby's Hist. Ireland, p. 31. 
 + Dolby's Hist., p. 31. 
 
26 IRELAND AND THE POPE. 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 HUMILIATING THE IRISH PRIESTS AND PEOPLE. 
 
 In the year i i8o King Henry, "who persecuted 
 the Holy Prelate, St. Lawrence, for his ardent at- 
 tachment to the land of his birth, resolved that 
 an office of so much importance (the Arch- 
 bishopric of Dublin), should not be entrusted to 
 an Irishman. "^ * Accordingly on the monarch's 
 recommendation, his Chaplain, John Comyn, a 
 native of England, was elected to the Arch- 
 bishopric of Dublin, by some of the clergy who 
 had assembled at Evesham for that purpose, 
 /okn was not then a priest, but was in the follow- 
 ing year ordained, and was consecrated by Pope 
 Lucius HI.," who, at the request of the King, 
 released the new archbishop and his arch- 
 diocese from the control, and even from the visi- 
 tations, of the Irish Primate of Ireland.* 
 
 From that time to the present — from Comyn to 
 McCabe, at least — the British Government, as 
 well since it became Protestant as while it was 
 Catholic, has generally dictated, either directly or 
 indirectly, the appointment of most of the Catholic 
 archbishops and even bishops of Ireland. It be- 
 came at one time a common saying that : " Ire- 
 land gets her rent receipts and archbishops from 
 England." 
 
 * Walsh's Irish Hierarchy, p. no; Dolby's Hist., p. 33; 
 
ENGLISH INTRIGUES. 2 7 
 
 Since the reformation, the government negoti- 
 ations with the Vatican have been conducted by- 
 secret emissaries and are difficult of cHscovery, but 
 occasionally an uncovered track is found which 
 discloses something, and indicates a great deal more. 
 For example, in a letter written by Lord Palmers- 
 ton (then English secretary of foreign affairs) to his 
 brother, May 12th, 1834, occurs the following : 
 " I am sending off a messenger suddenly to Flor- 
 ence and to Rome to try to get the Pope not to 
 appoint an agitating prelate Archbishop of Tuam, 
 and I write a few lines by him to you, as he may 
 as well go on to Naples from Rome while the 
 Pope is pondering upon his answer."* 
 
 Greville's Memoirs shed further light on this 
 subject. Speaking of Lord Melbourne (then 
 Home Secretary under Grey's Administration) he 
 says : " He told me that an application had been 
 made to the Pope * * * * not to appoint 
 McHale to the vacant Catholic bishopric. ^ * 
 * '* His Holiness said that he 'had remarked 
 for a long time past that no piece of preferment 
 of any value ever fell vacant in Ireland that he 
 did not get an application from the British Gov- 
 ernment asking for the appointment.' Lord Mel- 
 bourne, * * * «- in reply to my question, 
 admitted that Ike Pope had generally conferred the 
 
 * Evelyn Ashley's Life of Lord Palmerston; Chas. Gavan Duffy's Young 
 Ireland, p. 211. 
 
28 IRELAND AND THE POPE. 
 
 appointment according to the wishes of the Gov- 
 ernment." After commentirjg upon the "regular 
 underhand intercourse" estabhshed between the 
 Government and the Vatican and the constant 
 soHcitation of appointments from the Pope, he 
 adds : 'Hhe Pope, who is the object of our ortho- 
 dox abhorrence and dread, good-humoredly com- 
 plies zvith all, or nearly all, of their requests!'"^ 
 
 On the 14th of September, 1808, the CathoHc 
 bishops of Ireland met in synod in DubHn 
 and passed, among others, the following resolu- 
 tion : " That the Roman Catholic prelates pledge 
 themselves to adhere to the rules by which they 
 have been hitherto uniformly guided — namely, to 
 recommend to his Holiness (for appointment as 
 Irish Roman Catholic \yL^O'i^^ only such persons 
 as are of unimpeachable loyalty.' '"^ 
 
 This accounts for the pro-English sentiments of 
 so many Irish bishops, and accounts for the ap- 
 pointment of the Murrays, and Moriartys, and 
 Cullens, and McCabes, and so on ad nauseam, ad 
 infinitum. 
 
 But, enough; the story of the humiliation and 
 degradation of Ireland's patriotic priests to the 
 domination of Englishmen, Italians, Spaniards and 
 
 * Young Ireland, p. 211. 
 t Haverty's Hist., p. 746. 
 
ENGLISH FLESH AND IRISH FISH. 29 
 
 anti-Irish Irishmen is a long one, and interesting, 
 but the studied attempt to degrade the Irish race, 
 as such, is of more importance. 
 
 In the 13th and 14th centuries such race preju- 
 dices had arisen between the Irish and Anglo- 
 Irish in Ireland that they each established rules, 
 excluding the other from their canonries (religious 
 colleges) and religious houses. 
 
 Complaint being made to Pope Innocent IV., 
 he issued a bull requiring the Irish to admit the 
 English and Anglo- Irish to their canonries. 
 
 Complaint being afterwards made by the Irish 
 to Pope Leo X., he issued a bull confirming the 
 right of the English to exclude the Irish from their 
 canonries,"^ 
 
 Under this bull Irish ecclesiastics and students 
 were excluded from institutions which had been 
 founded and endowed by their own Irish ances- 
 tors, t 
 
 "Consistency, thou art a jewel," but, surely, 
 Rome cannot be charged with inconsistency in 
 dealing with the Irish. She has been consistently 
 and constantly unjust and insulting to them. 
 
 She has found them confiding and obedient, 
 while she has spurned and spat upon them, and 
 
 * Cambrensis Eversus, by Dr. Kelly, Vol, II., p. 543; Haverty's Hist., 
 PP- 253-4, note. 
 
 t Haverty's Hist., p. 255. 
 
30 IRELAND AND THE TOPE. 
 
 she has spurned and spat upon them inces- 
 santly, apparently for no other reason than that 
 she has found them still confiding and obedient, 
 and that their humiliation pleased and conciliated 
 a more independent power. 
 
 There is a general impression to the effect that 
 the persecution of the Irish is due mainly to reli- 
 gious prejudice, but no man who has read deeply 
 of Irish history can harbor such a delusion. 
 
 The Eno^lish orovernment and the Irish land- 
 lords (joint persecutors and plunderers of the race) 
 care very little to what church an Irishman goes 
 while living, or to what sphere his soul may be 
 consigned after his death. The pretense to the 
 contrary is a hollow sham, but it has a purpose. 
 By dividing the people into hostile religious fac- 
 tions, and setting them to fight each other, the 
 natural power of the Irish is greatly reduced, and 
 the difficulty of perpetuating the enslavement of 
 both factions is greatly lessened. 
 
 Besides, one of the factions would naturally ally 
 itself to the Protestant Government of England, 
 while the other would as naturally ally itself to the 
 head of the Catholic Church. The Government 
 and the Pope acting in concert through the ''reg- 
 ular underhand intercourse" of which Greville 
 speaks, and which Petre, Errington and Norfolk 
 
RACE AND RELIGION. 3 1 
 
 have so lately exemplified, the wisdom of the Gov- 
 ernment's promotion of religious feuds among the 
 Irish people is apparent. 
 
 "It should not be forgotten that it has always 
 been the policy of the English Government in 
 Ireland to foment religious dissentions there as a 
 powerful means of perpetuating its own dominion."^ 
 
 That religious differences are not the cause of 
 Irish persecution, is conclusively proved by the 
 fact that the most cruel and barbarous persecution 
 of the Irish people took place during and through- 
 out the period of four hundred years before Eng- 
 land became protestant; and while the Kings of 
 England were the Pope's "beloved sons in Christ," 
 as they were affectionately termed. 
 
 Speaking on this subject. Rev. R. A. Byrne, in 
 a lecture on "The Free Schools of Ancient Ire- 
 land," pertinently said: "In 1380 it was enacted 
 (at Downpatrick Abbey) that no mere Irishman 
 should be allowed to make his profession in the 
 Abbey. 
 
 This is but in keeping with the spirit of English 
 Catholic domination in Ireland everywhere. This 
 anti-Irish feeling is of no modern date, and by no 
 means owes its oriein to the introduction of Pro- 
 testantism. HenyVIII. was a bad man * ^ 
 
 * Ireland of To-day, by M. F. Sullivan, p. 369. 
 
32 IRELAND AND THE POPE. 
 
 but the deadly wounds that laid E^dn low zvere 
 struck by the assassin hands of his Catholic fore- 
 fathers!'^ 
 
 It was this same English Catholic spirit that an- 
 imated that typical English priest, Monsignor 
 Capel,t when he said at Metropolitan Hall, in this 
 city, that, in his opinion, "the Irish famine of 
 1847-8 was a God's blessing." 
 
 Daniel O'Connell, in 1813, said ''The English 
 do not dislike us as Catholics; they simply hate 
 us as Irish. "I 
 
 John Mitchell most happily and truly stated the 
 situation when he said, that to England the ma- 
 terial wealth of the Irish was "far more valuable 
 than their souls." 
 
 But the English Protestant people, as a people, 
 where they are even partially free from the in- 
 fluence of caste, which affects both Protestants and 
 Catholics alike, and from that hydra-headed mon- 
 ster of bigotry, which in both countries is mis- 
 called religion, have no such prejudice against the 
 Irish race. This was well proved during the years 
 of famine, when "the good will of the English 
 people" was shown by their subscription of more 
 than two million dollars, to relieve the distress of 
 
 * Ireland as She Is, by J. J. Clancy, p. 82. 
 
 + "Domestic Prelate to His Holiness Pope Leo XHL" The Pope, p. i. 
 
 % Ireland as She Is, p. 80. 
 
MARKET VALUE OF IRISHMEN. ^^ 
 
 the Irish; some, at least, of the English people, 
 going even without butter on their bread, "in order 
 that some money might be saved for the starving 
 poor of Ireland."* 
 
 It is therefore not to English Catholics nor to 
 Italian Catholics that Ireland must look for sym- 
 pathy and succor in her struggle for political lib- 
 erty and civil justice, but to the lovers of Liberty 
 and Justice, of all shades of religious belief, 
 throughout the world. 
 
 She has been sadly handicapped in her struggle, 
 by her dependence on the broken reed of Roman 
 honor. 
 
 I must close this prolific branch of my subject 
 with one more general statement and a couple of 
 historical examples. 
 
 Under all "their Catholic Majesties," from 
 Henry II. to Henry VIII. (nearly 400 years), the 
 Irish people, with the exception of five families, 
 were outlaws. They were murdered at will, like 
 dogs, by their English Catholic neighbors in Ire- 
 land, and there was no law to punish the murder- 
 ers.f 
 
 Yet, during all of this unparalleled reign of ter- 
 ror, history fails to show a single instance in which 
 
 * The Parnell Movement, by T. P. O'Connor, p. 117. 
 t Ireland as She Is, pp. iS to 27 and citations. 
 
34 IRELAND AND THE POPE. 
 
 the power of the Catholic Church was ever exer- 
 
 4 
 
 ted or suggested, by any pope, for the protection 
 of her faithful Irish children. 
 
 In the year 131 1, for example, and as a mere 
 illustration of the esteem in which Irish lives were 
 held by these Catholic princes: "Wm. Fritz 
 Roger, being arraigned for the felonious slaying 
 of Roger de Cantelon, comes and says, he could 
 not commit felony by means of such killing, be- 
 cause the aforesaid Roger (de Cantelon) was an 
 Irishman and not of free blood. And the jury 
 upon their oath say that the aforesaid Roger was 
 an Irishman, and theTefoix the said William as far 
 as regards the said felony is acquitted." * 
 
 But as the aforesaid Roger was found to be an 
 Irishman belonging to the King, the unlucky mur- 
 derer was "recommitted to jail, until he shall find 
 pledges to pay five marksf to our Lord the King, 
 for the value of the aforesaid lrishiuany\ 
 
 I suppose this penalty was imposed under some 
 of the English laws against poachmg, but as to 
 that, I am not prepared to make a positive state- 
 ment, and do not deem the subject of sufficient 
 importance for investigation, since the fine was 
 
 * Davies' Hist. Tracts, p. yS, et. seq. ; Ireland as She Is, p. 20; Dolby's 
 Hist., p. 58. 
 + About $16.50. 
 \ Dolby's Plist., p. 58. 
 
BOUNTIES FOR KILLING IRISHMEN. 35 
 
 manifestly not imposed for the protection of the 
 lives of Irishmen, but merely to preserve them as 
 chattels of the King. 
 
 In 1465 an act was passed (indirectly but effec- 
 tualty) giving rewards for the killing of Irish- 
 men, just as with us rewards are given for the 
 killing of coyotes;* and the marriage, fostering, 
 gossip and trade of English Catholics with Irish 
 Catholics, were made penal offenses by Catholic 
 parliaments and Catholic kings.* Under these 
 laws, murders innumerable — causeless, cruel, 
 sportive murders — were committed with impunity. 
 Through their bishops, archbishops, primates and 
 legates the popes must have been fully advised 
 concerning these atrocities; the English rulers and 
 people were Catholics, and as much subject to the 
 popes as the Irish now are; yet there was no ex- 
 communication and no threat of excommunication, 
 by any of the popes, against the English for their 
 hellish practices. But assuming that all of the 
 pope's legitimate advisers in Ireland were such 
 scoundrels and conspirators with the kings, upon 
 whose favor their offices depended, yet the plea of 
 ignorance could not be made for the popes, 
 
 O'Neill, King of Ulster, and other Irish princes, 
 
 * Ireland as She Is, p. 21. 
 + Ireland as She Is, p. 20. 
 
36 IRELAND AND THE POPE. 
 
 fully represented those grievances to Pope John 
 XXII., who paid no attention to them for more 
 than twelve years, when, at last, he sent a letter 
 to King Edward III., mildly advising that mon- 
 arch to adopt a different policy and to reform the 
 evils as speedily as possible. On what ground? 
 Solely on the ground of expediency; namely: 
 " lest it might be too late hereafter to apply a 
 remedy when the spirit of revolt has grown 
 stronger."* 
 
 If he had been dealino- with the Irish he would 
 have sent a bull commanding them to desist with- 
 in a fixed time on pain of excommunication, but 
 the English, although Catholics, were not so much 
 afraid of bulls as were the Irish. Hence their 
 milder treatment. 
 
 Hence the Vatican, now so anxious to shield 
 the enemies and plunderers of the Irish people 
 from peaceful ostracism (boycotting), never lifted 
 the scepter of Church authority to shield the Irish 
 from wanton murder, outrage and robbery, when 
 those crimes, through centuries, were being per- 
 petrated by the English Catholic children of the 
 Church, t 
 
 * Haverty's Hist., pp. 255-6. 
 
 t King John of England was excommunicated by Pope Innocent HI., in 
 the year 1208, while the former was engaged in murdering the Irish and 
 devastating parts of their country ; but the excommunication had nothing to 
 do with his persecution of the Irish. It grew out of the Pope's refusal to 
 
FEAR OF PAPAL BULLS. 2)1 
 
 The whole history of the Vatican shows that 
 ever since it assumed to be the political as well as 
 the religious head of the world (about the year 
 860),"^ its universal policy has been to crush 
 the weak; to frighten the timid and to conciliate 
 the strong and defiant. 
 
 Acting on this policy, and finding the Irish 
 people afraid of papal wrath, each succeeding 
 pope has traded for political and other advantages 
 with England on the strength of his power to 
 coerce and subdue the Irish people. 
 
 ajipoint the King's nominee as Archbishop of Canterbury, and the King's 
 refusal to allow Stephen Langdon, whom the Pope appointed, to act in 
 that capacity. The Pope having frightened the King by inviting the 
 Catholic powers of Europe to invade England, this trouble was compromised. 
 The King agreeing to accept Langdon as Archbishop and to lay his crown 
 at the feet of Cardinal Pandulf, the Pope's Legate, who, after kicking it 
 contemptuously, replaced it on the King's head. Henry VIH. and Queen 
 Elizabeth, both cruel enemies of Ireland, were also excommunicated: the 
 first by Pope Paul IH., in 1535, and the latter by Pope Pius V., in 1570; 
 but it is needless to say that these excommunications grew out of troubles 
 connected with the Protestant Reformation, and had nothing to do with the 
 persecution of Ireland. — ^J. G. M. 
 
 * Catholic Dictionary, Addis and Arnold, Tit. "Tiara." 
 
38 IRELAND AND THE POPE. 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 PAPAL INTERFERENCE WITH IRISH STRUGGLES FOR 
 LIBERTY AFTER THE CONQUEST. 
 
 Many Irish historians are specially severe in 
 their strictures on Adrian IV., ''the only English- 
 man who ever occupied the Papal throne," as if 
 he were the only pope who had ever interfered 
 with the political liberties of the Irish people, but 
 the acts of his successors are not a whit less 
 iniquitous. 
 
 I have already mentioned the bull of Pope Alex- 
 ander III., confirming- thegrant of Adrian, and the 
 action of his Legate at the Synod of Dublin in 
 1 1 77, wherein he threatened the excommunication 
 of such of the Irish people as refused to recognize 
 the right of King Henry to the sovereignty of Ire- 
 land. 
 
 I have also referred to the appointment, by the 
 popes, of English and pro-English bishops, arch- 
 bishops, primates and legates to rule over the 
 church in Ireland. 
 
 These prelates deemed it a part of their duty, no 
 doubt a pleasant part, to bless the loyal English 
 and to curse the rebellious Irish, in the name of 
 
O NEILL S REBELLION. 39 
 
 the Catholic Church, in all controversies between 
 the races. 
 
 But, so strong was the love of liberty among the 
 Irish people (said to have been the growth of 
 thirty centuries),* that the ban of the local church 
 dignitaries was not sufficient to restrain it ; and, 
 even in the 14th century, England was obliged to 
 call for special interference from the Vatican. 
 
 In the year 13 15, after the memorable Scottish 
 victory on the field of Bannockburn, the princes 
 and ^pular leaders of the Irish people invited 
 Edward Bruce (brother of Robert Bruce) to enter 
 Ireland and make common cause with them in 
 their struggle for liberty. Accordingly, on May 
 25th of that year, Bruce landed in Ireland with six 
 thousand veterans. These were at once joined 
 by the Irish armies of Ulster. Castles were 
 stormed, cities were burned, "and," says the his- 
 torian, " in a very short space of time, no trace 
 of the English remained in Ulster but the desola- 
 tion of their former dwellings. "f 
 
 Felim O'Connor, King of Connaught (whose 
 ''dignity and possessions had been restored to 
 him by the English "), deserted the English and 
 cast his fortunes with the advancing armies of 
 
 * O'Halloran's Hist., p. ig. 
 t Dolby's Hist., p. 58. 
 
40 IRELAND AND THE POPE. 
 
 O'Neill and Bruce. *' The O'Briens of Thomond, 
 and a great proportion of the toparchs of Mun- 
 ster and Meath (then a province), followed his ex- 
 ample." Their victorious armies swept over 
 Ossory and entered Munster. Here they met with 
 some reverses. English supremacy in Ireland 
 had reached a crisis, and, in the supreme moment, 
 England turned to Pope John XXII. "The 
 English interest soon began to revive, and the 
 Pope lent his powerful assistance to restore its as- 
 cendancy. Sentence of excommunication was 
 solemnly pronounced against Bruce and all his 
 adherents." * 
 
 Then followed the famous battle of Dundalk, 
 which sealed the fate of Ireland for all the suc- 
 ceeding centuries. The Pope's decree presided as 
 a grim spectre over the battle. " The Irish felt 
 that they fought ttnder the curse of the church ; 
 while the English were roused by the belief that 
 Heaven was on their side, and that the blessing 
 pronounced on their arms by the Primate, that very 
 morning, rendered them invincible."t 
 
 "Under the curse of the church!" Yes, every 
 battle for Ireland's liberty and for natural justice 
 to her plundered people, has been fought under 
 
 * Dolby's Hist., p. 59. 
 + Dolby's Hist., p. 60. 
 
THE CURSE OF THE CHURCH. 4I 
 
 the curse of the church. The Q^allant Irish, who 
 never shrank from the whistHng- bullets or the cold 
 steel of their armed foes, have always withered 
 and failed under the blighting breath of Roman 
 curses. 
 
 "How long, O Lord! how long" will the Irish 
 people stand divided between two opinions con- 
 cerning the Pope's authority to keep them in 
 political thraldom ? 
 
 So complete and demoralizing was the English 
 victory at Dundalk, and so crushing was the ven- 
 gence dealt out to the surviving leaders and help- 
 less people, that the Pope's personal services 
 were not again required by England in maintain- 
 ing the subjection of Ireland prior to the refor- 
 mation (1534). 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 THE RELIGIOUS WARS. 
 
 The religious rupture between England and 
 the Vatican, following the abolition of Papal 
 authority in English territory, led Pope Cle- 
 ment VIII. to foster the Irish rebellion of 
 1598 — not for the purpose of freeing Ireland, but 
 for the purpose of securing from England better 
 terms for the church — and accordingly in the year 
 
42 IRELAND AND THE POPE. 
 
 following, he sent with Oviedo, a Spaniard whom 
 he had appointed Archbishop of Dublin, a number 
 of indulgences, with power to grant other indul- 
 gences, ''to those of the Irish who fought against 
 the English in defense of the ancient religion.''^ 
 
 In the year 1643 Father Scarampi came to 
 .Ireland as the Legate of Pope Urban VIII., 
 bearinof " a bull of indulg-ences to the Irish 
 Catholics; and he also brought with him from 
 Father Wadding (representative of the Catholic 
 Confederates of Ireland, at the Vatican) a sum of 
 $30,000, with a quantity of arms and ammuni- 
 tion. "f 
 
 The insurrection of 1641 was then in progress, 
 but this uprising was not a struggle for Irish 
 nationality nor for the political emancipation of 
 the Irish people. Its purpose was to secure "a 
 partial transfer of property, and certain stipula- 
 tions in favor of the Church of Rome, "J the most 
 radical demand by the insurgents being " perfect 
 religious liberty. "|| 
 
 It was directed and governed by " The Supreme 
 Council of the Confederate Catholics of Ireland,"§ 
 
 * Dolby's Hist., p. 238 ; Haverty's Hist., p. 437. 
 
 t Haverty's Hist., p. 502. 
 
 X Haverty's Hist., pp. 480, 508, 517-18. 
 
 II Haverty's Hist., p. 501. 
 
 (j Haverty's Hist., p. 491. 
 
MUSKETS AND POWDER FROM THE POPE. 43 
 
 and was encouraged not only by the Pope but 
 also by the Catholic nations of Europe, especially 
 France and Spain,* 
 
 I dwell upon these details not for the purpose 
 of belittling the movement, nor to discredit the 
 Pope's services, but to show that in its true char- 
 acter it was a religious war between Catholic 
 Europe and Protestant England, of which Ireland 
 was the battle ground, in which the Pope was 
 equally interested with the Irish people, and that, 
 as in the struggle of i 598, the Irish armies," while 
 fighting for the grand and just and holy principle 
 of religious liberty at home, were really helping 
 the Pope far more than they were being helped 
 by him. It may be justly said to have been 
 essentially his war, since, by abandoning him, all 
 the immunities claimed by the Irish would have 
 been promptly secured to them. 
 
 In 1645 Pope Innocent X,, continuing the 
 policy of his predecessor, sent a nuncio to the 
 Council of the Confederate Catholics, and also 
 sent a few men, a little money, some munitions 
 and implements of war, and one ship, to aid them 
 in the struggle against religious persecution and 
 anti-Catholic penal laws.f 
 
 * Haverty's Hist., p. 502-7. 
 t Haverty's Hist. , p. 507 . 
 
44 IRELAND AND THE POPE. 
 
 These religious feuds necessarily estranged the 
 English Government from the Vatican for at least 
 two centuries, and apparently for a much longer 
 period. But none may know when or how the 
 subsequently discovered "regular underhand 
 intercourse"* was established, for it appears that, 
 even in the midstof this war,King Charles I. had an 
 emissary (Lord Herbert) in secret conference with 
 the papal nuncio (Father Rinuccini) with the 
 knowledge, however, of the Catholic Council, but 
 unknown to the regular representatives of his 
 own government. So that when an attempt was 
 made to negotiate a peace, the Catholic clergy 
 were "secretly acquainted with the intention of 
 the King to grant much more than Ormond 
 (Lord Lieutenant) stipulated for."t 1 1 would seem 
 that very little affecting Ireland for good or evil 
 was done by the Vatican from the close of this war 
 until the beginning of the present century. 
 
 * See p. 28. 
 
 t Haverty's Hist., pp. 505-6. 
 
IRELAND AND THE POPE. 45 
 
 CP^APTER VII. 
 
 A SOP TO CERBERUS. 
 
 In the year 1795 a most extraordinary, but 
 keen, far-sighted and statesmanHke change was 
 made by the English Government in the matter 
 of governing the restless, liberty-craving Irish. 
 
 The preceding generations of religious perse- 
 cution hadj|[3lended in the minds of the Irish peo- 
 ple the trials of the Catholic church and its priest- 
 hood with the wrongs of their race."^ The priests 
 (a brave, noble and patriotic body of teachers and 
 comforters), had become their traditional advisers 
 in politics as well as in religious matters. No 
 priesthood in the world was ever nearer to the 
 hearts of its people, and none was ever more de- 
 servedly beloved. Though severe in discipline, 
 they were kind, generous and attentive and in full 
 sympathy with the national aspirations of the peo- 
 ple. Edmund Burke, Wm. Pitt, Lord Granville, 
 Chas. J. Fox and other English statesmen resolved 
 upon a plan, acceptable to the Vatican, and also 
 to the Irish bishops and representatives, by which 
 the great influence of the Irish priesthood might 
 
 * Mc'Carthy's Hist, of Our Own Times, Vol. IV, pp. 190 to 196. 
 
46 IRELAND AND THE POPE. 
 
 be made, at least negatively, to serve the purposes 
 of the English Government. 
 
 This plan was no less than the establishment of 
 a royal college for the education of Irish Catholic 
 priests at the expense of the English Protestant 
 Government. 
 
 Accordingly, in that year the Pitt ministry 
 "recommended the Irish Parliament to appropri- 
 ate a grant of eight thousand pounds ($40,000) per 
 annum, to support a college for the education of 
 the Irish priesthood,"* and that sum was there- 
 upon appropriated for the maintenance of the 
 Catholic Theological College of Maynooth. 
 
 In the year 1807 (after the Union) this grant 
 was increased by the British Parliament to ^13,- 
 000 ($65,000) per annum. 
 
 The purpose was to educate for the priesthood, 
 in this college, the sons of the common people of 
 all parts of Ireland; to educate them out of ''the 
 Irish idea" into a sort of patriotic conservatism. 
 The idea was not to make them pro-English, nor 
 even unpatriotic, for that would destroy their very 
 valuable influence with the people, but it was to 
 make them more Catholic than Irish, eager to 
 struggle for Ireland when unrestrained, but ready 
 to sacrifice the cause of Ireland to the cause of the 
 
 * Mooney's Hist., p. 1535. 
 
RELIGIO-POLITICAL GOVERNMENT. 47 
 
 church, or to church discipline, at any moment, 
 upon the call of their religious superiors. 
 
 The priests so selected and educated were to be 
 distributed through all the 2,500 parishes of Ire- 
 land, at least one being assigned to each parish. 
 
 The strength and elasticity of this new scheme 
 of religio-political government must be at once 
 apparent. This great body of pro-Irish priests, 
 moving and sympathizing with the people, yet 
 bound to an absolute obedience, to a small body 
 of pro-English bishops, selected for their '^unim- 
 peachable loyalty"* to the English Government 
 and all controlled as absolutely as if they were 
 automatons by an Italiafri pontiff, f the latter (gen- 
 erally a member of the Italian nobility, or noblesse 
 — a most important fact — as I will presently show), 
 being in league with the British Government 
 through unofficial, but all powerful, secret ambas- 
 sadors. 
 
 This was the scheme, J and from all that we can 
 glean from the pages of Irish history, the Vatican 
 and the government seem to have been in full 
 accord concerning it. 
 
 Its immediate success was greatly hindered by 
 
 * See p. 28. 
 
 t "In his subjects the Holy Father has inculcated the union of all hearts 
 in the cause of Holy Church; * * * * ^ loyal obedience of people to 
 pastors, and of people and pastors to the Holy See." (The Pope, by Mon- 
 signor Capel, Domestic Prelate of his Holiness Pope Leo XHI., p. 38. 
 
 \ See pp. 53-5. 
 
48 IRELAND AND THE POPE. 
 
 the hostility or indifference of those who succeeded 
 to the control of public affairs after the increased 
 grant of 1807, but the college endowment did not 
 cease to form a strong bond of union between the 
 government and the Vatican. 
 
 The strength of this bond may be surmised from 
 the fact that the Vatican favored a public statute, 
 giving the English Protestant government a 
 voice m the selection of Irish Catholic bishops. 
 My authority for this statement is that in 18 10 
 the EnHish Catholics charQ^ed the Irish with 
 "wavering in their allegiance to the pope" be- 
 cause they opposed the measure,^ and in 18 14 pub- 
 liehed a rescript from P(^e Pius VII., expressly 
 recommending that concession. Daniel O'Connell, 
 subsequently (in 1832), speaking of this period 
 said: "the Catholic laity were totally repugnant to 
 allow the crown any poive^' to noininate the Cath- 
 olic bishops of Ireland. 
 
 We steadily opposed the Court of Rome, as vv^ell 
 as the inclination shown by our own prelates; we 
 resolutely resisted the wishes of our nobility, and 
 of so many of our merchants, backed as they were 
 by the almost universal voice of the Catholics of 
 England."t 
 
 In view of the secret relations of the govern- 
 
 * Haverly's Hist., p. 748. 
 t Haverty's Hist., p. 761. 
 
THE REPEAL MOVEMENT. 49 
 
 ment and the Vatican, as subsequently discovered, 
 this measure seems to have been unimportant, 
 since the government already enjoyed the secret 
 privilege of doing all that the act contemplated. 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 THE REPEAL MOVEMENT KH.LED BY A RESCRIPT. 
 
 In the year 1829, O'Connell organized the great 
 Repeal movement, which has immortalized his 
 name, and which gave such bright promise of ful- 
 filling the last prayer of the illustrious Emmet. 
 It grew with amazing rapidity. Around the 
 leader gathered a grand galaxy of statesmen, 
 poets, and orators, whose words and works cast 
 an imperishable luster over Erin's race, and lent 
 a new dignity to the character of man. The peo- 
 ple of Ireland believed in them and flocked, not 
 in thousands, nor in tens of thousands merely, 
 but in hundreds of thousands, to their meetings, 
 eager to learn the gospel of political deliverance 
 from their lips. The tide of this political move- 
 ment rose and rolled with majestic power. Re- 
 form after ^form was accomplished. Proposi- 
 tion after proposition was made by the English 
 Government. Anything short of a total repeal of 
 the Union could be had by the Irish for the ask- 
 
50 IRELAND AND THE POPE. 
 
 ing ; and even repeal, with broader, better, hap- 
 pier conditions than those that had been lost by 
 the Union, seemed almost within reach. O'er the 
 long-watched horizon of hope deferred, the sun- 
 burst of freedom was breaking. But lo ! the God- 
 dess of Irish Liberty, lately so joyful, is weeping. 
 She faints, she reels ! What evil fortune has be- 
 fallen her .-^ Alas! the fangs of the Vatican ser- 
 pent have been driven again to her heart. The 
 learned and patriotic priesthood of Ireland had be- 
 come the teachers and leaders of the people of this 
 movement, in every parish. Pope Gregory XVI., 
 in the year 1843, '" at the urgent instigation of the 
 British Ministry, through the Austrian Ambassa- 
 dor at Rome, and through the more direct agency 
 of a Mr. Petre, who, it appears, had acted on be- 
 half of England at the Court of the Holy See " * 
 issued a rescript commanding the priests of Ire- 
 land to refrain from attending the repeal meet- 
 ings. This treacherous ^nd unexpected blow had 
 a stunning effect upon the movement. It silenced 
 at once thousands of its active and trusted leaders. 
 
 It was as if all the commissioned officers of their 
 mighty army had been captured at once by the 
 enemy. 
 
 O'Connell saw in this rescript the doom of his 
 
 * Mooney's Hist., Vol. H., p. 1530. 
 
KILLED BY A RESCRIPT. 5 1 
 
 race and country; the blasting of all his cherished 
 hopes. 
 
 He rose in the grandeur of his almost super- 
 human power to meet and turn the blow of the 
 Holy See. He published a letter to prove that 
 the rescript was an illegal interference with the 
 civil liberties of the clergy.* In the agony of his 
 soul be uttered his famous cry: ''As much religion 
 as you please from Rome, but no politic sJ' 
 
 He called upon the clergy to stand by the 
 movement and they did, at least mechanically, re- 
 spond. Mooney thereupon says: "The clergy 
 are as much repealers as they ever were, and the 
 current of agitation goes on quite as steadily and 
 powerfully as before the document was issued. "f 
 
 Alas ! the events prove the contrary. During 
 the paralysis, which resulted from the blow, the 
 Tatal decay of disentegration had set in. 
 
 The priests came forward as before, but not 
 with the firm step and earnest purpose of their 
 former enthusiasm. They wavered between love 
 of country and vows of obedience. The mighty 
 movement, then in its prime, J which had grown 
 and flourished and triumphed for fifteen years,' 
 withered and died. Within three years from the 
 
 * Mooney's Hist., pp. 1 530-1. 
 t Mooney's Hist., p. 1531, 
 X Haverty's Hist., 786-7. 
 
52 IRELAND AND THE POPE. 
 
 date of the rescript it had joined the empire of the 
 eternal past. 
 
 Poor O'Connell, most faithful son of the Church, 
 truest friend of the Vatican, ' he must have felt 
 most keenly: 
 
 "How colder than the wind that freezes, 
 
 Founts that but now in sunshine played, 
 • Is the congealing pang which seizes 
 
 The trusting bosom when betrayed." 
 
 He died at Genoa of a broken heart on May 
 15th, 1847, and strangely willed his heart^" to the 
 destroyers of his life and his country. f 
 
 THE PRICE OF THE RESCRIPT. 
 
 What was the consideration which moved the 
 Vatican to issue the rescrij^t ? 
 
 As it was the result of secret negotiations, the 
 details of which have never been directly published 
 or made known, it is impossible to say, authorita-* 
 tively, what was its price ; but certain it is that 
 shortly before and shortly after its issuance the 
 British Government made legislative concessions 
 to the Church which were most pleasing to the 
 Vatican. 
 
 The first was the repeal of the obnoxious stat- 
 
 * The Parnell Movement, p. 69. 
 
 t It is but just to his memory to state that he was then suffering from 
 softening of the brain, superinduced by the mental agony involved in 
 witnessing the dying struggles of his cherished movement. Young Ireland, p. 
 531; the Parnell Movement, p. 13. 
 
PRICE OF THE RESCRIPT. 53 
 
 ute of Mortmain, in 1842. The repeal of this law 
 was a just and proper measure, and was generally- 
 supposed to have been forced from the government 
 by the Repeal Association, but, in the light of 
 events following so closely after it, there may be 
 some force in the suggestion that it was in part 
 the result of the repeal agitation and in part the 
 price of its destruction. 
 
 The other concession was an act of Parliament 
 passed in 1845, increasing the grant to Maynooth 
 College from ^13,000 to ^26,000 ($130,000) per 
 annum, and making an additional appropriation of 
 ^30,000 ($150,000) for the enlargement of its 
 buildings. 
 
 Speaking of this grant, Mr. Thomas Power 
 O'Connor says : " Sir Robert Peel, by the con- 
 cession of a larger grant to Maynooth, still further 
 disintegrated the forces of O'Connell by bringing 
 pressure on the Vatican, and, through the Vatican, 
 on some of the bishops ; and so O'Connell's 
 power began gradually to melt away." * 
 
 On the passage of this act, Richard Lalor Shiel, 
 Catholic member of Parliament for Dungarvan, 
 who had discredited his patriotism by accept- 
 ing an appointment to office under the 
 
 * Parnell Movement, p. 15. 
 
54 IRELAND AND THE POPE. 
 
 English Government, '^^ made a most remark- 
 able speech, openly avowing, reviewing, and 
 enforcing the purposes of the original College 
 grant, of which it may not be uninteresting to 
 quote a few passages here : " You are taking a 
 step in the right direction/' he said. " You are 
 advancing in a career of which you have left the 
 starting post far behind, and of which the goal 
 perhaps is not far distant. You must not take the 
 Catholic clergy into your pay, but you can take the 
 Catholic Church under your care. * * * May- 
 nooth was founded in a great measure at the sug- 
 gestion of the aposjle of order, the great Edmund 
 Burke. Let him be assured that he has made 
 great progress in the art of governing Ireland, by 
 whom the works of Edmund Burke are perused 
 with admiration. That sagacious man saw that it 
 was not to the interest of Protestant England that 
 the priesthood of Catholic Ireland should be edu- 
 cated in France ; he thought that evils could arise 
 from a French and Irish ecclesiastical fraterniza- 
 tion ; he did not wish that French principles 
 should be imported into every Irish parish, and 
 he denounced the introduction of a Gallo-Hiber- 
 nian establishment into Ireland. Edmund Burke 
 was of opinion that the Irish Catholic priesthood 
 should be educated by the state and for the state. 
 
 * Parnell Movement, p. 76. 
 
PRIESTS TO KEEP DOWN SEDITION. 55 
 
 Give the Catholic priest and the Irish Protest- 
 ant proprietor a common interest in maintaining 
 the institutions of their country and their reconcil- 
 iation will be immediate and complete. Indeed 
 the only danger to be apprehended is, that their 
 alliance may become too unqualified and too com- 
 pact. * * * * Great ability will be allured into 
 Maynooth — gold for genius has a magnetic power. 
 * * * Locate in every parish an educated Cath- 
 olic priest, whose mind has undergone the process 
 of literary refinement, and you will accomplish 
 much in the way of national amelioration. * * * 
 Even if the sum to be granted were five times 
 what the minister recommends you to concede, 
 there is so much true economy in the results of 
 wise legislation that your very love of saving 
 should induce you to act with liberality to Ireland. 
 Are not lectures at Maynooth cheaper than State 
 prosecutions? Are' not professors less costly than 
 crown solicitors ? Is not a large standing army, 
 and a great constabulary force, more expensive than 
 the moral police with which, by the priesthood of 
 Ireland, you can be thriftily and efficaciously sup- 
 plied r'^ 
 
 Why did Shiel suppose that the priests educated 
 at Maynooth would render the same service for 
 
 * Shiel's Speeches, by MacNevin, p. 338, et seq. 
 
56 IRELAND AND THE POPE. 
 
 England that had previously been rendered by- 
 state prosecutors, crown solicitors, the standing 
 army, and the constabulary force? 
 
 Why did the English Government believe the 
 promise and make the grant ? 
 
 There can be but one answer. The English 
 Government, then in secret diplomatic correspond- 
 ence with the Vatican,* had satisfactory assurances 
 that none but pro-English bishops and archbish- 
 ops would be appointed for Ireland, and that, by ed- 
 ucating her priesthood into a sufficiently rigid polit- 
 ical subserviency to their religious superiors, they 
 might readily be made the unconscious instru- 
 ments of English tyranny, and might ultimately 
 aid in eliminating the spirit of nationality from the 
 Irish character. 
 
 These, at least, were the hopes and expecta- 
 tions of the English Government, and, if they have 
 in anything failed, the failure has certainly not 
 been the fault of the Vatican or its Anglo-Irish 
 bishops, as we shall see. 
 
 * Seep. 28. 
 
IRELAND AND THE POPE. 57 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 YOUNG IRELAND MOVEMENT KILLED BY BISHOPS 
 AND PRIESTS. 
 
 When the repeal movement passed away, the 
 spirit of Irish nationality was represented by the 
 Young Ireland Party — "the men of '48." 
 
 Of this party the illustrious Alexander M. Sul- 
 livan says : "They were pre-eminently the party of 
 religious tolerance. The leading idea, in what 
 may be called their home policy, was to break down 
 the antagonism between Catholics and Protestants 
 in Ireland."* 
 
 The following lines, from the pen of the immor- 
 tal Thomas Davis, well illustrates the noble and 
 truly fraternal spirit of the movement : 
 
 ' 'What matter that at different shrines 
 We pray unto one God ? 
 What matter that at different times 
 Our fathers won this sod ? 
 In fortune and in name were bound 
 By stronger links than steel ; 
 And neither can be safe or sound 
 But in the other's weal. 
 
 ***** 
 And oh, it were a gallant deed 
 To show, before mankind, 
 How every race and every creed 
 
 Might be by love combined — , 
 
 Might be combined , yet not forget 
 The fountains whence they rose. 
 As filled by many a rivulet 
 The stately Shannon flows." 
 
 * New Ireland, p. 98. 
 
58 IRELAND AND THE POPE. 
 
 Equally grand, liberal and inspiring was his 
 famous "Orange and Green," addressed to his 
 fellow Protestants of Ulster, in which these lines 
 occur : 
 
 " Freedom fled us ; 
 
 Knaves misled us ; 
 Under the feet of the foeman we lay ; 
 
 But in their spite 
 
 The Irish unite 
 For Orange and Green will carry the day." 
 
 In like strain wrote also those glorious daughters 
 of Erin: " Eva,"=^ " Mary,"t and " Speranza."J 
 In one of the last poems of " Speranza," pub- 
 lished in the Nation, occurs the following : 
 
 ' ' We are blind, not discerning the promise, 
 'Tis the sword of the spirit that kills ; 
 Give us light and the fetters fall from us, 
 For the strong soul is free when it wills." 
 
 Did these lines have reference to the subject 
 which I am now discussing ? 
 
 In vain, in vain! all, all in vain ! Again, as at 
 Dundalk, the champions of Irish liberty "fought 
 under the curse of the Church." 
 
 The Catholic clergy set themselves invincbily 
 against the movement. 
 
 Quoting again from Sullivan, who was an 
 
 * EVa Mary Kelly, afterwards Mrs. Kevin O'Dougherty. 
 
 t Ellen Downing. She died of grief, on being discarded by Joe Brennan, 
 her patriot lover. 
 
 X Jane Frances Eglee, daughter of a Protestant minister; now Lady 
 "Wilde and mother of Oscar Wilde. 
 
HOSTILITY OF THE CLERGY. 59 
 
 active participant, and, at the same time, an 
 earnest Catholic, and even an extreme Ultramon- 
 tane (being one of the chief organizers of the "Irish 
 Brigade " for the Pope's army in i860),* we find : 
 "At this time, in 1848, the power of the Catholic 
 priests was unbroken — was stronger than ever. 
 The famine scenes, in which their love for the 
 people was attested by heroism and self sacrifice 
 such as the world had never seen surpassed, had 
 given them an influence which none could ques- 
 tion or withstand. Their antagonism was fatal to 
 the movement — more surely and infallibly fatal to 
 it than all the power of the British Crown, "f 
 
 The famine-years undoubtedly called forth the 
 noblest traits of all true characters. All honor to 
 the Catholic priests for having done their priestly 
 duty so nobly in that awful period, but it should 
 be remembered that many of their Protestant 
 brethren of the cloth were also self-sacrificing. 
 Of this the following instance, given by Mr, 
 Sullivan, is a striking example: 
 
 " The Protestant curate of my native parish, in 
 1847, was the Rev, Alexander Ben Hallowell, 
 
 * New Ireland, pp. 277 to 286. 
 
 t New Ireland, p. 1 19; John Mitchell says: "About the year 1850 
 Ireland became thoroughly subjugated, without almost a hope of escape. 
 Everything was fitted to the hand of her enemy, and that enemy made most 
 unrelenting use of the advantage. The CathoUc bishops counselled obedi- 
 ence and submission." Hist. Ireland, Vol, II, p. 252. 
 
6o IRELAND AND THE POPE. 
 
 subsequently rector of Clonakilty, and now I be- 
 lieve residing somewhere in Lancashire. There 
 were comparatively few of his own flock in a way 
 to suffer from the famine, but he dared death 
 daily in his efforts to save the perishing creatures 
 around him. A poor hunchback, named Richard 
 O'Brien, lay dying of the plague in a deserted 
 hovel at a place called ' The Custom Gap.' Mr. 
 Hallowell passing by heard the moans and went 
 in. A shocking- sight met his view. On some 
 rotten straw, in a dark corner, lay poor ' Dick ' 
 naked, except a few rags across his body. Mr. 
 Hallowell rushed to the door and saw a young 
 friend on the road. ' Run, run with this shilling 
 and buy me some wine,' he cried. Then he re- 
 entered the hovel, stripped off his own clothes, 
 and with his own hands put upon the plague- 
 stricken hunchback the flannel vest and drawers 
 and shirt of which he had just divested himself. 
 / know this to be true. I was the ' young friend * 
 who went for and brought the wine.^'* 
 
 Noble priests ! noble ministers ! Surely none 
 of such men will be cast out of Heaven for mak- 
 ing a mistake in the selection of his creed ! 
 
 But why did this devoted Irish Catholic priest- 
 hood destroy the "Young Ireland" movement } 
 
 * New Ireland, p. 91. 
 
THE ALLEGED REASON. 6l 
 
 It is said in their defense that "they regarded the 
 Young Irelanders with suspicion." That: "They 
 fancied they saw in this movement too much that 
 was akin to the work of the continental revolu- 
 tionists, and, greatly as they disliked the domina- 
 tion of England, they would prefer it a thousand 
 times to such 'liberty' as the carbonari would pro- 
 claim."* 
 
 If I could believe that the Irish Catholic clergy 
 acted in good faith on their own judgment, even 
 on this ridiculously mistaken opinion of the 
 "Young Irelanders," I would not feel privileged 
 to say one word in denunciation of their conduct; 
 for, as Irishmen, each had an unquestionable 
 right, according to his honest judgment, to favor 
 or oppose any movement affecting the political 
 liberty of his country. 
 
 But I cannot believe that they opposed the 
 movement for any such reason nor upon their in- 
 dependent judgment. 
 
 They knew that the movement was led by great 
 and gifted statesmen, who fully realized their re- 
 sponsibility, and who, in public and in private, f 
 opposed the methods of the carbonari and of the 
 continental revolutionists. They knew also that 
 
 * New Ireland, p. 119. 
 
 t See letter of Gavan Duflfy to Wm. Smith O'Brien, from Newgate 
 Prison. New Ireland, p. 117. 
 
62 IRELAND AND THE POPE. 
 
 neither the French Revolution then in progress, 
 nor even the "carnival of fire and blood" which 
 reigned in France at the close of the last century, 
 could add one terror to the sufferings which the 
 Irish people had endured and were enduring. 
 
 The artificial famine produced by English mis- 
 government and landlord avarice was still upon 
 them, and held them in its torturing grasp. 
 
 On the combination rack of landlord-bred 
 famine and famine-bred fever, the Irish people, in 
 tens of thousands, were dying in agony, homeless 
 and shelterless, in sight of the cabins which their 
 own hands or the hands of their ancestors had 
 built, but from which inhuman landlordism had 
 evicted them, in their hour of direst affliction. 
 They were hungering to death in sight of grana- 
 ries filled with fruits which the God-given soil of 
 Ireland had yielded to the inspiration of their 
 own toil, but which, under the malign power of 
 English laws, they had been compelled to sur- 
 render to idle landlords. 
 
 These landlords had, and have, no purpose in 
 living, save that of collecting toll from their in- 
 dustrious fellow-men; giving absolutely nothing in 
 return except a superfluous assent to their victims' 
 God-given privilege of using the natural resources 
 of their native land. 
 
THE FAMINE ARTIFICIAL. 63 
 
 Justin McCarthy, an eye witness, speaking of 
 this period (1847 to 1857), says: "Evictions 
 took place by the hundred, by the thousand, by 
 the ten thousand — evictions as much for grazier's 
 purposes as for non-payment of rent, which in 
 those evil days of famine and failure they could 
 not pay. Winter or summer, day or night, fair or 
 foul weather, the tenants were ejected. Sick or 
 well, bed-ridden or dying, the tenants— -men, women 
 or children — were turned out. They might go to 
 America if they could ; they might die on the 
 roadside, if so it pleased them. They were out 
 of the hut, and the hut was unroofed that they 
 might not seek its shelter again, and that was all 
 the landlord cared about. ""* 
 
 These evictors and their allies, bear in mind, 
 are the hell-hounds whom the Holy Father (?) is 
 now so eager to shield from peaceful ostracism 
 and legal embarrassments at the hands of their 
 victims. 
 
 There was not even a scarcity of food in Ire- 
 land during the years of famine, but only a failure 
 of the immediate crops on which the plundered 
 tenantry depended. f 
 
 * Ireland since the Union, p. 141. 
 
 t "The harvest of 1847 was also very abundant in Ireland, and it was 
 one of the deadliest years of famine. The English offered thanksgivings to 
 God for the Irish harvests, and then devoured them," Mitchell's Hist., Vol. 
 II, p. 252. 
 
64 IRELAND AND THE POPE. 
 
 Mrs. Nicholson, another eye witness, in her 
 soul-harrowing work, "Lights and Shades of Ire- 
 land," says : " What shall be said of the pitiful 
 landlords, who were still drinking their wine, 
 while pouring their doleful complaints into gov- 
 ernment's ears, that no rents were paid. * * * * 
 But these afflicted landlords were exporting to 
 the continent vast quantities of grain, which their 
 poor starving tenants had labored to produce. 
 They were not allowed to eat a morsel of their 
 food, but must buy it from others or starve."* 
 
 And again. "Next to the absurdity of Cork 
 and Limerick exporting cargoes of Irish grain for 
 sale, and at the same time receiving cargoes of 
 American grain to be given away at the cost of 
 the English people, may be ranked the folly, if it 
 may not properly be called by some worse name, 
 of seeing hundreds dying for want of food, at the 
 same time permitting* the conversion of as much 
 grain as would feed the whole of those dying of 
 starvation, and many more, into a fiery liquid 
 which * * * ^ never saved a single life or im- 
 proved a single character. "f 
 
 Was this abject poverty of the Irish tenantry 
 due to idleness or improvidence ? No. In years 
 
 * pp. 30-1. 
 
 t Lights and Shades, p. 130. 
 
IRISH SELF-SACRIFICE. 65 
 
 of plenty as well as in years of scarcity the tenant 
 is robbed of all the fruits of his labor, except that 
 in good years he is left a slave's portion, enough 
 to keep body and soul together. 
 
 Industry, providence and self-sacrifice are and 
 were the general characteristics of the Irish peas- 
 antry. One illustration, among thousands that I 
 might cite, must here suffice. It is also from the 
 pen of Mrs. Nicholson. She had been riding on 
 a car on which a tattered and repulsive looking 
 man was also seated. On alighting from the car 
 this man fell prostrate in the passage. She found 
 that his weakness "was exhaustion, occasioned by 
 hunger," and thus proceeds: "When he could 
 speak in a whisper, he begged Mrs. Arthur to 
 take a few sovereigns which he had sewed in his 
 ragged coat, and send them to his wife and chil- 
 dren, who were suffering for food. He had been 
 at work in England, and, knowing the dreadful 
 state his family were in at home, had saved a few 
 sovereigns, not wiUinof to break one, and endea- 
 vored to reach home on a few shillings he had, and 
 being so weak for want of food he occasionally 
 rode a few miles when it rained and had not eaten 
 once in two days. "* 
 
 It is to be hoped that the poor wife and children 
 
 * Lights and Shades, p. i £9. 
 
66 IRELAND AND THE POPE. 
 
 obtained the money without the knowledge of the 
 landlorcrs factor, as, otherwise, it must surely have 
 gone to buy wine for the landlord instead of food 
 for them. 
 
 This spirit of self-sacrifice was not confined to 
 mothers and fathers : " It is expected that mothers 
 will suffer and even die for their famishing little 
 ones, if needful ; but to see children suffer for one 
 another, was magnanimity above all. Two house- 
 less, starving little orphan boys," says Mrs. Nich- 
 olson, "one about nine and the other five, called 
 at the door of a rich widow of my acquaintance 
 and asked for food. The woman had consumed 
 all her bread at breakfast but a small piece, and 
 giving this to the eldest she said : You must 
 divide this with your little brother. I have no 
 more." She then tells us that the lady "looked 
 after them unperceived" and saw the elder boy 
 give the whole piece to the other, and turn away 
 to stifle the pangs of his own hunger while his 
 weaker companion devoured it.* 
 
 And these, bear in mind incidentally, are the 
 people from whom the present Pope, by the spir- 
 itual terror and coercion of his rescript, seeks to 
 take away the only effective peaceful weapons of 
 self-defense that they have ever had against the 
 
 * Lights and Shades, p. 120. 
 
Ireland's condition. 67 
 
 murderous and thrice damnable institution of land- 
 lordism. 
 
 Everywhere throughout the Island these scenes 
 appeared^ shocking the sight, freezing the souls 
 and haunting the memories of beholders, and all 
 produced directly by the two institutions against 
 which the gallant Young Irelanders were contend- 
 ing. 
 
 With the white lips, the glassy eyes and the 
 bony fingers of gaunt visaged famine thus every- 
 where pleading for succor or death, what had Ire- 
 land to fear from "the methods of the continental 
 revolutionists?" Absolutely nothing. 
 
 Why then did the priesthood oppose the only 
 movement that had for its object the removal of 
 the causes, or any of the causes, of this artificial 
 famine and this systematic plunder of the indus- 
 trious by the idle ? 
 
 My answer is, that they must have been acting 
 under orders from the Pope and the bishops. 
 
 John Mitchell says : " The Catholic bishops 
 counseled obedience and submission" to the English 
 Government,* and we know that the bishops, besides 
 being appointed for their " unimpeachable loyalty," 
 are directed largely by secret orders from the Vat- 
 ican, which they are sworn to keep secret even 
 
 * Mitchell's Hist., Vol. II, p. 252. 
 
68 IRELAND AND THE POPE. 
 
 from the priests of their jurisdictions. In such 
 cases the orders of the Pope are issued to the 
 priests and people as if they originated with the 
 bishops. 
 
 Assuming that, if the Pope did directly bring 
 his authority to bear on the Irish bishops,* and 
 through them on the priests and people to de- 
 stroy the Young Ireland movement, his action 
 must have been induced by some consideration 
 moving from the English Government, I immedi- 
 ately looked for acts of Parliament relating to the 
 church and the Vatican. 
 
 Strangely enough, I find that in the year 1848 
 — the pivotal year of the Young Ireland struggle 
 — a political privilege which had previously been 
 denied for over three hundred years, was accorded 
 to the Pope by an act of Parliament. f 
 
 By this act the Government was authorized to 
 re-open diplomatic relations with the Pope and to 
 receive, in regal state, a papal ambassador at the 
 Court of St. James. 
 
 To those not familiar with the history of the 
 Vatican, since it has fallen under the absolute do- 
 minion of what has been most aptly called "the 
 Italian Ring," this may seem a small price to en- 
 
 * Parnell's Movement, p. 15. 
 
 + Stats. II and 12, Vict. (1848), Chap. 108, p. 686. 
 
THE VATICAN AGAIN. 69 
 
 gage the head of the Catholic Church in assisting 
 to perpetuate the bondage of six millions of faith- 
 ful Catholics,* but to those who have read and 
 watched the political history and movements of 
 that ring, the sufficiency of the consideration will 
 be quite apparent. 
 
 Those who have observed the painful eager- 
 ness with which the cardinals and popes — " the 
 princes" t and "supreme rulers of the world" J— 
 have bent " the pregnant hinges of their knees," 
 and extended their hands, for small political favors, 
 from the temporal rulers of European nations, will 
 realize the tremendous importance attached by 
 the Vatican to this recognition at the English 
 Court. II 
 
 This act constitutes the missing link and com- 
 pletes the chain of causation. It makes plain the 
 fact, and the reason, that the Vatican required the 
 Irish priesthood to oppose the Young Ireland 
 movement. The English Government had pur- 
 chased its support and the quid pro quo must be 
 given. 
 
 * The sad remnant of the eight millions of two years before; Hist, of Our 
 Own Times, Vol. I, p. 324. 
 
 t "The rank of Cardinal, in its temporal aspect, is equivalent to that of 
 a reigning prince. On their seals they have their own arms, with the red 
 hat as crest." Catholic Dictionary, Tit. "Cardinal," p. 120. 
 X Catholic Dictionary, Tit. "Tiara," p. 796. 
 
 II For the enlightenment of those to whom this knowledge may not be 
 common, I have inserted a chapter on Vatican politics. 
 
yo IRELAND AND THE POPE. 
 
 What did it matter that Ireland was on the rack 
 of a law-imposed famine ?* What did it matter 
 that two millions of her people were dyingf for 
 want of the bread which they had produced from 
 mother earth, but of which they had been robbed 
 by landlordism — the cruel creature of English 
 law ? What did it matter that extermination by 
 famine was the declared purpose of the govern- 
 ment press,|; and of government representatives, || 
 with respect to the Irish question ? As a com- 
 pensation for all this, it was surely sufficient 
 that the church (which meant, and still means, the 
 Italian Ring in the chnrcJt) had made a great ad- 
 vance. The political ambition of three centuries 
 had been attained ! Glory hallelujah ! the Pope's 
 legate was again permitted to strut in the Court of 
 St. James ! 
 
 Joy reigned in Rome ! Gloom spread over the 
 camp of the Irish patriots ! 
 
 " Their tents were all silent, their banners alone^ 
 Their lances unHfted, their trumpets unblown." 
 
 * Irish famines are not natural famines, they are artificial famines ; 
 they are not made by the Lord, but by the landlord ; they are not famines 
 of food — there is always plenty of that in Ireland — but famines of money 
 with which to buy^food from landlords, who have taken the fruits of the soil 
 as rent for land, to which they have generally no moral title." Ireland of 
 To-day, p. 184. 
 
 i" Hist, of Our Own Times, Vol. I., p. 324. 
 
 X "In a few years," said the London Times, exultingly, "a Celtic Irish- 
 man will be as rare in Connemara as is the red Indian on the slopes of the 
 Manhattan." Ireland Since the Union, p. 144. 
 
 II Ireland of To-day, pp. 46 and 191. 
 
THE CHURCH AGAINST THE FENIANS. 7I 
 
 Ri^ht or wrong, for good or evil, another " Irish 
 movement" lay dead at the feet of the triumphant 
 Vatican ! 
 
 The principal leaders of the movement were 
 sentenced to be "hanged, disemboweled and quar- 
 tered," but this barbarous sentence was commuted 
 by Act of Parliament to transportation for life.* 
 Of the others, numbers were convicted and hun- 
 dreds fled to exile, and Ireland suffered not only 
 the sacrifice of many of "her best and noblest 
 sons," but also " in the terrible re-action, prostra- 
 tion, terrorism and disorganization that ensued, "f 
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 THE FENIAN MOVEMENT OPPOSED BY THE CHURCH. 
 
 Passing over the Tenant League agitation, the 
 next serious effort for the liberation of Ireland 
 was the Fenian movement, organized by a few 
 daring spirits in May, 1858. 
 
 The purpose was to organize and drill an Irish 
 army; to have them supplied with munitions of 
 war by similar organizations of Irishmen in Amer- 
 ica ; to rise at a given signal ; storm the English 
 strongholds and proclaim Ireland free. J It was 
 
 * New Ireland, p. 125. 
 + New Ireland, p. 125. 
 t New Ireland, p. 264, et. seq. 
 
72 IRELAND AND THE POPE. 
 
 too loosely oro^anized, for a movement so serious, 
 and was in many respects impracticable and reck- 
 less, but it was full of genuine patriotism, and love 
 of a country whose condition was so wretched and 
 desperate that it could not be seriously injured by 
 their adventure. 
 
 Bishop Moriarty, of Kerry, within an hour after 
 learning of the movement,* commenced a bitter 
 warfare against it. The Catholic clergy were soon 
 denouncing it throughout Ireland as a "secret 
 society" unauthorized by the church. 
 
 Over this issue '' the Fenian movement, on its 
 very threshold, was plunged into a bitter war with 
 the ecclesiastical authorities of the Catholic 
 Church. 'The priest has no right to interfere in or 
 dictate our politics,' said the Fenian leaders ; 'ours 
 is a political movement ; they must not question 
 us or impede us.' 'You cannot be admitted to 
 the sacrament until you give up and repent of illi- 
 cit oaths,' responded the Catholic priests, ' and if 
 you contumaciously continue in membership of an 
 oath-bound secret society, you are liable to excom- 
 munication.'" 
 
 *' Do you hear this ? We are cursed by the 
 church for loving our country!" exclaimed the 
 Fenians;" and thus the quarrel continued for five 
 
 * New Ireland, p, 264. 
 
MORIARTY S REGRET. 73 
 
 years.* The movement grew, and attained con- 
 siderable proportions, but in face of such opposi- 
 tion it could not accomplish much. 
 
 In 1867 three of its promoters — Allen, O'Brien 
 and Larkin — were hanged. These men died 
 with the prayer: "God Save Ireland," on their 
 lips; while their gentle Christian antagonist, Bish- 
 op Moriarty, of " unimpeachable loyalty "f re- 
 gretted that "hell was not hot enough nor eter- 
 nity long enough to punish such miscreants. "|; 
 
 CHAPTER XI. 
 
 HOME RULE MOVEMENT OPPOSED BY THE CHURCH. 
 
 On the 19th day of May, 1870, the present 
 Home Rule Movement was instituted. It was a 
 purely peaceable movement to secure, by constitu- 
 tional agitation, "the establishment of an Irish 
 parliament, with full control over domestic af- 
 fairs."|| At this meeting were " men who never 
 before met in politics save as irreconcilable foes. 
 The Orangeman and the Ultramontane, the 
 staunch Conservative and the sturdy Liberal, the 
 National Repealer and the Imperial Unionist, the 
 
 * New Ireland, p. 312. 
 t See page 28. 
 i Pamell movement, p. 227. 
 II New Ireland, p. 450. 
 
74 IRELAND AND THE POPE. 
 
 Fenian Sympathizer and the devoted loyalist, sat 
 in free and friendly counsel."* 
 
 Even at this heterogeneous meeting the resolu- 
 tion in favor of Home Rule was adopted unani- 
 mously. 
 
 But the Catholic Bishop of Derry was more 
 loyal to English rule than all of these, so he op- 
 posed the movement, and in January, 1871, he 
 publicly denounced it. 
 
 Like Cardinal Cullen he " was always on the 
 side of the Government as against all struggles of 
 Nationalists, on the principle that England could 
 do more for the interests of the church than any 
 National Party, "f 
 
 The British Government was at that time hold- 
 ing out a proposition to establish a Catholic Uni- 
 versity in Ireland, for the purpose of drawing the 
 Catholic clergy away from the popular move- 
 ment, and it had "a powerful effect with some of 
 the Catholic bishops and clergy. "J Early in 1872 the 
 Home Rulers noticed that important newspapers 
 under the control and influence of the Catholic 
 clergy "began to draw off from the movement 
 and to say that the demand for Home Rule was, 
 
 * New Ireland, p. 444. 
 
 t Parnell Movement, p. 140. 
 
 i New Ireland, p. 456. 
 
THE CLERICAL PARTY. 75 
 
 no doubt, very right and just, but it was inoppor- 
 tune ^^ 
 
 Did the finger of Rome direct this change of 
 heart on the part of the Irish clergy ? I cannot 
 prove it by direct evidence, but viewing and judg- 
 ing the circumstances in the light of experiences 
 prior and subsequent to that time, I may fairly 
 say that it so appears to a moral certainty and 
 beyond all reasonable doubt. 
 
 The movement grew and prospered, but the 
 opposition of the clergy continued. On the 6th 
 of August, 1875, 3-t a banquet given in honor of 
 the centenary of the birth of Daniel O'Connell, a 
 number of Catholic clergymen, native and foreign, 
 were present, and an unseemly discussion arose 
 between the clergymen and the Home Rulers on 
 the question of Home Rule, which resulted in much 
 dissension, and, immediately afterwards, Mr. 
 McSwiney, Lord Mayor of Dublin, organized, or 
 tried to organize, a sort of clerical counter move- 
 ment to draw away the strength of the Home 
 Rule Party, calling it the "Faith and Fatherland 
 Party." 
 
 On the 15th of August, 1879, the price of this 
 clerical opposition to the Home Rule movement 
 was duly paid by Parliament, by the abolition of 
 
 * New Ireland, p. 456. ^ 
 
76 IRELAND AND THE POPE. 
 
 the Queen's University in Ireland and the estab. 
 lishment in its stead of a new University for Ro- 
 man Catholics. 
 
 CHAPTER XII. 
 
 THE LAND LEAGUE OPPOSED BY THE POPE. 
 
 In September, 1879, the Irish National Land 
 League was formed, not to replace, but to supple- 
 ment, the Home Rule movement. 
 
 Another artificial famine was approaching, and 
 the real purpose of the League was to intercept 
 landlord extortion and to check evictions ; thus 
 preventing the re-enactment of the horrible fam- 
 ine scenes of 1847-8. 
 
 The lives of many thousands of Irish families 
 were saved, and this immediate success in giving 
 shelter and protection to the masses of the people 
 from the one ever dreaded enemy — landlordism — < 
 rallied the people in hundreds of thousands to the 
 standard of Parnell and Davitt. 
 
 In the midst of this struggle to keep the un- 
 fortunate tenantry under the shelter of their own 
 cabins during the famine ; while subscriptions to 
 the famine fund, for the relief of the starving 
 Irish, were slowly arriving from the generous 
 hearted of Canada, Australia, the United States, 
 
ALL FOR A CARDINAL S HAT. 'J'J 
 
 and even from far-off India; and while factors 
 and bailiffs and soldiers and constables and crow- 
 bar brigades were evicting the unfortunates and 
 leveling their huts, and as far and fast as the pas- 
 sive resistance of the unarmed people would per- 
 mit, re-enacting the horrors of 1847-8 — even in 
 this awful crisis — the Roman Catholic Archbishop 
 of Dublin (McCabe), in full cry with the blood- 
 hounds of landlordism, had a pastoral letter pub- 
 lished in the churches of his arch-diocese condemn- 
 ing the Land League agitation. 
 
 On the loth of October, 1880, and again on the 
 30th of October, 1881, the same Archbishop re- 
 newed his thunders against those who by passive 
 resistance defended the lives and homes of the 
 people, in new, and truly "loyal," pastoral letters. 
 In March, 1881, a Ladies' Land League was 
 formed for the most humane and Christian purpose 
 of "raising funds, inquiring into cases of eviction, 
 and affording relief to evicted tenants. As soon 
 as this new organization came into existence it 
 was assailed" by this red-cap-hunting hound of the 
 Vatican — Archbishop McCabe — "as at once im- 
 modest and wicked."* As a reward for these ser- 
 vices, and as an acknowledgment that he was 
 sufficiently anti-Irish and cold-blooded to associate 
 
 * Ireland since the Union, p. 274. 
 
78 IRELAND AND THE POPE. 
 
 in close relationship with the Italian Ring, he was 
 created a cardinal* on the 27th of March, 1882. 
 
 I have spoken specially of the conduct of Arch- 
 bishop McCabe because his elevation to the posi- 
 tion of a "prince of the church" is pretty conclu- 
 sive evidence that he, at least, in all that he did, 
 was acting under the direct orders of the Vatican. 
 
 A strong circumstance tending to confirm this 
 view is, that the Vatican, while still pretending to 
 be neutral in the affairs of Ireland, was secretly 
 interfering with the raising of funds in America, 
 even to relieve the famine sufferers whose support 
 had been undertaken by the Leagues. 
 
 In 1882, Rev. Edward McGlynn, the most elo- 
 quent and popular Catholic priest in the world, 
 was delivering lectures in New York for the bene- 
 fit of the Leagues. Archbishop McCloskey re- 
 ceived peremptory orders from the Vatican re- 
 quiring him to compel Dr. McGlynn to desist, on 
 pain of suspension from his priestly office. 
 
 The Dr., bowing to authority, discontinued his 
 lectures. 
 
 In 1883, Dr. McGlynn was requested to deliver 
 a special lecture for the benefit of the then starv- 
 ing people of Western Ireland. A telegram was 
 immediately sent to Archbishop McCloskey from 
 
 * He was the second Irish cardinal ever appointed ; Cullen, another anti- 
 Irish Irishman, being the first. 
 
DAVITT SPURNED AT ROME. 79 
 
 the Vatican, signed by Cardinal Simeoni, or- 
 dering him to "suspend this priest McGlynn, for 
 preaching in favor of the Irish revolution." 
 
 These documents came to light in December^ 
 1886, in consequence of the trouble between Dr. 
 McGlynn and Archbishop Corrigan at that time. 
 Otherwise the circumstances would never have 
 been made public. How many hundred similar 
 blows may have been dealt against the Irish cause 
 in secret and in darkness by these Italian allies 
 of England may never be known. 
 
 Another circumstance pregnant of meaning is, 
 that, about the time of which I am speaking, it 
 was reported that Sir George Errington, a "Castle 
 Cawtholic," and emissary of England, was com- 
 missioned for some secret intrigue at the Vatican. 
 
 Michael Davittwent to Rome, as the accredited 
 representative of the Irish people, to lay their 
 cause before the Pope. 
 
 He was spurned and boycotted, as if he was a 
 leper, by the " distinguished Catholics " then 
 visiting at Rome — even the guests at the hotel 
 where he stopped left the dining-room in which he 
 was seated, and threatened to leave the hotel 
 unless he was required to leave. He was refused* 
 an audience with the Pope, on the ground that his 
 
8o IRELAND AND THE POPE. 
 
 reception might give the impression that the Holy- 
 Father was taking sides on the Irish question. 
 
 A few weeks afterwards, the Prince of Wales, 
 apparently for no other purpose than to expose 
 the double face of the Vatican, had a suggestion 
 conveyed to the Holy Office that he thought of 
 paying a visit to Rome, and inquiring if he might 
 expect to be accorded an audience by His Holi- 
 ness. 
 
 Immediately, without any fear of misconstruc- 
 tion, the arms of the Holy Father were opened 
 and extended to receive the representative of the 
 English side of the Irish question. He did not 
 go, but sent his "Castle Cawtholic" flunky. Erring- 
 ton, who was accorded more than one audience* 
 and on his ex parte representations secured at 
 least one important favor of which I shall presently 
 speak. 
 
 On the 20th of January, 1883, Pope Leo XIII. 
 sent a rescript to the Irish clergy commanding 
 them to use their power to suppress certain classes 
 of societies, the description being broad enough to 
 include the Irish political leagues. 
 
 The effect of this rescript was not to destroy, as 
 designed, but to divide and weaken the movement; 
 but it certainly was not the Pope's fault if anything 
 
 * No representative of landlordism was ever denied an audience by tke 
 Pope. 
 
ERRINGTON S BLUNDER. 01 
 
 remained of the Irish movement after his poisoned 
 draught had been administered. 
 
 Not satisfied with this the Pope, on the nth of 
 May of the same year, issued a more powerful and 
 mandatory rescript, condemning and forbidding 
 disaffection to the government, and forbidding 
 subscriptions to the Parnell testimonial fund, a 
 fund then being raised by Irishmen and their 
 sympathizers to reimburse Mr. Parnell for losses 
 suffered by him through the agitation. This was 
 the papal favor secretly granted at the secret re- 
 quest of Errington, made under circumstances 
 which I have already detailed. 
 
 Again, upon the death of Cardinal McCabe in 
 February, 1885, this same Errington, still "acting 
 as the gutter-agent of the English Government," 
 secretly secured from the Pope a rescript or order 
 commanding the bishops of Ireland to observe the 
 wishes of England in nominating a successor to 
 the vacant archbishopric. 
 
 Before this rescript had reached Ireland, Er- 
 rington, either in the intoxication of joy produced 
 by the success of his mission, or under the influ- 
 ence of anotner kind of intoxication, quite common 
 to his class of reveling Christians, boasted of the 
 promise which he had secured from the Pope. 
 
 This news, telegraphed to Ireland before the 
 
82 IRELAND AND THE POPE. 
 
 rescript had been received, called forth such a 
 storm of indignation that the Pope, in fear of los- 
 ing his Irish "Peter's Pence," recalled it. 
 
 In April, 1885, Bishop Nulty of Meath, a brave 
 and noble patriot prelate, and others of his stripe, 
 having publicly favored the Land League and 
 Home Rule movements, were summoned to Rome 
 and rebuked by the Pope for their disloyalty. 
 
 On the 9th of May following, Bishop Nulty 
 published a pastoral letter warning the Vatican 
 that if it persisted in its unjust and oppressive 
 course toward the Irish people they too would 
 some day manifest the spirit displayed by other 
 nationalities and break away from the spiritual, as 
 well as the temporal dominion of Rome. This 
 pastoral is said to have "caused great displeas- 
 ured It did in fact cause great consternation, 
 and produced the remarkable effect of keeping the 
 Pope's hand away from the throat of Irish lib- 
 erty for three full years. 
 
IRELAND AND THE POPE. S^ 
 
 CHAPTER XIII. 
 
 THE LAST RESCRIPT. 
 
 On the 20th of April, 1888, the Pope, at the 
 secret and ex parte request of the Duke of Nor- 
 folk, issued another resc^dpt* condemning and for- 
 bidding the use of two of the weapons of self- 
 defense invented and successfully used by the suf- 
 fering people in their terrible and unequal strug- 
 gle against the life-destroying oppression of land- 
 lordism, namely : the plan of campaign and the 
 boycott. 
 
 This condemnation is put upon the grounds: {a) 
 that the plan of campaign is " unjust and inequita- 
 ble to the landlords; and [b) that the boycott is "« 
 new form of persecution and proscription, al- 
 together foreign to natural justice and to Chris- 
 tian charity." 
 
 Leaving out of account for the present the un- 
 denied and undeniable fact that the Irish land- 
 lords, under the protection of English laws, and 
 English or pro-English judges, constables, bailiffs 
 and soldiers, have been able, not only to hold their 
 own, but to rob the whole Irish people of all the 
 produce of their labor above that bare subsistence 
 
 * See Appendix C. 
 
84 IRELAND AND THE POPE. 
 
 which is the portion of chattel slaves — denying 
 even that to millions, whom they have willfully 
 condemned to death by the slow tortures of 
 famine — and to drive (as they still do) a million 
 a decade into exile, let us consider what the 
 plan of campaign and boycott are and compare 
 them with the methods of persecution, plunder, 
 and extermination which they were designed to 
 resist. 
 
 CHAPTER XIV. 
 
 PLAN OF CAMPAIGN AND BOYCOTT VS. RACK RENT, 
 EVICTION, AND RULES OF ESTATE. 
 
 The land question is at the very root, and is the 
 root, of all the Irish troubles. The Irish people 
 must live on the land, and from the land of Ire- 
 land, if they are permitted to live at all. There 
 are now about five millions of people living on the 
 Island, and the entire land on which and from 
 which they must live is the exclusive private prop- 
 erty of about seventeen thousand landlords, * 
 great and small, who have the almost absolute 
 power to determine upon what conditions and for 
 what tribute the other millions shall be permitted 
 to live. Having this power, the landlords, for 
 
 * Mullhall's Dictionary of Statistics, p. 266. 
 
RACK-RENTING. 85 
 
 centuries, kept the people in a constant nightmare, 
 and turned the country into a vast panorama of 
 horrors. 
 
 They fixed rents according to the measure of 
 their own merciless avarice, often making it higher 
 than the gross yield of the land, and, in the lan- 
 guage of Dean Swift. '' squeezed it out of the very 
 blood and vitals and clothes and dwellings of the 
 tenants, tvho live zuorse than English beggars^' 
 Whatever of the rent could not be extorted by the 
 terrors of threatened eviction was generously al- 
 lowed to accumulate in "arrearages," to pay 
 which unusually good crops, and contributions of 
 American relatives, were confiscated. 
 
 This is what, in Irelend, is called "rack-rent- 
 ing." It may be denominated the " rack " of 
 landlordism, but it is not without its flesh-rending 
 " spiked roller "(to use terms certainly familiar to 
 the Holy Office of the Inquisition) nor its "fire 
 wheel" and "torturing stake." 
 
 The tenant in arrears was always subjected to 
 summary eviction, and even if his rent were not 
 in arrears he was subject, on short notice, to be 
 similarly evicted, in order that the owner might 
 consolidate farms, or turn the land into a park, or 
 sheep pasture, or in order to gratify any whim, re- 
 
86 IRELAND AND THE POPE. 
 
 venge, or other desire, on the part of the land- 
 lord. 
 
 "Our Irish landlords," says Father Lavelle, 
 "all Christians, many of 7ny ozvn creed^ act the 
 landlord as if there were no God ; oppressing the 
 poor man and the weak of heart to put him to 
 
 death. "t 
 
 A parliamentary committee appointed to in- 
 quire into the condition of Irish tenantry — evicted 
 in order to promote the consolidation of farms, 
 not for non-payment of rent — reported that : "It 
 would be impossible for language to convey an 
 idea of the distress to which they have been re- 
 duced. * * ^^ They are obliged to resort to 
 theft and all manner of vice and miquity to pro- 
 cure subsistence, and a vast number of them per- 
 ish of want, after having undergone misery and 
 suffering such as no language can describe and of 
 which no conception can be formed without act- 
 ually beholding it. "J 
 
 But the scope of this book will not permit the 
 presentation of many examples of the murderous 
 persecution by which landlordism has turned the 
 heaven-favored land of Erin into the dark and 
 
 * Has the Pope ever excommunicated, or threatened to excommunicate, 
 any of these landlords for persecuting their fellow Catholics ? Not one. 
 + The Irish Landlord, p. 196. 
 % The Irish Landlord, p. 248. 
 
RULES OF THE ESTATE. 87 
 
 bloody arena which It has certainly been. I have 
 before me Father Lavelle's great and fascinating 
 work on "The Irish Landlord," containing five 
 hundred and forty pages filled with terrible but 
 well attested examples of landlord atrocity, but 
 those which I have, here and elsewhere in this 
 volume given, are quite sufficient to show how 
 unnatural is the power, and how terrible is the 
 threat, of eviction. They show the sort of knife 
 which the seventeen thousand landlords, in good 
 and bad seasons, hold, by legal process, to the 
 throats of their five million Irish tenant slaves,* to 
 enforce their extortionate demands. 
 
 Well has Mr. Gladstone called the writ of 
 eviction a ''death warrant?" 
 
 But the landlord's persecution does not end 
 with eviction. After eviction the unfortunate 
 tenant must face the terrible "Rules of .the 
 Estate." 
 
 These rules forbid any tenant in the district 
 giving food or shelter to any member of an evic- 
 ted family, on pain of being in like manner evicted 
 by his or her landlord. But this is not all, the 
 landlords of other districts have equally stringent 
 
 * Pope Leo complimented the Emperor of Brazil on having freed his 
 slaves, in the very week during which he ordered the Irish back into their 
 chains. 
 
65 IRELAND AND THE POPE. 
 
 rules against sheltering or harboring the doomed 
 wretches. 
 
 Another example from Father Lavelle will illus- 
 trate the working of these rules. Speaking of a 
 very ordinary eviction he says: " A certain land- 
 lord in County Galway got a cheap decree at 
 quarter sessions against a tenant on his property. 
 This was early in October ; October and Novem- 
 ber passed over and a gleam of hope began to 
 enter the poor man's soul that, at least, he would 
 be permitted to pass the Christmas holidays in his 
 old home. December was fast running out; the 
 sun of Christmas eve had actually risen, and with 
 it the poor man and his wife and family, when 
 horror of horrors ! what does he see approaching 
 his cabin door, followed by a -posse comitatus of 
 the Crow-bar Brigade, but the Sheriff, surrounded 
 by. a detachment of the constabulary force. The 
 family were flung out like vermin, and the work 
 of demolition occupied but a few minutes. The 
 evicted family passed that and the subsequent 
 Christmas night with no other covering but that 
 of the wide canopy of Heaven, as strict prohibi- 
 tions had been issued to all the other tenants to 
 harbor them on pain of similar treatment.""* 
 
 Bishop Nulty of Meath, one of God's true 
 
 * The Irish Landlord, pp. 271-2. 
 
EVICTION HORRORS. 89 
 
 noblemen, speaking of "a truel and inhuman 
 eviction" witnessed by himself, and in which 
 '' seven hundred human beings were driven from 
 their homes in one day and set adrift on the 
 world," although "there was not a single shilling 
 of rent due on the estate at the time except by 
 one man." After describing the horrors of the 
 eviction itself, he proceeds : "The horrid scenes 
 I then witnessed I must remember all my life 
 long. The wailing of women — the screams, the 
 terror, the consternation of children — the speech- 
 less agony of honest industrious men — wrung 
 tears of grief from all who saw them. # * ^ 
 The heavy rains that usually attend the autumnal 
 equinoxes descended in cold, copious torrents 
 throughout the night, and at once revealed to the 
 houseless sufferers the awful realities of their con- 
 dition. I visited them next morning and rode 
 from place to place administering to them all the 
 comfort and consolation I could. The appearance 
 of men, women and children, as they emerged 
 from the ruins of their former homes — saturated 
 with rain, blackened and besmeared with soot, 
 shivering in every member from cold and mis- 
 ery — presented positively the most appalling spec- 
 tacle I ever looked at. The landed proprietors 
 in a circle all around — and for many miles in 
 
90 IRELAND AND THE POPE, 
 
 every direction — warned their tenantry, with 
 threats of their direst vengeance against the hu- 
 manity of extending to any of them the hospital- 
 ity of a single night's shelter. Many of these 
 poor people were unable to emigrate with their 
 families, while at home the hand of every man 
 was thus raised against them. Th»y were driven 
 from the land on which Providence had placed 
 them, and, in the state of society surrounding 
 them, every other walk of life was rigidly closed 
 against them. What was the result ? After bat- 
 tling in vain with privation and pestilence, they at 
 last graduated from the workhouse to the tomb, 
 and in a little more than three years, nearly a 
 fourth of them lay quietly in their graves."* 
 
 This is landlordism, in all its cold and cruel 
 infamy ! Standing between God's children and 
 the means which he has provided freely for their 
 support If Blasting their happiness and crushing 
 out their lives. Down with it! Eternal Justice, 
 let it, and its supporters, find : 
 
 " No shelter from the withering curse 
 Of God and human kind." 
 
 But what of the plan of campaign and the 
 boycott — the weapons of passive resistance 
 
 * The Parnell Movement, p. 173. 
 
 + It is estimated that Ireland, if free from landlordism, is capable of sup- 
 porting comfortably from three to four times its present population. 
 
PLAN OF CAMPAIGN. 9 1 
 
 with which the tenants, "contrary to natural jus- 
 tice and Christian charity" according to the Holy 
 Father, seek to defend their lives and their fami- 
 lies against this man-eating monster of landlord- 
 ism ? 
 
 The plan of campaign is a modification of the 
 "No-Rent Manifesto" of October i8th, 1881, 
 and is simply this : The tenants of a district de- 
 termine to act together in withholding from their 
 landlords enough of their crops, or of the price 
 thereof, to provide food for their families and seed 
 for their land for the approaching season, and to 
 give the rest up to the landlord as toll for the 
 privilege of using the God-given land. The ten- 
 ants, or their representatives, agree upon the 
 percentage of the fixed rents that can be paid by 
 them, and then, all who desire to join in the plan, 
 pay the amount of rent agreed upon to a secret 
 agent (from whom it would be taken by legal pro- 
 cess by the landlords if his identity were known), 
 subject to future agreement between the landlord 
 and tenants. If the landlord agrees to accept the 
 rent thus deposited, it is paid over to him ; other- 
 wise it is returned to the tenant. The tenants, 
 thus acting under the plan, assist each other in the 
 defense of eviction suits, and, in defiance of the 
 " Rules of Estate," give each other shelter when 
 evicted. 
 
92 IRELAND AND THE POPE. 
 
 But this would be ineffectual without some 
 means of preventing their more unscrupulous 
 fellow wretches from underbidding them and tak- 
 ing their little holdings at the old rack-rent rates. 
 
 Here the boycott comes into play, and it is 
 simply this : Any person who rents the holding 
 of an evicted tenant is socially, commercially, 
 poHtically, and industrially ostracised by all of the 
 other tenants (practically the whole population) in 
 the district. 
 
 They will not associate with him, nor speak to 
 him, nor buy from him, nor sell to him, nor work 
 for him, nor hire him. They will not handle his 
 erain, nor work where it is handled. 
 
 No member of any of the Leagues will work on 
 any steamer which carries cattle raised by him 
 to the English market. There is in it no invasion 
 of legal right, and no aggression. 
 
 " Nothing is done ^o the obnoxious individual, 
 but nothing will be done y^r him."* 
 
 This principle, as far as possible, is applied to 
 obnoxious landlords as well as to underbidding 
 tenants. 
 
 Thus the boycott and the plan of campaign 
 are the complement and supplement of each other, 
 
 * Ireland Since the Union, p. 251. 
 
DISARMING THE VICTIMS. 93 
 
 and together they constitute a tolerably effective 
 moral weapon of self-defense. 
 
 With the weapons which I have thus described 
 the contest between landlordism and tenantry has 
 of late years been fought. 
 
 This is the contest in which Pope Leo has 
 deemed it his duty to interfere seven times, at 
 least, within the past six years, and always on the 
 side of the strong against the weak. 
 
 He now deems it his duty to disarm the un- 
 fortunate tenantry of even these moral weapons, 
 and leave them naked and helpless to the cruel 
 fangs of their worse than tiger enemies. 
 
 Vicar of Christ ! Well, — so be it. 
 
 These condemned methods have saved thous- 
 ands of the Irish people from starvation, and 
 millions from hunger and privation, during the 
 past six years. 
 
 They have saved to the people about fifteen 
 millions of dollars per annum, and have, by this 
 immediate benefit, consolidated the whole people 
 of Ireland in the mighty political struggle for 
 Home Rule and Land Reform. 
 
 The landlords, the Tories; and the Pope well 
 know that, if this advantage could be taken 
 away, the political movement would disin- 
 tegrate with it ; and so, by an agreement 
 
94 IRELAND AND THE POPE. 
 
 confessedly made with the Duke of Norfolk, 
 the Pope threatens the Irish tenants with the 
 terrors of an eternity in hell, after death, unless 
 they will consent to return again to the hell on 
 earth from which the Land and National Leagues 
 have partially relieved them. 
 
 Before the condemned methods were adopted, 
 from one million to five million dollars were an- 
 nually sent to the people of Ireland by relatives 
 and sympathizers in America, but the contribu- 
 tions served only to increase the rapacity and ex- 
 tortion of the landlords, by increasing the tenants' 
 ability to pay — the only standard by which the 
 maximum of Irish rents is measured. Any man, 
 not an idiot, who speaks seriously of freedom of 
 contract between landlords and tenants in Ireland, 
 betrays a contemptible hypocrisy that not even 
 the mask of the Gorgon would conceal. 
 
 If, by any possibility, the Pope may have been 
 ignorant of the true nature of the controversy in 
 which he has been so persistently interfering, his 
 ignorance is due to his constant refusal to hear 
 the Irish side of it, and is not a whit less excusa- 
 ble than malice prepense. 
 
 The other hypocritical defense so often urged, 
 that the Pope does not oppose the Irish political 
 movement but only the methods by which it is sup- 
 
MOVEMENTS AND METHODS. 95 
 
 ported, is puerile and childish. The methods 
 constitute the force and measure of the move- 
 ment. 
 
 They alone make the political movement possi- 
 ble by giving the people an immediate incentive 
 to combined effort, and a breathing spell from the 
 tortures of landlordism, during which they may 
 work and think. 
 
 Suppose that Germany were to commence an 
 invasion of France (eldest daughter of the church) 
 and that the Pope should forbid the French peo- 
 ple to use either powder or improved implements 
 of war in resisting the invasion, and should then, 
 with customary hypocrisy, say to the French peo- 
 ple: "My dear children, I would not for the world 
 interfere with your ambition to preserve the politi- 
 cal freedom of your country. 1 object only to 
 your metJiodsy 
 
 What would the French people say to this ? 
 
 They would burn him in effigy, as they did his 
 predecessor, Pius VI., in 1791, when he interfered, 
 on behalf of the nobility, with their political as- 
 pirations. 
 
 The ultramontanes will hardly deny the anal- 
 ogy between the present case of Ireland and the 
 supposed case of France on the ground that 
 France has a nationality to preserve while Ireland 
 
96 IRELAND AND THE POPE. 
 
 has not, since Ireland had a nationality for thirty 
 centuries and would probably have had it to this 
 time were it not for the treachery of Pope Leo's 
 predecessor — Adrian. 
 
 This Roman "explanation of the rescript" is 
 so supremely ridiculous, that, if it had been given 
 by a negro minstrel it would have produced roars 
 of laughter and would have ranked as "a good 
 hit." 
 
 CHAPTER XV. 
 
 POPE leg's boycott on dr. m'glynn. 
 
 In the Pope's rescript we are favored with the 
 information that boycotting is "a new form of per- 
 secution and proscription." In truth, however, 
 it is but a mild form of excommunication, suggest- 
 ed by, and modeled after, the Roman Catholic 
 practice of religious and civil ostracism, which, ac- 
 cording to Catholic church authorities, has been 
 practiced by the church ever since its organiza- 
 tion; was recommended by Christ* himself and 
 actually put in practice by St. Paul.f 
 
 We find also, that Solon (594 B. C), recom- 
 mended the " ostracism" by the people of persons 
 v.'hose presence was considered dangerous to the 
 
 * f,. It., XVIIL, 17. 
 
 + I C '., V. 3; Catholic Die, p. 327. 
 
THE RELIGIOUS BOYCOTT. 97 
 
 peace and well being of Athens; but that boycott 
 included the harsher element of " exclusion from 
 the city." 
 
 In cases of major excommunication, non toler- 
 
 ati, pronounced by the pope or by any bishop of 
 
 the Catholic church, "the faithful are forbidden to 
 
 hold either religious or civil communication"* with 
 
 -the excommunicated person. 
 
 I certainly cannot give a better definition of 
 boycotting than to say that it is an agreement be- 
 tween two or more persons not "to hold either re- 
 ligious or civil communication" with a third per- 
 son. Yet that is the very definition which Cath- 
 olic authorities give of the universal practice of 
 the church, and certainly the Holy Office does not 
 mean to condemn a regular and frequent practice 
 of the Catholic church as ''contrary to Christian 
 charity." 
 
 The Pope himself has now a boycott in full 
 force against Dr. Edward McGlynn of the city of 
 New York; a boycott which is, in its terms, infin- 
 itely more rigorous and terrible than any ever de- 
 clared or enforced by any secular body in Ireland. 
 
 The church boycott delivers the victim imme- 
 diately, and for eternity, over to the devil ; f the 
 
 * Catholic Die, p. 328. 
 + Catholic Die, p. 327. 
 
98 IRELAND AND THE POPE. 
 
 faithful are forbidden to hold either relieious or 
 civil communication with him ; they cannot attend 
 a meeting at which he is to deliver a" lecture with- 
 out incurring the penalty of excommunication * 
 by contagion ; and if a Catholic, however devout, 
 even if he have received communion within a 
 month, should suddenly die while attending a 
 lecture delivered by an excommunicated person, 
 he must be deprived of Christian burial, f 
 
 The body of a devout Catholic is now lying in 
 a public vault in New York City, and, because he 
 died suddenly at one of Dr. McGlynn's lectures 
 on social questions, is denied Christian burial by 
 the archbishop. In other words, this dead man's 
 body is denied Christian burial because, in his life- 
 time, he did not take part in carrying out the 
 Pope's boycott against Dr. McGlynn. A very 
 common regard for the ordinary proprieties 
 should have induced His Holiness to declare his 
 own boycotts off before condemning the milder 
 Irish boycotts as un-Christian. 
 
 It is no answer to this " deadly parallel " to 
 say that the Irish boycotts, although milder, are in 
 fact more strictly observed than his. It is cer- 
 tainly not his fault that anybody associates with or 
 
 * So declared by Bishop McQuade of Rochester, N. Y. 
 + So declared by Archbishop Corrigan, N. Y. 
 
VATICAN POLITICS. 99 
 
 Speaks to, or deals with, Dr. McGlynn, after he has 
 given an order which requires them to avoid him. 
 
 Again, what is the penalty for violating the 
 Pope's rescript against the un-Christian practice 
 of boycotting ? Why, the violators of the rescript 
 will simply be boycotted by the Pope ! 
 
 It is fortunate, as has been fully explained, that 
 this document was not issued by the Pope ex 
 cathedra^ but was issued on the fallible advice of 
 the Holy Office of the Inquisition, over the delib- 
 erations of which the Pope presides in person,* and 
 it is therefore possible to recall it if it shall prove 
 to be erroneous. 
 
 If it effects its purpose without serious opposi- 
 tion, there will be no further action taken about 
 it ; so, also, if it be quietly ignored ; but if it be 
 strenuously resisted it will be found to be errone- 
 ous and withdrawn. 
 
 At any rate that is the fixed reputation of the 
 Vatican in the matter of issuing political bulls 
 against the children of the church, and there is no 
 reason to suspect a change of policy at this time. 
 
 * Catholic Die, p. 447. 
 
lOO IRELAND AND THE POPE. 
 
 CHAPTER XVI. 
 
 VATICAN POLITICS THE ITALIAN RING. 
 
 To get any clear idea of the motives and pur- 
 poses of the Vatican in dealing with the Irish 
 question it is absolutely necessary to have a gen- 
 eral knowledge of the character (religious and po- 
 litical) of the papal office, and of the personnel of 
 its incumbents at various periods, and also a 
 knowledge of the origin, character and personnel 
 of the College of Cardinals. 
 
 There is a vast difference between the Catholic 
 religion, the Catholic church and the Catholic 
 hierarchy. The first consists of principles and 
 articles of faith; the second is the organization by 
 and through which these principles and articles 
 are taught and inculcated, and the third is the 
 body of priestly officers charged with administer- 
 ing the affairs of the church and promoting the 
 religion. 
 
 The religion is unchangeable, no matter how 
 much the interpretation of its principles and arti- 
 cles may vary. The organization, which includes 
 discipline, ceremonies, etc., may be changed by 
 the hierarchy as the ever changing conditions of 
 the world may require. 
 
POPE AND CARDINALS. lOI 
 
 The hierarchy Is constantly changing and is 
 subject to all the defects that are incident to hu- 
 man folly, ambition and vice. 
 
 It is with this changeable human hierarchy, 
 and with it alone, that I am dealing; and it is 
 acknowledged, by all Catholic writers, to have 
 been at various times, good and bad, weak and 
 strong, covetous and generous, worldly and disin- 
 terested. I shall therefore speak freely, feeling 
 that none can be reasonably offended, in his re- 
 ligious sensitiveness, by the statement of "truths, 
 however painful,"* which do not concern the in- 
 tegrity of his religious principles. 
 
 The controlling power of the Catholic hierarchy 
 consists of the Pope and a college of seventy 
 Cardinals. t 
 
 The Pope appoints the Cardinals and the Car- 
 dinals elect the Pope. The whole church organ- 
 ization is therefore under the absolute and exclu- 
 sive control of a self-perpetuating body of seventy- 
 one men. 
 
 The tremendous power wielded by those sev- 
 enty-one men, cannot be questioned by any per- 
 son, or body of persons, in the church; and if their 
 political as well as their religious edicts are obeyed 
 by Catholics, it will at once be apparent that their 
 
 * See Lives of the Popes, by J. C. Earle, p. 6. 
 + Catholic Die, p. 119. 
 
I02 IRELAND AND THE POPE. 
 
 support must be of incalculable value to political 
 sovereigns, and that the temptation to corruption 
 and worldly ambition is enormous. 
 
 It will further appear, at once, that if the Col- 
 lege of Cardinals should ever fall into the hands 
 of a few designing families it would be impossible 
 to prevent them from creating or perpetuating a 
 most exclusive aristocracy, as powerful and irre- 
 sponsible as any that ever held sway upon earth. 
 
 These are the very things that have transpired 
 in the See of Rome. 
 
 The College of Cardinals for over eight hundred 
 years (ever since it was created) * has been com- 
 posed almost exclusively of Italians, and these 
 have been nearly all members of a little Italian 
 nobility consisting of a very few families. 
 
 While the great teachers, preachers, bishops, 
 and priests, representing more than nine-tenths of 
 the Catholic world, have been practically excluded 
 (being admitted only in a small and powerless 
 minority), brothers, cousins, uncles, nephews, and 
 even fathers and sons, of the little Italian nobility, 
 have for generation after generation sat beside 
 each other in the College of Cardinals. 
 
 To illustrate this, a few examples, from stand- 
 ard Catholic authorities, will suffice : 
 
 * Catholic Die, p. ii8. 
 
ALL "NOBLEMEN. IO3 
 
 The present Pope, John V. R. L. Pecci, is the 
 son of Count Domenico, and has a brother in the 
 College of Cardinals^; Pius IX., John M. M. 
 Ferretti, was the son of Count Jerome Ferretti 
 and Countess Catharine Solazzi^ ; Gregory XVI., 
 Bartholemew Albert Cappellari, " was born at 
 Belluno, in Lombardy, September i8th, 1795, of 
 parents belonging to the nobles of the place^ ; " 
 Pius VI 1 1., Francis X. Castiglioni, was "born 
 (November 20th, 1761) of noble family'*" and 
 appointed as his secretary Cardinal Albini, of the 
 house of Albini, " one of the most illustrious and 
 noble in Italy, boasting even of imperial allian- 
 ces^ ; " Leo XII., Hannibal della Genga, "was 
 the son of Count Hillary della Genga^ ; " and 
 Pius VII., Barnabas Chiaramonti, who was a rel- 
 ative of Pius VI,'' derived "high nobility" from 
 his father.^ These constitute the last five Popes, 
 and the statement which I have given illustrates 
 how the papacy is confined, not merely to Ital 
 ians, but to the old Italian political aristocracy. 
 But that is not all ; four of the Popes — Leo X., 
 
 1 M. F. Egan in "The Century," May, 1888. 
 
 2 Shea's Life of Pius IX., p. 1 1. 
 
 3 The Last Four Popes, by Cardinal Wiseman, p. 376. 
 
 4 The Last Four Popes, p. 323. 
 
 5 The Last Four Popes, p. 330. 
 
 6 The Last Four Popes, p. 195. 
 
 7 The Last Four Popes, p. 328-9. 
 
 8 The Last Four Popes, p. 37. 
 
I04 IRELAND AND THE POPE. 
 
 Clement VII., Pius IV., and Leo XI. — were im- 
 mediate members of the" Medici family^ ; three 
 Popes — Innocent III., his nephew Gregory IX., 
 and Innocent XIII. — were immediate members of 
 the [Conti family^; two of the Popes — Sixtus 
 IV. and his nephew Julius II. — were immediate 
 members of the Rovere family^ ; two of the 
 Popes — Nicholas III. and Benedict XIII. — were 
 immediate members of the Orsini family^ ; two 
 of the Popes — Calixtus III. and his nephew Alex- 
 ander VI. — were immediate members of the Bor- 
 gia family.^ 
 
 Cardinal Caesar Borgia was a son of Pope Al- 
 exander VI. ,^ and sat as a member of the College 
 of Cardinals,' over which his father presided. 
 
 These are but a few examples taken from the 
 lives of popes who lived and reigned since the 
 time of Adrian and Alexander, and during the time 
 that the Irish people have been taking so large a 
 share of their politics from Rome. 
 
 The power and prestige of the papacy have 
 
 1 Earle's Lives of the Popes, pp. 366, 374, 393 and 412. 
 
 2 Earle's Lives of the Popes, pp. 266, 279, and 436. 
 
 3 Earle's Lives of the Popes, p. 360. 
 
 4 Earle's Lives of the Popes, pp. 298 and 437. 
 
 5 Earle's Lives of the Popes, pp. 343 and 356. 
 
 6 There was nothing illicit in this. The Pope was a married layman. 
 The cardinals are not bound to choose one of their own body; a layman,, 
 and even a married man may be lawfully elected." Catholic Die, p. 679. 
 
 7 Earle's Lives of the Popes, p. 356. 
 
PAPAL FAMILIES. IO5 
 
 always excited the most consuming ambitions and 
 burning jealousies among the eligible families. 
 
 Each family, and combinations of families, in 
 turn, sought to gain control of the College of Car- 
 dinals. 
 
 An example of this is given in the life of Alex- 
 ander VI., who, " To satisfy his ambition and ex- 
 alt the princes of his own family, too often out- 
 raged the laws of justice. It was with such views 
 that he sought the ruin ot the houses of Colonna 
 and Orsini."* 
 
 This Borgia family was originally from Spain, 
 and Earle, with Hefele and others, speak of Alex- 
 ander VI. as an exceptionally "unworthy pope." 
 This is undoubtedly true, but it does not alter the 
 fact that the papacy has been in the hands of a 
 very wicked, ambitious and designing man, who 
 was duly elected to the papal chair and filled it 
 for nine years, and that if he had succeeded in 
 doing what his more favored Italian predecessors 
 did, the Borgia family, instead of being hunted 
 from Italy by Pope Julius II., as they were, might 
 still be in control of the Vatican, making political 
 trades with England and issuing rescripts to Ire- 
 land ; for, if they had once secured the necessary 
 majority of their own family in the college, no 
 
 * Earle's Lives of the Popes, p. 357 ; quoting Mariana, Lib. 26. 
 
I06 IRELAND AND THE POPE. 
 
 power in or out of the church could have di-s 
 lodged them. 
 
 Besides, no candid historian will claim that Al- 
 exander VI. was any worse than his predecessors, 
 Sergius III., John X., John XI., John XII., John 
 XVI., or John XIX., the first three of whom were 
 " elevated to the papal throne by the intrigues of 
 the notorious Marozia,"* and the last of whom, 
 with Benedict VIII., tried to have the Holy See 
 made a legal '''inheritance in their family y^ 
 
 These, bear in mind, were not anti-popes, but 
 duly elected and recognized popes of the church, 
 although Sergius III. was, for some years, an anti- 
 pope before being elected to the papal chair. J 
 
 V^e had, recently, an illustration of the nepotism 
 and family influence still prevailing at the Vati- 
 can, in that, while the Irish priesthood, represent- 
 ing more genuine Catholics than does the Italian 
 priesthood, had not a single representative in the 
 College of Cardinals, and while the Italians had 
 more than a two-thirds majority of that college, 
 two youthful offshoots of the effete Italian nobility 
 were sent to Queen Victoria, also a temporal and 
 spiritual sovereign (head of the Episcopal Church) 
 with some sort of a trinket as a jubilee gift, and, 
 
 * Earle's Lives of the Popes, p. 187, 190-2. 
 t Earle's Lives of the Popes, p. 209. 
 X Earle's Lives of the Popes, pp. 185-7. 
 
ORIGIN OF THE CARDINALS. lOj 
 
 on its safe delivery, to honor the Queen, they were 
 both created cardinals. This is also an illustra- 
 tion of the closer relation between the ''nobilities" 
 of England and Italy than exists between the Ital- 
 ans and their Irish co-religionists. 
 
 The political scheming which has been resorted 
 to for the purpose of securing control of the 'Holy 
 See was worthy of modern political bosses, and is 
 very interesting. 
 
 The Pope, who for the first six hundred years 
 after Christ, was recognized simply as the Bishop 
 of Rome, and exercised no jurisdiction beyond that 
 See, was, until the year 1059 "chosen like other 
 bishops by the clergy and people, with the assent 
 of the neighboring bishops."* 
 
 In that year (1059) the College of Cardinals 
 was instituted and consisted of six bishops.f The 
 number of cardinals was gradually increased by 
 succeeding popes, very much as our United States 
 Supreme Court has been increased, and, no doubt, 
 for the same purpose, namely : to change from 
 time to time the balance of power. This practice 
 continued for over five hundred years, when, in 
 1586, the number was finally fixed at not exceed- 
 ing seventy. J 
 
 * Catholic Die, p. 678. 
 t Catholic Die, 1 18, 679. 
 X Catholic Die, 119. 
 
I08 IRELAND AND THE POPE. 
 
 The Holy See, as thus constituted, claims the 
 Divine right to exercise political as well as relig- 
 ious sovereignty in every country. This claim 
 was emphasized by Monsignor Preston, Vicar Gen- 
 eral of the Arch-diocese of New York, in his " New 
 Year's Sermon" (January, 1888) in which he 
 said: *'' Whoever says, I will take my religion 
 from Rome but not my politics, is not a good 
 Catholic.''' 
 
 But it needed not the assurance of Monsignor 
 Preston to advise us of the Pope's claim of tem- 
 poral authority over his religious followers. 
 
 Prior to the year 860 the Pope was inducted 
 into office as "Vicar of our Savior Jesus Christ," 
 and the miter was placed upon his head as one of 
 the emblems of his priestly authority. 
 
 Some time between the years 85 8 and 867, 
 
 Pope Nicholas I. united a kingly crown with the 
 
 miter, and between that time and the year 1200 
 
 (the exact date is uncertain), a second crown was 
 
 added,* and the third crown was added about the 
 
 year 1370, thus completing the tiara. 
 ft 
 Ever since that time, " The tiara is placed on 
 
 the Pope's head, at his coronation, by the second 
 
 Cardinal Deacon, in the loggia of St. Peter's, with 
 
 the words, ' Receive the tiara adorned with three 
 
 Catholic Die, p. 796 
 
THE RESCRIPT POLITICAL. IO9 
 
 crowns, and know that thou art Father of Princes 
 and Kings, Ruler of the World, Vicar of our Sa- 
 vior Jesus Christ '."'^' 
 
 Even in this coronation ceremony, as in the 
 practice of the Vatican, the religious office is sub- 
 ordinated to the political offices. 
 
 In face of all these undenied and undeniable 
 facts, how silly it is to enter into nice disputations 
 about the religious character of the Pope's rescript. 
 
 The rescript was issued by the Pope as a tem- 
 poral sovereign, was intended as a political edict, 
 and obedience to it will be an acknowledgment 
 that the self-revolving, self-perpetuating Italian 
 Ring which I have described, has a Divine right 
 to rule in the political affairs of Ireland. 
 
 It can have no other meaning. 
 
 * Catholic Die, p. 796, citing "Beitiage," by Bishop Hefele, Vol. II., p. 
 236, et. seq. 
 
no IRELAND AND THE POPE. 
 
 CHAPTER XVII. 
 
 CONCLUSION. 
 
 The true and manly position of the Irish 
 people in this matter must be, that, whatever its 
 purpose, the rescript is an impudent interference 
 with Irish politics and ought to be promptly and 
 effectually repudiated. 
 
 It will not do to change the movement in order 
 to avoid the letter, or meet the spirit, of the re- 
 script, for that will instantly destroy the confix 
 dence of sympathizers everywhere. 
 
 Well may such sympathizers ask, as many even 
 now are asking: What is the use of helping Irish 
 movements if the Pope can still kill them, as for 
 seven hundred years he has been killing them, just 
 at the critical moment of dawning victory } 
 
 A quietus must now and forever be put upon 
 Irish political rescripts from Rome. Otherwise 
 confidence in " Irish movements " will be, for an- 
 other generation, absolutely destroyed. 
 
 The spirit displayed by so many thousands of the 
 Irish people, both in Ireland and America, in their 
 protests against this latest edict, is most gratifying 
 and encouraging; but there have also been mani- 
 
CONCLUSION — STOP PETERS PENCE. Ill 
 
 fested some of the old and fatal symptoms of dis- 
 integration, which have always been observed to 
 follow papal rescripts. For example, at the meet- 
 ing held in Limerick on Sunday, May 27th, while 
 twenty thousand enthusiastic people, in spite of 
 the bishop's anathemas, attended, it was observed 
 that " there were no priests present, and the lead- 
 ing Catholics, who had previously been conspicu- 
 ous at the meetings, were to-day conspicuous by 
 their absence," 
 
 The meaning of this is too plain to students of 
 Irish history. 
 
 It means, unless checked by prompt and effec- 
 tive measures, disintegration and death to the 
 Irish Home Rule movement. 
 
 Are there no patriotic priests in Limerick ? 
 Yes, but true to the prophecies of Burke and Pitt 
 and Shell, Maynooth and Rome have established 
 in them a prmciple of subserviency stronger than 
 their patriotism — a readiness to sacrifice the in- 
 terests of Ireland and the hopes and aspirations of 
 her people to the discipline imposed by the church 
 authorities at Rome. 
 
 In this crisis and in the future political struggles 
 it is manifest that one of two things must be done : 
 the Irish priests must break away from their slav- 
 ish subserviency to the Italian Ring and reassume 
 
112 IRELAND AND THE POPE. 
 
 the independent position which was held by the 
 clergy of Ireland from the time of St. Patrick to 
 the coming of Cardinal Paparo ; or if that, unfortu- 
 nately, cannot be, then the people must break 
 away from all political alliance with the priesthood 
 and absolutely reject it as an element in political 
 affairs ; or finally, failing both of these, the Irish 
 people must be content to wear the chain of Eng- 
 land with the chain of Rome, until some future 
 generation shall discard both chains together. 
 
 It is not necessary that any change should be 
 made, either by priest or people, in their religion. 
 
 There were Irish saints, afterwards canonized 
 by the Roman Church, who never recognized any 
 allegiance to the See of Rome, except to receive 
 the abstract doctrines of Catholicity from that cen- 
 tre ; but I venture, on the authority of their 
 canonization, to say, that they were at least as good 
 Catholics as any of the ultramontane Irishmen 
 of the present day. 
 
 Neither is it necessary that there should be any 
 change in their relations to the church as an or- 
 ganization, but only that the Roman hierarchy be 
 held strictly to their spiritual trust and boycotted, 
 if necessary, out of their political pretensions. 
 
 If the people of Ireland would, by general con- 
 cert of action, suspend payments on the bill of 
 
CONCLUSION STOP PETERS PENCE. II3 
 
 sale of Ireland, given by Pope Adrian to King 
 Henry II., until the liberty which that instrument 
 blasted shall be recovered, nothing more would be 
 heard forever of papal interference with Irish pol- 
 itics, and the Irish priests would be left free to 
 hasten the renewal of tribute. 
 
LIST OF AUTHORITIES. 
 
 Of the many of the authorities which I have cited, there are several editions 
 differently paged. To avoid misleading and hyper-criticism, I here insert a list of 
 my authorities with the edition referred to: 
 
 TITLE. 
 History of Ireland 
 History of Ireland 
 History of Ireland 
 History of Ireland 
 History of Ireland 
 History of Ireland 
 History of Ireland 
 History of Ireland 
 History of Ireland 
 Irish before the Conquest 
 Irish Hierarchy 
 Ecclesiastical Hist, of Ireland 
 Irish Landlord, The 
 Ireland As She Is 
 Ireland of To-day 
 New Ireland 
 
 History of Our Own Times 
 Outlines of Irish History 
 Ireland Since the Union 
 Lights and Shades of Ireland 
 The Parnell Movement 
 Catholic Dictionary 
 The Last Four Popes 
 Life of Pius IX. 
 Lives of the Popes 
 The Pope 
 English Misrule 
 
 EDITION. 
 Kelly, 1885 
 Virtue, E. & R., 1845 
 First 
 
 2nd O'Kelly's Trans. 
 Cameron & F. 
 Kenmare Convent, i 876 
 Donahoe, 1857 
 Virtue, E. & R., 1845 
 Cameron & F. 
 First 
 
 Sadlier, 1855 
 Cummisky, 1838 
 Donahoe, 1870 
 Kelly, 1877 
 Bancroft, 1881 
 Third 
 
 Belford, C. & Co., 1887 
 First 
 
 Belford, C. & Co., 1887 
 French, 1851 
 Benziger, 1886 
 Catholic Pub. Society, 1 8i 
 Donahoe, 1858 
 Kelly, 1877 
 Kelly, 1877 
 Pustet, 1885 
 Lynch, C. & M., 1877 
 
 AUTHOR. 
 M. Haverty 
 S. O'Halloran 
 Thos. Wright 
 Abbe MacGeoghegan 
 D'Arcy McGee 
 M. F. Cusack 
 Thos. Mooney 
 Wm. Dolby 
 John Mitchell 
 M. C. Ferguson 
 Rev. Thos. Walsh 
 Rev. P. J. Carew 
 Rev. P. Lavelle 
 J. J. Clancy 
 M. F. Sullivan 
 A. M. Sullivan 
 Justin McCarthy 
 Justin McCarthy 
 Justin McCarthy 
 Mrs. A. Nicholson 
 T. P. O'Connor 
 Addis & Arnold 
 Cardinal Wiseman 
 J. G. Shea 
 J. C. Earle 
 Monsignor Capel 
 Rev. T. N. Burke 
 
APPENDIX A. 
 
 Full translation of the Bull of Pope Adrian IV. , granting Ireland to King 
 Henry II. 
 
 [From O'Halloran's History of Ireland, p. 305.] . 
 
 "Adrian, bishop, servant of the servants of God, to his dearest son in 
 Christ, the illustrious King of England, greeting, and apostolical benediction: 
 
 "Full laudably and profitably hath your magnificence conceived the 
 design of propagating your glorious renown on earth, and completing your 
 reward of eternal happiness in heaven ; while as a Cathohc prince, you are 
 intent on enlarging the borders of the church, teaching the truth of the 
 Christian faith to the ignorant and rude, extirpating the roots of vice from 
 the field of the Lord, and for the more convenient execution of this purpose, 
 requiring the counsel and favor of the apostolic See, in which the maturer 
 your deliberation and the greater the discretion of your procedure, by so 
 much the happier we trust will be your progress, with the assistance of the 
 Lord, as all things are used to come to a prosperous end and issue, which 
 take their beginning from the ardor of faith and the love of religion. 
 
 "There is, indeed, no doubt but that Ireland, and all the islands on which 
 Christ, the sun of righteousness hath shone, and which have received the 
 doctrine of the Christian faith, do belong to the jurisdiction of St; Peter and 
 the Holy Roman Church, as your excellency also doth acknowledge; and 
 therefore, we are the more solicitous to propagate the righteous plantation 
 of faith in this land, and the branch acceptable to God, as we have the 
 secret conviction of conscience that this is more especially our bound en 
 duty. You then, my dear son in Christ, have signified to us your desire to 
 enter into the island of Ireland, in order to reduce the people to obedience 
 under the laws, and to extirpate the plants of vice; and that you are willing 
 to pay from each [house] a yearly pension of one penny to St. Peter, and that 
 will preserve the rights of the churches of the land whole and inviolate. 
 We, therefore, with that grace and acceptance suited to your pious and laud- 
 able design, and favorably assenting to your petition, do hold it good and 
 acceptable, that, for extending the borders of the church, restraining the 
 
I I 6 APPENDIX. 
 
 progress of vice, for the correction of manners, the planting of virtue, and 
 the increase of reUgion, you enter this island, and execute therein whatever 
 shall pertain to the honor of God and welfare of the land ; and that the 
 people of this land receive you honorably, and reverence you as their lord ; 
 the rights of their churches still remaining sacred and inviolate, and saving 
 to St. Peter the annual pension of one penny from every house. 
 
 "If then you be resolved to carry the design you have conceived into 
 effectual execution, study to form this nation to virtue and manners, and 
 labor by yourself, and others you shall judge meet for this work, in faith, 
 word, and life, that the church may be there adorned ; that the religion of 
 the Christian faith may be planted and grow up, and that all things pertain- 
 ing to the honor of God, and salvation of souls, be so ordered, that you may 
 be entitled to the fulness of heavenly reward from God, and obtain a glo- 
 rious renown on earth throughout all ages. Given at Rome, in the year of 
 Salvation 1156." 
 
 APPENDIX B. 
 
 Full translation of the Bull of Pope Alexander III., confirming the grant 
 of Adrian. 
 
 [From O'Halloran's History of Ireland, page 306.] 
 
 "Alexander, bishop, servant of the servants of God, to his most dear son 
 in Christ, the illustrious King of England, health and apostohcal benediction. 
 
 "Forasmuch as these things, which have been on good reasons granted by 
 our predecessors, deserve to be confirmed in the fullest manner, and con- 
 sidering the grant of the dominion of the realm of Ireland by the venerable 
 Pope Adrian, we, pursuing his footsteps, do ratify and confirm the same, 
 (reserving to St. Peter, and to the Holy Roman Church, as well in England 
 as in Ireland, the yearly pension of one penny from every house) provided 
 that the abominations of the land being removed, that barbarous people, 
 Christians only in name, may, by your means, be reformed, and their live^ 
 and conversation mended, so that their disordered church being thus re- 
 duced to regular discipHne, that nation may, with the name of Christians, 
 be so in act and deed. Given at Rome, in the year of Salvation 1172." 
 
APPENDIX. I I 7 
 
 APPENDIX C. 
 
 THE TEXT OF THE LAST RESCRIPT. 
 
 (From the "Dublin Freeman," May 5th, 1888.) 
 
 The following is a translation of the Latin text of the circular addressed 
 by the Congregation of the Holy Office to the Irish Bishops in reference to 
 the Plan of Campaign and to boycotting: — 
 
 My Lord — A letter was issued by the Supreme Congregation of the 
 Holy Roman and Universal Inquisition on the 20th of the present month of 
 April, for transmission to the Archbishops and Bishops of Ireland. 
 
 Herewith I send your Lordship a copy of this letter, and having dis- 
 charged this duty, and wishmg you every blessing in the Lord, I remain 
 
 yours devotedly, 
 
 John Cardinal Simeoni, Prefect. 
 
 ^ D. Archbishop of Tyre, Secretary. 
 
 S. Congregation of the Propaganda, Rome, April 23rd, 1888. 
 
 [COPY.] 
 
 My Lord— Whenever the affairs of their country seemed to require it the 
 Apostolic See has frequently addressed to the Irish people — towards whom 
 it has always shown special affection — seasonable words of warning and 
 counsel with the object of enabling them to defend or to assert their rights 
 without prejudice to justice or to public tranquillity. At the present mo- 
 ment our Holy Father Pope Leo XIII., fearing lest right conceptions of 
 justice and charity should be perverted amongst that people in consequence 
 of that mode of warfare called the Plan of Campaign, which has been em- 
 ployed in that country in contests between letters and holders of lands or 
 farms, as also in consequence of a form of proscription in connection with 
 the same contests known as boycotting, commissioned the Supreme Con- 
 gregation of the Holy Roman and Universal Inquisition to make the matter 
 the subject of grave and careful examination. Accordingly the following 
 question was submitted to the Most Eminent Fathers who share with me 
 the office of General Inquisitors against heretical error, viz: In contests be- 
 tween letters and holders of lands or farms in Ireland is it lawful to have 
 recourse to those means known as the Plan of Campaign and Boycotting — 
 
Il8 APPENDIX. 
 
 and their Eminences, having long and maturely weighed the matter, re- 
 plied in the negative. 
 
 Our Holy Father confirmed and approved this reply on Wednesday, the 
 18th of the present month. 
 
 How equitable this decision is any one will see who reflects that a rent 
 fixed by mutual consent cannot, without violation of contract, be reduced 
 at the arbitrary will of the tenant alone. This the more, since for the set- 
 tling of such contests courts have been established wliich, allowance being 
 made even for failure of crops or of disasters which may have occurred, re- 
 duce excessive rents and bring them within the limits of equity. 
 
 Again, it cannot be held to be lawful that rent should be extorted from 
 tenants and deposited with unknown persons, no account being taken of the 
 landlord. 
 
 Finally, it is altogether foreign to natural justice and to Christian charity 
 that a new form of persecution and of proscription should ruthlessly be put 
 in force against persons who are satisfied with, and are prepared to pay the 
 rent agreed on with their "landlord; or against persons who in the exercise 
 of their right take vacant farms. 
 
 Your lordship will therefore — prudently but effectively — admonish the 
 clergy and the people in reference to this matter , and exhort them to ob- 
 serve Christian charity, and not to overstep the bounds of justice whilst 
 seeking relief from the evils which afflict them. — Your devoted servant in 
 the Lord, R. Card, Monaco. 
 
 Rome, 20th April, 1888. 
 
LIBHAKY Ul- UUNUHtbb 
 
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