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THE 
 
 CHURCH SETTLEMEiNT 
 
 IRELAND, 
 
 OR, 
 
 HIBERNIA PACANDA. 
 
 BY 
 
 AUBREY DE VERE. 
 
 LONDON: 
 
 LONGMANS, GREEN, READER, AND DYER. 
 
 DUBLIN: DUFFY. 
 
 1866. 
 
I. 
 
 With a Preface by tfie same Author. 
 
 THE CHURCH ESTABLISHMENT IN IRELAND. Illus- 
 
 -1- trated exclusively by Protestant Authorities. Dublin : Waeren. 
 
 By the same Author. 
 
 II. 
 
 In a few days. 
 
 IRELAND'S CHURCH PROPERTY, AND THE RIGHT 
 
 X USE OF IT. London : Longmans. Dublin : Duffy. 
 
 III. 
 
 THE SISTERS; AND INISFAIL, a Lyrical Chronicle of 
 Ireland. London : Longmans. 
 
 Ireland. London : Longmans. 
 
 IV. 
 
 nnHE INFANT BRIDAL, AND OTHER POEMS. 
 
 London : Macmillan. 
 
THE 
 
 CHUECH SETTLEMENT OF IRELAND. 
 
" That Jacobinism which is speculative in its origin, and which arises from 
 wantonness and fulness of blood, may possibly be kept under by firmness and 
 prudence. The very levity of character which produces it may extinguish it. 
 But Jacobinism which arises from penury and irritation, from scorned loyalty 
 and rejected allegiance, has much deeper roots. They take theii* nourishment 
 from the bottom of human nature, and the unalterable constitution of things, 
 and not from humour and caprice, or the opinions of the day about privileges 
 and liberties. These roots will be shot into the depths of hell, and will at last 
 raise up their proud tops to Heaven itself." — Burke. Correspondence, vol. iv. 
 p. 380. 
 
 " To one or other of these principles — that of the appropriation of the whole 
 of the Ecclesiastical revenues to the majority, or that of their partition according 
 to numbers — there exists in the civilized world but one exception, Ireland ; and 
 * * Ireland is the only country in the world in which a condition of 
 social and political disorganisation prevails, growing out of, or closely connected 
 with, religious animosities, and full of danger to the most vital interests of the 
 State. — Past and present Policy of England towards Ireland, p. 271. 
 
THE 
 
 CHURCH SETTLEMENT 
 
 IRELAND, 
 
 OR, 
 
 HIBEENIA PACANDA, 
 
 BY 
 
 AUBKEY DE VEEE. 
 
 LONDON: 
 
 LONGMANS, GKEEN, READER, AND DYER. 
 
 DUBLIN: DUFFY. 
 
 1866. 
 
u^isosm^ 
 
 (c %^^ 
 
 BROWNE AND NOLAN, PEINTEBS, DUBLIN. 
 
bYSS30 
 
 NOTICE. 
 
 The first two letters included in this pamphlet were 
 published in the Times last spring, with the hope of 
 directing the attention of thoughtful persons in England to 
 the duty and necessity of establishing Religious Equality 
 in Ireland. Nearly at the same time I published several 
 letters in two of the Irish newspapers, the object of which 
 was to shew that it is through a just distribution of her 
 Church Property, not through its secularization, that 
 Ireland ought to win Religious Equality. These letters 
 will shortly be re-published under the title " Ireland's 
 Church Property, and the right use of it." I hope also, 
 before long, to publish some remarks upon the arguments 
 commonly urged in defence of the existing Church Settle- 
 ment : but upon the present occasion I have confined 
 myself, as much as possible, to one great aspect of that 
 question, viz., its relation to the constitutional rights of 
 the Irish people. 
 
 POSTSCRIPT. 
 
 Since the following pages have been in type, Fenianism 
 has once more raised its head. This is an unwelcome con- 
 firmation of the remark made in page 11, that a plague 
 
 497 
 
VI 
 
 which comes from a foreign land can only be stayed by that 
 policy, masterly at once and merciful, which deprives it of 
 that aliment supplied to it in Ireland by the national dis- 
 content. The times are urgent, though attempts as witless 
 as they are wicked may be long warded off ; and to delay 
 the permanent remedy is to play into the hands of those 
 who, at a secure distance, indulge their sport, or their 
 greed, by inflaming popular passions, and prolonging a 
 nation's poverty and unrest. Every new incident enforces 
 the same moral. Alarm prevails again : — Why, it lias been 
 asked, is not the challenge met by the loyal in Ireland as a 
 similar challenge would be met by the same class in England? 
 Because they do not feel the gi-'ound solid beneath their feet. 
 They trust to the strong hand of the State. The just hand 
 alone is consistently strong. 
 
 The real danger is not that immediate one which scares 
 the timid, and passes in a few days. It is that which 
 proceeds from the chronic disease of industry paralyzed by 
 insecurity, and a people demoralized by equivocal social 
 relations. 
 
 A. De V. 
 
 December 2, 1866. 
 
I 
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 PAGE. 
 
 Peeface — The Pkoposed Reform . . . . ix. 
 
 I. — Fenianism . . . . . . 1 
 
 II. — The Ecclesiastical Settlement of Ireland . .6 
 
 III. — Practical Evils from Sectarian Ascendency (Ma- 
 terial Evils) . . . . . 11 
 
 IV. — Practical Evils from Sectarian Ascendency (Moral 
 
 Evils) ....... 17 
 
 V. — Practical Evils of Sectarian Ascendency — The War 
 
 WITH Common Sense . . . . 22 
 
 VI. — Pensions Inadmissible . . . . .33 
 
 VII. — The Constitution — Citizenship ... 38 
 
 VIII. — The Constitution — Citizenship . . . .45 
 
 IX. — The Constitution — The Rights of Subjects . 50 
 
 X. — The Constitutional Question — Summary . . 60 
 
PREFACE, 
 
 For the pacification of Ireland, religious equality is necessary ; 
 and that equality should be effected, not by the secularization of 
 the existing Church property, but by a just distribution of it 
 between the Catholics and the Protestants. This is the thesis 
 maintained in the following pages. 
 
 Such a change, it is said by some, would be an injustice 
 and injury to Protestant interests. An erroneous tradition 
 has long maintained itself on this subject. Let us ascertain the 
 religious statistics of Ireland, and compare them with those of 
 England and other countries. 
 
 First, as to population. According to the last census, the 
 number of those belonging to the Established Church is 693,357 ; 
 and that of the Roman Catholics is 4,505,265. Of the total 
 Irish population the Established Church possesses about one- 
 ninth part. But this statement is far from showing the whole 
 state of the facts. Two Dioceses in Ulster (consisting each of 
 united dioceses), presided over respectively by the Archbishop 
 of Armagh and the Bishop of Down, together with the diocese 
 of Dublin, contain, by themselves, 417,011 of the population 
 belonging to the Establishment, leaving in aU Ireland, with the 
 exception of these three dioceses, only 276,346, a population 
 less than that of many an English town. Excluding Ulster, 
 the members of the Establishment in Ireland about equal in 
 number the inhabitants of Birmingham, and are fewer than 
 those of Liverpool. Even in Ulster the Roman Catholic popu- 
 
lation exceeds, though not largely, the Presbyterian and that of 
 the Establishment taken together. In all Munster the Estab- 
 lishment countsbut 80,860, being less by 5,919 than the number 
 of Catholics in the borough of Cork alone. In all Connaught 
 it counts about 40,000 — a body about as numerous as the 
 Catholic population of the city of Limerick or that of Bel- 
 fast. It used to be thought during the famine years that, as 
 the visitation fell with most force upon the poorest part of the 
 population, it would be found to have effected a great change in 
 the proportion between Catholics and Protestants. But the 
 census proved the change to amount to but a small fraction. In 
 1834 the Catholic population was 80-9 per cent, of the whole; 
 in 1861 it was 77*7 per cent. 
 
 What now are the statistics as regards Endowment ? That 
 of the Catholic Church will give us. no trouble ; that of the 
 Establishment has already given a great deal, and we have not 
 yet got a plain account of the matter. During the debate upon 
 Earl Grey's motion last session, it was stated to amount only to 
 £420,000 per annum, and by some speakers it has been reckoned 
 at a sum lower still. But according to the " Stackpoole Re- 
 turns " furnished from official sources, it amounts to £586,428. 
 Even this statement does not include important parts of that 
 Revenue. A clergyman of the Irish Establishment, remarkable 
 for accurate information and for fearless impartiality. Dr. Maziere 
 Brady, has commented upon it thus in a published letter : — 
 " The Ecclesiastical Commissioners, when they estimated the ag- 
 gregate amount of the revenue of the Established Church (whe- 
 ther derived from land, rentcharge, or any other source) at the 
 sum of £586,428, omitted the sums which they themselves re- 
 ceive out of the See Estates for church purposes. In calculating 
 the gross revenue they also wholly omitted the value of the See 
 houses, and Glebe houses ; and in valuing the Glebe lands, they 
 adopted a rate of valuation lower in many instances than even the 
 Poor Law Valuation, which is well known to be much under 
 
the true letting value. Sums derived from pew-rents are like- 
 wise omitted. . . . The true amount of Irish Church re- 
 venues cannot be ascertained without a Government enquiry, so 
 unwilling are the officials to give information." Dr. Brady re- 
 marks pointedly upon the fallacy included in certain distinctions 
 between gross income and net income, which have been much 
 insisted on by some, but with little discrimination as to what 
 properly belongs to the two categories. In estimating the net 
 revenue of the Establishment it is but fair to deduct such a 
 charge as that of poor rates, which, of course, is so much lost to 
 it as a whole :— it is, however, wholly illusory thus to deduct also 
 sums only taken from one portion of the clergy to be paid to 
 another. Dr. Brady observes, in another letter, " The Ecclesias- 
 tical Commissioners allege the net value of livings (including 
 Bishoprics under that term) to be £448,943. That * net value * 
 is exclusive of all stipends paid to the unbeneficed clergymen or 
 curates, and, in many instances, as in the case of sick, absent, 
 and rich incumbents, represents the net sum paid to clergymen 
 for doing no clerical duty whatever."* ..." If those sums 
 were added . . . the total would perhaps exceed £700,000." 
 Dr. Alfred Lee, also a clergyman of the Irish Established Church, 
 has published several letters touching, among other things, on 
 its revenue. He fell into several errors, some of which he has 
 corrected ; and his latest estimate of that revenue (gross) is, I 
 believe, £649,500. 
 
 * The Irish Establishment includes 199 parishes which do not contain a single 
 member of it ! How do its defenders meet this fact ? By the statement, that 
 these 199 parishes — they should say 146 of them — are included in benefices which 
 do contain members of the Establishment, This would be an answer if the 
 objector contested the skill with which the mosaic of the Establishment is put 
 together ; but his complaint refers to another subject, viz., the souls of men. 
 How many Catholics are there in these 199 parishes ? — 98,017. How many Pro- 
 testants are there in the whole Pronnce of Connaught ? Far lass than half that 
 number ! I should be sorry to see even that small flock deprived of all funds for 
 religious objects: — but Catholics have souls, too. 
 
Xll 
 
 The following is the most detailed statement I have been able 
 to procure. It agrees with that set forth by Dr. Maziere Brady 
 in his published writings : — 
 
 Gross Revenues of the Established Church, taken from the 
 Accounts of the Ecclesiastical Commissioners for the year 
 ending August 1, 1864, and from Capt. Stackpoole's returns: — 
 
 * From See Estates in the hands of the 
 
 Ecclesiastical Commissioners 
 
 * Suspended Dignities, Benefices, and DI 
 
 appropriated Tithes, &c. . . . 
 
 * Interest on Government Securities 
 
 * „ Perpetuity Purchase Fund 
 
 * ,, Trustee Chapel Fund 
 
 * „ Endowment Fund 
 
 * „ Perpetuity Mortgages 
 
 * „ Investment for Insurance 
 
 * Donamon Church Repair Fund 
 
 * Boulter and Robinson Funds 
 Gross Value of Bishoprics 
 
 „ „ Livings 
 
 Trustee Chapels, 1st Appendix 
 
 £674,578 6 10 
 The items thus (*) marked seem to represent net income, and to the 
 entire sum there remains to be added the value of existing See and 
 Glebe Houses, as follows : — 
 
 12 See Houses, at £200 each ... ... £2,400 
 
 978 Glebe Houses, at £40 each ... ... 39,120 
 
 £58,126 13 
 
 6 
 
 19,162 10 
 
 11 
 
 2,918 7 
 
 4 
 
 2,955 10 
 
 7 
 
 18 10 
 
 4 
 
 102 1 
 
 4 
 
 609 
 
 6 
 
 397 1 
 
 
 
 7 3 
 
 4 
 
 5,286 11 
 
 3 
 
 80,059 10 
 
 11 
 
 503,159 3 
 
 2 
 
 1,776 2 
 
 8 
 
 £41,520 
 
 But the sale of perpetuities up to 1861 had produced £631,353, and 
 about as much more remains to be sold, the value of the whole being 
 calculated at £1,200,000, which at 3^ per cent, would give an annual 
 sum of £42,000. The total value of Irish Church property, accordingly, 
 amounts to £716,098 6s. 10c?., exclusively of Perpetuities; or to 
 £758,098 6s. lOd. annually, inclusively of perpetuities. 
 
 The Church property is liable to deductions on account of 
 Poor Rate, Visitation Fees, Diocesan Schoolmaster's Fee, 
 Insurance on House, and County Cess on farm. Dr. Maziere 
 Brady, however, states his belief that, taking all these matters 
 into consideration, the Irish Establishment's net income (exclu- 
 
XUl 
 
 sively of pew rents and other voluntary payments) cannot be 
 short of £700,000; adding, " It is impossible to arrive at the 
 precise sum without a Government enquiry." I do not venture 
 to decide between the statements of these different Church 
 authorities ; nor can their variation saffect my argument, which 
 does not assume the correctness of the highest estimate, though 
 the latter is founded upon facts and inferences that have as yet 
 met with no answer. 
 
 Nor is this all. No allusion need here be made to the vast 
 property, whether consisting of Lay- tithes or of alienated 
 Church Lands, which once belonged to the Catholic Church of 
 Ireland, and almost all of which is now in the hands of 
 those whose spiritual needs are provided for by the 
 Establishment. But a glance may be cast at a more recent 
 transaction. There is a third property — an outer circle — which 
 floats like a nebular ring round the Irish Establishment. 1 
 allude to the Episcopal Lands, much of which have already 
 been alienated from all ecclesiastical or other public use, while the 
 rest is doomed to the same fate. Those lands had in days gone by 
 been let for rents utterly disproportionate to their value, the 
 tenants being, in many cases, the relatives or friends of Bishops 
 long since deceased. Here was a great opportunity ; but it was 
 lost. No one thought in 1832 of endowing the Catholic Church ; 
 and whatever diminished the wealth of the Establishment was 
 supposed but to diminish an abuse. A law was passed for 
 converting the leases of Church lands into perpetuities ; and 
 how the arrangements prescribed by it differed from those made 
 in the case of English Episcopal lands is explained by Mr. 
 Justice Shee, in his valuable work on the Irish Church, 
 pubHshed in 1853.* He remarks (p. 53) :— " By the sale 
 of perpetuities to the amount of £500,000 [£631,353, in 
 1861], Church property to an immense amount has already 
 been as good as given to the Irish Protestant clergy 
 
 * A later edition appeared in 1863. 
 
XIV 
 
 and gentry :" and again, " In his (Lord Morpeth's) estimate, 
 the annual income from 669,247 acres of land, which, on very- 
 liberal arrangements with the middle-men who stand between 
 the Bishops and their actual tenants, would more than suffice to 
 maintain upon its present scale the whole Establishment^ was set 
 down at the sum of £130,000 per annum" (p. 20).* Another 
 law made over to the landlords one quarter of the tithe ! 
 
 All this is lost to the Protestant Church — though not to " The 
 Protestant Interest." The Establishment retains, however, 
 beside her revenue, the property vested in a permanent form for 
 her behoof — property which gives to her members gratis what a 
 Catholic peasantry, the poorest in the world, has to pay for. It 
 benefits permanently by the sums which, since 1833, the Church 
 Commissioners have spent on the building, repairing, or fur- 
 nishing of Churches and Glebe Houses, and similar purposes. 
 These sums amounted in 1862 (inclusive) to £3,444,328. In 
 the sixty years preceding 1833, those purposes were chiefly 
 provided for by means of Gifts from the Board of First Fruits, 
 Parhamentary grants. Church Kates, and Parish Cess, the pri- 
 vate donations having been less than £170,000. Within those 
 years £1,070,435 were spent upon Churches, and £809,699 
 on Glebe Housesf {Ibid, 208). The property thus realized in a 
 permanent form since 1773 amounts to £5,324,462, and cannot 
 be valued at much less than an annual revenue of £200,000. Is 
 not this to go somewhat minutely into the matter ? it may be 
 asked. Let us see. From an excellent pamphlet lately pub- 
 lished by M. O'Reilly, Esq., M.P., it appears that since 1800 the 
 sums spent by the Irish Catholics on Churches, Convents, Col- 
 leges or Seminaries, Hospitals or Orphanages, amount, as nearly 
 as can be ascertained, to £5,274,368. This sum about balances 
 the £5,324,462 '' annexed*' to the Church of the Ascendency. 
 
 Let us now confine our attention to the annual revenue of the 
 Irish Establishment, and let us take that at an estimate very 
 
 * The Irish Church— Us History and Statistics. f Ibid. 
 
XV 
 
 far below its actual amount. Let us assume it to be no more 
 than £586,428, as stated by the Stackpoole Keturns. The 
 population of the Irish Establishment being 693,357, the cost 
 of the religious ministrations is at the rate of about 175. 6d. per 
 head of those ministered to. According to Dr. Brady's statis- 
 tics, it would be at that of more than £1 Is.; and at Dr. Lee's, 
 at somewhat less than £1 per head. Compare this Avith the 
 cost of other establishments. The revenues of the English 
 Parochial Clergy amount, I am told, to somewhat more than 
 £4,000,000 per annum. The population of England and Wales 
 is about 21,000,000, of whom the Establishment would probably 
 not claim more than 16,000,000. To the revenue of the Paro- 
 chial Clergy other items, of course, have to be added ; but the 
 total revenues, from such information, at least, as I have been 
 able to procure, would seem to be between £4,000,000 and 
 £4,500,000. According to that calculation the revenue of the 
 English Church would amount to little more than 5s. per head 
 of those ministered to ; it Avould be less still, if, as some affirm, 
 the revenue of that Church is lower, or the number of her 
 members is larger than I have reckoned them. Dr. O'Brien, 
 Bishop of Ossory, has indeed stated, in a recent speech, that in 
 England the number of Churchmen is much smaller — ^nay , that they 
 exceed Dissenters by only six or seven hundred thousand souls, 
 or at most that the difference claimed by the Church may be that 
 of a million. This is the allegation, I believe, of the Dissenters 
 themselves, who support it by an appeal to the Census of 185 L 
 But it was (as is said) their objections which prevented a similar 
 religious analysis from being included in the latest Census; 
 while it is also to be remembered, that many Dissenters attend 
 the services of the Church of England, and, in secular matters, 
 by no means reject the abundant charities of her Clergy — 
 to whose teaching also they are probably much more 
 indebted than they know. Assuming, however, their claim 
 as regards numbers, the revenue of the English Church 
 
will not rise above about 7^. per head. I have seen 
 no recent statistics of the Scotch Kirk; — it has, of course, 
 been affected by the Free Kirk Secession; but before that 
 event, a remarkable book, " The Past and Present Policy of 
 England in Ireland," commented thus on the subject: — '* The 
 Scotch Presbyterians are more than twice as numerous as the 
 Irish Episcopalians ; while the Ecclesiastical Revenues of the 
 latter are nearly three times as great as those of the former." 
 The numbers of the Scotch Presbyterians, at that time, it counts 
 at 1,800,000, and the Revenue of the Kirk £200,000 per annum, 
 or little more than 25. per head. In most parts of the Con- 
 tinent the Roman Catholic Church is utterly impoverished ; 
 and in France, where the. Clergy are paid by the State, the 
 charge per head is far lower than in Scotland. In Italy the 
 Roman Catholic Church is supposed to be richer than in any other 
 part of Europe : — the whole property of the Clergy there, 
 secular and regular, is reckoned at £3,000,000 per annum ; the 
 laity to whom they minister are 24,000,000 ; the cost per head 
 is therefore 2s. 6d. 
 
 What inference is to be drawn from this ? The Irish Estab- 
 lishment is too poor, men say, to bear a diminution of its 
 property. An establishment is rich or poor according to the 
 proportion which its revenue bears to the number of the souls 
 it ministers to. Where the laity are, like the Irish Protestants, 
 scattered over a wide tract of country, they need, it is true, 
 more clergy, and perhaps, therefore, a more costly establish- 
 ment than would otherwise be necessary. This is an admission, 
 however, not a denial, that the Establishment is a costly one, 
 while it vindicates that costliness. If the Protestants of Ireland 
 were scattered over India, their Establishment would cost ten 
 times what the Irish Establishment costs. Some would justify 
 that costliness, and some would think it unjustifiable ; but no 
 one would deny it. Those who thought that the settlers should 
 be as amply endowed with ecclesiastical ministrations as though 
 
xvu 
 
 they had fixed their abodes Tvithin thirty miles of Calcutta, 
 may be quite right ; but probably they would think also that 
 some attempt should be made to accommodate the rights of the 
 few with those of the people at large. So in Ireland. No one 
 complains, either that the Clergy of the minority have endow- 
 ments, or that those endowments are large. The complaint is 
 that those endowments consist of an ancient and sacred heritage 
 torn from the nation. It is one thing to admit that a small 
 minority is entitled to religious endowments, and quite another 
 thing to concede that, because it is a scattered minority, it is also 
 entitled to consume the whole religious endowments of the 
 nation. Granting that the Protestant Establishment of Ireland 
 should be a rich one, it does not therefore require to be three 
 or four times as wealthy as its English sister, compared with 
 the number of those ministered to, and seven or eight times 
 richer than the wealthiest Roman Catholic Church in Europe. 
 
 A just distribution of the Irish Church property, so far from 
 being a fatal blow to the Irish Establishment, would but assimi- 
 late its financial condition more nearly to that of the English, 
 when compared with the work done by each. To the Irish 
 Catholics the endowment of their Church out of the ancient 
 Church property of Ireland, would be yet more a political and 
 social than a financial advantage. To Ireland, however, and to 
 the empire, that advantage would be lost — and this it is impor- 
 tant to remember — unless the endowment came, and was known 
 to come, from a genuine sense of justice and spirit of good 
 will. By some it has been recommended chiefly on the ground 
 that the resources of the Roman Catholic Clergy have been so 
 crippled by the famine and the exodus, and their influence so 
 much impaired by their steady opposition to Fenianism, that 
 they must now be ready to snatch at aid offered in any form. 
 This is an illusion. Unless it were offered in the most secure and 
 honorable form, there never was a time when they were less 
 tempted to accept it. In Ireland, and I trust in England also, 
 
XVlll 
 
 both among Catholics and Protestants, noth withstanding oc- 
 casional eddies and counter-tides, the great main stream of 
 religious sentiment has been on the whole advancing. To 
 the allegation that since the famine the Priests' dues have 
 lamentably fallen off, the best answer is, that in 1854 the number 
 of the clergy was 2,291, and in 1864 had increased to 3,097— a 
 nuQiber far short of that needed. In the English Establishment 
 the proportionate number of the parochial clergy to the laity is 
 supposed to be not less than 1 to 800. In the Irish Establish- 
 ment, the clergy of which number 2,172,* it must be about as 
 1 to 319. In the Catholic Church of Ireland each of the paro- 
 chial clergy must have five or six times as many under his 
 charge. The Presbyterian religion does not lean much on 
 clerical ministrations ; yet Dr. Chalmers asserted that an 
 average of 500 was as many as could be effectually ministered 
 to by one clergyman. An eminent Irish architect informs me 
 that since 1852, a sum of £375,000, spent upon Catholic reli- 
 gious buildings, had passed through his hands alone, and that, 
 according to his calculations, the whole of what has been spent 
 on such objects within the last thirteen years must amount to 
 £2,500,000. Most of this money has been raised through the 
 exertions of the clergy : — it does not, therefore, seem likely that 
 they have lost their influence, or been left to starve. 
 
 Those who insist upon the " Exodus" forget that a large num- 
 ber of the emigrants were rather a charge to their clergy than 
 payers of " dues." Meantime, other classes of Roman Catholics 
 have been growing richer, and very many of them have pur- 
 chased land sold under the Incumbered Estates Court. If it 
 should be asked why, when such funds have been forthcoming, 
 the religious destitution in large parts of Ireland appears as great 
 as ever, the answer is, that the districts in which the poor are 
 poorest are also those in which there are fewest of that richer 
 
 Allowance, however, must be made for such of the Protestant clergy as are 
 employed upon education, not parochial work. 
 
XIX 
 
 middle class who have shewn so much religious liberality. The 
 munificent and devout have commonly their favorite objects. 
 A well-known silversmith in Dublin contributed out of his 
 earnings, and anonymously, £500 per annum to the Missionary 
 College of " All-Hallows," which was near him. It by no 
 means follows that he would have given the same sum to some 
 desert in Donegal. 
 
 Not in recent only, but in past years, the Roman Catholic 
 clergy and people of Ireland have laboured, as it became them 
 to labour, in the field of religion and Christian civilization; nor 
 have they missed their reward. Since the beginning of this 
 century nearly all the existing Koman Catholic churches, cathe- 
 drals, colleges, and ecclesiastical seminaries have been built. 
 The Christian Brothers, who had but one school before the year 
 1800, have now 195, containing 30,000 scholars; and there now 
 exist also 131 primary schools for boys, which educate 17,155 
 pupils. Since 1800 more than 146 convents of women have 
 grown up, nearly every one of which has its school; while there 
 are also 51 " superior schools " for girls, with 2,430 pupils. On 
 the Catholic University, in spite of every discouragement, 
 £130,000 has been spent; and a noble missionary college has 
 been created which educates 220 students, and has already sent 
 more than 400 priests into remote lands. Here are no signs of 
 decay. It is those who thus " help themselves " that have best 
 earned, and are most likely to profit by the aid of the nation : — 
 it is they also, as a wise statesman will remember, who will be 
 least disposed to acquiesce in injustice. They do not boast of 
 what they have done ; nor do they grudge the praise that is 
 justly due to others ; but when they demand equal constitu- 
 tional rights, it would be a dangerous mistake to suppose that 
 they sue for alms in forma pauperis. 
 
 " In what condition," it may be asked, " is the Established 
 Church in Ireland?" In an unusually efficient one, except 
 so far as its exclusive Ascendency injures it. Its clergy are far 
 
XX 
 
 more zealous, laborious, and instructed than they were in past 
 times ; its organization is better ; and it is amply furnished with 
 churches and schools. Non-residence is now a rare reproach. 
 It has men of learning, who have illustrated their country's 
 annals ; and several cathedrals have been either built or restored 
 lately — which can only be attributed to a growing interest in 
 the venerable and ecclesiastical. It is not to the past that the 
 Irish " churchman " owes a debt of loyalty. Whatever defects 
 he complains of, far worse existed in the "good old times." It 
 would be unjust to attribute the improvement solely to the Le- 
 gislative changes made more than thirty years ago, for reforms 
 had been made at an earlier time, and came in part from within. 
 Before them the munificence of Primate Beresford had restored 
 the ancient Cathedral of Armagh ; and the learned labours 
 of Bishop Jebb and others had adorned the Irish Establish- 
 ment. Nor were those Legislative changes in all respects just, 
 though in some they were grievously insufficient. They not 
 only diminished the episcopal incomes, but, in spite of vehement 
 reclamations, reduced greatly the number of the bishops — a 
 change vexatious to one community without being of advantage 
 to another. These internal arrangements are things which 
 ought to be left to the discretion of the community interested in 
 them, when a final settlement takes place. On the w^hole, how- 
 ever, the Irish Protestant must be struck by the fact that the 
 best period of his Church has been that which followed reforms 
 vehemently denounced at the moment as likely to prove its ruin. 
 That improvement would be increased by the further reforms 
 which Ireland justly requires. Ireland has room for all her sons, 
 and the rights of all vested interests should of course be re- 
 spected ; the change made in the condition of the Established 
 Church would therefore be a gradual one, and the financial loss 
 might be greatly lessened by the better distribution of the 
 revenues remaining. That loss would be less than might be ex- 
 pected, for the liberality of the laity would be increased when 
 
XXI 
 
 the ordinary sphere for its exercise had been provided. Should 
 it be found necessary, in the case of both communities alike, to 
 supplement endowments by moderate free-will offerings, I should 
 recognize in this system the happiest combination of advantages. 
 The laity would be secured against the lack of needful ministra- 
 tions, while they retained the salutary privilege of showing their 
 gratitude to their clergy; and that clergy would be secured against 
 dependence, without losing a natural stimulus to special exer- 
 tion. For this reason, the plan I suggest involves nothing more 
 than a just distribution of the Church property as it stands. It 
 has been said indeed that the Legislature would willingly pay, 
 out of the Consolidated Fund, a large sum, say £400,000 per 
 annum, in order to settle the Irish Church Question with loss to 
 no existing interest. If such a desire prevails, it can reach its 
 end without obtruding pensions upon the clergy of either com- 
 munity — nay, without mixing alien modes of endowment. Par- 
 liament might capitalise the sum it devotes to this purpose, and 
 employ it in redeeming certain alienated portions of Church 
 property, such as lay tithes, episcopal lands, and the landlord's 
 25 per cent.* — making due compensation. The Church property 
 would thus be augmented before it was redistributed. For the 
 interests of the Catholic Church in Ireland I desire nothing 
 of this sort. If Protestant statesmen desire it for the sake 
 of Protestant interests, preserving always inviolate the principle 
 of Religious Equality, there is nothing in the plan here proposed 
 which either includes the proposition or excludes it. Should an 
 addition ever be made to the property of the Established Church 
 in England, I trust that it will be done in this way, and that no 
 specious change may ever take place which will make that Church 
 cease to be a co-heritor with the proprietor class in the soil, 
 
 * The lay tithes of Ireland are said to he worth i£81,659 per annum, and the 
 episcopal lands not yet alienated might be increased in value by ^120,000 per 
 annum. The 35 per cent, of tithes assigned to the landlords is probably worth 
 ii'125,000 per annum. 
 
XXll 
 
 Those who are agreed as to the principle of a just distribu- 
 tion of Church property in Ireland will not be long in coming 
 to an agreement about details. In determining the different 
 proportions according to which the distribution should be made, 
 we must bear in mind the great facts of the case. We must 
 remember, on the one hand, that no lapse of time can obliterate 
 the right of the Irish people to their own, because, though 
 individual rights decay and die, yet nations and churches 
 survive ; and, on the other hand, we must not forget that a 
 prescription of 300 years entitles the present possessors of 
 Church property to a just proportion of it, provided that they 
 are willing to adjust their claims honestly with those of their 
 country. And again, we must remember, on the one hand, that 
 the Catholics constitute the great bulk of the people, and, on 
 the other, that the Protestants have a married clergy. What- 
 ever portion of the Church property may be assigned to each 
 community, I would place in the hands of a board consisting of 
 persons, ecclesiastical and lay, belonging to that community. 
 As to the purposes to which the Protestant fund should be 
 devoted, I do not presume to make any suggestion. Those to 
 which the Catholic should be applicable ought, I think, to be 
 the following, viz. : — The support of Maynooth — assistance 
 given, proportionately to local efforts, in the building of 
 churches and presbyteries, reformatories and penitentiaries — the 
 creation and maintenance of ecclesiastical seminaries and of 
 cathedrals — the endowment of the clergy wherever and when- 
 ever the bishops accounted such endowment desirable — and 
 the purchase of glebes — unless- a separate sum should be set 
 apart by the State for that purpose. There are so many wants 
 in Ireland that it is only by degrees they can be met ; and the 
 order of precedence must be left to those most competent to 
 decide on it, A friend has suggested to me the following as 
 the purposes to which the fund at the disposal of the Catholic 
 
xxm 
 
 board should be made applicable, viz. : — (1.) Building, buying, 
 restoring, and repairing churches, and making provision for 
 suitable services therein. (2.) Purchase of glebes : building 
 and repairing of glebe houses. (3.) Maintenance of Maynooth. 
 (4.) Superannuation fund for worn-out clergy. (5.) Provision 
 for such educational institutions as to the Catholic board may 
 seem fit. (6.) Contributions to the support of great public 
 charities. Either of these lists would carry out the two great 
 principles of Religious Equality, and of equality effected, not 
 by the destruction of Church property, but by a just distribu- 
 tion of it. Each of them would be recommended to many 
 persons by the circumstance that it would put an end to all 
 discussions respecting Maynooth. 
 
 It is not without regret that I find it impossible to propose a 
 plan eflScacious for real good, and yet not likely to give offence 
 to some who are worthy of all respect. Needlessly to injure, 
 humiliate, or even alarm such persons, would be at once unwise, 
 unjust, and ungenerous. It is natural that they should see a 
 system which is theirs by inheritance in its most favourable 
 point of view, and that custom should have hidden from them 
 some of its more abnormal characteristics. Many of them have 
 been brought up in very peculiar traditions respecting it, and, 
 if they should one day discover the truth, they will themselves 
 feel a generous wish to make an amende. What I desire, mainly 
 on the ground of justice and of peace, a wise member of the 
 Establishment ought also to desire for Protestant interests. 
 Some of the most eminent members of the Established Church 
 have proposed reforms more stringent. Dr. Arnold affirmed 
 " the simple, just, and Christian measure of establishing the 
 Roman Catholic Church in three-fifths of Ireland ;" while 
 Archbishop Whately approved the substitution of the congre- 
 gational for the territorial, or parochial system. Dr. Dickenson, 
 Bishop of Meath, drew up a memorial which advocated, among 
 
XXIV 
 
 other things, the sale to Government, at the rate of sixteen years* 
 purchase, of all Church property, and the vesting of the sum 
 thus obtained in a commission which should have power to 
 distribute Church revenue according to Church work. Professor 
 Gold win Smith has said, " The grand and apparently insuperable 
 difficulty with which it (the Irish Establishment) has had to 
 contend is in effect this, that Christianity cannot be propagated 
 by unchristian institutions, and that the State Church of ar 
 dominant minority is an institution which, being unjust^ must be 
 unchristian." 
 
 In three respects, at least, the Protestant Church in Ireland 
 would profit by Religious Equality. A great weight of odium 
 would be removed from it : it would retain a competence : and, 
 if trusted with the management of its own internal arrange- 
 ments, it might expect to gain in freedom what it lost in wealth. 
 Freedom, honourable rivalship, and a state of neither poverty 
 nor riches — these are the external conditions most needed for the 
 energetic estate of a religious body. If it has in it any life, 
 these are the things which call it forth. Its sectarian Ascendency 
 is an injury to the Protestant body ; its religious well-being ought 
 to meet with the sympathy of all. It is but misconception that 
 creates jealousies in these matters. Religious bodies are far from 
 being adversaries in the sense in which partizans fancy. It is not 
 at each other's expense that they prosper spiritually. On the 
 contrary, despite polemical antagonism, and also real diversities 
 of creed which are unhappily even greater than they seem to be, 
 they have many points of common interest. They sometimes 
 fall asleep together ; and whichever wakes first is apt, in rising, 
 to rouse his neighbours. The priceless gift of unity once lost 
 to a nation, an honourable emulation among the separated bodies 
 is the best blessing that remains. A good man naturally wishes 
 that in every community there should be developed the utmost 
 good of which it is capable ; nor need his loyalty to his own 
 Church reproach that desire, for a professed foe may be a friend 
 
■ 
 
 XXV 
 
 in disguise — nay, a friend at heart, and the most authentic 
 Church might find cause to regret the sudden fall of a rival. 
 
 A Catholic does not believe that under any circumstances the 
 Protestant Establishment could have changed the faith of Ire- 
 land ; a wise Protestant sees that its exclusive Ascendency re- 
 duced its chance of doing so to a minimum ; and both may join in 
 the wish that its proper duties, which are those to its own mem- 
 bers, should be discharged with the largest spiritual results. 
 There is an interior condition of well-being more important than 
 any of those external conditions already referred to. An Ascen- 
 dency at once unnatural and unjust has proved the insidious ob- 
 stacle to that well-being. Those who have pondered the his- 
 tory of the Irish Establishment will understand this. Pre-sup- 
 posing, as that Ascendency both logically and practically does, 
 that the church of the nation at large is not a Christian commu- 
 nity, it breathed into the Establishment, from the first, the spirit 
 of Calvin and Knox, not that of Hooker and Herbert. 
 
 But for it Archbishop Usher would not — when peace and war 
 hung in the balance — have preached his celebrated sermon on 
 the text, " he beareth not the sword in vain," and lost Ireland 
 to Charles. But for it the Bishops of 1626 would not have 
 deliberately affirmed the religious obligation of persecution; 
 and Ireland would not have learned to identify the longest and 
 sharpest of her trials, not with statesmen at a distance, but with 
 pastors close by. Like churchmen in many other countries, 
 they might not, as regards toleration, have risen above the pub- 
 lic opinion of their, day ; but they would have remained passive. 
 A soft hand, lost in lawn, would not have been laid upon the 
 central wheel, and by a pressure, perhaps unconscious like that 
 of our " table-turners," have kept in motion the complex, omni- 
 present machine that held a nation on the rack. That Puritan 
 domination which statesmen have often denounced upon social 
 grounds, churchmen must surely have learned to deplore upon 
 religious. To it must be referred those strange lapses, whether 
 
 h 
 
XXVI 
 
 as regards doctrine or discipline, for which the sister Establish- 
 ment has not had to apologise. To this leaven must be attri- 
 buted the adoption in the Irish Convocation of 1615 of the fa- 
 mous " Lambeth Articles," rejected as heretical by the English 
 Church; yet retained by the Irish till cast off by the English in- 
 fluence of Lord Strafford, and in several dioceses subscribed to, 
 as well as the Thirty-nine Articles, as late as 1641. To this 
 were owing somewhat later, those wonderful ordinations in which 
 Bishops who professed to transmit the Apostolical Succession 
 joined with ministers who had been attached to the Presbyterian 
 platform, and who could tolerate episcopacy itself only propter 
 necessitatem temporis. These things have a meaning. Towards 
 existing men and interests too much forbearance cannot be used ; 
 but of such records as these we must speak plainly, unless we 
 would miss their moral. The anomalies occurred in Ireland, 
 and occurred, when in England the Anglican Church, already 
 rich in literary glories, was entering, with the King to whom she 
 stood faithful, upon trials which have enkindled the loyalty of 
 her sons and the sympathy of strangers. When historians like 
 the late learned Bishop Mant, record such events, it is unfortu- 
 nate that they miss their true import. The interests of their 
 community require that they should understand it. 
 
 The interests of the English Church require the same. I ap- 
 peal to those who hold " Church principles," for they at least 
 must know what retribution is exacted when the leaden mace of 
 penal law strikes an ancient Church in the face, and when the 
 State erects in her place some creation of its own. That retribu- 
 tion has been Puritanism. There was a cause for those aberrations 
 which history records as special to Ireland : and while that 
 cause continues to exist, so long will the Anglican Church bleed 
 through the wound of the Irish Establishment. The Ascendency 
 which stunts and distorts the latter imperils the former. Had 
 the two a united convocation at this moment, does any man 
 doubt how the English Church would be affected by the Irish 
 
XX Ml 
 
 vote ? They are unlike in Theology because they are unHke in 
 position. The Enghsh Established Church confesses a nation's 
 belief; the Irish insults it : the English is a bond to connect the 
 different classes of society ; the Irish is a bar to separate them. 
 The Enghsh Church discharges for the English nation, real 
 functions, rehgious and moral, social and pohtical. Those who 
 desire the best things for her— the increase of her episcopate — 
 the extended work of her diaconate — above all, her corporate 
 freedom, judicial, legislative, and administrative — those who 
 desire such things for her, whether her members, or others not 
 in her pale who would fain hope against hope, can desire no- 
 thing better for her than that she should cease to be bound up 
 with another Establishment, the exclusive domination of which 
 is the triumph of Erastian, and the scornful denial of Church 
 principles.* 
 
 Those who desire the weal of the Protestant community in 
 Ireland, ought to arrive at a similar conclusion. Some men talk 
 of the two Establishments " sinking or swimming together," but 
 they forget that even if the two were really hke each other, 
 they exist under opposite circumstances, and therefore that to 
 approve the one is in itself to condemn the other. Nothing that 
 should hurt the sensibilities of a tlioughtful Irish Protestant is 
 involved in the suggestion here made. If he holds " Church 
 principles," it must be in the form of what is called the " Branch 
 Church " theory, and the utmost his honest ambition can seek 
 must be that the smaller "branch" should partake, as regards 
 endowment, with what he must regard as another branch of 
 Christ's Church, and in Ireland immensely the larger branch. 
 If he repudiates Church principles, still he maintains Christian, 
 and he should see that to restore Ireland's Church property is 
 to restore "good will to men," and a lost commandment to the 
 decalogue of the State. As a man of sense he cannot think it a 
 grievance that in Ireland a small minority should receive but its 
 * See also on this subject page 62. 
 
XXVIU 
 
 share, considering that in England and Scotland it receives 
 nothino-. The ruin to be feared by it is the ruin that comes 
 from an unwise defence, and that haughty spirit which does not 
 precede victory. " Sint ut sunt, aut non sint,'* was very well 
 in the last ceutury from the General of the Jesuits. It meant 
 that his far-seeing intelligence was already providing, not for the 
 preservation of his Order, but for its restoration. For institu- 
 tions like the Ascendency there remains, in these days when the 
 religious aspire to be enlightened, and when even the irreligious 
 are civilized, no restoration. 
 
 I trust that among the prelates of the Irish Establishment, 
 some one will be found capable of rising to the greatness of the 
 occasion, and of vindicating his charge without trampling on a 
 nation's rights. One of the greatest ornaments of that com- 
 munity in modern times, whether as regards genius, learning, 
 or piety, was Mr. Alexander Knox ; but he did not pay it the 
 strange compliment of believing that the knell of its faith was 
 rung if Catholics were allowed equal rights. It was thus that 
 he wrote to Lord Castlereagh in 1801 : — " Mr. Vfilberforce 
 Avrote to me a few days ago, desiring I should give him my 
 opinion about the Irish Catholic Question. I told him plainly what 
 I thought, which certainly is, that until the Roman Catholics 
 are equalled with the Protestants, disaffection in Ireland must be 
 the popular temper." . . . "If rebellion be kept alive (and alive 
 it will be kept, until every degrading circumstance he removed 
 from the Catholics), even the Union, calculated as it is for both 
 local and imperial benefit, may become the source of irreparable 
 mischief, both to Ireland and the Empire ; because disturbance 
 will as much as ever require summary means of repression ; but 
 those means can no longer have the same sanction as was given 
 them by a resident Parliament." — Memoirs of Lord Castlereagh, 
 vol. iv. p. 33. 
 
 Of the Catholic Church in Ireland Mr. Knox writes thus : — 
 " In a manner, perhaps not to be paralleled in any other instance. 
 
XXIX 
 
 the moral person of the ancient Church of Ireland presents itself 
 before us this day, with as much identity as any corporation can 
 do, shewing us at once the marks of its pristine grandeur, and 
 our triumph over it. Our identity as victors is also self-evident; 
 we possess all the funds from which the ancient Church derived 
 its emoluments and its magnificence. Thus respectively placed — 
 it before us^ as substantially existent, and as miserably destitute 
 as if we had dismantled it but yesterday, and we no otherwise 
 changed from that period except in greater ability to be merci- 
 ful ; — I ask, is there in such a case no moral claim on the one 
 hand, no duty on the other ? ... Is it right that the Roman 
 Catholic Church in Ireland should remain unaided, while it has 
 been deemed a matter of just agreement between us and the 
 conquered Canadians that theirs should be established ? " — 
 vol. iv. p. 221. 
 
 What Mr. Knox's opinion as to endowment was in detail I 
 do not know. Endowment could be effected by a doubled, as 
 well as by a divided Tithe. I have quoted him to shew with 
 what feelings a sincere churchman approaches this subject. 
 Some, who arrogate to themselves that title, have characterised 
 the Roman Catholic Church of Ireland as an intrusive sect. 
 When a church stood before the eyes of JVIr. Knox he knew it. 
 
 Few persons see the magnitude of this question, the greatest 
 that remains to be solved. It has worn a veil — as great things 
 do. There are persons who ask, " Why has not the Church 
 grievance been more prominently put forward by the Irish ?" 
 It was anticipated by the Repeal question : and in later years 
 political action has been fitful and fragmentary. When urged, 
 the response has not been favourable as regards a real settle- 
 ment ; and a compromise is not desired. Nor is this all. Those 
 only who know Ireland well are aware how many might 
 have had special reasons for abstaining from agitation on what 
 they yet regarded as the chief of wrongs. First, there were 
 those who might have said — " We can be of more use by 
 
insisting upon what relates to morals and education. The 
 present settlement cannot last : — much is in progress ; — and it 
 may, perhaps, be as well that it should fall some years hence as 
 now. It is not our duty to be politicians. Let those who 
 tangled the skein untangle it, if they can." Secondly, there 
 were those who said — " The people are starving or flying. We 
 can think but of the Land question. It is not the greatest 
 matter, but it is the most urgent." Thirdly, there were those 
 who shrank from all political action because it might run into 
 dangerous agitation. Fourthly, there were those who said — 
 " We once had great hopes, but we were deceived : let things 
 take their course : we will ask for nothing more." Fifthly, 
 there were, and are, those who hope for Revolution, and, there- 
 fore, hate Keform. Here are five classes whose quiescence it 
 would be a fatal error to mistake for acquiescence. The inac- 
 tion of a people, when it does not proceed from content, is a 
 more inauspicious sign than the most violent demonstrations 
 could be. It indicates that the sallies of irregular anger have 
 given place to a cold but settled habit of aversion — one not 
 grounded on this thing or that, but on everything. 
 
 " All my heart turned from her, as the thorn 
 Turns from the sea." 
 
 It is not thus that the two nations ought to stand to one 
 another after a connection of 700 years. 
 
 The time for action is come ; and the modern history of Ire- 
 land is a warning against two wrong modes of action — the 
 action which comes too late, and that which substitutes a pre- 
 tended for a real reform. Ireland's commercial Freedom, which 
 was haughtily refused in 1778, was conceded in 1779; and a 
 few years later those who would hear of no approach to her 
 Parliamentary Independence granted it suddenly and in 
 unlimited measure, but too late for gratitude or respect. 
 Lastly came Catholic Emancipation, but it also came too late. 
 
XXXI 
 
 These are illustrations of the former error. The " Church 
 Temporalities Act," and the Ecclesiastical nieasures of the 
 next few years belong to the latter class. They were plausible 
 things ; and perhaps at that moment nothing more could have 
 been done : but their chief permanent effects have been two — 
 to prolong the national discontent, and to diminish by about 
 £300,000 per annum, the Ecclesiastical property which might 
 otherwise have been available now for the needs of Ireland, 
 Catholic and Protestant. The advocates of the " Appropri- 
 ation Clause" were entitled to great gratitude ; but they 
 demanded too little, and therefore got nothing. Their pro- 
 posal lacked the strength of a principle, and fell. The arith- 
 metic of politics is of a peculiar sort ; and half measures of 
 justice do not produce even half results. What remains to be 
 done let us do in time : and that we may do it honestly let us 
 do it completely. 
 
 Beligious Equality has long been refused, not because statesmen 
 approve of Avhat exists, but because they shrink from the 
 responsibility of change. All action involves responsibility ; 
 but inaction involves it no less. No cowardice can shun it — 
 no adroitness, no refusal to hear counsel or to give it, no volun- 
 tary or simulated blindness, deafness, or dumbness. What a 
 man can escape is the coming of that day when it shall be 
 demanded of him — " You who knew the danger and its gravity, 
 why did you not avert it fearlessly, or declare it openly, when 
 there was yet time to redeem the past, and to save the Empire ?" 
 
ERRATUM. 
 From the Estimate of Church Revenue, printed at p. xii., the sum of 
 ^£5,286 11«. Sd. should be deducted, being the amount of the Boulter and 
 Robinson Funds, which are included under the " Gross value of Livings." 
 The amount paid by Rectors and Vicars to Perpetual Curates ought also 
 to be deducted from that " Gross value." But this sum, which is about 
 £10,900, will be found not to materially affect the correctness of any 
 argument based upon the total amount of Church Revenue. Owing to 
 the want of accurate information, it is impossible to ascertain the precise 
 amount of Irish Church Income. 
 
I 
 
 THE 
 
 CHURCH SETTLEMENT OF IRELAND. 
 
 I. 
 
 FENIANISM. 
 
 A PERIOD of difficulty is often a special opportunity. Fenian- 
 ism has been for some time occupying public attention : — we 
 may easily make too much of it or make too little ; and those 
 who began by doing the former will probably end by doing the 
 latter. If we understand it aright, we shall disarm it of its 
 dangers, and may convert evil to good. 
 
 As an attempt at revolt, it is, at the moment, not alarming. 
 The Catholic clergy have from the first denounced it, as they 
 denounced the attempted rising in 1848, and as they always 
 denounce secret societies ; and the farming class have good 
 reason to hate and fear it. The sect consists, in the main, of poor 
 and ignorant persons, though with a very considerable mixture 
 of young men who hang loose on the skirts of society and whose 
 education has been an irreligious one. It includes, doubtless, 
 honest enthusiasts, who, if the movement gained a temporary 
 success, would fall early in their attempts to check its excesses. 
 As for foreign assistance, Ireland has long since learnt what 
 that means. It always came too late and ended in desertion. 
 
 But^ Fenianism has another side to it. It proves that long- 
 continued discontent, taken in conjunction with the circum- 
 stances of our day, can, to a considerable extent, alter even a 
 national character. There are dangers worse than those of a 
 revolt, because more insidious and less remediable. "Fast" 
 politicians exclaim, ** Ireland was always disloyal :" but this is 
 a random reading of history. Fenianism is a new and Jaco- 
 binical movement — one out of harmony with the Irish character 
 and annals. There is no other country in which, for so 
 many centuries and under such repeated rebuffs, the instinct of 
 
loyalty survived so long. Professor Goldwin Smith well re- 
 marks in his excellent work, Irish History and Irish Character: — 
 
 " So far as willingness to submit to governors is concerned, they are 
 only too easily governed. Loyalty is the great feature of their political 
 character ; its great defect is want of independence, and of that strong 
 sense of right by which law and personal liberty are upheld." 
 
 The great and successful struggle of this century, that for 
 Catholic emancipation, was a constitutional one. Mr. O'Connell 
 never endangered his popularity when he asserted his loyalty to 
 the Crown, and denounced the shedding of '' one drop of 
 blood." The few Sovereigns who have visited this country 
 have been well received ; and many an Irish noble, of the later 
 race, has found himself almost a clan chief in his own despite. 
 
 There was one exception — the rebellion of 1798. That 
 rebellion was produced by protracted wrong, and it bequeathed 
 to a country then on its way to better things thirty-one years 
 more of oppression and ignominy. But its root was in Ulster ; its 
 leaders were not Catholics ; and it was quickened by the French 
 Revolution which had at that time scattered widely over Eng- 
 land, as well as over Ireland, the contagion of Jacobinism. 
 
 The danger now comes to us not from France, but from 
 America, and comes by no fault of hers, but by necessity. 
 Slavery abolished, she stands with her face to the light. But 
 how is the Irish peasant in America to discriminate between a 
 prosperity coincident with Republican institutions and one 
 derived from such ? How is he to learn that the only institu- 
 tions which could exist in America might work ruin in an old 
 country like Ireland ? He is not an impartial critic. Since 
 the beginning of the famine years about one- third of Ireland's 
 sons have been driven from Ireland by stress of poverty. What 
 if such a state of things existed in England or France ? Emigra- 
 tion is better than the workhouse ; nay, it often leads to wealth ; 
 but the poor as well as the rich love their homes — woe to the 
 land if they do not ! — and when emigration becomes colossal, 
 the emigrant sometimes thinks, whether rightly or wrong, that 
 the laws are at fault, either by enactment or omission. On 
 landing in a new world he hears exaggerated statements, mixes 
 natural feelings with erroneous impressions, and becomes at 
 once a valuable American citizen, and an Irish Jacobin. Such 
 is Fenianism. It comes from without^ though with a ready 
 response from within ; and therefore, however checked at any 
 particular time, the disease is renewed with every westerly 
 wind. England has now two Irelands to deal with, and one of 
 them is out of her reach. In time she may have a third in 
 
^Rii 
 
 stralia. Here is the true danger. In the noble old times 
 obedience might, indeed, sometimes be challenged by the wrong 
 claimant ; but in itself it was deemed a thing to be proud of, 
 not a thing to be conceded with a sense of degradation — that is, 
 assuming, of course, that the authority obeyed was itself a loyal 
 authority, the true exponent and virtual representative of the 
 subject — his interests, his feelings, and his honour. A moral 
 basis was thus supplied for political stability. It is otherwise 
 now. Ireland is. surrounded by what is calculated to perplex if 
 not to seduce. While herself full of anomalies and sufferings, 
 she often hears a revolution spoken of as if it had been the first 
 foundation of the constitution ; and with Continental revolu- 
 tions the most eloquent writers have commonly been in almost 
 indiscriminate sympathy. All these things work dangerously 
 under the peculiar circumstances of Ireland. Loyalty goes ; 
 and the respect for law has not come. Nations are disaffected 
 till their affections have been gained. 
 
 With the American part of the difficulty we cannot deal. 
 What remains is this — to leave no fuel at home for a foreign 
 flame to play with. It is one of those periods which require 
 large action, and create an opportunity for it. How begin ? 
 Ireland is full of hard problems, made harder by her transitional 
 condition ; but there is one on the solution of which the right 
 working of all other remedial measures mainly depends — the 
 Ecclesiastical Settlement of the country. Of that Settlement 
 the Church Establishment is the positive side ; — but it has a 
 negative side likewise. 
 
 In all nations physical distress and religious bitterness have 
 proved the chief causes of disturbance. What if the two exist 
 in union ? Material prosperity can only advance by degrees. 
 The more reason, then, for dealing with the question that 
 admits of being settled. In this question all the jealousies of 
 Ireland meet, as the nerves of the body are said to meet in the 
 hand. Be the question one of legislation, or administration, 
 from the appointment of a minister to the appointment of a 
 turnkey, under all alike the same sinister subauditur lurks. 
 Above all, this question alienates those true loyalists who cannot 
 support injustice, which they know to be, however prescriptive, 
 not order and civilization, but chronic anarchy. Catholics 
 without loyalty to their faith may be servile to the State, but 
 are never loyal to it, and they end by deluding, if not betraying, 
 it. The bad musician quarrels with his instrument, but there are 
 harmonies in Ireland still for a skilful hand to draw out. We 
 have to convert into a principle the instinct of loyalty ; and we 
 have also to produce that respect for law which cannot exist 
 until the primary laws are all of them respectable. 
 
But the Fenians, we are told, do not quarrel with the Ecclesi- 
 astical Settlement. Of course not. Bitterly would they quarrel 
 with any one who set " this frame of things the right side up." 
 It is while statesmen show their wit by keeping the social 
 pyramid standing on its apex, not its base, like the " Boulder 
 Stone" of Borrodale, and therefore keeping it in a tremble, that 
 the Fenians see their chance of overturning it. 
 
 What is the Ecclesiastical Settlement ? It is one by which 
 the whole of the ancient religious endowments of Ireland were, 
 and are, taken from a nation and given to a small minority — 
 taken from the poor and given to the rich. To the latter no 
 blame. They have inherited their position, and suffer from it, 
 as some of them know, scarcely less than the rest of the com- 
 munity. This is no landlord question. From the land a 
 portion was set apart for the purpose of providing religious 
 ministrations for the people on the land. It is alienated, and 
 the people have to provide their religious ministrations at their 
 own cost, imperfectly, and with the note of inferiority. This is 
 a question not of theology, but of morals. Let it be conceded, 
 if anyone chooses to make the assertion, that the new teachers 
 came with a message of peace and truth. But they took pos- 
 session of the Church property. Their voice v/as the voice of 
 Jacob ; but their hand was the hand of Esau. The nation at 
 large refused to change. Its Church — let us speak plainly — 
 stands disinherited by ancient laws, and, legally at least, pro- 
 scribed by recent. This is the Ecclesiastical Settlement of Ire- 
 land. Whenever the Irish people are contented with it, expect 
 soon to find that the spirit of Jacobinism has eaten through its 
 very heart. Do they muse over the past ? The present 
 "Ecclesiastical Settlement is the past embodied and monu- 
 mental ; and the popular recollections of ancient sorrows are but 
 the weeds which grow in its shade."* 
 
 *' What, then," it will be asked, '' does Ireland require ?" I 
 answer, " Religious Equality." I use this term advisedly, and 
 in contradistinction to a more formidable one. The abolition of 
 the Ascendant Establishment would be but one means out of 
 many for effecting equality. If no better be permitted, to this 
 it must come at last. But there is such a thing as levelling up 
 as well as levelling down. The principle of equality once 
 heartily accepted, men of sense will not be long in finding both 
 just and gentle means of applying it. If the wound of the 
 
 * The Church Establishment in Ireland, illustrated exclusively by Protestant 
 Authorities. (Warren, Thomas -street, Dublin.) In this pamphlet the opinions 
 of the chief leaders of Liberal public opinion in England between ISiSO and 
 1845 will be found carefully digested, with an explanatory preface, by tlie present 
 writer. 
 
nation can be healed witliout inflicting a wound upon any section 
 of the nation, surely this must be the wisest and best course ? 
 No Catholic need seek for more. For him wrongs that are 
 wholly past are as though they had never been : nor is it for 
 him to think his Faith endangered, because fair play is allowed 
 to his neighbour's Faith. But the objection comes from another 
 quarter. "The State," we are reminded, " is bound by a reli- 
 gious obligation to make a confession of the truth." The truth 
 it has to confess is, that the nation has ceased to possess unity 
 of faith, but that H preserves a love of justice and a respect for 
 social order and political security. 
 
 In times not wholly unlike our own there lived a man who 
 was at once the master-foe of Jacobinism, against which he 
 ever bent a Pythian bow, and the foremost friend of the Irish 
 Catholics— Mr. Burke. In 1780, addressing his constituents 
 at Bristol, who were discontented with bis conduct on Irish 
 affairs, he said fearlessly : — 
 
 "It is proper to inform you that our measures must be healing. Such 
 a degree of strength must be communicated to all the members of the State 
 as may enable them to defend themselves and co-operate for the defence 
 of the whole. Their temper, too, must be managed, and their good affec- 
 tions cultivated England and Ireland may flourish 
 
 together. The world is large enough for both. Let it be our care not to 
 make ourselves too little for it." 
 
 In 1795 he insisted upon it, — 
 
 "That in Ireland particularly the Roman Catholic religion should be 
 upheld in high respect and veneration, and should be, in its place, provided 
 with all the means of making it a blessing to the people who profess it." 
 
 Again, he said, — 
 
 "Let them (the Irish) grow lax, sceptical, careless, and indifferent with 
 regard to religion, and so sure as we have an existence it is not a zealous 
 Anglican or Scottish Church principle, but direct Jacobinism which will 
 enter into that breach. Two hundred years dreadfully spent in experiments 
 to force that jDCople to change the form of their religion have proved fruitless. 
 You have now jour choice for full four-fifths of your people of the Catholic 
 religion or Jacobinism." 
 
 He lifted a warning and reproving voice. " The worst of 
 the matter is this : you are partly leading^ partly driving^ into 
 Jacobinism that description of your people whose religious 
 principles, church polity^ and habitual discipline might make an 
 invincible dike against that inundation." What in that day 
 was called Jacobinism is now called " Fenianism." How would 
 it have fared in Ireland to-day if the exhortations of Mr. Burke, 
 from his earliest tract to his latest political letter (dictated in 
 1797 from his death-bed), had been attended to? 
 
II. 
 
 THE ECCLESIASTICAL SETTLEMENT OF IRELAND. 
 
 Prejudice is strong, but principle and interest combined are 
 stronger. With the Irish Ecclesiastical Settlement the manly- 
 common sense of the nation has been steadily becoming more 
 dissatisfied. Many a wave has fallen back, but the tide has been 
 coming in. The purpose of the sixteenth century — compulsory 
 conversions — generated a coherent policy, but it has failed. How 
 long is an anachronism to torment the nineteenth ? To put an 
 end to that religious inequality in Ireland which has long been 
 the regret of English, and a scandal to foreign, statesmen is the 
 interest of all. 
 
 It is the interest of the empire. How often have not states- 
 men pointed out that if the union with England has worked so 
 differently in Scotland and in Ireland the cause was this — that 
 in Scotland the national religion was honoured, while in Ireland 
 it was degraded? Men complain of agitation. For the last 
 fifteen years, much as discontent has prevailed in Ireland, there 
 has been far less of organized agitation than during the pre- 
 ceding thirty ; but, perhaps for that reason, the sore has bled 
 inwardly. It is only through the creation of sound political 
 sympathies among a people that society finds its equilibrium. 
 An empire the circumference of which is almost as wide as that 
 of the earth can no longer consent to rest upon a centre flawed 
 and weakened by purposeless divisions. 
 
 It is the interest of Ireland. Were her warring, classes at 
 one, it would be worth her while to throw herself on her better 
 faculties. There is such a thing as a good-humoured despair ; 
 and Ireland knows it well. Once united, Ireland would have 
 the strength of hope, and could then deal with that chronic 
 poverty which weighs her down. It is the curse of religious 
 inequality that it turns to poison much of the good already 
 gained. In proportion as Ireland advances in wealth, it will 
 resent wrong ; in proportion as it advances in education, it will 
 despise the sophisms by which wrong is defended ; in propor- 
 tion as it sympathises more with orderly liberty all over the 
 world, its Church will the less rest contented to be proscribed 
 as a Church, though by laws not enforced, and tolerated as a 
 sect ; — for this, or something less than this, is the estimate now 
 made of it by law. So with letters. A copious antiquarian 
 and historical literature has been growing up in Ireland, among 
 
the most impartial contributors to which are several of the 
 Protestant clergy. "Desist," some persons will say, "from 
 studies which faction may abuse." But the answer is, " By no 
 means — if the studies that ennoble other nations endanger ours 
 — if among us authentic history means sedition, while in 
 Scotland to record virtue and valour is to perpetuate them, the 
 fault rests with those institutions in which Ireland differs from 
 Scotland. Shake the bitter lees out of the cup, and do not 
 complain of the pure waters they corrupt." 
 
 It is the interest of the proprietor class. We should then 
 hear no more sneers about " the English garrison." They 
 would at last be allowed to strike their roots into the soil of their 
 country. They would clasp the substance instead of the shadow 
 — security, respect, moral influence, a country^ and all that 
 dignity at home and abroad which belongs to those who are 
 known to be the representatives of their country. They are 
 right to stand by their Church, but not to insist on its exclusive 
 and paradoxical Ascendency. To defend the latter they are 
 obliged themselves to recall all that it is for their interest to 
 bury in oblivion. Surely it should not be still as when Burke 
 complained, — 
 
 "Justice and liberty seem so alarming to them that they are not ashamed 
 even to slander their own titles ; to calumniate and call in doubt their 
 right to their own estates, and to consider themselves as novel disseizors, 
 usurpers, and intruders, rather than lose a pretext for becoming oppressors 
 
 of their fellow-citizens For this purpose they revive the 
 
 bitter memory of every dissension which has torn to pieces their miserable 
 country for ages." 
 
 Let them throw off the nightmare of the past and do 
 justice to their own gallant and genial dispositions, and they 
 will find themselves beloved by a people from whom circum- 
 stances alone have ever estranged them. It was not their 
 doing, 
 
 "It was that fatal and perfidious bark, 
 
 "Built in the eclipse, and rigged with curses dark," 
 
 that linked for a time their fortunes with the national grief and 
 dishonour. Let them cut themselves loose from the Tudors 
 and live under Victoria. As industry gains its noble triumphs 
 their body is recruited, often from an earlier race. Let not 
 the relations of the two be embittered by religious wars. 
 
 It is the interest of the Protestant clergy. Had their creed 
 possessed ever so much to recommend it to the Irish people, the 
 odium of the Ascendency must, as many a Protestant has 
 assured them, have barred its way. Under no circumstances. 
 Dr. Arnold warned them, can the present exclusive domination 
 
8 
 
 last : — " A savage people will not endure the insult of a hostile 
 religion ; a civilized one will reasonably insist on having their 
 own.'* It is a political materialism which makes liglit of the 
 feelings Dr. Arnold refers to. Is it best to redress the balance 
 by a constructive or destructive process ? If he cannot brook 
 the former, why does the Protestant clergyman talk of " diffe- 
 rent branches of the one Christian Church ?" and how can he 
 tolerate endowments for Presbyterians in Ulster and Scotland, 
 for Eoman Catholics in Canada and Malta, — nay, for Brahmins 
 and Buddhists in India? Is not this what the Gospel calls 
 hypocrisy ? Ireland' can appreciate the position of the Protes- 
 tant clergy; let them appreciate hers. They are excellent 
 persons; their abolition, as an endowed body, would be a serious 
 loss and a great injustice to Protestants, and would profit no 
 other community : — but would they not be happier if they 
 might live in peace with their neighbours? In England the 
 Established Church, so far from being at war with any class, is 
 a great connecting link between all classes. Would not it, too, 
 gain if its Irish sister were so modified that the enemies of all 
 establishments could no longer point to it as the reductio ad 
 absurdum of the Establishment principle ? 
 
 Why was it that for a dozen years before Mr. O'Connell's 
 death the Irish Establishment w^as the frequent theme of English 
 invective ? Why did Lord Macaulay ask, " What panegyric 
 has ever been pronounced on the Churches of England and 
 Scotland which is not a satire on the Church of Ireland ? " 
 Why was it that Sydney Smith compared it '* to the institution 
 of butchers' shops in all the villages of the Indian Empire ? " — 
 that Sir E. Bulwer Lytton said, " the expression ' Irish Church' 
 is the greatest Irish bull in the language ?" that Lord Dalmeny 
 indignantly exclaimed, " They (the Irish) would be unworthy 
 of being our equals if they tamely submitted to such oppression?" 
 The Church Temporalities Act had been passed, and Tithes 
 had been commuted ; and many of the grosser abuses had died 
 out. The marvels of the eighteenth century had waned. A 
 throng of Episcopal liveries no longer made Irish wastes 
 resemble those Elysian Fields " invested with purpureal gleams." 
 The hardworking English traveller no longer inquired whether 
 the mild Sabbatical supremacy around his steps could, indeed, 
 belong to our militant estate, and were not more probably a 
 portion of the Church triumphant which had dropped down on 
 a fortunate isle. The spiritual leisure of a Primate Boulter or 
 Stone no longer sufficed to transact the political business of 
 Ireland. Things had once worn an idyllic, mythological grace ; 
 but that was over ; and Jupiter had returned from his long and 
 
remote feast with the " blameless Ethiopians." But (to have 
 done with metaphor), though great scandals were removed, 
 English statesmen remained dissatisfied. They complained less 
 that the Establishment was still too rich than that the poor were 
 robbed of their religious patrimony, Ireland of her peace, and 
 the empire of her dignity and security. 
 
 And Ireland has been dissatisfied ever since. People assure 
 us that the Fenians are not discontented with the Ecclesiastical 
 Settlement. This reminds one of the good man who felt sure 
 that the hole could not be at the bottom of his cask, since there 
 the wine was not lacking. Fenianisrn is the partial and bar- 
 barous exponent of a discontent almost universal, and most 
 deeply felt by the most thoughtful. It is with causes, not 
 effects, that we have to deal. A great principle is at once a 
 guide, a support, and a restraint. No Irish Protestant can 
 repudiate that of ecclesiastical equality without admitting that 
 his fellow-subjects must repudiate inferiority ; no Catholic can 
 assert it without renouncing all thought of retaliation. This 
 was the principle aflrirmed by Lord Grey when he said, " I will 
 never disturb the country by proposing any measure w^hich does 
 not, in my opinion, go to the root of the evil. What I mean is, 
 one that does not deal on entirely equal terms with Catholics and 
 Protestants." This was what Mr. Disraeli asserted, — " The 
 moment they had a strong Executive, a just administration, and 
 ecclesiastical equality^ they would have order in Ireland." 
 
 How is this principle to be applied to the endowment of the 
 Irish clergy? Many modes might be imagined, such as land, 
 or a secured funded property, but there are two of a more obvious 
 character which have been suggested. One of these would 
 derive that endowment from the general revenue in the shape 
 of pensions. The other would divide the existing Church 
 property between the Protestants and Roman Catholics. Of 
 these two methods the latter would alone be Equality. In Ire- 
 land pensions would now be universally regarded, however well 
 intended, not as independence secured, but as a dependence 
 transferred. The clergy could not accept them without forfeiting 
 at once their own respect and that of their flocks ; and social 
 order would be the first thing to lose that support which it 
 derives from their moral influence. During the many discussions 
 on Irish Church matters almost all the leaders of English liberal 
 public opinion maintained, and surely very naturally, that it was 
 from Ireland, not mainly from English resources, that the endow- 
 ment of the Irish clergy should be drawn. Lord Fitzwilliam, for 
 instance, uttered an eloquent warning against "making the 
 Irish Koman Catholic priesthood a stipendiary priesthood," 
 
10 
 
 while Lord Russell said — "I believe there would be great 
 and serious objections to granting, out of the public revenue, a 
 large revenue of £300,000 or £400,000 per annum to the 
 Koman Catholic clergy of Ireland. I believe that the funds for 
 the maintenance of any such establishment should be furnished 
 by Ireland." Lord Palmerston affirmed the same principle :^ 
 " I hold that the revenues of the Church of Ireland were 
 primarily destined for the religious instruction of the people of 
 Ireland;" and, again, "A provision by the State for the 
 Catholic priesthood is a measure to which the Government 
 and this House will at no distant period be compelled by their 
 sense of justice to proceed."* 
 
 Full justice is the mother of peace. It has been objected 
 that Ireland has got much, and shown little gratitude. In the 
 civil sphere very much has been conceded, and in it a result has 
 been gained ;— the greater pity, therefore, not to complete the 
 work and reap the harvest. It is when almost unbound that 
 men can writhe, and the last cord is the most irksome. In 
 material things, when a portion of the evil is removed, a pro- 
 portionate satisfaction may be looked for ; but in what concerns 
 the honour and spiritual being of a people, the sensibility 
 increases in proportion as the life-blood is permitted to flow 
 freely ; and as light steals into the prison its scandals become 
 more visible. The reversal of a wrong is the payment of a debt. 
 Even the partial payment of a debt is a subject for gratitude, 
 but it becomes less such if you are told that you have got all 
 that you are to have. To preach peace in such a case is 
 rhetorical ; it but exhorts a man to secure his own interests and 
 abandon the rights of his children and dependents. It is true 
 that Ireland might have done better; but she has had the 
 terrible arrears of the past to contend with, and multitudinous 
 social confusions in the present. It is hard for a people to 
 understand its position, when it has to live, as regards civil 
 rights, in the nineteenth century, and ecclesiastically in the six- 
 teenth. 
 
 I am aware that my opinions on this subject cannot satisfy 
 any extreme party, and can flatter no passions. They cannot 
 please those whose inexperienced politics are enthusiastic, or 
 those again whose over- experienced ability would amuse itself 
 by making a bad system do the work of a good one. Truisms 
 are so dull that many do not see that they are truths. This 
 must be my excuse for insisting upon it that in Ireland there 
 is a loyalty to be preserved, and a reverence for law to be 
 
 * The Church Establishment in Ireland, illustrated exclusively by Protestant 
 Authorities. (W^arren, Thomas- street, Dublin.) 
 
1 
 
 11 
 
 ted. That statement is my theme : and the illustrations of it, 
 at which I have hitherto been able but to glance, I shall enlarge 
 upon in future letters. Cut out the heart of Irish discontent 
 (that heart lies deep, and Fenianism is but a superficial though 
 too significant symptom of it), and, although the Fenians will 
 not thank you, that discontent, the sluggish parent of many an 
 active evil, will cease to be fed from its perennial springs. I 
 can promise no miracles. Trivial passions and harmless follies 
 will for a time continue to fight with their own shadows ; but 
 the noblest faculties and the most generous instincts will no 
 more be at war with each other and themselves. A just 
 authority will have the virtues of the nation at its side ; and in 
 them alone is a nation's strength. 
 
 III. 
 
 PRACTICAL EVILS FROM SECTARIAN ASCENDENCY. 
 (material evils.) 
 
 Before we enter upon the question of remedy, let us consider 
 the disease more at large, and review the " situation." Among 
 the sophisms by which the present Church Settlement of 
 Ireland is defended few are more popular than the one which 
 recommends itself by the title of " practical." Those who 
 believe that nations live by bread only, not by justice and 
 truth, ask, ' ' How would the Irish peasant gain by Religious 
 Equality ?" This is the old stereotyped crux — " How is the 
 peasant to benefit by Catholic Emancipation ?" " What prac- 
 tical harm comes from Gatton and Old Sarum ?" It applies to 
 every projected reform that does not visit a nation in the form 
 of a wooden spoon, filled with child's meat. Applied to the 
 Irish Church question it involves a peculiar absurdity, since 
 every one knows that, owing to the misappropriation of an 
 immense annual sum, originally intended, to provide for the 
 religious ministrations needed by the whole people of Ireland, 
 the bulk of that people, and especially the poorer portion, is 
 obliged to provide those ministrations at its own sole cost. This 
 notable objection has its moral and its material answer. Let 
 us begin with the material, for those who insist on it most, 
 often think that moral considerations can wait. 
 
 There are few evils in Ireland, as has already been remarked, 
 
12 
 
 with which the religious Ascendency of a minority is not con- 
 nected ; and of most it is the root, though, like other roots, it 
 may lurk unseen beneath the ground. Eeligious differences, 
 apart from this Ascendency, would create few quarrels. It has 
 sometimes been said that polemical bitterness is greatest when 
 those who hold different opinions are mixed together in the 
 same society. If this were the case, more of theological animosity 
 against Protestantism would exist in Ireland than in exclusively 
 Koman Catholic countries, such as Spain and Italy. The 
 opposite is the fact; and the fidelity of the Irish Catholics 
 to their faith has been so little alloyed by religious intolerance, 
 that a charge of indifferentism might be more plausibly brought 
 against them. The Catholic peasant is accustomed to div.ersities 
 of Faith, and commonly thinks it as natural that his Protestant 
 neighbour should walk in the way of his fathers, as tliat he 
 should do so himself. What he cannot forgive is the claim to 
 superiority. The champion of Ascendency, on the other hand, 
 who — intolerant even of equality — knows from his own feelings 
 how galling inferiority must be, feels his position to be insecure, 
 hates what he fears, suspects what he hates, and in the desire to 
 prop a falling cause, is brought into a thousand collisions with 
 his fellow-countrymen, whose Faith, when he meets it in foreign 
 countries, he commonly respects. 
 
 What occasions the bitterest Election feuds ? That which 
 at the far-famed elections of Waterford and Clare first set the 
 tenants in battle array against their landlords. A vital question 
 is ever at stak6. Something new must be gained lest all that is 
 gained should be lost. So with the votary of Ascendency — he 
 argues thus : " If we lose the elections we lose everything ; the 
 Establishment must fall ; a Catholic lawyer may reach the head of 
 his profession ; a Catholic nobleman may be his Sovereign's re- 
 presentative in Ireland ; Catholics may be buried in their ancient 
 church-yards, with the full rites of their religion, and without 
 the Protestant Incumbent's permission." Dreadful visions rise 
 before his imagination. He sees the repeal of several obsolete 
 laws still a cause of hatred. The mystic words, " Superstitious 
 uses," will no longer exercise the evasive faculties of Catholics 
 drawing up their mils. Administrative impartiality may be 
 established: nay, Catholic parents may be enabled to send 
 their sons to a University which they do not account dan- 
 gerous to faith or morals, and the higher dignities of which 
 would be as open to a Catholic as those of the Dublin Univer- 
 sity are to Protestants ; the secular instruction being, in both 
 cases alike, open to all. He sees the marriage law so 
 simplified that there is no chance of a Koraan Catholic woman, 
 
I 
 
 13 
 
 married to a convert, discovering, in time, that she has 
 no husband. He sees Catholic orphans in English workhouses 
 as secure of being allowed to retain their faith as Protestant 
 orphans are in Ireland. Down a far vista of horrors he sees 
 Roman Catholic mayors going to church in their official robes! 
 The thick-coming fancies beset him most at election times. A 
 few tenants vote against his plain mandate or oracular suggestion. 
 Of course he respects their legal " right to do wrong ;" but 
 there remains a question as to how they stand in the rent book. 
 The mischief is not all at one side. Wrong is met by retaliation 
 — not seldom at Irish elections the military have had to be 
 called out; — and the dead have beenburied. In France they would 
 have been carried round the city on shutters, and barricades 
 would have been raised. At the last Monaghan election a 
 Catholic peasant was first beaten and then shot dead, in a public 
 place and in open day. The trial took place ; — the jury was 
 exclusively Protestant, and the verdict was acquittal. Persons 
 of influence asserted that there was no sectarian bias ; but the 
 people thought otherwise ; and the tradition will hold its own 
 for a century against all the authority and eloquence in the 
 world. A Chief Justice of great vivacity (it was before his 
 elevation to the bench) is reported to have expressed a hope, in 
 the speech he delivered on that occasion while defending the 
 accused, that the Catholics might learn a lesson. They have 
 learned two lessons — one on the ethics of Ascendency, and one 
 on the circumstances under which law claims respect : but these 
 are not the lessons a wise statesman would teach. 
 
 To Ascendency are obviously owing the bitterest of the 
 quarrels about education ; but this is too large a subject to be 
 here pursued. Even evictions are, rightly or wrongly, in many 
 cases attributed to it. The passing traveller has pointed to 
 ruined walls, and the answer of his guide has been that its 
 farmer inhabitants refused to send their children to some pro- 
 selytising school patronised by the incumbent, or the landlord, 
 or the agent, or the unwise lady bountiful. The proprietor 
 asseverates, it may be, that he never evicted anyone on religious 
 grounds. Let us charitably suppose — the most charitable is 
 generally the wisest assumption — that he did not know the true 
 state of the case ; that he was only one link in a chain with 
 many links ; nay, that of those who made him their instrument, 
 several were but enthusiasts not tyrants. But there exists a 
 state of things at once so complex and so perverse, that the 
 wrong which no one in particular would have done is done by 
 all conjointly ; and society is tangled into an unconscious con- 
 spiracy. A single wrong wears a hundred disguises. Occasion- 
 
14 
 
 ally its form is the refusal of a site for church or school. A 
 remarkable instance of this form attracted public attention in the 
 county of Clare for many successive years. In a large forlorn tract, 
 extending along the sea, it was impossible to induce the pro- 
 prietor to give a site for a Roman Catholic Church. The 
 people worshipped in the open-air, carrying stones in their hands 
 as they journeyed to the place of meeting, that they might not 
 kneel in the mud. A sort of wooden canopy, placed on wheels, 
 was constructed to protect the movable altar, and is still preserved 
 as a memorial. Sites for schools, even National Schools, it has 
 often been impossible to obtain ; and in Ulster this difficulty is 
 said to have seriously interfered with the just working of the 
 National system, the result to the Catholic frequently being 
 still, either a Protestant education for his children, or one from 
 which religion is excluded. 
 
 It is often said, by the self-termed "practical" man, that 
 " what Ireland needs is, not the settlement of the Church 
 question, but the development of her industrial resources." Let 
 us analyse the assertion. What is it that has hindered their 
 development ? Insecurity in its various forms : — and whence 
 comes insecurity ? From national discontent. If political 
 agitation at one time, if, at another, those secret societies which 
 make society inwardly diseased when discontent does not find a 
 vent in public agitation, drive away capital, the various causes 
 of alarm have still a common origin. Till clu'onic discontent 
 is removed occasional improvement is fallacious. There has 
 often been a fair promise in Ireland ; but it had no root, and 
 therefore withered away. A discontent of which the main cause 
 is a moral one is made more dangerous by material distress^ 
 Ireland has long been undergoing a process of depopulation ; 
 and for this it is often said that no remedy exists so long as the 
 population depends upon agriculture alone. I will not discuss 
 that question : — in any case it is obvious that a nation without 
 manufactures fights the battle of civilization with one hand. 
 Now, from this what follows ? There can be no manufactures 
 so long as insecurity drives away capital, and discontent pro- 
 duces insecurity. If then the depopulation is to go on (whether 
 from an inevitable necessity, or from defective laws), the discon- 
 tent which indirectly produces it must ever be directly increased 
 by it. Does this imply nothing as regards the past ; — forbode 
 nothing for the future ? What if in England or France the 
 difficulty of finding employment had within a few years reduced 
 the population by more than one- third, and were rapidly 
 reducing it to one-half? Prove as men might that no one was 
 
I 
 
 15 
 
 to blame, old manor houses would rock on their foundations 
 notwithstanding, and the faces of the prosperous would whiten 
 like an aspen tree in the breeze. Let us assume that Ireland 
 must go back from the agricultural to the pastoral stage of 
 civilization (it has not yet, I believe, been suggested that it 
 should go back to the hunter stage) and must therefore support 
 a low population, though it may pay a high rent. Let us 
 further concede the statement that manufiactures cannot be 
 introduced so long as insecurity prevails. Is not the logical 
 inference this, that we are bound to deal with the moral, if we 
 cannot with the physical evil, and remove the permanent cause 
 of that discontent which produces insecurity? From the tone 
 of some writers one might imagine that every fugitive that fol- 
 lows the train of the " Irish Exodus" left his native shores to 
 vindicate the glory of British institutions in partibus infi- 
 deliurn. An Irish nobleman congratulated Lord Cornwallis 
 after 1798, because "the rebels were all crossing the Atlantic/' 
 The Viceroy replied, " 1 would rather have three rebels to deal 
 with in Ireland than one in America !" 
 
 It is strange that those who, in estimating the condition of 
 every other country, regard continued and wide-spread discontent 
 as in itself a proof of misgovernment, in the case of Ireland refer 
 it exclusively to national perversity. This is the rhetoric of 
 spleen or the philosophy of despair. If it were the sober truth, 
 it would only remain for the British statesman to wish — what it 
 has been said that every Irish peasant wishes — viz., that the 
 island could be towed out 2,000 miles into the Atlantic ! "Why 
 do you not make the most of what you have," such reasoners 
 ask the Irish peasant, " considering that, even if a hostile Estab- 
 lishment be a grievance, still you are better off than your fathers 
 were?" But though it has been said that " oppression maketh 
 a wise man mad," it has never been found, I believe, that a 
 diminished amount of injustice will convert men who are still 
 oppressed into a race of philosophers. Ireland does not profess 
 in the present, or promise for the future, any special superiority 
 to the usual infirmities of human nature; nor is she secured 
 against occasional aberrations by the fact that she has legitimate 
 grounds of complaint. Surely these lofty monitors are a little 
 unreal. They have a hundred times confessed religious inequality 
 to be a grievous wrong, but suggested that the remedy is ren- 
 dered difficult by the prejudices of the middle classes in England 
 and Scotland. Why then should they expect to find in Ireland 
 an exemption from analogous excitabilities ? 
 
 There are many who object, " after all, the people pay tithes 
 no longer, and the Church question addlresses itself to the few." 
 
16 
 
 But what if the few be that few which moulds the many? The 
 most influential books have generally been those which influence 
 that select few by whom the larger number are influenced. Vai'ious 
 cities in Italy founded professorships for the exposition of Dante 
 alone. AVhat if a book were to find in every parish a man of 
 influence to expound it ? The law-makers of past centuries, in 
 their dealings with Ireland, bequeathed to the present, it must be 
 confessed, ' ' a great book," — one indeed which is " written within 
 and without." That book can never lack expositors. Have the 
 objectors any faith in principles? Do they denounce injustice, 
 yet fancy that it can work little harm ? If they do not believe in 
 principles, let them believe in the passions of a nation. Has the 
 heart nothing to do with religion ? Can you safely trifle v/ith 
 a Church which ages of wrong have identified Avith a nation's 
 patriotism as well as with its piety? Is there no solidarite 
 between a Christian people and its clergy? Can the priest be a 
 Pariah, and the peasant be a contented man ? Little do those 
 -who talk thus know that between a religious people and its 
 pastors the sympathy is so close that you cannot touch the latter 
 without sending a vibration through the nerve of the former. 
 The clergy of such a people cannot if they Avould, divest them- 
 selves of their just influence : — they cannot diminish it except by 
 seeking an influence which is not just. It is as in a family, 
 where the very thoughts of the children seem shaped for them 
 in the cerebral cells of the parents. The quick, youthful eye is 
 ever on the watch ; and indelible impressions are formed, not 
 only by the lightest word of a father, but by the expression that 
 fleets in silence across his face, and casts an instantaneous reflec- 
 tion in that of his child. The magical influence is exercised 
 unconsciously, and often most potently when without or against 
 the parent's will. Such is the influence of the clergy. So long as 
 the priest is one who feelingly believes, either that he himself^ or 
 else the Church which lie is bound to venerate, stands degraded 
 (and to one or other of these categories every priest may 
 be referred), a religious people will not think that all is right. 
 A people that could so think would be incapable of all genuine 
 loyalty. If statesmen do not appreciate these sensibilities as 
 they appreciate the proverbial " sensitiveness of the funds,"^ it 
 is because, when discussing them, they move in a region which 
 they do not realize, and the objects of which are to them but 
 abstractions. To many the more spiritual region of politics is 
 one of convention, not of fact — one where everything is relative, 
 and nothing is substantial. A fine lady may trip through the 
 world without touching a single object in rerum natura^ except 
 through the intervention of a white kid glove ; but statesmen 
 
17 
 
 who have dealings with Ireland must treat religion and the 
 affections as realities. They are practical things : and the policy 
 which ignores them is not only " speculative" in character (how- 
 ever stoutly it may lay claim to common sense), but proves on 
 the long run a sorry speculation. 
 
 IV. 
 
 PHACTICAL EVILS FROM SECTARIAN ASCENDENCY. 
 (moral evils.) 
 
 It is when we look at the question from the moral point of 
 view, that the evils inflicted by an unjust religious Ascendency 
 are most apparent. They are these : — 
 
 1. It destroys among the people reverence for the State. 
 Power may be feared and obeyed : justice alone is revered : and 
 to demand the allegiance of a people without guaranteeing their 
 rights, is injustice, and is known to be such. The claim is 
 resented, not as a tyranny merely, but as a fraud. 
 
 In a well-ordered nation there exist two main objects of re- 
 verence, the Civil and the Spiritual Authorities. These two 
 authorities, though distinct, and the more for being distinct, 
 are in harmony. Each has its independent sphere ; but each 
 is supplemental to the other, and recognizes its rights while 
 sympathising with its aims. If the civil authority wages an 
 aggressive war against the spiritual, it wages war against 
 itself. It at once alienates its best allies, and chooses for its 
 enemies the closest of man's sympathies, and the deepest of his 
 convictions. However the war may end, the State must be the 
 loser. If she gains a temporary triumph, it must be by the 
 destruction or the corruption of that religious sentiment without 
 which Governments perish ; while, on the other hand, the State 
 may itself receive a fatal wound where there is no outward war. 
 A wise clergy shuns strife, well aware that religion suffers less, 
 on the long run, from much injustice than from the loss entailed 
 upon it indirectly when the people have discarded the habit 
 of rightful obedience in civil things. But a sullen discontent 
 the clergy cannot avert ; and this is often a more durable and 
 deep-rooted evil than open war. 
 
 2. It destroys among a people the healthful strength of 
 hope. No good thing is expected from rulers supposed to 
 
 C 
 
18 
 
 regard the religion of a people with hostility. It forbids 
 gratitude no less ; for, from those who wound our deeper sen- 
 sibilities, benevolences in smaller matters are commonly felt as 
 humiliations. In every country there is a class which clamours 
 for whatever it can get ; but this is not the class which cherishes 
 either gratitude for personal benefits, or hope for its country. 
 Where wrongs have long remained unredressed, hope is stigma- 
 tised as credulity ; and gratitude is laughed at when the belief 
 takes root, that benefits have only been conceded from indirect 
 motives or in times of diflSculty. It is often asked why Ireland 
 has not more often sent petitions to Parliament on the subject 
 of the Church. It had little hope of success. A nation that 
 has ceased to hope has become formidable. 
 
 3. It need hardly be said, that where reverence and hope 
 do not exist, neither does love. A nation has affections ; and 
 they invest themselves as they please, not as rulers please. The 
 secondary affections follow the primary ; and those who love 
 their religion (a contingency not adverted to by some philoso- 
 phers), love no institutions which profess, record, or inculcate 
 hatred of it, or contempt for it. The Irish have the same 
 affections, mixed with the same infirmities, as other men ; but 
 those affections have, by a blundering injustice, been diverted 
 ivom. many of their proper objects. Their imagination deals 
 with the past rather than the present ; and their pride attaches 
 itself less to the greatness of an Empire in which they have an 
 unequal part, than to recollections, sad and dear, in which none 
 claim a part with them. . We read of the dismay of the great 
 navigator, when for the first time the needle ceased to point to 
 the pole. There is such a thing as an erring, or an alienated 
 social polarity — a condition in which the needle never points to 
 the pole. The disturbing influence is created when the vessel 
 of the State is freighted with injustice. If that injustice be 
 persisted in, the statesman consults his craft, and the augur 
 consults the stars, in vain, for no course remains that is not evil. 
 It is Cardinal de Retz who remarks, "there are conjunctures 
 in which we can do nothing that is not an error." But he 
 adds, "I have observed, that it is never fortune that places men 
 in this condition. No one falls into it except by his own fault." 
 Let us settle the Church Question of Ireland before that time 
 has come. 
 
 If disunion between a people and its Government be a dis- 
 astrous thing, that between class and class is often a nearer and 
 sorer evil. Throughout Europe the higher classes are, in these 
 days, exposed to a criticism which nothing can disarm of its 
 dangers except the cordial interchange of social oflSces and an 
 estimate of political relations which some will call Christian, and 
 
19 
 
 others brand as superstitious. We must level up if we would 
 avoid levelling down. The battle between the earlier and the 
 modern civilizations threatens everywhere to be a hard one. The 
 former has no chance unless it can prove itself the more capable 
 of ministering to the permanent needs of the whole body. The 
 efforts made by England in this way to retain what distin- 
 guishes her from the colonial nations, and to sustain ancient 
 dignities in their place by weighting them with new duties, has 
 attracted the respectful and sympathetic attention of all thought- 
 ful men. But what progress has been made in Ireland ? Laws 
 which, not content with the social advantages necessarily 
 possessed by the higher classes, crown them with privileges not 
 only exceptional but unnatural, effect all that laws can effect to 
 render those " protected" classes powerful for evil and impotent 
 for good. Before the first French Revolution the French nobles 
 were exempt from many of the taxes that pressed on the poor. 
 Whether such an exemption rendered them really the wealthier 
 they were not careful to enquire : — that it rendered them odious 
 was a truth which they learned too late amid " the crash of 
 tower and grove." Yet, what are financial to religious in- 
 equalities ? Many wrongs are forgiven by men who abound in 
 loyalty and self-forgetfulness : but, be it remembered, these are 
 especially the virtues wftich make a people attached to their 
 Church; and it is our own wrongs, not wrongs done to what 
 we are bound to defend, which the Gospel commands us to 
 forgive. It is not chance or folly, but the Creator of man, and 
 of man's heart, that " puts enmities" between a nation and that 
 which, by degrading its religion, traduces it. 
 
 *' To the poor the Gospel is preached." The matter is theirs 
 in a special sense ; and they have a singular insight into it. It 
 would be safer by many degrees to trifle with the religion of 
 the rich: — the wound would touch less nearly their discreeter 
 susceptibilities. To the poor the world is not a very dazzling 
 snare ; and the temptations of sense — especially when the poor 
 are circumstanced like the Irish poor — rather come to them 
 in gusts than cling about them as a permanent thrall. Their 
 faults lie on the surface and meet a quick punishment. They 
 do not close a specious life by a plausible death and a news- 
 paper canonization. They take a vivid interest in the world 
 of faith and in the future world : — in this respect they are, of 
 course, God's nobility; and a wise man of the world, if he 
 believes in prayer, would be glad to have them as his patrons, 
 while they, for a corresponding reason, not unnaturally seek his 
 patronage in secular matters. But what, if instead of so happy 
 an interchange of good offices, he reviles their faith and absorbs 
 
20 
 
 the endowments intended to sustain it ? In former times 
 this was the madness of passion ; to persist in this course 
 would be the imbecility of hearts too hard, and brains too soft. 
 Kow that the iron hand of feudality has fallen down, a dead 
 thing, and that every schoolboy is mainly fed upon that alien 
 pasture, the republican lore of the old Pagan states, what is there 
 which can sustain aristocratical institutions except those old 
 Christian, and especially those Catholic, principlesand associations 
 which oppose themselves to a grudging pride, assert a spiritual, 
 not a worldly equality, insist, not upon a surly independence, 
 but upon reciprocal dependance, and by teaching at once 
 humility and aspiration, draw men to prefer the highlands of a 
 society that admits diversities of rank, to the featureless levels of 
 democracy ? I can imagine a conservative statesman wishing 
 for a religion that could do such things even if he thought it 
 had ceased to exist. I cannot understand his trampling on it. 
 An upper class that insults the Christianity of the poor, as the 
 ascendency of a modern minority insults it, is guilty of felo 
 de se. 
 
 It is not their own choice, It is the malice of laws that have 
 outlived their original purposes, which obtrudes upon the gentle- 
 men of Ireland this invidious and insidious pre-eminence. VV^ere 
 it their own deliberate choice it would prove that they were 
 ignorant of that foundation upon which alone true nobility rests. 
 Nobles who but reap the harvest from fields fertilized by the 
 sweat of some subjected race, remain a foreign caste, no matter 
 how long they may have lasted : they are satraps not nobles : they 
 have not the weight necessary to keep their feet on the earth : — 
 in the day of trial they prove but poor shadows and heraldic 
 phantoms — light enough to be hung from their own genealogical 
 trees. True nobles are the indirect representatives of their 
 country, its interests, its aspirations, and its honour ; and as such 
 only can they stand firm and hold fast. Ireland had nobles of 
 old ; and it is not the best thing about the Ascendant Establish- 
 ment that it is the memorial of their fall. In Ireland there are 
 two nobilities. The five successive confiscations upon which 
 Lord Chancellor Clare thought it necessary to enlarge in his 
 celebrated speech on the Union, did not merely set up a new 
 nobility. The old nobles, Norman and Gaelic alike, were for 
 the most part hurled from their seats, and nobility was thus 
 "put in commission" among the poor. But their Church survives. 
 " When," it is sometimes asked, " will the Irish people forget 
 the past?" When the upper classes remember it! Grattan 
 and Burke gave them better counsel than they have ever 
 received from the sycophants. Grattan used a memorable 
 
21 
 
 expression —" The consequence of this vile, mean, and selfish 
 monopoly is that your State becomes an oligarchy — the worst 
 species — a 'plebeian oligarchy ^ Burke wrote to the King 
 of Poland, '* It is a poor exaltatlcjU which consists in the 
 depression of other men. I love nobility. I should be ashamed 
 to say so if 1 did not know what it is that I love. He alone is 
 noble that is reputed so by those who, by being free, are alone 
 competent to bestow a due estimation upon rank and titles. He 
 is noble who has a priority amongst freemen, not he who has a 
 sort of wild liberty among slaves. * * There is no nobility 
 where there is no possible standard for a comparison among 
 ranks." — ( Correspondence^ vol. iii., p. 448). If this high truth is 
 not yet appreciated in Ireland by some among those whom it 
 most concerns, the reason is this, that the same inequality which 
 turns piety to bitterness on the side of the injured, turns wisdom 
 into folly on the other side. It is the greatest evil but one of 
 unjust laws that they make fools of those whom they favour. 
 That class become subject to *• blindness in part;" and there is 
 "a veil on their hearts." 
 
 Early last session an Irish nobleman complained that in his 
 country official persons were all in all, his order being treated as 
 of no account : and on coming into office Lord Derby promised 
 that this evil — as to some others he was less explicit — should 
 be redressed. It can be redressed only by the removal of that 
 which severs the gentlemen of Ireland from their country. 
 When their foot touches its soil, the strength of that country 
 will be in them. What separates ? What is it that dries up 
 their hand and makes their dignities titular ? It is that their 
 position does not accord with their virtues or their abilities. At 
 one time they were used as a foreign garrison ; and in this there 
 was a purpose. Next they were kept apart from the people, 
 that both might be held in subjection through division ; and in 
 this there was a purpose. It is now but apathy or cowardice 
 that leaves them the deserted warders of a dismantled fortress in 
 defence of which the State is resolved never to fire another gun ; — 
 guardians of what their country regards as a tattered, piratical 
 flag, the memorial of every dishonour that has shamed that country 
 for centuries. Let not the gentlemen of Ireland identify their 
 cause with their opprobrium. If they would have power in 
 their native land they must put away the evil thing. The Irish 
 people will not be governed permanently either by a Bureau- 
 cracy, or by a noble class that does not represent them. 
 
22 
 
 PRACTICAL EVILS OF SECTARIAN ASCENDENCY. 
 (the war with common sense.) 
 
 We have spoken of material evils, and of moral evils :^- 
 both classes are created by a condition of society which is a 
 war against common sense. As communities become civilized 
 they fall under the dominion of common sense ; and the 
 religious Ascendency of a small minority is a protest against 
 her sway. In Ireland the penalty exacted for the maintenance 
 of this " unreason" is, that the serious is lost sight of, and 
 that social life has become " a comedy of errors." Everyone is 
 at cross purposes with his neighbour because everyone has been 
 put into a false position. The higher class does not find 
 itself duly respected, because its religious monopoly insults the 
 supreme object of the poor man's reverence; and the poor man 
 is lightly esteemed because he is suspected. The Irish peasant 
 is accused of a deficient truthfulness and justice. It is difficult 
 to speak, or know, the truth, where institutions live a lie; 
 and not easy to practise justice in detail where wholesale injustice 
 has the sanction of" law. Truth and justice discountenanced, 
 the moral sense of society is stultified, and no foundation is left 
 for common sense, which is mainly a moral attribute. Men 
 acquire the habit of looking at the odd side of things : life is 
 regarded as a scramble, and government as a practical joke. 
 The reign of whim is enlarged, and industry itself often proves 
 to have been but a graver caprice. Nothing pays with sufficient 
 certainty to make self-control and perseverance worth while, 
 unless these virtues invest themselves in the spiritual sphere. 
 The Irish peasant lives either for the moment or for eternity. 
 The most sanguine statesman descries no sign of Ireland's 
 becoming a capable, prosperous land. He would probably 
 think it less unlikely that she should relapse into an " Isle of 
 Saints." 
 
 Why is this ? It is because one enormous inveracity has 
 gathered about it a whole world of make-belief. Old design 
 and new patchwork have concurred to make the system so 
 complete that the sufferer himself is in danger of forgetting 
 the perversity in the congruity. Go over a large tract — let us 
 say a diocese in Connaught — and its conditions, historical, 
 physical, social, religious, political, will interpret each other. 
 it is an extreme instance, I admit, but as such, the best 
 
I 
 
 23 
 
 illustration. You find a peasantry, the descendants, in many 
 cases, of those Ulster men who in the days of King James 
 the First's "Plantation" were admonished to go "to Hell or 
 Connaught," and preferred the latter alternative ; or of refugees 
 whom the sword and law of Cromwell forbade to exist eastward 
 of the Shannon. Elsewhere time brings heahng : — in what 
 condition do the men of the present day, this day of scientific 
 appliance and universal philanthropy, exist in Connaught ? 
 First, what is their material state ? That of a chronic distress, 
 not even occasional in other European countries, yet not 
 traceable to the ill-will of any class or of Government. The 
 roads are few ; half the day you toil across a morass, where a 
 square yard of fern, briar, and coarse grass looks like civilization ; 
 and the evening sun shines angrily on the slope of some 
 mountain, brown as the gloomy weed-harvests of the sea, or 
 dull red like the flank of a sleeping lion. There are improved 
 tracts ; but they fail to cheer the waste, and the new work, 
 half finished, and perhaps abandoned, wears a sadder aspect 
 than the ruin beside it. You come to what was a village, and 
 is a mass of crumbling walls : one man tells you that the 
 inhabitants emigrated ; another that fever flung them down, or 
 that the famine years trampled them out. In many places the 
 population is reduced to half of what it was twenty years ago, 
 and the Exodus is still going on. These things bewilder the wise, 
 and may well bewilder the simple. An able and benevolent 
 man, one himself convinced that the consolidation of farms was 
 necessary even for the eventual interests of the people them- 
 selves, described to me what had followed the famine years. 
 He told me how day by day as that change went on Avhich 
 precedes consolidation, he had seen the aged parish priest 
 riding about and watching the progress of it, now from 
 one hill-top, now from another, and tossing his hands in 
 the air. " I knew what he thought," my informant added, 
 "and who could blame him?" And who can blame peasants 
 who think with him ? I am not writing on the Land Question. 
 The statesman who thinks it insoluble will at least grant that to 
 mitigate such physical woes, there must be necessary a moral con- 
 dition Christian in more than name. Perhaps he may remember 
 a certain passage in Burke — " That Jacobinism which is 
 speculative in its origin, and which arises from wantonness and 
 fulness of blood, may possibly be kept under by firmness and 
 prudence. The very levity of character which produces it may 
 extinguish it. But Jacobinism, which arises from penury and 
 irritation, from scorned loyalty and rejected allegiance, has much 
 deeper roots. They take their nourishment from the bottom of 
 
24 
 
 human nature, and the unalterable constitution of things, and 
 not from humour and caprice, or the opinions of the day about 
 privileges and liberties. These roots will be shot into the 
 depths of hell, and will at last raise up their proud tops to 
 heaven itself." — {Correspondence, vol. iv., p. 380.) 
 
 Now let us turn to the spiritual condition of the country. 
 This people fares ill as regards worldly goods — what religious 
 aids does it possess? The answer is this: the parish is often 
 some fifteen miles long by twelve wide, or larger, and the single 
 priest who serves it faithfully, so far as one man's strength may 
 go, starves on a pittance too small to be divided between 
 several. In some churches Mass can only be celebrated every 
 second Sunday : in others it depends upon wind or tide ; and 
 many of those who live far away — not to speak of the very 
 young and the very old — are unable to attend it. Who is to 
 console the sick, to instruct the ignorant, to reclaim the erring, 
 to avert, to forestall, to break the evil habit scarce knitted, to 
 supplement weakness, to impart strength? One of the most 
 eminent of the Irish clergy. Dr. Murray, of Maynooth, has 
 said, '' If we had twice as many working clergy we should still 
 need more."* Let us leave abstractions. Observe that boy with 
 a face full of possible destinies — daring, yet docile — frank, yet 
 suspicious — like a wild animal newly caught. There is in him 
 a remnant of the old barbaric strength, not yet subdued by 
 convention. Is it to be elevated by no spiritual culture ? He 
 might be made all that is great ; but there is in him no less 
 another character, troublesome alike to Church and State. Is 
 he to prove the hero or the felon as chance directs ? That girl, 
 too, with eyes that lean on you for help, and those lips whose 
 smile does not banish their sadness ; — to-morrow she sails ; she 
 has no more abiding place than the dropt leaf. The sanctities of 
 home, the traditions of neighbourhood and country, protect 
 innocence ; but these are gone, and innocence can prove a 
 snare to innocence. The quays of Liverpool and the streets 
 of New York are roaring for their prey. It is adequate religious 
 ministrations that build a fortress round the soul ; and these 
 cost money. Who is to supply them in this wilderness ? The 
 land is like a land sacked by a barbarian invasion, or newly 
 emerged from a deluge. 
 
 Do then no funds exist for religious ministrations ? They 
 have existed for centuries. Turn to almanacks and directories, 
 and your fancy riots in a paradise of affluent orthodoxy. There 
 you find the whole " throne and equipage" of piety made 
 
 * Irish Annual Miscellany. 
 
25 
 
 perfect — archbishops and bishops, deans and archdeacons, canons 
 and prebends, precentors and chancellors and vicars choral. But 
 where are they ? Why cannot they be seen ? Do the cathedrals, 
 and deaneries, and prebendal closes belong to the Church In- 
 visible ? You are answered by the long-winded mystification, 
 which, translated into the vulgar tongue, means this : This goodly 
 ecclesiastical array is a picture : — the largest dignitaries are but 
 " such stuff as dreams are made of:" the cathedrals are wreaths 
 of the mist, the deaneries bubbles of the stream, and the vener- 
 able chapter but floats before the *' half closed eye" of the 
 devout statesman. The dioceses are ideal : several of these 
 abstractions have to be clubbed together in order to make one 
 concrete diocese ; and that one lacks a laity, or boasts but such 
 a laity as a single parish in many an English city might supply. 
 The Sunday sermons are '* imaginary conversations" between 
 imaginary clergymen and an imaginary flock. Half a dozen 
 parishes are joined into a single " benefice," and a collective 
 congregation of 300 makes a fair shew in the flesh so far as those 
 mystical records, the Ecclesiastical returns are concerned. In 
 them all looks well ; but in that wild region between Connaught 
 moss and Connaught cloud the great dignitaries of the Irish 
 Establishment are unavailing names like those shadows — Firbolg 
 chiefs, or Fomorian sea-kings — that look up out of Hades 
 and pass in dim succession over the pages of Irish archaeologists. 
 The ill-appointed farmer, the labourer without hire, the shepherd 
 of the lean dog-worried flock, sees them not by day, nor the 
 bat by night. They are " imputed" by theological politicians. 
 Such is their utter non-existence, that far from having a flock 
 many have not tithes. 
 
 " What befel these last?" it will be asked : — " What modern 
 miracle made separation between full pay and no duty ?" It 
 was the Church Temporalities Act. Some one discovered more 
 than thirty years ago that in all Connaught there were but 
 40,000 Protestants, and in many parts of it none at all. Eman- 
 cipation and the Reform Bill had lately been passed ; and the 
 public conscience, even on Irish Church Questions, was in an 
 uneasy, if not insurrectionary, state. Statesmen awoke to the 
 conviction that incomes of £700 or £800 were too much for 
 absentee clergymen in Brighton or Paris, or for clergymen 
 resident, but resident exclusively in the capacity of stipendiary 
 country gentlemen, or of apostles living on out-door relief. A 
 change was made — a change denounced by hundreds of excellent 
 men at the time as sacrilege, revolution, a violation of the act 
 of Union, and a fulfilment of the Prophecies. The " Church 
 Temporalities Act" was passed. It enacted that the otiose 
 
26 
 
 i 
 
 incumbent who had sat upon three parishes for forty years, " 
 smoking the pipe of peace, should sit there for no longer term than 
 the rest of his natural life. Then was to come Reform ; — and 
 what was that Reform ? Who would not have supposed that 
 it would have transferred to the Catholics of Connaught and of 
 Munster, that portion of their ancient religious property which 
 there were no Protestants to use ? Nothing of the sort. It 
 transferred it to the Protestant parishes of comfortable Leinster 
 and opulent Ulster, there to assist in building or repairing 
 churches, paying curates, and providing the requisites for 
 Divine Service adapted to the rich — clerks and sextons, pulpits 
 and prayer books, organs and hassocks, cushions and stoves and 
 coals ! Certainly those whom the statesmen of that day chastened 
 were stricken by a maternal hand. Another act took away from 
 the Protestant clergy twenty-five per cent, of their income, 
 and transferred it — to the landlords ! And thus was renewed 
 the lease of the Ascendant Establishment. 
 
 Once more with the tragedy comedy is mixed. The ruinous 
 district has not the silence that belongs to ruin. It is enlivened 
 by a brisk element of controversial activity, barren of serious 
 result. The Ascendency would be too obviously absurd if 
 it acknowledged the Catholicism of the nation as the permanent 
 order of things : that Catholicism it therefore is forced to regard 
 as but an accident destined to vanish before the zeal of a 
 church planted for the purpose of compelling the nation to 
 come in. But here arises the difficulty so pithily put by Lord 
 Melbourne as long ago as 1835. "Pastor he is not; for he 
 has no flock to tend, no cure of souls — missionary he is not ; he 
 cannot be an effectual missionary ^ because he is not disinterested.'' 
 The result is what the sober-minded would have anticipated from 
 circumstances which at once render missionary enterprize a 
 logical necessity, and render its success impossible. There is 
 a controversy as to the number of alleged converts. Some who 
 once heard of 50,000 converts will draw their conclusions from 
 the fact that this controversy is only as to whether, after countless 
 thousands — probably hundreds of thousands — have been spent on 
 the enterprize, the result, in the main field of action, Conne- 
 mara, is represented by about 750 converts, as some say, or, as 
 others affirm, by about half that number, including importa- 
 tions. It would be useful if some impartial persons, after 
 visiting the district, made a business-like return of the funds 
 spent, and the results attained. Not a few neat Missionary 
 Churches and Schools have sprung up of late. They represent, 
 as most affirm, not a church population that exists, but one 
 that is expected. The buildings are good ; and if a Protestant 
 
I 
 
 27 
 
 community could be raised by piling up stones into buildings, 
 as Deucalion and Pyrrha, after the flood of Thessaly, raised 
 a rapid population by flinging stones over their heads, there 
 would be hope for the missions. Let those who believe in 
 such experiments persevere in them. The zealous missionary 
 may say that success will come when hope is all but gone : 
 the zealous Catholic will say that such efforts are not wholly 
 thrown away, that erring enthusiasm on one side awakens 
 slumbering zeal on the other, and that a blot hit occasionally 
 does good, though not the good intended. The Irish do not 
 quarrel either with diversity of Faith or with missionary zeal : 
 the most popular Protestant Clergyman ever known in Ireland 
 was the excellent Bishop Bedell : amid the storm of a terrible 
 war he was respected by them in life, and mourned in death ; 
 and yet he was so zealous for their conversion, that in the hope of 
 promoting that end, he published an Irish translation of the 
 Holy Scriptures. No one has a right to complain so long as 
 fraud and force keep remote fi-om the missionary field, and the 
 noisy polemics remain within the limits of lawful war. But 
 these conditions are not easily fulfilled. Earnest Protestants 
 have openly reprobated much that has been done, and repro- 
 bated it both upon moral grounds and grounds of expediency : 
 for when party spirit and sectarian passion are combined, 
 good motives will not always keep men within the limits of 
 principle or even of discretion. Public meetings are held : a 
 fierce organization is got up : it is triumphantly proclaimed 
 that England has subsidised the Irish Church Missions with 
 £!29,000, or £39,000 within the year. Scripture-Beaders swarm 
 all over the country; and their profession pays well, whether 
 any one will listen to them or not. One of them forces himself 
 into a peasant's house, gets a broken head, and is reimbursed 
 at twice its value. A second confines his preaching to the 
 public road, which is free to all ; and a couple of ragged urchins, 
 I'ree no less, accompany his exhortations with their penny trumpets, 
 by way, as they say, " of drawing down public opinion on him." 
 A volunteer gives a condensation of Sacred History : — " The 
 Church was put under Peter at the first going on : but he ran out 
 altogether, and the whole concern was handed over to two men 
 that were better than he : and these were St. Paul and Dr. 
 Martin Luther." A fourth interprets the Apocalypse, and thunders 
 against Antichrist. Soup pots multiply — "At the last day," ex- 
 claimed an exulting missionary, " we shall have to give an account 
 of all our talents — the soup pot in the number." The season is 
 bad, and a few "converts" bid. The neighbours know they are 
 shamming, and therefore they lose caste. The loss is handsomely 
 made up to them. A good season comes, and most of the 
 
28 
 
 proselytes disappear. «* What wonder," replies the irrefutable mis- 
 sionary; — " I always said, ' out of Rome comes no clean thing.'" 
 The inquiry, "where are your converts?" meets the answer 
 "most of them have emigrated:" but the priest will often add 
 that they went to confession before tempting the perils of the sea. 
 
 These are not things to smile at: they have a serious 
 side. The words of Holy Scripture are irreverently strewn, in 
 tracts, along the public wnj. The walls of the chapel-yard 
 itself are sometimes pasted over with blasphemous placards in- 
 scribed "idolatry" — "no wafer Gods" — outrages directed against 
 a doctrine substantially the same as that maintained by the most 
 learned Anglicans in ancient, and in recent times. For their 
 fidelity to that and kindred doctrines the Irish suffered centuries 
 of persecution. One would say that dignitaries Avho, under less 
 severe difficulties, hold, or nearly hold, the same doctrine, ought 
 to look with little satisfaction on the missions which make it the 
 object of scurrilous attacks. Those who think with the late 
 Mr. Keble — ^^ sanctum et amahile nomerC' — upon "Eucharistic 
 Adoration," those who have formed Anglican societies in "repara- 
 tion of insults offered to our Lord in the Blessed Sacrament," 
 those who profess to follow antiquity, and who have read 
 the ancient liturgies of east and west, will draw tbeir own con* 
 elusions from such acts, and perhaps will explain them when 
 next treating with representatives of the Eastern Church on the 
 subject of inter-communion. For its "Church Missions" at 
 least a "United Church" must stand responsible, unless it 
 stands above — or below — all responsibility. These antics will 
 last so long as in Ireland religious controversy means, not free 
 speech, a free press, and a generous zeal for truth — things which 
 all must admire — but that passionate, yet politic hatred, the 
 joint result of tradition and of fear, with which the intelligent 
 zealots of an ascendant minority regard an ancient Church 
 which they must either prove to be an abomination, or admit 
 to be wronged. 
 
 Very grim, then, is the aspect of things — material, social, 
 political, and religious — in Ireland ; but an elfish gleam is 
 occasionally thrown over it. News from without visits the 
 waste, and there are men enough skilled to expound it. Perhaps 
 the expounder is an artizan out of work, or a schoolmaster 
 irreligiously trained, at feud with the priest, and with a taste 
 for Fenianism — a wiry little man with a large head, a mouth 
 with manifold expressions and sour when at rest, dilated, sen- 
 sitive nostrils, and a dark fiery eye — a man humorous yet 
 melancholy, slenderly interested in his own fortunes, and loving 
 his country "not wisely but too well" — boundless in -word- 
 wealth, and the more fiercely syllogistic the more hotly his 
 
29 
 
 anger burns — a heart in chronic tempest— a mind with strange 
 streaks of lore, political and polemical, traversing a boundless 
 black tract of invincible ignorance on all practical subjects. 
 Such is the news-monger : what is the news ? Perhaps the 
 passing of the " Ecclesiastical Titles Act ; " perhaps a proposed 
 law for searching convents ; perhaps only the arrest of a little 
 Irish child for selling violet-bunches in the streets of the great 
 city ; perhaps the triumphant revolt of some land, never pinched 
 for bread, or mulct in religion, but recently visited by the 
 passion for nationality. Or it is Garibaldi himself —Garibaldi in 
 England — and our orator does not like him. His account of the 
 matter is picturesque, whether it be accurate or not, and is signi- 
 ficant to the thoughtful. He seems to fling the " winged " words 
 abroad with his hands as well as his lips. — " This is the man 
 who fitted out a ship of his own, and raised the subjects 
 of a neighbouring king, the kinsman and ally of his king ! If 
 he had come from America, and landed in Bantry bay, he Avould 
 have been a buccaneer ! He took Naples ; and what did he do 
 there ? He publicly pensioned the wife of a murderer who had 
 tried to kill the old king ! Some time later he resolved to take 
 Kome in spite of his own king, and got wounded by the king's 
 troops. And now he is in London." Here the orator waves 
 the newspaper round his head, and then reads the account of 
 the triumphant reception. " Mazzini's name was on his ban- 
 ners ! Mazzini was his first visitor on his reaching England ; 
 Garibaldi publicly proposed the health of Mazzini as ^ his 
 master^ his teacher^ and his friend.' Who is Mazzini? The 
 greatest conspirator in Europe — a man who wrote a book to 
 defend the murder of kings ! All London is at Garibaldi's feet. 
 Great statesmen feast him ; poets sing him ; crowds cheer him ; 
 bishops bless him. What are his merits ? Garibaldi is brave ! 
 So are most men ; so were Lord Edward and Wolfe Tone. 
 Garibaldi is honest ! So are we all ; we do not steal the agent's 
 cow though hunger worries us from the land, nor the parson's 
 pig though we have seen it rooting up our old church-yard. 
 Why all this Garibaldi- worship in a land that sets its face 
 against sedition, and believes in trade and good sense ? Oh, a 
 distinction is made ! It is not Garibaldi the buccaneer, but 
 Garibaldi the hero, that men honour ! This is what philoso- 
 phers call an abstraction ! Is not England grown very meta- 
 physical of late for so practical a country ? Let us hope that 
 when Garibaldi visits her next the distinction will be better 
 kept up. If Garibaldi the hero is crammed at dinner time, 
 Garibaldi the buccaneer must have no breakfast ! If Garibaldi 
 the conqueror is lighted to his room by duchesses, Garibaldi the 
 
30 
 
 friend of regicides must be tossed in a blanket by the housemaids ! 
 What ! would Statesmen teach us that loyalty and treason 
 are what some Austrian called a ^geographical expression?' 
 Oh, my friends, have you made perfect your hatred of hypocrisy ? 
 True hatred is serious, even when it jests. It knows how to 
 speak and how to be silent — how to act and how to wait : it is 
 with you when you are asleep, and wakens with you when you 
 wake. What ! is Italy to be praised for overthrowing her 
 thrones, and Ireland to be forbidden native volunteer corps 
 when foreign invasion threatens her hearths and altars ? The 
 hearths remain, though there is often no fire on them. The altars 
 stand, though the churches lie in ruins." So preaches the lean 
 Sheik of the comfortless village, or the Prophet of the new 
 encampment on the moor ; while the sun drops into those wes- 
 tern waves beyond which is the emigrant's home, and the 
 malcontent's hope. 
 
 These things are sad : what is sadder is that wise men are 
 angry about them in place of seeking a remedy for them. 
 Ireland is a land of anomalies, and the religious anomaly under- 
 lies the rest. It never sleeps long ; and the moment it stirs, 
 with it there awaken the school-battle, and the land-battle, and 
 the election-battle, and fifty more battles. Retaliation rules, 
 and every subject is a dangerous one ; for wrong is linked with 
 wrong in endless chain of causation or association, just as, in a 
 house that fears robbers, bell is so linked with bell that a mouse 
 cannot take a leap in the dark without danger of waking the 
 parish. Neighbourly relations are vitiated by mutual dis- 
 trust ; generous intentions are chilled by suspicions too natural, 
 though often unjust ; the kindly are made morose, because 
 kindness has often been ill-requited ; and the frank are made 
 secret in self-defence. There is no extricating the present from 
 the past ; and there is nothing in that past which is not inter- 
 preted in an opposite way by the two parties. We have to ford 
 the Boyne in all weathers, and the Derry 'Prentices have never 
 fired their last gun. Life is a long wrangle ; and each party 
 strings together its wrongs in lineal succession from the Refor- 
 mation to the Revolution, and from the Revolution to the last 
 election ; — the concatenation is complete on both sides, and the 
 social fabric becomes a " house that Jack built," not a house 
 that will keep out the rain. In a natural state of things evil is 
 overcome by good, and bad instincts are over-ruled to subserve 
 the common weal : in a society of which something unnatural is 
 the centre or moving power, the opposite is the case; — the 
 good is frustrated, the whole is worse than the parts, and all 
 things " work together " for evil. Society seems to crystallize 
 
31 
 
 itself according to some law of antagonism ; its atoms are 
 drawn out of their natural position, and ranged against each 
 other point to point. No country is richer than Ireland in all 
 the elements of virtue and happiness, but one might say that 
 the malignant spirit of the fairy-tale had found entrance at the 
 birth-day feast, and turned blessing into malediction. 
 
 It comes to this : disown allegiance to common law, and you 
 leave behind you the sane in social relations. Proportion becomes 
 impossible: consistency is consistent evil; wisdom spends itself in 
 patching folly's work, and courage in sustaining what is noxious. 
 Noble breasts are troubled with the heart-burn of objectless 
 affections, and wander into erroneous ways ; while the champions 
 of order squander a barren loyalty — unfruitful as the works of 
 darkness themselves — upon institutions neither venerable nor 
 vital, and at war with those that are both. Patriotism does not 
 find it worth while to be reasonable ; and when the inevitable 
 disappointment comes, the credulity of youth ends in the politi- 
 cal scepticism, perhaps in the cynical corruption, of middle 
 age. Results are not looked for: people meet about business, 
 and drift into anecdote about some statesman who inspected 
 Galway harbour with the aid of a lantern, or tried his 'prentice 
 hand on a nation by insulting its bishops. Those who never 
 forgive, seem ominously callous to wrong. Everything follows 
 the law of the fantastic, and therefore nothing is felt to be fan- 
 tastic, just as water does not weigh in water, nor air in air. 
 Political relations are accepted without being believed in, as an 
 exchange of counters not redeemable in coin. Words have 
 merged thoir real in a conventional meaning : " Church" has no 
 reference to a people's religion ; and " Law" does not imply a 
 nation's sanction to that which is lawful and right. There is 
 one charge that cannot be brought against this system — that of 
 deception ; for that vice cannot exist where credence is neither 
 expected nor desired — nay. Avhere great Functionaries of State 
 would feel aggrieved if supposed to mean what they say. The 
 huge inveracity that makes Government a jest finds an apt 
 illustration in the marvellous " Declaration " with which the 
 Lord Lieutenant attests his fitness to rule — one of the many 
 instances in which a system reveals its true character by an 
 involuntary caricature. Let us try to fancy the scene. His Excel- 
 lency is some dignified person who, while breathing his native 
 air, lived for business, and shunned stage effects. He lands at 
 Kingstown ; a great crowd follows him through Dublin. All 
 good is believed of one who smiles, and bows, is clothed with 
 the Queen's name, and has not had time to refuse an application. 
 He reaches the Castle. The great officers of the household 
 
32 
 
 receive him — the heads of the law — the civil and military autho- 
 rities, and various other grave persons belonging, some to the 
 " Church as by law established," and some to the Church as 
 by law dis-established. He looks round the circle with benig- 
 nity, and then makes a solemn Declaration attested by a second 
 Declaration, which last affirms, "in the presence of God " (but 
 insincerely), that the former one is made sincerely, " without 
 any evasion, equivocation, or mental reservation whatsoever." 
 What does the former, and sincere, declaration declare ? Briefly, 
 that the creed of the nation he is sent to govern is false, and its 
 worship " idolatrous!" Was ever, in east or west, such a salam 
 given, on such an occasion, to a whole people ? Why adven- 
 ture upon so much excited theology in high places merely to 
 inflict an outrage, the substance of which a cab-driver could 
 condense into three words of one syllable each ? In what con- 
 dition is a country in which such a feat excites little surprise ? 
 If the Representative of the Sovereign were, on so critical an 
 occasion, only — let us say — to cut a somerset, it would be thought 
 in doubtful taste. To inaugarate his reign by a formal declara- 
 tion that he was sent to rule a nation of idolators, while, perhaps, 
 the Governor-General of India is lavishing smiles on the priest- 
 hood of a Buddhist Temple, or enriching it with some lost trophy, 
 this, even in Ireland, must be serious, if aught of serious remains 
 in the land. His next public declaration may be that in 
 administering a vast system of education, charged with being 
 Governmental, he will religiously abstain from all that can 
 influence, however indirectly, the belief of those idolatrous 
 millions ! 
 
 In short, the whole system is a flight of bad poetry, and we 
 want a little prose to it — " a pennyworth of bread" to all this 
 sack. I have endeavoured here and elsewhere to indicate the 
 remedy. It consists in political reality. " In Ireland there 
 exist, surrounded by many more conspicuous objects which are 
 but appearances and pageantries, two principal things — realities. 
 These are the people of Ireland, and the Church of that people. 
 These two things have wrestled with the centuries, and remain. 
 * * A wise legislation is that which moulds itself upon the 
 great realities of a nation, not that which hangs itself like a 
 garment about the framework of illusory shews."* Too much 
 in Ireland partakes of the illusory. Irish agriculture does not 
 meet — probably does not deserve — much respect from the farmers 
 of the Lothians : Irish commerce is looked on as not altogether 
 
 * The Church Establishment in Ireland, illustrated by Protestant Authorities. 
 Preface, p. xi, (Warren, Thomas-street, Dublin.) 
 
33 
 
 business-like by Liverpool and Manchester : the Irish nobility 
 complain that they do not possess the full influence at home, or 
 respect elsewhere, enjoyed by their order in England : the Irish 
 Church Establishment is the least Irish thing in Ireland. In 
 the mean time the two chief realities of Ireland are the two 
 things most carefully ignored by the chief institution of Ireland. 
 ' ' Statesmanship is not a department of scene-painting : and a 
 mock court, however appropriate in its place^ is not that ' pattern 
 on the mount' after which a whole kingdom should model itself."* 
 For thirty years the word "sham" has been shaking down, in 
 a thousand brains, traditions, false and true; and with the 
 word "unreal," began a movement which has built a thousand 
 Churches. The office of the Lord Lieutenant has often been 
 denounced of late as an idle pageantry. That is the reason why 
 it should be preserved — together with the wonderful "Declara- 
 tion" that illustrates it — preserved as the type and bond of a 
 whole world of political millinery, until the master-mischief has 
 been dealt with, and the removal of a narrow Ascendency, which 
 no longer possesses a meaning, has made room for the constitu- 
 tional sway of a very ancient potentate — common sense. 
 
 VI. 
 
 PENSIONS INADMISSIBLE. 
 
 We have seen what the "situation" is. The remedy for evils 
 produced by a religious monopoly will be found in religious 
 equality. To make room for this theme it is necessary first to 
 clear away a dangerous illusion. The question of religious 
 endowments is so delicate a one that any mistake in the matter 
 at once changes, not a greater good to a lesser, but a great good 
 to a great evil. It is like one of those chemical compounds in 
 which a slight variation of proportion reverses the character 
 of the resultant. Pensions have been recommended by many 
 as the simplest mode of endowment. Such a mode would be a 
 measure almost as odious in Ireland as the Repeal of Catholic 
 Emancipation, and therefore almost as mischievous. It would 
 unquestionably be regarded as a bribe intended to corrupt, not 
 at once, but by degrees, that Church which ibrce was never able 
 to subdue. This conviction has been expressed repeatedly 
 during the last half century by those who have the means of 
 
 * Ibidem. 
 
34 
 
 arriving at a sound judgment, and who have a right to speak. 
 " Cresar's wife must not be suspected:" and of all suspected 
 things a suspected Church must be the worst. The hand " full 
 of gifts" would be empty of benediction, and therefore impotent 
 alike to guide and to control : and that wealth which saturated 
 the body would "send leanness" into the soul. Pensions are 
 the least honorable and the most precarious form of Church 
 endowment. Does the Ascendant Establishment of Ireland 
 accept this statement ? The offer of them would in that case be 
 an insult. Does it deny the statement ? Then all difficulty is at 
 end. It has only to take the pensions, and hand over the Church 
 property to the nation which pre:^rs it. 
 
 It is not so much the hostility of statesmen that a dependent 
 Catholic Clergy would have to fear, as their misconceptions, and 
 their subjection to a public opinion, itself subject to politico- 
 theological excitements. In the twenty years preceding 1851, 
 much had been done to make up the old quarrel with the 
 Catholic Church. In that year neither the Irish clergy nor the 
 laity had been charged with any wrong course; the Repeal 
 agitation was dead ; and the people still lay prostrate after the 
 desolation of the famine years. Notwithstanding, a misconcep- 
 tion arose. A regular hierarchy had in England been substi- 
 tuted (as had often been desired both by English Catholics and 
 by the English government), for an irregular hierarchy subject 
 only to the Pope. Its authority, being spiritual, existed and 
 could exist only in the " court of conscience :" but though the 
 distinction between the forum internum and the forum externum 
 was pointed out by most of the Roman Catholic Bishops, and by 
 one Anglican, the Bishop of Exeter, persons not used to those 
 terms imagined that distinction to be identical with another and 
 very slippery distinction — that between claims existing de jure, 
 and powers existing de facto — both of which refer to the forum 
 externum, or civil court, and challenge the nation as a political 
 community. Ireland had nothing to do either with the miscon- 
 ception or the new hierarchy: yet she found herself under a penal 
 law, which, if it could have been enforced, would have either 
 sent the whole of her Bishops to prison, after they had ceased to 
 be able to pay fines, or would have substituted for a hierarchy 
 fourteen centuries old, that system of "vicars apostolical" which 
 prevails in new missions and barbarous lands. W hat would have 
 been the consequence if the proscribed Clergy had also been a 
 pensioned Clergy? It is not necessary to enlarge on this topic: — 
 but it is not lawful to miss the moral. Mutual independence is 
 necessary for mutual respect. What is to be avoided is mutual 
 antagonism, founded on wrong, and calling itself independence. 
 
35 
 
 lere there is a donor, there must be a recipient, and there 
 should be a willing one ; for gifts forced on a reluctant recipient 
 are commonly turned against the donor. In the case of pensions, 
 what will the Catholic, to whom the offer is made, answer ? He 
 will reply : " Here are two forms of endowment, viz.. Pensions, 
 and the ancient Church Property — the latter secured on the land 
 itself. You do not even propose to divide each of these two 
 endowments between the Catholics and the Protestants. You 
 propose to give the whole of the one form to those who cannot 
 but disapprove of it, and the whole of the other to those who, 
 according to you, ought to be indifferent on the subject ! 
 Dependence you reserve for those you scarcely profess to like ; 
 and independence for those whose interests a Protestant State 
 always indentified with its own ! Clerical Pensions you think to 
 be all that the clergy of a nation can claim. Less than the whole 
 Church Property you deem an unnueet provision for the clergy 
 of a small and recent minority. You insist on it, against 
 Ireland's will, that the Irish Catholic Clergy must be supported 
 out of taxation, nine-tenths of which comes from Protestant 
 England. It seems a paradox ! This is what you propose, not 
 after there has been a century's peace between us, but while 
 you are actually waging an educational war against us on the 
 sole ground that you cannot trust the Irish Catholic Clergy with 
 the same Educational influence which you gladly concede to the 
 Clergy of every denomination in England, and the absence 
 of which you would stigmatise as Godless Education. We do 
 not dispute your good motives. But you invite us to trust you 
 and trust you wholly. We answer — « That which you would 
 have us trust to you is not our own. We are trustees ourselves. 
 To hand over to your keeping a people's Faith, and then our- 
 selves to walk abroad in soft apparel: — this is no tradition of 
 ours; — * this line we learned not in the old sad song;' — this form 
 of dijty no writer on morals has ever illustrated." 
 
 Implicit trust in this matter would be a sorry affectation. 
 Even among those who worked well for Catholic liberties, 
 several made no secret that they valued the system of pensions 
 merely as a mode of changing a nation's priests into a black-coated 
 police. *' The first thing to be done is to pay the priests, and 
 after a little time they will take the money. One man wants 
 to repair his cottage ; another wants a buggy : a third cannot 
 shut his eyes to the dilapidations of a cassock. The draft is 
 payable at sight in Dublin, or by agents in the next market 
 town ! * ♦ * A buggy, a house, some fields near it, a 
 decent income paid quarterly ; — in the long run these are the 
 cures of sedition and disaffection." This is hardly worthy of 
 
36 
 
 the masculine mind of the writer ; and the time has gone by for 
 such temptations as are here paraded. 
 
 Mr. Burke was in favor of endowing the Roman Catholic 
 Clergy ; yet he said that, except under conditions at once the 
 most prudent and honorable, endowment would be fatal. , To 
 Pensions his warning applies a fortiori. He wrote : — 
 
 " I am convinced that folly alone cannot wholly ruin an 
 established empire. Cunning must come to its aid. Amongst the 
 poor devices of this sure and natural ally of absurdity is the scheme 
 you talk of, but which will hardly take place, of bribing the 
 Catholic Clergy, by giving to them some share in the Establish- 
 ment of the Church, and letting them into a partnership in the 
 odium attendant upon tithes. You observe very rightly that this 
 would be the destruction of all religion whatsoever ; and when 
 that is destroyed, nothing can be saved, or is worth saving. You 
 say rightly too^ the scheme taken by itself, is a piece of just and 
 prudent arrangement, I have often recommended it, but for a 
 very different purpose. Many things done from principles of 
 justice, produce in their secondary consequences excellent effects 
 of policy, and for low tricking purposes produce the very direct 
 reverse. As a piece of mere substantial ecclesiastical and civil 
 arrangement, if the ecclesiastical estate was put on a more 
 reasonable and durable basis, this would be wise. In future, 
 something of the kind perhaps will be thought necessary. But 
 this is evidently the part of low cunning, by which they hoped 
 first to divide the laity among themselves : — this is to divide 
 the clergy from the laity. Both will be equally vain in the 
 issue, and mischievous in the attempt." * * * JV|y inference 
 from the matter is this : — that if the Castle-ascendency could 
 bribe the whole body of the Roman Catholic Clergy (a thing not 
 very likely) into a treacherous conduct towards three millions 
 of their laity, not anything else would result fi-om it than 
 this, that they would never attend on the ministry of one of 
 these corrupt and silly creatures. They would call them the 
 Castleick Clergy. They would have other priests."* 
 
 Elsewhere he writes to Dr. Hussey : — 
 
 ** What friends would bestow as gifts, enemies will give as 
 bribes." Again he writes to the same prelate, " The being 
 of Government depends upon keeping the Catholics from a 
 mischievous presumption andy>om a mean depression.'*] 
 
 Were Mr. Burke's suspicions those of captiousness or of ex- 
 perience ? A letter from the Protestant Bishop of Meath to 
 Lord Castlereagh {Lord Castlereagh's Correspondence, vol. iii. 
 
 * Burhe's Correspondence, vol. iv. p. 10. f I^o-j P- 271. 
 
37 
 
 p. 400) divulges the intentions with which an endowment of 
 the Roman Catholic clergy might have been connected, and the 
 effects which it might produce: — "So early as the year 1782 
 I entertained the idea of the policy and necessity of making 
 an established provision for the Roman Catholic clergy, 
 that would make them independent of their people. I neces- 
 sarily connected this measure with that of bringing their bishops 
 more in contact with the Government, and giving the Castle an 
 interference and ivjiuence in their appointment'^ He is in favour 
 of Maynooth, but thinks its great office is that of putting down 
 Ecclesiastical Education elsewhere. " I would, therefore, put 
 an extinguisher on all these foreign seminaries, and places of 
 education ibr the mission of Ireland." His further policy is 
 thus shadowed forth: " A power might be given to this College 
 to grant Divinity Degrees, and that, a Doctor's Degree in it, 
 should, in a reasonable period, be an essential qualification for 
 their Bishopricks. * * * ;^o public course of Theology 
 should be taught, and no Divinity thesis held, without being 
 first signed by the Professor, and sent to the principal Secretary's 
 office^ to be thence referred to a Censor, a Roman Catholic of 
 their own College, and in orders, but who must be particularly 
 appointed by, and answerable to the Government, that he may 
 give his fiat." He proceeds, " I have already given my opinion 
 on the expediency of leaving the presentation to the parishes, as 
 it now is, in the Roman Catholic Bishops ; — they will be more 
 within the inspection, and under the control of the GovernmentJ* 
 * * " They should also have the power, as now, of depriving 
 them, but under the special reservation that they should certify 
 to the Government the causes of deprivation, and receive its 
 consent before they can proceed to it. Government should also 
 reserve to itself the power of withdrawing the stipend from any 
 parish, against the possessor of which any suspicion of disloyalty 
 and disaffection, or danger to the Establishment, or the State, 
 should lie, unless his bishop proceed immediately to his depriva- 
 tion." He next shows how the Government is indirectly to 
 manage Episcopal appointments — " I would rather see the whole 
 measure thrown up at once than not secure to the Crown, in 
 some way or other, an effectual influence and control in this 
 appointment of archbishops and bishops. By them, and them 
 only, can the Government manage the body of the Roman 
 Catholic clergy and secure them to its interests.'' * * t« With 
 respect to the deprivation oi' archbishops and bishops, 1 would 
 recommend the same regulations as in the deprivation of priests 
 and curates. The causes and process should be certified to the 
 Crown by the Court of Rome, that it may appear that it is merely 
 
«8 
 
 for a spiritual offence, or an offence against discipline, and in no 
 way connected with any question of State, or affecting the peace 
 and tranquillity of the country.' ' He would suppress all Religious 
 Orders, and bring the Sacrament of Penance under the control 
 of the magistrate ! 
 
 Many, themselves too sincere as well as wise for all this 
 elaborate folly, will reply : " The time for distrust is gone by. 
 We do not dream of anything that could compromise the 
 canonical rights of your clergy. Their revenues shall come 
 to them solely through their own bishops, and be distributed as 
 those bishops please. There shall be no Bureaucrat to dictate 
 the number of the clergy, or to make inquisition as to their 
 conduct at elections, or to ask whether the 'muscular Chris- 
 tianity' of the regulars does not disparage the more nervous 
 Christianity of seculars dependant on pensions. Your bishops 
 shall be as independent as the bishops are in Belgium. We 
 could not ask them to accept the 'organic articles' of Gallicanism 
 unless the State were to accept the faith of Gallicanism." The 
 ingenuousness of such persons will render it the more easy for 
 them to appreciate the motives of those who cannot adopt their 
 opinions. It is not by good intentions, but by sound principles — 
 not by friendly dispositions, but by self-acting rides — that a 
 polity is kept from fatal though insensible abuse. Statesmen, 
 whether Protestant or Catholic, have their own instincts, as 
 Churchmen have theirs ; and each class must act within its proper 
 limits. The danger comes gradually, and possibly not without 
 wrong on both sides ; and only the very credulous man thinks 
 that he can look into the far future. There are, however, other 
 considerations, unconnected with the accidents of the day, which 
 determine the course that should be adopted with respect to 
 ecclesiastical endowments. Let us proceed to consider these. 
 
 VII. 
 
 THE CONSTITUTION— CITIZENSHIP. 
 
 What then is the remedy? Let us legislate on Constitutional 
 principles respecting the Irish Church settlement, or let us leave 
 it alone. Is it not justice and expediency Avhich command Reli- 
 gious Equality ? If so, then the former prohibits pensions for the 
 Catholic clergy, for that would not be equality ; and the latter 
 prohibits the secularisation of Church property, for that would be 
 
39 
 
 but equality of evil. What Ireland needs is the just distributioir 
 of her Church property between those who have never yet had 
 more than a legal claim to it, and those who have never ceased 
 to have a moral claim to it. She needs this because she needs 
 the Constitution ; and the Constitution provides for the good 
 estate of all, both as citizens and as subjects. 
 
 Let us consider first the question of citizenship. What is 
 Church property? Hereafter we shall have an opportunity, 
 when dealing successively with the sophisms by which injustice 
 is propped, to discuss in detail, the allegation that tithes ought 
 to be paid to the Protestant clergyman because they are paid 
 by the Protestant landlord. The fact on which the argument 
 rests is a fiction, and that may suffice for the moment. No land- 
 lord, Protestant or Catholic, pays tithes. He serves but as agent 
 in the transaction, as the Catholic farmer was repeatedly told in 
 old days, when it was he, not the landlord, who acted as inter- 
 mediate. It is the land that pays the tithe ; and the wrong is 
 this, that in place of being paid for the benefit of those living on 
 the land, it is paid for the benefit of a few, the many being 
 treated in the matter as if they were horses or cows. They pay 
 for their own religious ministrations, instead of receiving them 
 more amply and gratis : — but they do not accept the fashionable 
 philosophy on the subject. The landlord retains that nine-tenths 
 of the property which became his by purchase, inheritance, or 
 confiscation ; but the people has lost the remaining tenth, and 
 is told that the grievance, if any exists, is a sentimental one. 
 A nation has been disinherited; and the theological lawyers 
 admonish her not to be romantic. 
 
 Let us go to the root of the matter. What is the purpose of 
 Church property? It is to provide for a nation's soul. It 
 assumes that the persons composing a nation have souls, and 
 that the training of souls costs money. Coleridge in his " Church 
 and State" illustrates this subject with great felicity. Even 
 before Christianity, most of the races capable of civilization, 
 while committing the larger part of their lands to the charge of 
 individual proprietors, reserved a portion for the direct benefit 
 of the nation itself. That reserved portion was dedicated to the 
 interests of religion and civilization ; and this principle, which 
 in the Hebrew polity received a divine sanction, was adopted in 
 due time, as the basis of Christian civilization. At later periods, 
 vast, and often very mischievous, bequests and gifts were added 
 to the "National Reserve:" but the reserve itself was independent 
 of such accretions, and survived them. In many parts of Europe 
 that reserve has been dissipated by successive tyrannies or 
 revolutions; and it is a distinction honorable to Enojland that 
 
40 
 
 in her this bequest from the early days of Christendom has, to 
 a large extent survived. It has survived in Ireland also ; — but 
 for her in vain. 
 
 What is it that Ireland has lost by the alienation of the 
 National Reserve? Citizenship, and the sense of citizenship. 
 That reserve, by some called "the nationality," becomes the 
 primary test of what is, or is not, included in the nation. 
 Pensions may be, and have been, assigned to aliens and refugees. 
 The "voluntary system," when imposed upon a people by 
 force, informs that people that the nation has no part in it, nor 
 it in the nation. If some eccentric legislation withdrew from 
 one of the three United Kingdoms the protection of law, the 
 outlawed race would, perhaps, set up courts of arbitration. If 
 it withdrew the protection of the national armaments, the 
 abandoned race would provide, by an organization of its own, 
 or by foreign alliances, for the safety of its hearths. What then 
 if it withdraws from them that provision made for religious and 
 moral culture ? The community thus amerced is rejected from 
 the nation. It is not by words, but by deeds, that nations live. 
 Were a ruler in some not favoured part of his kingdom to paint 
 nine-tenths of his subjects black, and then hang placards about 
 their necks with the inscription "these men are to be accounted 
 white men," they would remain black notwithstanding. Here is 
 the 'original sin' of Irish Society. Treated kindly, or treated 
 harshly, they have but seldom been treated as fellow-citizens. 
 Swift was a patriot after his fashion, and his fellow-countrymen 
 were proud of him; yet he affirmed of the native race that they 
 were '* of no more account than so many women and children." 
 In Ireland, even in our day, the kindest often fail in that respect 
 which is due to the lower, no less than to the higher class. 
 They dictate to them about the management of their houses, 
 and the education of their children ; and if their suggestions, 
 often received much as a great mastiff meets the petulances of a 
 child, are not complied with, they fancy themselves aggrieved. 
 A misapprehension as to the true relations between ourselves 
 and our neighbours has existed in many countries. While we 
 were daily hearing of fresh horrors from India, a person who 
 had lived there for twenty years exclaimed in amazement, 
 " When we took our evening drives by the river side we 
 literally did not see whether those quiet, insignificant natives 
 happened to be in the fields or not, any more than whether birds 
 had chanced to alight on them !" In the wildest clan life there 
 exists a rude citizenship, and, therefore, a rudimental civiliza- 
 tion. Unequal laws insensibly destroy what has held its own 
 in the absence of all written law. There is no true charity 
 
41 
 
 where there is not sympathy ; and there are circumstances 
 under which the benevolence that does not proceed from both 
 becomes an offence. The most sagacious statesman and the 
 most philanthropic proprietor can do nothing for men unless 
 they respect them, and respect the objects of their legitimate 
 reverence. But the law must set the example of this respect. 
 
 The State which neglects this duty may plead what it pleases 
 in its defence, but it has to pay the penalty. Its law- is looked 
 upon as an alien power even when not as an adverse power. 
 Reverence for law is the duty of subjects: — it is the self-respect- 
 ing and self- protecting instinct of citizens. The lack of it in 
 Ireland proceeds not from the dissimilarity between the English 
 and the Irish characters, great as that is, but from what they 
 possess in common. In England the law has long been the 
 mother, not only of freedom and of security, but of equal 
 rights, and, therefore, of social peace, and is reverenced for 
 that reason. How stands it in Ireland ? We speak of our 
 constitution in Church and State ; for under these two categories 
 the chief social relations distribute themselves. In Catholic 
 Ireland almost all that belongs to the sphere of the Church 
 exists either externally to law, or against law ; and the laws are 
 regarded by too many of her sons as the game laws are regarded 
 in England. 
 
 We are now considering, not the position of a clergy, but that 
 of a people. One way or another the clergy of a people that 
 retains faith will always be supported ; and if the voluntary 
 system is unable in some districts to raise them, however few, 
 to a competence, in others its result may be clerical affluence. 
 But the Kational Keserve was created for the people, and 
 especially for the poor : and it belongs to the clergy, accidentally 
 and mediately, as they are the spiritual representatives of the 
 people, no less than as their pastors. Constitutionally, they hold 
 that reserve, neither as a thing intrinsically their own, nor yet 
 as the gift of the State which protects their rights, but as 
 spiritual trustees for that nation which exists indi visibly in 
 the twofold relations of Church and State. Ecclesiastically that 
 nation cannot be represented by a small section of itself. In one 
 of the Church debates of 1844, Lord Fitzwilliam said very well, 
 while protesting against pensions for the Roman Catholic clergy: 
 " The Protestant rector and Roman Catholic priest must be 
 placed upon precisely the same footing — they must both be 
 made to feel that they have an interest in the soil.'' 
 
 In Ireland, perhaps even more than elsewhere, this is necessary 
 for the sense of citizenship. The old Irish clan system made 
 the race joint proprietors with the chief; — one reason probably 
 
42 
 
 why in a land which has always lived by its traditions more 
 than by its laws, evictions are still regarded as confiscations. The 
 clan system was but a local institute, and has passed away 
 for ever ; but everywhere throughout Christendom the people 
 possessed, tln-ough their clergy, a sure though limited interest in 
 the land, together with the class of individual proprietors. This 
 sacred and reasonable co-heritorship gives dignity to the people, 
 citizenship to the clergy, and security to property. It is when 
 its beneficent realities vanish that the dreams of Communist 
 and Jacobin take their place. Fancied dangers are always 
 alarming those who do not see true dangers. Throughout all 
 Europe, in our day, the greatest perils are those which proceed 
 from principles true at heart, but changed by some invertion, 
 omission, or false context, into fatal falsehoods. Among these 
 is the Communistic theory which boldly proclaims all individual 
 property to be theft. A proprietor class which would save their 
 estates alive, should take good care to be guilty itself of no theft 
 against God and the people. In politics, as in religion, there 
 are facts that had a beginning but have no end — ever-living and 
 ever-energising facts; — and these we must not confound with 
 the facts that once were, but have ceased to be. The " Act of 
 Settlement" is forgotten. The accidents of history are fleeting 
 things : the necessities of a nation remain. 
 
 This salutary co-heritorship, in England never lost, was 
 imparted to Scotland when, after a brief interval of imaginary 
 orthodoxy, and real persecution, the Ascendency of an Establish- 
 ment in which the people would have no part was abolished. 
 Better still might have been done ; for the Episcopal community 
 was hardly dealt with. It was saved, however, from that greatest of 
 ignominies, an exaltation at once unjust and unreal. The nation 
 rested upon an intelligible basis. What was the consequence? 
 It became a solid thing. The Scotch Union began by being 
 hated ; yet the hatred passed away, while the patriotic senti- 
 ment which had inspired it remains unchanged in that never- 
 vanquished land. Why? Because that Union was a reality: — 
 as Lord Macaulay expressed it, England and Scotland became 
 one, because it was not insisted upon that their churches should 
 be one. 
 
 It was through such a moral unity that Mr. Pitt, one of those 
 statesmen who do not substitute names for thmgs, proposed to 
 make a reality of that Union with Ireland which, under the 
 pressure of danger, he had effected not without grievous 
 omissions, and also circumstances of discredit that have borne a 
 large harvest in later times. He proposed to endow the Roman 
 Catholic Church ; and one of his plans was, I think, that it 
 
43 
 
 should become the Established Church in Munster and Con- 
 naught. Doubtless, however, it was chiefly pensions that were 
 thought of by him and Lord Castlereagh : but pensions did not 
 mean then what they now mean : and those who would have 
 accorded them at a time when the Penal Laws were still recent, 
 probably rose more above the prejudices of their day than the 
 advocates of Keligious Equality rise in ours. It is but lately that 
 we have learned how worse than useless, if unattended by a 
 settlement of the Church Question, the Irish Union was regarded 
 by Lord Castlereagh. He desired that the Irish people should 
 have a real, not a nominal share in the Constitution, because, 
 " they are more naturally open to an alliance with Jacobinism, 
 the enemy of the present day, than in a state of comprehension," 
 and the Union he looked on as a means to this end. His words 
 are memorable. " If the same internal struggle continues, Great 
 Britain will derive little beyond an increase of expense from the 
 Union. If she is to govern Ireland upon a garrison principle, 
 perhaps in abolishing the separate Parliament, she has parted as 
 well with her most effectual means, as with her most perfect 
 justification. In uniting with Ireland she has abdicated the 
 colonial relation ; and if hereafter that country is to prove a 
 resource^ rather than a burden to Great Britain^ an effort must 
 be made to govern it through the public mind^ — (^Memoirs, vol. 
 iv. p. 339.) 
 
 Still more remarkable is the great speech of Sir R. Peel in 
 the Catholic Emancipation debate of 1817, for it came from one 
 who at that time was a reluctant enemy of the Catholic cause ; 
 while its great argument is this — that Catholic Emancipation, 
 without a settlement of the Church Question (which no one then 
 proposed to touch), must prove a nullity. 
 
 He asks, " Can you believe that they (the Irish) will, or can, 
 remain contented with the limits which you assign to them ?" * * 
 "Do you think that, if they are constituted like other men, if they 
 have organs, senses, affections, passions like yourselves — if they are, 
 as no doubt they are, sincere and zealous professors of that 
 religious faith to which they belong" — can they, he asks, if this 
 be so, remain contented to see their ancient Church in its state 
 of degradation? He refers to the precedent of Scotland, as 
 certain to be adduced if Emancipation be conceded. He says : — 
 "The history of Scotland is referred to as proving the policy 
 of granting those privileges which we are now called on to 
 grant, and though I reject it as affording any precedent at all 
 analogous to the present case of Ireland, I cannot help feeling 
 that it may be, at some future time, with great force, appealed 
 to in favour of the establishment of the Roman Catholic reli«:ion 
 
44 
 
 in Ireland. What was the policy towards Scotland? After 
 vain attempts to impose on the people a form of religious worship 
 against which they revolted, you abandoned these attempts, and 
 estaV)lished permanently and inviolably the Presbyterian Church, 
 its doctrine, discipline, and government." 
 
 Catholic Emancipation, he affirms, will do nothing practical 
 for the mass of the Irish people — and why ? Because it will do 
 nothing for their pastors. " But we are told that these con- 
 cessions are to tranquillize Ireland. We are told that the 
 mass of the people are in a state of irritation, and that nothing 
 but Catholic Emancipation can allay it ; but we are not told 
 what this Emancipation is to effect with respect to the mass of 
 the people ! Do you confer any direct and immediate benefit 
 upon the lower orders ? You argue indeed, that the ultimate 
 effects of Emancipation will be to ameliorate their condition, to 
 raise up new classes in society, and to unite the lower and upper 
 orders by gradations which are now wanting. Will the peasant 
 understand this ? Will he feel any immediate benefit ? Will 
 he receive any practical proof that his condition is improved?" 
 
 He next speaks of the clergy. "You confer certain privileges 
 — substantial benefits perhaps — on the aristocracy and the bar ; 
 but you confer none on the clergy ; you do not even leave them 
 as you find them ; you concede to the laity, but you accompany 
 these concessions with regulations and restrictions, bearing 
 exclusively on the clergy — on that body, whose influence is all 
 powerful, and who of all classes must naturally view your 
 establishments with the greatest jealousy and hostility. And 
 then the connexion between the mass of the people and the 
 clergy remaining the same — the people receiving no immediate 
 advantage, nor prospective advantage which they can com- 
 prehend, and the clergy being subjected to restrictions against 
 which they vehemently protest — can we flatter ourselves that 
 the predictions of tranquillity and concord are likely to be 
 verified?" 
 
 Alas ! it is but slowly that great truths make their way. A 
 consensus of wise men is borne down by a conspiracy of preju- 
 dices. The philosophy of a Burke, the wit of a Canning, are in 
 vain, while a Dr. Duglenan struts his day and bequeaths his 
 folly. The generous persistency of a Pitt, the generous recan- 
 tation of a Peel, prevail but tardily when the nation doats upon an^ 
 evil thing, and when it may be said of her teachers, *'7iow obti- 
 nuerunt visionem a Domino.'' It is always thus. The indi- 
 vidual sees his way : the nation feels the path w ith her hand, 
 and gropes painfully from premiss to conclusion. It needs but 
 a few hours to suspend a Constitution : to extend one to a people 
 
45 
 
 bewildered with a half Constitution needs half a century. Yet 
 there remains a compensation. The individual advances fast, 
 yet may fall into many errors : the logic ol' a community is slow 
 but sure ; and at last, Truth, a stern divinity, works itself out 
 — through timely action, or through cleansing suffering — into 
 peace. 
 
 VIII. 
 
 THE CONSTITUTION— CITIZENSHIP. 
 
 We have seen how the Irish people are affected, as regards 
 their position as citizens, by the alienation of their Church pro- 
 perty. Let us now consider how the position of the clergy 
 stands affected by it. 
 
 This question is logically distinct from the preceding one ; 
 but it has a close practical connection with it. A common prin- 
 ciple lies at the root of both. In the formation of Christendom, 
 as has already been remarked, a certain reserve, independent of 
 the land in the charge of individual proprietorship, was set apart 
 for the nation itself Its primary purpose was to provide reli- 
 gious ministrations for her sons. How the people were benefited 
 by it we have seen. Its effects, as regards the clergy, were not 
 less excellent. It rendered them at once independent, and 
 honorably dependent. They were independent alike of the 
 caprice of individuals and of governments ; but they were iden- 
 tified with the sympathies and the interests of the people, and 
 no less with the well-being of the state. Without the pride or 
 the cares of landed property, they partook of its dignity and its 
 permanence. They shared its security, but they did not escape 
 its fluctuations. They were enriched by local affections and 
 local duties, but not imprisoned wdthin a merely local limit. 
 The sacred bond between them and the Church remained their 
 chief tie ; but the natural bond between them and their native 
 soil was preserved inviolate. They were respected as ecclesiastical 
 rulers on no more stringent condition than that they acknow- 
 ledged their position as citizens and subjects; and prelacies 
 which the peasant's son might share with the king's son, were 
 filled by men at once the priests of the Christian faith and the 
 spiritual representatives of their country. 
 
 Let us apply this to Ireland. The Church property is 
 alienated from the people, and the people is discontented. It is 
 alienated from the clergy, and they do not think that all is right. 
 
46 
 
 Soul and body, Ireland turns from England, and the schism 
 but grows wider with time. Thus it happens when a free 
 country plagiarises from despotic, or Avalks in the traditions of 
 its own despotic days. Let us learn a lesson from our neigh- 
 bours whose experience is more varied than ours. 
 
 It is the historian Clarendon who affirmed that of all men 
 who can read and write, churchmen make the most mischievous 
 blunders in politics. He means, probably, that they do not 
 enjoy the "phlegmatic intelligence." and that they are more 
 conversant with abstract principles than skilful in the applica- 
 tion of them to actual circumstances ; — in short, that politics 
 are not the region in which they find themselves at home. 
 But might they not retort the statesman's compliment and 
 remark that there is a sphere in which he finds himself so little 
 at home that he cannot be convinced of its existence, but mis- 
 takes it for a mere department of state ? Certainly he makes 
 blunders in it, if it be a blunder to effect with labour and 
 danger the opposite of what he intends. Thus, while statesmen 
 have denounced what is, with little historical exactness, called 
 " Ultraraontanism," they have often created it. 
 
 During the last century, and part oi the seventeenth, despotic 
 sovereigns on the continent subjected Ecclesiastical to Royal 
 power, as they endeavoured to subject everything else. They 
 had many, even among the ablest churchmen, to abet the 
 attempt ; for absolutism was the low enthusiasm of a time that 
 had too little insight to foresee consequences, great as was its 
 learning, and too little virtue to love liberty. They spoke the 
 church fair, probably meant her well, secured her in boundless 
 wealth, and persecuted unlicensed forms of belief, while they 
 enslaved the licensed. The strange pretext of those who strove 
 to establish an oriental despotism in the west — a sort of 
 Christian Caliphate — was that they thus vindicated the " National 
 Liberties;" but by the "Nation" each Sovereign meant the 
 State, and by the State he meant himself —L' Etat c^est moiP' 
 By degrees the effects of this paradoxical liberty declared them- 
 selves. Ecclesiastics made the discovery that when Church and 
 State sit at the same hearth the more robust power gets his legs 
 at both sides of it. They returned to the belief that the free- 
 dom of a Church depends upon a nationality wholly different 
 from that one of which the sole exponent is the State Trium- 
 phant, and also upon a living union with the body of Christian 
 society as diffused among the nations — a thing too large to be 
 swallowed by any of them. France, a logical country, ran 
 rapidly round the circle. The spontaneous action of her Church 
 was impeded by Governmental control ; while its great appoint- 
 
47 
 
 merits were jobbed by the Court : its learning, its genius, its 
 morals, its influence, all successively suffered; and a clergy 
 which, in times not long past, had battled with sectarian 
 intellect and the vices of kings, was unable to cope with the 
 unbelief or the licentiousness of the next age. Then came the 
 retribution. Louis XIV. had dealt with the ancient Church of 
 France, one of those great estates of the realm the independence 
 of which was necessary to sustain the equipoise of her liberty, 
 as he had dealt with another great estate, that of the nobility. 
 He had thought it a triumph to seduce alike prelates and nobles 
 from their homes and strongholds and make them courtiers at 
 Versailles. His successors discovered that he had thus pulled 
 down the buttresses of the monarchy to supply materials with 
 which to add to the height of its pinnacles. Between that 
 monarchy and the masses no barriers remained, and when the 
 democratic deluge burst up, all that was historical in France 
 gave way before it. Thus, then, upon both Church and State 
 there fell a great retribution. The Gallican Church lost its spiritual 
 strength in losing its freedom ; and the latter loss was in part 
 deserved, for she had compromised the freedom of the nation by 
 throwing herself, with an immoral trust, into the arms of a 
 despotic State. And to the State its own triumph was its ruin. 
 A national church in abject vassalage to the State, not in 
 honorable union with it, will ever increase the despotic power 
 of that State so long as it remains strong, and when it becomes 
 weak, will lack the means of strengthening it. 
 
 Then came to the French Church a trial essentially the same, 
 but in a converse form. Revolutionary statesmen had succeeded 
 to despotic kings, and confiscated her property. But in doing so 
 they had forced her upon an unlimited freedom. They had re- 
 stored the hostages which a church, inordinately wealthy and 
 exclusively established, had given to fortune. They had raised 
 a spirit they could not control. Her temporalities gone, to chain 
 up her action was like dealing with the imponderable agents of 
 the material world. The chains themselves became conductors 
 through which rushed a power at once the source of life, and 
 yet capable of dealing death. Thus, as M. Guizot has confessed 
 ^ — the most memorable of modern confessions — the French 
 clergy were made ultramontane by statesmen passionate for 
 Gallicanism. The same double process took place in other 
 countries, and in Austria the reaction is complete, the Josephine 
 laws having ended in the recent Concordat. In Belgium, 
 before the revolution of 1830, the incurable hostility of the 
 Dutch Government had produced a clergy as hostile, and 
 morally more powerful. In some parts of Europe the second 
 
48 
 
 stage of the process is going on before our eyes. In them, 
 statesmen have borrowed M. de Montalembert's noble expres- 
 sion, " a free Church in a free State." In their mouths, this means 
 to-day that the State is free to deal at discretion with the Church, 
 its functionaries, its laws, its property, and its clerical education ; 
 and that the Church is free to say its prayers and forgive its 
 enemies. The meaning to-morrow will be this ; that the Church 
 is free to wield, at its discretion, that mighty religious power 
 without which states perish, but which, when long dammed 
 up, sometimes flows over the bound of its proper domain ; and 
 that statesmen are free to rail at what they have themselves 
 called into existence. 
 
 Is there no parallel in Ireland to all this statesmanship at 
 cross purposes with itself? I express no opinion as to whether 
 ultramontanism be an evil or a good. That depends partly on 
 the alternative offered. It is certain, in either case, that states- 
 men denounce it and produce it. It will not be hindered by 
 such measures as the Ecclesiastical Titles Act, the effects of 
 which have been two, to deepen a dislike to law, already too 
 profound in Ireland, and to widen that gulf between Church and 
 State which, for half a century, statesmen had laboured to bridge 
 over. As little could it be found in pensions for the clergy, a 
 measure which would not in most cases offer even a pecuniary 
 attraction, while it would draw down imputations that could 
 only be averted by hostility to the State on the part of their 
 reluctant recipients. In France they have not always averted 
 that hostility, though in France the State has been an object, 
 not of traditional suspicion, but of vain-glorious worship. The 
 remedy is to be found alone in those great constitutional prin- 
 ciples which affirm the Nation without, inferentially at least, 
 denying the Church. The State, we must remember, is not the 
 Nation, and represents it only in its civil relations. A Nation, 
 when fully developed, exists in two relations which are mutually 
 supplemental, but which can only be kept in harmony while they 
 are also kept distinct, viz., the civil and the ecclesiastical: — 
 in the former alone is the State its representative, while 
 the Church is such in the latter. Church property came 
 originally, in most lands, from the heart of the nation while 
 that nation was yet but inchoate, with many of its relations 
 unfixed. It preceded the State, as the State now exists with 
 its own distinct organization, and did not owe to that State its 
 ORIGIN, though it received from it the sanction and protection of 
 civil law. Church property was a Nation's free-will offering to 
 God : — its end being the spiritual culture of the people, and the 
 independence of the Clergy. Pensions come directly and 
 
49 
 
 immediately from the State, and compromise that independence. 
 Between the local Church and the nation there may be a lawful 
 marriage : between the Church and the civil power, an equivocal, 
 has too often proved an illicit tie. 
 
 In the Roman Catholic, as well as among Protestant com- 
 munities, national churches, truly such, may exist, and have 
 existed in the best times, although they need not exist. 
 They can never of course exist in separation from the uni- 
 versal fold; but they may exist as distinct portions of it; 
 and they may possess not only special attributes, political and 
 social, but a character and genius expressive of local circum- 
 stance, and adapted to it. In every such church there subsists 
 an equilibrium between two forces, like the centripetal and cen- 
 trifugal forces we read of in astronomy, one of which binds it to 
 the unity of the universal church in all that belongs to tilings 
 ecclesiastical, while the other makes it gravitate towards the 
 nation, in those matters in which the nations are graced with 
 diversity and variety. Annul the lesser, that is the national 
 attraction, and there remains but the central one. Abolish the 
 nearer ties, and the local church will throw itself perforce too 
 exclusively — too faithfiilly she cannot — on those which are more 
 remote — at least in the statesman's apprehension. They are more 
 remote, we must remember, in the social, not in the spiritual 
 sense : — to the true priest they are ever primary. The State can 
 never be the counterweight to the centre of ecclesiastical unity ; 
 for that centre, small as it may seem, represents to the local church 
 the total attraction of the universal body, in which lies its safety 
 as well as its pride. That centre is not, as some have repre- 
 sented it, the mere object of an obsequious and superstitious 
 devotion, nor the battle-flag of a blind partizanship ; — in that case 
 it must have perished long since : it is that point in which all 
 the veins of power meet, and through which, as well as fi:om 
 which, rush forth, from all parts of the church, like the magnetic 
 currents that circle the globe, those vital influences that sustain 
 the part afflicted, or cherish the member benumbed. Such it is, 
 at least, in the belief of every true Roman Catholic priest. The 
 true statesman cannot but see that the counterweight to such a 
 centre — so far as such counterweight is desirable or possible — 
 is to be found, not in the State, but in that home of great thoughts, 
 that mansion of wide affections, and that fortress of immortal 
 traditions — the nation itself. This is the truth which modern 
 statesmen have missed. They have ignored those innumerable 
 national and home influences which appeal to the Clergy more 
 through their sympathies than their interests, and are designed, 
 in the blended orders of nature and grace, not to sap the church' 
 
 £ 
 
50 
 
 man's ecclesiastical allegiance, or wed his heart to dust, but to 
 prevent narrowness, and hinder self-love from engendering pro- 
 fessional pride. In place of these influences they htive offered a 
 coarse and false substitute, and have deservedly failed. We 
 know the line Bossuet took. If it is pre-eminently the Bossuets 
 of our day that take the opposite line, statesmen have been the 
 cause of this. They have left no choice. 
 
 In Ireland no Church Settlement can be made that is free 
 from anomalies : but the present Settlement is one huge anomaly. 
 Three centuries ago a secular ban was laid on that nation, and 
 it was driven, under the excommunication of the State, far forth 
 from the paternal mansion into the wilderness. It demands re- 
 admittance : it is answered by equivocations. The denial proceeds 
 partly from the desire quieta non movere : but the quieta have 
 become inquieta. It proceeds chiefly from jealousy; and this 
 jealousy is, in the main, an anachronism. The diffusion of edu- 
 cation, industrialism, science, the existence of a world-wide 
 civilization, born of Christianity . though often forgetful of and 
 hostile to its mother — some of the virtues, all the vices of the 
 modern world, forbid the restoration of that preponderating 
 political influence which fell to the Clergy by necessity, perhaps 
 more than by their desire, when they were the sole depositories 
 of knowledge. The genuine interests of Church and State are 
 one. Let their spheres be kept as distinct as may be, if there 
 is to be peace between them ; and let each respect the rights of 
 the other, if it would have its own respected. Until in both 
 those spheres the rights of Ireland are recognised, like those of 
 England and Scotland, her place in the empire will be an uneasy 
 one. She will be to it but a necessary evil ; and it to her. 
 
 IX. 
 
 THE CONSTITUTION— THE EIGHTS OF SUBJECTS. 
 
 It is a deplorable thing to reflect how much Ireland has 
 occupied of Legislative attention and good will, and then to see 
 the result. Let us not go back to past ages : — in recent times 
 statesmen have planned, though with much feebleness, little but 
 what was good ; but in both they have reached the same result, 
 and the Pacata Hibernia of one generation has always turned 
 into the Hibernia Pacanda of the next. 
 
 We must see things from a height — a few yards' ascent, and 
 we perceive more of the lie of the land than miles of level 
 
51 
 
 travelling would have given us. We have laboured ineffectually 
 because we have been but treating symptoms ; and we have 
 contented ourselves with treating symptoms because we feared 
 to look the disease itself in the face. Men talk of the poet's 
 "creative eye ;" but the timid statesman — eventually, the rash 
 statesman — has a faculty more wonderful still — the faculty that 
 sees not what is plain. We have had our misgivings as well as 
 our aspirations ; — but repentance is costly. We have acted like 
 the man who corrects his little failings, but does not look into 
 his conscience, or deal with " the skeleton in the closet." For 
 several centuries Ireland had no laws. That evil is long past, 
 and we have done with it. But nearly at the time that law 
 came to her, Penal Laws came; and within the ecclesiastical, 
 though not the civil sphere, they remain — chiefly in a privative 
 ibrm. The evil is old, and its cure inconvenient. Therefore 
 we first denied it, then ignored it, and lastly equivocated with 
 it. We have seen how the ascendency-tradition affects the 
 Irish as citizens : let us see how it affects them as subjects. 
 
 We have lights enough. On the principle at issue our most 
 accredited authorities are agreed. It is thus that Bishop 
 Warburton explains the rationale of a Church Establishment, 
 as contemplated from the political and ethical point of view : — 
 " The alliance between the Chiu-ch and the State is not 
 irrevocable. It subsists just so long as the Church thereby 
 established maintains its superiority of extent, which when it 
 loses to any considerable degree, the alliance becomes void. For 
 the united Church being then no longer able to perform its part 
 of the convention, which is formed on reciprocal conditions, the 
 State becomes disengaged." To the same effect speaks Paley : — - 
 " If the Dissenters from the Establishment become a majority of 
 the people, the Establishment itself ought to be altered or 
 modified." I do not wish to strain these statements ; they may 
 be too large, or they may not make due allowance for dissent 
 that is transient, or dissent which disapproves of all endowments, 
 and could, therefore, accept of none. But as regards Ireland 
 they are conclusive. They would be such even if the Irish, 
 an ancient Catholic people, were but Dissenters. As such they 
 figure in a certain legend of the Establishment, which has not 
 however been defined as de fide^ and which does not meet 
 credence from those who remember a certain fable, older still, 
 about a wolf and a lamb that disputed as to which had troubled 
 the stream. This antiquarian objection, abundantly replied to 
 by such writers as Dr. Moran,* will be noticed hereafter. 
 
 * Essays on the Origin, Doctrines, and Discipline of the Early Irish Church. 
 By the Rev. Dr. Moran. (Duffy, Dublin.) 
 

 52 
 
 Here it will suffice to remark that even if it could be shewn that 
 St. Patrick was the author of the Thirty- nine Articles, it is certain, 
 notwithstanding, that the Irish people at the Reformation con- 
 . tin ued to maintain the faith they had held for centuries, and that the 
 body which changed, whether for better or worse, was the same 
 which has retained the Ascendency ever since. It professed 
 nothing less than to have re-discovered a pure faith, lost beneath 
 the corruptions and idolatry of " nine hundred years and more." 
 We need not discuss this exalted claim, which is a matter of 
 theology. It is matter of history that what can only be called 
 a Dissenting Establishment came into sudden existence, and 
 that it dissented, with no inconsiderable energy, both from the 
 religion Avhich had preceded the great discovery, and from the 
 nation which preferred the old religion to the new. Ihis would 
 be true no less if the Roman Catholic Bishops had conformed — 
 unless indeed the laity and the parochial clergy have no part in 
 Christ's Church. There is a legend to this effect also, of which 
 no more need here be said than that Mr. Froude, Dr. Moran, and 
 Dr. Maziere Brady have dealt with it efficaciously.* 
 
 A Church Establislnnent is too great a tiling to have no 
 meaning. Statesmen at least must assert its true political sanc- 
 tion, as a nation's spiritual heritage, or else reject it as one of 
 the most inconvenient of monopolies, if not impious of frauds. 
 If they take the former course they must say of Ireland, what 
 Dr. Johnson said of her, restricting his assertion to her ecclesi- 
 astical condition — " The Irish are in a most unnatural state, for 
 we see there the minority prevailing over the majority." They 
 must say with Bacon, — " That men shall live of the flock that 
 they do not feed, or of the altar at which they do not serve, is a 
 thing than hardly receive just defence." 
 
 Why then did not Bacon disapprove of the Irish Church 
 Settlement? For the same reason that he approved of the 
 plantation of Ulster. It was part of a system which has been 
 discarded as a failure, but wliich was once thought likely to 
 succeed. Lord Melbourne exposed the fallacy which casts on 
 the statesmen of past times the responsibility of the Irish settle- 
 ment, as it now stands. He said : — 
 
 " Why, my Lords, it is probable that if those we condemn 
 were here to defend themselves, they would be able to show in 
 one sentence, perhaps in one word, that we know nothing about 
 the matter. * * * They would say, ' a Roman Catholic 
 population and a Protestant Establishment is a state of things 
 which we never contemplated, or intended. Our policy might 
 be violent, our measures might be cruel, our objects might be 
 
 * See Dr. Moran's Archbishops of Dtiblin, and Dr. M. Brady's unanswerable 
 pamphlet, The alleged Conversion of the Irish Bisfiops. (Longmans.) 
 
53 
 
 impracticable : but still we had definite and reasonable objects in 
 view. We intended the eradication of the Roman Catholic, and 
 the substitution of the Protestant Faith. Such was our end, 
 and such our means, from the reign of Henry VIll. down to the 
 enactment of the Penal Code. If you abandon our policy, as 
 you have done, you must abandon it entirely, and you must 
 adopt, not only a different, but precisely the opposite course.'* 
 The late Archbishop Whately was fond of pointing out that 
 the most extravagant anomalies are those produced by changes 
 unmeaning merely because unaccompanied by correlative 
 changes. He illustrated his thesis by the story of the German 
 Baron, who, after traversing a country covered with snow, tied 
 his horse to what he took for a stake, but waking the next mor- 
 ning, aiter a sudden thaw, looked up and saw him dangling 
 saddle and bridle, to a church spire — no bad image of an ascen- 
 dency that survives its true support. 
 
 It is a question of the Constitution, and of tlie rights it 
 bestows upon Subjects. The Irish are the Queen's Subjects, 
 and have bled for their Sovereigns by sea and land. Sir John 
 Hippesley asserted that, according to returns inspected by him 
 in 1810, they then constituted one half of the army and navy. 
 If they constituted a third part, it is possible that they saved the 
 Empire in one of its most critical struggles. Whether that 
 strong arm will be as available again, when needed again, let 
 those say who rejoice in the " Irish Exodus." I do not discuss 
 that matter. But the Irish are the Queen's Subjects, and with 
 the duties they have the rights of subjects. Yet their patrimony 
 — the patrimony of the poor — is taken from them: — and by 
 whom ? hj the same power which demands their allegiance ! 
 Can a people look up to the State as a parent while she spurns 
 them as children ? Is not loyalty a reciprocal duty ? Does not 
 the nation that pays it, claim it? The law disowns a nudum 
 pactum : — what then shall we say of a pact that exacts obedience, 
 and withdraws protection as regards that which is man's primary 
 need? A direct and formal '* Social Contract" is a dream of the 
 theorists ; but an indirect and virtual contract is that which lays 
 the foundations of true society, and constitutes the difference 
 between a Christian monarchy and an Oriental despotism. 
 Certainly power comes from above, not from below : but though 
 it is not derived primarily from the people, yet it exists for the 
 people. Under a free Constitution the power that is from God 
 comes to rulers mediately and through the people. What then if 
 it not only fails to sustain in elevation their most sacred fran - 
 chise, but itself dashes it down, and tramples it under foot ? 
 
 The question is of the Constitution, and it is vital. There are 
 
54 
 
 many political privileges whicli to the poor are not necessaries 
 but luxuries. What they need is — not their own way — but a just 
 and kindly rule which respects them, and obedience to which 
 is therefore not only consistent with self-respect, but an act and 
 a habit of self-respect. Even the least exacting rule or law is not 
 obeyed with genuine loyalty so long as all authority is considered 
 as at best but a necessary evil, and so long as entire individual 
 independence is regarded as essential to entire personal dignity. 
 It begins only when a nation regards a just authority as the 
 exponent of its deepest needs and the sanction of its noblest 
 hopes. What then if it finds in law the enemy of both ? That 
 which a nation cannot dispense with is religion and its daily 
 bread. What it cannot honour is a Government which says of 
 either of these things, " I do not see the necessity for it." 
 What it cannot forgive is prevarication as to those primary 
 rights, which to deny is to reduce the primary duties to nulHties. 
 " But the grievance," some will say, " is imaginative, not prac- 
 tical ! " A sophism ! It is spiritual, not material, or rather spiritual 
 as well as material. Eestore to the Irish people their inalienable 
 rights in the national Church property of Ireland, and you 
 impart to them nationality — not in that form which you account 
 subversive of the Empire, but in that which is its safety. 
 
 The poor do not always know where the remedy lies ; but 
 when they are wronged they feel it. An Irishman in illness 
 sends for his priest before his physician : — the laws, therefore, 
 which bring religious consolations to the doors of such as keep 
 carriages, and repel them from those that walk, are laws wliich 
 forbid his respect for law. He accounts them lawless laws 
 upon principles identical with those of one who was the strongest 
 assertor of law, but who reverenced it too deeply not to recog- 
 nise its relations with the reason and conscience of a people. 
 Mr. Burke says: — " As a law directed against the mass of a 
 nation has not the nature of a reasonable institution, so neither 
 has it the authority : for in all forms of Government, the people 
 are the true legislators, and whether the immediate and instru- 
 mental cause of the law be a single person, or many, the remote 
 and efficient cause is the consent of the people, either actual or 
 impUed ; and such consent is absolutely essential to its validity." 
 That consent has in this matter never been given. Against the 
 Ascendency of a sect they have levelled a people's undying 
 protest. The Church Establishment that censures a people has 
 from the first day to this hour lain under the censure of that 
 people ; and that censure is great and sore. Arc the people, 
 therefore, incapable of a reverence for law ? Let us turn again 
 from the sophists and the partizans to the great Philosopher of 
 
55 
 
 Order. He says — " All human laws are, properly speaking, 
 only declaratory : they may alter the mode and the application, 
 but have no power over the substance of original justice." That 
 which the Ascendant Establishment of Ireland declares is not 
 the truth but a falsehood. It declares that Ireland is a Protes- 
 tant country. Ireland is a Catholic country, just as England is 
 a Protestant one, and resents an illusory confession of faith 
 made in her name. Every moral, every religious, every natural, 
 every human instinct, interest, and principle is outraged by this 
 arbitrary substitution of convention for the truth. 
 
 But, it will be said by some, the Irish are a religious, nay, a 
 Catholic people, and, therefore, should reverence law. Obedience 
 is one thing, reverence is another. The laws which still insult 
 once enslaved rehgion ; and then, as now, they confidently 
 asserted their claim to an undivided reverence, and that expressly 
 on religious grounds. Alas I not even the omnipotence of Par- 
 liament can sustain an ethical creed which is rendered incredible 
 by a contradiction in terms. Once more, what says Mr. Burke ? 
 " Religion, to have ant/ force on men's understandings, indeed, 
 to exist at all, must be supposed paramount to laws, and inde- 
 pendent for its substance of any human institution, else it 
 would be the absurdest thing in the world — an acknowledged 
 cheaty 
 
 There is one thing alone that can deepen this wrong : — it is 
 the plea that sustains it. That plea affirms a principle which, if 
 carried into effect, would deny to the Irish any constitutional 
 position whatever as subjects: and whether that principle be 
 distinctly enunciated or not, its full import is felt and known 
 by both sides alike. What it says is this : — " That you should 
 have no share in your national Church property is of course an 
 anomaly: — were a Protestant country thus treated the wrong 
 would be intolerable. But in your case there is a circumstance 
 that justifies the anomaly by necessitating it. You can have no 
 share in the national Church property except through your 
 clergy. They must not have it because they own a foreign alle- 
 giance." Do those who prate thus about a " Foreign alle- 
 giance" know that they brand a whole nation with high treason, 
 and not merely with an act, but a permanent and necessary state 
 of high treason ? The Roman Catholic clergy and laity, alike, 
 affirm the Pope's supremacy, but affirm also that it exists in the 
 spiritual sphere alone, not the temporal. Is the distinction 
 valid? If it be, then " why these bonds?" If it be not, then 
 weigh the consequence ! In that case, to affirm that the Pope 
 can lawfully make bishops is equivalent with affirming that he 
 can lawfully make sheriffs; and every Roman Catholic is a 
 
56 
 
 traitor ! What men are assumed to be there is danger of their 
 becoming. 
 
 On the question whether spiritual jurisdiction be a national 
 or an extra-national attribute, the East though it quarrels with 
 the Pope, is yet opposed to the national claim from which it 
 suffers so deeply, as a violation of sacred precedent. The border 
 warfare on the confines of the Ecclesiastical and the Civil domains is 
 doubtless an occasional inconvenience, but it is one which the 
 weakest nations have known how to deal with, and is small com- 
 pared with that of the abject subservience of either power to 
 the other in what properly belongs to itself. As to the Divine 
 Head of the Church all are agreed. Whether, under Him, the 
 authentic ecclesiastical organization be a spiritual monarchy, or be 
 a republic of bishops, practically subject in each nation to the civil 
 power, which, within its own limit, can acknowledge no rival, — 
 this is a grave theological question in the West, and free men 
 have a right to differ respecting it. National independence is a 
 noble thing ; but it does not require that any Christian should 
 denounce the mass of Christendom, including his own ancestors 
 for a thousand years, or canonise the narrow political dogmatism 
 that would have sent a Bossuet to the Bastile and kept a Zimenes 
 at the plough. Men who have differed on this question have 
 alike led forth their country's hosts against hostile armadas. It 
 is a matter on which, if the theologians did not, the philosophers 
 would differ. "Obviously," one man asserts, " a nation must 
 have all its springs of action within itself." " Obviously," the 
 other replies, "the Church is a 'Household,' and ecclesiastical 
 ties must find their type in domestic ties, which are universal, 
 not in civil ties which are confined within a national limit." 
 The statesman sees the largeness and complexity of a problem 
 that looks very plain to the very superficial, and commonly 
 claims for the State as much as he can without damaging the 
 dignity, or at least the credibility of religion, which alone keeps 
 society from putrescence. The man of the world thinks that 
 each side may indulge in an endless series of pleasant retorts — 
 regards the question as one of taste — and is reminded of the 
 dispute between the man and the fish — the man who was grateful 
 that he had not been created " a shapeless lump wallowing in 
 endlesss wash," and the fish that gave thanks because he was 
 not a wretched being " tottering, about on prongs with a spht 
 body," But nations cannot wait for their rights until disputants 
 have come to the last word. Let each abound in his own sense, 
 or nonsense ; but let him not hurl imputations that go further 
 than he intends, or that fly back upon his own head hke the 
 " boomerang" of the wild Indian. The man who likes " narrower 
 
57 
 
 perfectness" and dislikes what to him seems "a divided alle- 
 giance" is entitled to his own opinions; but it would not cost 
 him serious effort to perceive that his neighbour is both as 
 loyal as himself, and as sincere in the ancient and wide- spread 
 belief that it is only when the political and ecclesiastical spheres 
 retain their distinctness, and acknowledge a different jurisdiction, 
 that a Christian subject can possibly realize, as well as profess, 
 a "perfect loyalty in each sphere, and also vindicate a reasonable 
 liberty in each. He is a patriot, and rejects a foreign allegiance : 
 he is quite right; but let him be just to his neighbour, remem- 
 bering that he too affirms this principle, and that their difference is 
 only as to its application. That neighbour believes, on the one 
 hand, that allegiance to a State not his own, would in civil things 
 be a foreign allegiance, and believes also that, in ecclesiastical 
 things the allegiance of the Church to the civil powder is a foreign 
 allegiance. In the former case he believes that it is the whole 
 nation, acting through its Sovereign Representative, that claims 
 his obedience, and that thus alone each part of the nation has 
 an inviolable share in civil liberty and law. In the latter case he 
 believes that it is the whole Church — the Orhis Terrarum — 
 acting through its Sovereign Eepresentative, that , claims his 
 obedience, and that thus alone each part of the Church is secured 
 in that liberty and law which belongs to the whole body. Can- 
 not the religious Nationalist hold his own in this matter without 
 imputing treason to those who desire nothing, but to be faithful 
 subjects both to Cassar and to God ? Laws have a meaning, 
 though we may shirk it ; and logic pierces to the inmost heart of 
 a people even though the so-called practical men may have 
 carried scepticism to the length of seeing no connection between 
 premiss and conclusion, when the latter rebukes them. To 
 legislate virtually on the hypothesis that all men must be either 
 fools, or at heart rebels, unless they accept a political dogma 
 never heard of in many free countries, and incompatible with 
 the rest of their faith, is to enact laws which, if enforced, must 
 keep open a permanent political schism, and if not enforced, 
 must render law at once hated because oppressive, and despised 
 because impotent. 
 
 Those who denounce disloyalty should ask themselves whether 
 the time has not come when every statesman should be deemed 
 disloyal who omits any effort to place the Irish people under 
 those circumstances which, in England, produce loyalty. It is not 
 necessary to enlarge on this subject, but a word may be said to 
 dispel certain illusions. Some people observe, " Fenianism looked 
 serious last May, but it has blown over." It has blown over 
 like a wind that returns. There are two Irelands, one in 
 
58 
 
 Europe and one in America, and these two are in sympathy. 
 Another race exists, also, in both continents, but exists in 
 antagonism. Every opportune season will waft back Fenianism ; 
 and if a lull there be, it should be used to render that Ireland 
 with which alone we can deal as little susceptive as possible of 
 its influence. Others observe : " But the Fenians have no 
 quarrel with the Church Establishment." Simpletons ! of 
 course they have not ; just as, according to Burke, the most 
 advanced Jacobins of the French Revolution did not dislike the 
 corruptions of the old monarchy, viz., because it was the 
 monarchy itself, not the corruptions connected with it, which 
 they intended to remove. " But the Fenians are comparatively 
 few ! " Are not a few sparks near a magazine dangerous ? 
 Above all, supposing them to be few, what is the condition of 
 the many? That is the real point at issue. It is the negative 
 danger, not the positive, that a true statesman would fear ; and 
 of this we hear nothing. Let us assume that the positively dis- 
 loyal were put down by the suspension of the Habeas Corpus 
 Act (though it hardly answers to be always putting down re- 
 bellions) ; but how are we to deal with those who, if they have 
 no definitely disloyal aims, have yet no loyal principles of a 
 rehable sort, and whose loyal instincts (for of these there is no 
 lack) being allowed no safe investment may, at any moment, 
 prove snares to practical loyalty ? 
 
 " But," it is sometimes said, " the grave and influential should 
 banish whatever disloyalty exists among the masses." How is 
 this to be effected ? Loyal they may themselves be, but con- 
 tented in that case they cannot be ; for their loyalty must itself 
 excite in them a profound discontent at a state of tilings both 
 unjust in itself, and the cause of disloyalty in multitudes. They 
 cannot play the hypocrite, and if they did, they would deceive 
 none. Secret societies have ever been prohibited, and their 
 members are denied the Sacraments ; but that does not exorcise 
 the danger. What more remains to be done ? To argue with 
 the malcontent is to walk upon glowing embers. That a wrong 
 exists an honest man could not deny, especially as most Enghsh 
 liberal statesmen have affirmed it. He might say that it is a 
 duty to bear wrong patiently — but that sounds rather flat. He 
 might prove that if any sudden calamity overtook England, it 
 would fall upon Ireland with an equal weight — doubtless it 
 would ; but some people have a taste for revenge. He might 
 show that the parallel between Ireland and certain continental 
 countries is illusory or imperfect — but the consequence does not 
 depend on that which is, but that which is believed to be. On 
 what principle is the grave man to argue with the angry man ? 
 
59 
 
 Is he to admit that abstract right to resistance on which most 
 modern statesmen have insisted, but to deny the existence in 
 Ireland of a case urgent enough to justify resistance ? Or is he 
 to prove that success is improbable ? He may be quite right in 
 such statements, but he will be told that these are matters of /ac^, 
 and that though he may speak with authority upon a point of 
 religion or morals, yet on a matter of fact others are as good 
 judges as he. Is he to entrench himself within the principle of 
 passive obedience and the divine right of kings ? It is a little 
 late in the day for this course — which, besides, would be treason 
 against the Revolution of 1688. In short, the grave man has to 
 keep silence ; and the statesman would do better to discharge his 
 own imperative duties, and see that the commonwealth receives 
 no harm, than expect that others should work miracles to prevent 
 misrule from reaping misadventure. The discontent of the 
 thoughtful few, no matter how just or how guarded, is the dis- 
 affection of the many. It is a duty to denounce disloyalty, but 
 the negative preaching avails nothing.- What avails is, to preach 
 loyalty, and to preach it with that sympathetic and moral might 
 which alone makes it the habit of a nation's soul. But the true 
 preachers of a nation are the circumstances among which it 
 lives. 
 
 1 end as I began. It is a question of the Constitution. Let 
 those who regard that constitution as " the citizenship of no 
 mean city" desist from their dishonest surprise because the Irish 
 people resents exclusion from an essential part of it. Let them 
 at least make their election, and not abuse men with the same 
 breath for remaining bad subjects, and for aspiring after the 
 conditions under which Englishmen and Scotchmen prove good 
 subjects. Nothing can be done by scolding. There is an old 
 adage, " you can lead an Irishman, but you cannot drive him." 
 Nothing can be done by rhetoric : the Irishman is a rhetorician 
 himself, and rhetoric takes no hold of him. Nothing can be 
 done by sophisms. There are a thousand pretty ways of colour- 
 ing the Ascendency of a minority : they feast in their rich suc- 
 cession the eye that appreciates art : by the Irish those delicate 
 tints are simply unseen. An evanishing oppression may "die 
 like the dolphin;" but the Irish are in this matter colour-bhnd. 
 They have noted Ascendency steadily, but in its form alone ; and 
 the dread shape is known of old. It rose above the horizon of 
 modern history, a cloud "like a man's hand;" and as it advanced 
 there were blood-drops on the flints below. In later times it has 
 grotesquely combined the grand with the familiar, the remote 
 with the near, now lifting a finger of scorn amid stormy heavens, 
 now disporting itself about the poor man's pocket. We have to 
 
60 
 
 cut ourselves adrift from this dolorous past, not to walk delicately, 
 and deprecate allusion to that which we perpetuate. We have to 
 lift the Irish peasant out of the mire of political pretences, and 
 rhetorical ethics, and to plant his feet upon the rock. We have 
 to place him in the " large room" of the Constitution. 
 
 X. 
 
 THE CONSTITUTIONAL QUESTION.— SUMMARY. 
 
 Let us sum up what we seen as to the connection between 
 the Church question, and the constitutional position of Ireland. 
 There are subjects which become difficult from their oiFensive 
 simplicity. Given this case: — certain persons 300 years ago 
 deprived a nation of its religious endowments for ends which 
 have been frustrated. What is to be done? The answer 
 "restore those endowments to their just purposes," would be 
 simple. Consequently the very clever people devise reasons for 
 not doing so ; and of these reasons there are fifty. 
 
 Or again, the case may be put thus : — a whole people, in the 
 very centre of a mighty empire, is malcontent. In civil matters 
 we treat it much like England and Scotland : in religious, we 
 treat it in an opposite manner. How shall we deal with this 
 malcontent people ? It would be simple to answer, ' ' make them 
 contented by giving them their rights." Consequently the very 
 clever people devise reasons for not doing so; and of these 
 reasons there are a hundred. 
 
 The question is not one of -polemics. The State has not to 
 pronounce between contending tenets on its own authority. It 
 has no faculty for such decisions. A State knows as much of 
 theology as the nation knows — and no more. It has a conscience, 
 and its duty is to confess its knowledge — and its ignorance. 
 Among us it has to confess that the three kingdoms have lost 
 religious unity, but continue to honour Christianity as it exists 
 in its more permanent forms. Doubtless it would be better if it 
 could truly confess that Faith remained one : but as matters stand, 
 it is more conscientious to confess the fact than the fiction. 
 
 The question is not one of finance. It is not necessary that 
 the clergy should be rich. This is what is needful : — that they 
 should be neither proscribed by the State, nor its slaves; — that 
 
61 
 
 they should be at once independent ministers of the gospel, and 
 equal citizens in a free country. 
 
 The question is not one of strategy. A State that seeks to 
 corrupt or weaken the Church is as short-sighted as the Clergy 
 that would imdermine the civil power. These are tortuosities 
 that end in shame. The greatest return which a beneficent 
 State can receive from a Church is the only one worth its 
 acceptance, viz., the faithful and efficacious discharge of those 
 spiritual functions on which social order depends. A servile 
 clergy ends by being the ruin of the State which has corrupted it. 
 
 The Irish Church question is a moral and constitutional one. 
 Ought the Irish, or ought they not, to revere the constitution ? 
 If they ought not, then of course they should wish, at any cost, 
 for a new order of things — one in which it would be possible to 
 respond to honorable protection by hearty allegiance. If they 
 ought, then they must be aggrieved at not having the benefits 
 of that constitution. In England and Scotland a ' ' constitution 
 in Church and State" means that the people obey the State and 
 possess the Church they believe in : — in Ireland it means that 
 they obey the State; and that the Church wliich denounces 
 them is exalted over their heads. 
 
 There is a noble task before us ; let us not look at it w^ith 
 despondency. We have run round from coercion to palliatives, 
 and from palliatives to coercion, in vain ; and it is time that 
 statesmen should deliver themselves from the self-imposed pen- 
 ance of this treadmill. That there remains one measure for Ire- 
 land not yet tried, is the one source of hope. W e have sown much : 
 it is time to reap. JMany of the measures passed have been 
 excellent ; yet some of them have aggravated the difficulty ; — 
 a signal proof that it is worse than in vain to piece the old 
 garment of monopoly with the patchwork of just legislation. 
 We have educated a generation, and anomalies which a barbaric 
 race bore as they bore frost in winter, bite them more shrewdly 
 than of old. Civil freedom has enriched many Catholics ; and 
 if they see a file of their poor fellow-countrymen kneeling in the 
 rain outside a barn-like chapel, the spectacle- has a more grim 
 look than it would have worn last century. Many have 
 travelled ; some may have admired the mightiest of Gothic 
 Cathedrals recently completed for Catholic worship by the 
 Protestant King of Prussia. In France, in Belgium, in Prussia, 
 in Austria, they find more religions than one respected and 
 endowed, and the education of each religious body conducted in 
 accordance with its conscientious desires ; but neither under the 
 more despotic Governments of the Continent, nor among the 
 Bepublics beyond the Atlantic, are they startled by an ascen- 
 
62 
 
 dency like that which fills the foreigner in Ireland with 
 amazement. Around us, as well as within our border, things 
 are not as they were. Races that for centuries had enjoyed 
 material prosperity and religious peace, have sought and won, 
 not always by the most regular means, a nationality not theirs 
 for centuries. Ireland desires a share in her national Church 
 property, because she has advanced in civilization. Modern 
 statesmen have this to boast of : — they have so far elevated the 
 condition of the Irish that less than their rights will not satisfy 
 them. Their forefathers were often put off with Penal Laws 
 relaxed " for a time not definite ;" but for the Catholics of our 
 day the " uncovenanted mercies" of the Constitution do not 
 suflfice. Their forefathers were allowed the Constitution in the 
 "non-natural sense :" they want it in the sense in which their 
 Protestant brethren possess it. 
 
 In this matter England as well as Ireland has a vital interest, 
 both ecclesiastical and civil. Let us begin with the former. 
 The specific mode of dealing with the Irish Church question here 
 recommended, is the one mode which would tend to the safety, 
 not danger of the English Church. This has already been 
 asserted on historical and theological grounds ; but from what- 
 ever point the subject is regarded, our con elusion must be the same. 
 That Religious Equality without which Ireland can never, 
 unless she suffers a total depravation of morals, lose the sense 
 of present, and the memory of past wrong, will be reached" 
 ultimately, and will, in all probability, be reached by one of two 
 ways. If it is reached by the "secularization" of Church pro- 
 perty — that is by its destruction — the victory belongs to the 
 adherents of the "voluntary system," and a precedent is at once 
 established, not only as applicable to England as to Ireland, but 
 sure to be urged as such, since in England there are many whose 
 aspirations can thus alone be satisfied. On the other hand, if it 
 is reached by a just distribution of the Church property, then we 
 adopt a policy grounded on circumstances obviously not appli- 
 cable to England. At the Reformation England became Protes- 
 tant: a Protestant, or, as it is with more discrimination called, 
 an Anglican Church, was consequently established ; from this 
 church the dissenting sects have seceded at various periods long 
 subsequent to its establishment, and so far from demanding a 
 share in its property, one main cause of their secession was, and is, 
 that they commonly disapprove of endowments. Again — the 
 Dissenters have not only a recent, but a fragmentary existence. 
 Unlike Catholic Ireland, they consist of numerous bodies at 
 variance with each other, as well as with the Established Church, 
 Once more — they are in a state of frequent change ; and to in- 
 
63 
 
 vest them with permanent Endowments would be a task as 
 difficult as that of* cutting a coat for the moon. In short, Dis- 
 senting Sects are ephemeral things, and the rights of individuals, 
 like individuals themselves, perish with time ; but Nations and 
 Churches live on. They demand their own by a moral necessity : 
 and when they get their rights, even their old foes are the better 
 for it ; for the sword of justice is so tempered from above that 
 wherever it strikes a healing virtue touches the wound. Ireland 
 remained Roman Catholic, and should it regain the church 
 property its own for centuries, no precedent would be established, 
 hostile or relevant even, to the English Church. On the con- 
 trary the latter would, in many ways, be strengthened. The 
 dignity of ecclesiastical endowments would be vindicated by 
 connecting them, in both countries alike, with that spiritual 
 utility which is their true sanction. The most formidable enemies 
 of such endowments would be changed into friends. Nor is 
 this all. In England the dissenters claim to constitute a very large 
 part of the population. Count England and Ireland as one, and 
 there exists a formidable majority against their common Establish- 
 ment ; so that, on the principles of Warburton and Paley, Angli- 
 cans have cause to fear that its position has already become 
 seriously compromised. Loosen the Irish Establishment from the 
 English Church, and you free the latter from its "body of 
 death." If it falls, with it must fall a hereditary Peerage, and 
 the present laws for the transmission of property. 
 
 Let us now see how this question directly affects both countries 
 in their civil relations. There exists a mode by which Ireland can 
 gain religious equality, not by violating, but by realizing the prin- 
 ciples of the Constitution, that is by her children ceasing to be 
 disinherited, and her clergy ceasing to be subjected to legal 
 penalties for necessary and innocent acts. When constitutional 
 rights are felt to be a reality, obedience to law is no longer a 
 servile necessity, but becomes elevated first into a moral duty, 
 and eventually into an instinct of self-respect and self-defence. 
 When constitutional rights are but nominal, they are not 
 nugatory merely ; they become a mockery, and they may change 
 into a snare. Admit Ireland on equal terms to the Constitution 
 and her lot is cast with the great constitutional parties that 
 divide the field of historical politics. Reject her and you force 
 her into the ranks of those whose face is set, not only against 
 religious endowments, but against whatever is ancient and 
 venerable in the land. This alliance cemented, in England the 
 balance of politics will be destroyed, while on Ireland, a form of 
 political thought and action will be forced from without, which 
 would not have grown up from within. History proves that 
 
64 
 
 the Irish character is not democratical. Make it such, and the 
 tendencies which, among an industrial and Teutonic race may 
 stop short at democracy, will sweep a people at once impassioned 
 and logical into Jacobinism — which includes the fiery element of 
 fanaticism, and speedily burns up into its most militant form. 
 In old times this was not among the trials of Ireland. She 
 never desired a monarchy the boast of which should be that it 
 "reigned but did not rule ;" and her misfortune has commonly 
 been, not that her government has been a strong one — it has 
 often been weak — but that it neither represented her honour nor 
 her interests. Ireland must develop her political being on a 
 type congenial to her. The two nations will otherwise be like 
 two ships in a storm, the worse for being tied together. 
 
 Parliament has now a great opportunity. It has to shew what 
 an Imperial Parliament can be. Scotland has far fewer repre- 
 sentatives than Ireland ; but she is well governed and contented 
 because what her representatives desire is recognised as their 
 country's voice, and is ratified by the Legislature. We have 
 lately heard on high authority that each of the three kingdoms 
 should be governed in a manner congruous with its special 
 character, so far as such a policy is consistent with the weal of 
 the empire at large. There is philosophy in that statement : — it 
 means that they are to be knitted together for mutual good, not 
 crushed together for mutual harm. The instincts and traditions 
 of a country should be respected, if its good-will be desired, 
 not only where they are demonstrably reasonable, but where they 
 are not unreasonable and noxious. This is representation. 
 There is a direct and there is a virtual representation. If in the 
 case of Ireland the latter be not supplied by the general voice of 
 the legislature her direct representatives must be lost in the 
 mass. There is a third mode of representation which we may 
 call the " vicious representation." It means either a local one 
 which represents but the passions and humours of a country — 
 not its mind and heart — or else a remote one which but feebly 
 and at intervals represents that country at all. The Imperial 
 Parliament has now to prove whether it can, or cannot, repre- 
 sent the mind and heart of Ireland. How is it to be accomplished 
 for the task ? By representing Justice and Truth, in which the 
 abiding interests of Ireland are included as the particular in the 
 universal, and by abhorring alike all sloth, cowardice, and craft. 
 If it says " you have rights ; but the prejudices of other parts 
 on the empire make it inconvenient to respect them," then it 
 abdicates as a representative body, so far as Ireland is concerned, 
 and sets up as a Parliamentary despotism. Such representation 
 would be tyranny in its most ruthless form — the tyranny of a 
 
65 
 
 majority. It would be foreign domination in disguise, and 
 weighted by the complicity of the vanquished. Eventually it 
 would be spurned by all men of sound morals and just minds, 
 not on the ground that a union was not desirable — far from it — 
 but on the ground that a true union did not exist, and had 
 never been honestly sought. 
 
 To consolidate an empire limitless in extent, but flawed at 
 heart, nothing more is necessary than the prudent and timely 
 exercise of Justice and of Truth ; but nothing less will suffice. 
 Fidelity to these virtues, by empiricists lightly esteemed, but on 
 the long run the rulers of the world, this — and not sectarian 
 partizanship — is the chief probation of Faith in the sphere of poli- 
 tics. To trifle with these is not venial : — it is summum nefas in 
 politics to think that a great wrong can be done, and yet but a 
 small evil be its result. Truth requires that an Exclusive Estab- 
 lishment, speaking in a nation's name, should no longer make a 
 false confession of that nation's Faith. Justice exacts that a 
 nation should no longer be amerced of its Church property 
 because it is guilty of Catholicism. We flatter ourselves that 
 we have long since put away the reproach of penal laws : but 
 penal laws may exist in a privative form ; and if they deprive a 
 people of their spiritual inheritance, the poena damni may be 
 worse than the poena sensus. A nation not conscious of guilt 
 v^ill endure penalty in neither form. It is in vain to cry " peace ! 
 peace ! where there is no peace." Statesmen who exclaim, '^ let 
 us have done with the past," are ignorant that in maintaining 
 that narrow Ascendency which is its imperious and domineer- 
 ing embodiment, they themselves make the past rule the 
 present and the future, and are themselves its serfs and its 
 slaves. They are ignorant also that the duties of nations and 
 of individuals are not in all respects the same ; and that com- 
 munities, which are Trustees for posterity, although they are 
 bound to remember wrongs no longer when once wholly past, 
 have no licence to forget them till then. Those who say — " We 
 cannot justify what exists ; but you must content yourselves 
 with inferiority, because your Protestant fellow-countrymen 
 cannot content themselves with equality," do not know the 
 effects which their words produce. Those who say — *' We 
 would give you your rights but that the prejudices of certain 
 classes in England and Scotland intimidate us," reproach the 
 Irish with supineness. The arraignment means *' where others 
 conspire in defence of wrong you fear to combine in the as- 
 sertion of right: arise in the ira leonum vincla recusantum, 
 then we will sustain your cause." Those who say " We are 
 
66 
 
 bound by engagements," plead their incapacity in vain, for the 
 work brings out the man. The non possumus of party leaders 
 is not stronger than the non volumus of a people which does not 
 choose that the moral laws that govern the world should be 
 changed, and a wrong be made eternal. Statesmen must not 
 shrink from the work before them because it is arduous. Ire- 
 land has long been ruled with a fatal facility ; for to alternate 
 half measures of reform with whole measures of coercion was 
 not difficult ; but the result has not been peace to rulers, and 
 the problem they have eluded, not solved, has ever fallen back 
 upon them with the irresistible weight of importunate weakness. 
 They have trampled out Fenian follies, and subsidised " Moral 
 Force" agitations; but that spectral problem has confronted 
 them again amid the triumphal procession, and chilled the 
 thanksgiving hymn. Once more they are summoned to the 
 tasks of might, and they must not look for rest till their work 
 is done. 
 
 Browne & Nol»n, PrlnterSi Dublin.