call us out?'* is the secret thought with all.

And at the very

Now

It is

first outbreak of a war, Ireland may burst into a flame. we ask whence and by whom is this feeling cherished? not spontaneous to the peasantry-they do not move (Mr. Wyse himself asserts it) unless they are excited-and in the kindness of their present landlords-we repeat again, the kindness of their landlords, much abused and calumniated as these are there is everything to keep them quiet. It is engendered by those who, in their education of children, make ‘Sassenach and Satan' (we quote from documents) convertible terms-who tell them (again we are using documents) that the Protestants long to murder and destroy every Catholic'-who accustom them to ' distinguish Protestants, landlords and all, by the term Bradagha word more significant' (writes a person conversant with all their notions, and a convert from Popery) than any word in our language, and denoting every sort of cunning wickedness.' Inflammatory histories, ballads, prophecies of Columbkill, everything which can keep up the exasperation of the poor peasant against England, is circulated among them. Hopes are held out, as in the tithe rebellion, of some great change soon to be wrought for their good.' And thus it is that they are held in the leashheld by a power above them, which power in Roman Catholic Ireland cannot be democratical, and cannot be other than priestly -ready at a moment's warning to spring upon their landlords as invaders, and claim to themselves the occupation of the soil.

The resumption of these confiscations enters as an essential feature into the ecclesiastical movement in Ireland. The maintenance of the old titles is proved by the Bullarium of Benedict XIV., recognised as authority in the appendix to Dr. Dens, to be a fundamental article in cases where heretical sovereigns have entered on the possession of property of the Church, disallowed by the Apostolic See.' And Ireland, as we shall see presently, has been claimed from the first as the property of the Pope as much as the patrimony of St. Peter.

It is in vain that the fact was denied in 1825 before a committee of the House of Commons, and by the declaration of the Romanist bishops in 1826. Their own authorised dogmatic theology, by which they are bound, completely repudiates the principles, which they profess as individuals. It makes the resumption of these confiscations a moral obligation, which the Pope may dispense with in the faithful, but will not in heretics. And either in assenting openly to the decrees, in which this doctrine is propounded, while they privately deny them, or in openly * Wyse's Catholic Association, vol. i. p. 413. Romanism in Ireland, vol. ii. pp. 235. 250.

denying

denying them, while they privately hold them, the men who make these declarations must do-what Romanist members of the House of Commons did, who swore that they would not disturb the Church property, and immediately afterwards joined the cry of Appropriation and the war against tithes.

Once more. Is there any other circumstance peculiar to Ireland which connects this agrarian movement against the Sassenach and the landlord with the religious-or rather, call it not religious-but with the Popish encroachments? In the nineteenth century, men who do not know what Popery is; that it never changes a principle once laid down, never abandons a claim once made--that by its title of infallibility it has cut down every bridge, by which it could retreat within the limits of peace, and justice, and truth-will smile at the revival of the following notion. But in 1810, Dr. O'Conor, the most learned of modern Roman Catholics, did not think it idle to publish four octavo* volumes full of warnings on this very subject, and against the aggressions of his own Church. It is a book now very scarce, having been carefully bought up by the parties interested in its suppression. But it is a work of the highest authority. He proved that the claim of the Pope to the temporal dominion of Ireland, as well as the spiritual, had never been abandoned; and that it swayed the movements of Popery in Ireland at the very moment when he was writing.

We are perfectly aware that Dr. Murray and the other bishops have taken oaths which to Protestant ears repudiate all such notions. But we have had enough of such oaths, and the less that is said of them the better. Even Dr. O'Conor, zealous as he is in defence of his religion, felt the same: he says: :

'It is true that the Irish bishops have, by accepting our present oath of allegiance, renounced on paper the indirect power (of the Pope). But here is the spot where Columbanus has struck the hardest blows, showing that their practice is in diametrical opposition to their oath. Do they not hold that the discipline of the Council of Trent is as binding on Roman Catholics as the doctrine of the Seven Sacraments? and does not that discipline expressly grant to the Pope and to bishops, as the Pope's delegates, powers which directly clash with that oath, on this very article of indirect power ?-Will [he adds in a note] the sworn delegates of Rome condemn those bulls which maintain the indirect power as fundamentally erroneous? I venture to assert that they will not dare to do it. Will they condemn the bulls "In cœnâ," or Unam sanctam?" When Archbishop Butler, of Cashel, had too hastily renounced the deposing power, and his example was followed so hastily by others, that it was too late to retract, he received from the sacred congregation of Propaganda a letter of rebuke, because he had

Columbanus ad Hibernos. London.

presumed

presumed to transact a business so momentous without previously advising with the Court of Rome.'*

So long indeed as Dr. Dens is the safe guide' of Irish priests, and Dr. Dens announces as established maxims, that every oath implies necessarily, whether expressed or not, the condition 'salvo jure superioris'-and the superior, or the bishop, or the Pope has a dispensing power in his hands, to be employed for the benefit of the Church-and everything we see in practice confirms the theory-so long an oath in the mouth of a Roman Catholic, who is not above the dreadful teaching of his system, as Roman Catholics are in England, must be, in the eyes of common prudence, valueless as a straw.

But the six foreign universities, when consulted by Mr. Pitt, pronounced against the claim!' Quite the reverse. They showed their sense of its validity by studiously evading the question Never were more pains taken, when a simple question was put, to avoid giving an answer, than in these well-known opinions. And the same must be said of the oaths which have been at various times suggested by Irish Papist bishops themselves, to reconcile the affirmation of allegiance to the crown of England with allegiance to the king of Ireland, their lord the Pope. Examine them with a microscope, as all such compositions must be examined, and their ingenuity will indeed surprise.‡

We have not space to enter into the question of this temporal claim. But it is a subject never to be forgotten in examining the real nature of Popery in Ireland. It dates from 1092, when the Irish chieftains are said to have given up the whole island to Urban II. Upon this was founded, in 1154, Adrian's grant of Ireland to Henry II.; and Henry's assumption of the title of Lord, and not of King. This title was never changed till the reign of Henry VIII. When Mary inadvertently retained it, the Pope sharply upbraided her,' and only conferred it on her as his own gift. In the rebellion under Elizabeth the plea was again and again urged. The whole conduct of Rinuccini and the Popish bishops in Charles the First's reign was founded on the same assumption. Not to mention the works of Dr. Routh, Peter Lombard, O'Mahony, Enos, Ponce, Porter, O'Canga, O'Broden, and the proclamations from the pulpit, advocating this doctrine-in 1659 Richard O'Ferrall dedicated a memorial to the Propaganda, distinguishing the true from the false Irish by this very criterion-that one acknowledged the Pope's right to Ireland, the other did not. In 1695 Dodwell published Considerations on the Irish Remonstrance,' showing that Columbanus, vol. iv. p. 84. See also Dens, vol. ii. p. 164. Vol. iv. p. 180. See Digest, vol. ii., p. 33.

'the

the kings of England have more reason to fear the foreign influenced Irish than the kings of France to fear the foreign influenced French, considering the Pope's claim to the dominion of Ireland.' In 1762 the Hibernia Dominicana' of the titular Bishop Burke adopted a similar view. And as late as the death of the last Stuart, who, as Dr. Doyle informed the Parliamentary Committee, had always nominated the Irish bishops, this right of nomination lapsed to the Pope, motu proprio,' upon the very same ground, and he exercises it to this day. It is on this principle that the cardinal who presides over the affairs of Ireland is styled the Cardinal Protector of the Kingdom of Ireland, and that the establishment of bishops is kept up in Ireland, though not in England. The Pope himself is the feudal lord. The bishops assume the title of lords, as barons holding under him. The people of Ireland are called by him his 'vassals;' and the bishops call their inferior clergy'subjects.' The clerical oaths are all framed on the principles of feudalism. And though at present the existence of another title is tolerated,' and oaths of obedience to another head are indulged,' nothing will extort from the priests of Ireland a full, fair, and unreserved abandonment of the Popish claim. Every word they utter must be sifted; and they must be forced, by all the arts of cross-examination, to a precise meaning; and yet after all, by some play on the word lawful,' or obedience,' or fidelity,' or by some mental reservation, they will escape, and laugh at the government, which imagines they can be tied down by such cobweb threads as these. It is a most painful thought, but it is true. Men smile at the notion of a Pope-an old man sitting amidst the ruins of an effete city, without armies, or revenues, or fleets, or personal influence even with his own subjects and yet claiming the kingdom of Ireland. But they would not smile if they saw the real arms with which it is to be seized; the cool, thoughtful, designing, deep-planning, all-daring arm of Jesuitism. This is the Popery against which we have to fight; and who is the man to speak of such a foe with a laugh or a sneer?

Once more, before we conclude for the present, we suspect there is another series of operations in Ireland which well deserve attention; we mean the various openly organised bodies, by which the system of agitation has been kept up, both before and after the passing of the Relief Bill. Mr. Wyse, an impartial witness, expressly distinguishes them from popular, tumultuous' move

ments:

The Catholic [i. e. Romanist] Association was of a very different order. It had a method in its madness, and an object in its tumult, which a close observer and a constant attention only could discern; it

was

was not possible to combine in the same mass greater powers of popular excitation, more undisputed sway over the popular heart, and more minute attention to the nice machinery, by which the details of public business (the business of many millions of men) require to be conducted. Neither was it a mere ebullition from the rank passions and the turbulent ambition of modern times: it was of long, and slow, and patient growth; its strength was not known, until it had been brought into direct collision with the government; it was not even fully appreciated by the very hands which wielded it, until its temper had been brought out by hostile attack. It was then suddenly perceived that a body had been growing up unnoticed, without the constitution, which might in its due season disturb from its foundations the constitution itself, co-extensive with the immense majority of the population, and reflecting, in its utmost energy, the entire form and pressure of the popular mind.'-Wyse, Hist., vol. i. Introduction, p. v.

Remarkable words-perfectly descriptive-perfectly true even in the seeming inconsistent statement that it reflected the popular mind-without having a popular origin. It first impressed the people, and then reflected the impression.* And the whole history which Mr. Wyse has given from 1759, down to 1829 (and the story might well be carried on to 1840), presents a series of similar paradoxes. The people, we are told, were labouring under the heaviest grievances-and yet it was a work of the greatest difficulty to rouse them from their apathy. The grievances most felt were those which affected the nobility and priests, and yet the nobility and priests (the old class of priests remember) studiously kept aloof from the movements which were intended to emancipate them. The Friends of civil and religious liberty' combined to put down the circulation of the Scriptures, and a combined system of education as carried on by the Kildare Society. The Brunswick Clubs were furious bigots, and yet no Catholic experienced violence from them.' The Protestants were bent on maintaining a tyrannical ascendency, and yet it was proved to a demonstration, that a large proportion of Protestant rank, wealth, and intelligence, was ranged on the side of justice and conciliation.' Again, the secret associations throughout Ireland had no connexion with this open organisation, and yet, when the open force appeared, the secret melted away; when it disappeared they were expected to revive; and violent and vicious as they were, a few words of friendly advice from the Association restored tranquillity to the local insurrections.' Mr. Wyse is spoken of by those who know him as an honourable, intelligent man. He must feel that these are contradictions perplexing to most readers: but the history which he has given is indeed

6

See also a singular passage, p. 89.

curious.