Against Home Rule (1912) Part 14

Irish Unionists are determined in their opposition to Home Rule by many considerations. But deepest of all is the conviction that, on the establishment of a separate legislature and executive for Ireland, the religious difficulty, which is ever with us here, would be increased enormously. Occasionally, in English newspapers and in Irish political speeches, there occur phrases which imply that the Protestant ascendency, as it was called, still exists in Ireland. Those who know Ireland are well aware that this is not merely false: it is impossible.

Even in Belfast, as a recent controversy proved, Roman Catholics get their full share of whatever is to be had. There are no Roman Catholic disabilities. The majority has every means of making its power felt. At the present moment, the most impossible of all things in Ireland is that Roman Catholics, as such, should be oppressed or unfairly treated.

It used to be imagined that when this happy condition was attained there would be no more religious disagreement in Ireland. But events have shown the exact opposite to be the case. There never was a time when there was in the minds of Irish Protestants so deep a dread of Roman aggression, and so firm a conviction that the object of that aggression is the complete subjection of this country to Roman domination.

Recalling very distinctly the events and discussions of 1886 and 1893, when Home Rule for Ireland seemed so near accomplishment under Mr.

Gladstone's leaders.h.i.+p, the writer has no hesitation in saying that the dread of Roman tyranny is now far more vivid and, as a motive, far more urgent than it was at those epochs. Protestants are now convinced, as never before, that Home Rule must mean Rome Rule, and that, should it be forced upon them, in spite of all their efforts, they will be face to face with a struggle for liberty and conscience such as this land has not witnessed since the year 1690. That such should be the conviction of one-fourth of the people of Ireland, and that fourth by far the most energetic portion of its inhabitants, is a fact which politicians may well lay to heart.

Approaching this subject as one whose duties give him the spiritual oversight of more than 200,000 of the Protestants of Ireland--members of the Church of Ireland, and who has had twenty-seven years of experience as a clergyman in Ireland, both in the north and in the south, the writer may venture to speak with some confidence as to the mind of the people among whom he has worked for so long. In doing so, he feels at liberty to say that he is one who has always avoided religious controversy, and who has ever made it his endeavour to be tolerant and considerate of the feelings and convictions of others. He has a deep regard for his Roman Catholic fellow-countrymen, and recognises to the full their many excellent qualities and the sincerity of their religion.

It is possible to bring to a single point the reasons which make Irish Unionists so apprehensive as regards the religious difficulty under Home Rule. Their fears are not concerned with any of the special dogmas of the Roman Church. But they recognise, as people in England do not, the inevitable tendency of the consistent and immemorial policy of the Church of Rome in relation to persons who refuse to submit to her claims. They know that policy to be one of absolute and uncompromising insistence on the exacting of everything which she regards as her right as soon as she possesses the power. They know that, for her, toleration is only a temporary expedient. They know that professions and promises made by individual Roman Catholics and by political leaders, statements which to English ears seem a happy augury of a good time coming, are of no value whatever. They do not deny that such promises and guarantees express a great deal of good intention, but they know that above the individual, whether he be layman or ecclesiastic, there is a system which moves on, as soon as such movement becomes possible, in utter disregard of his statements. At the time when Catholic emanc.i.p.ation was in view, high Roman authorities gave the most emphatic guarantees that the position of the then Established Church in Ireland would never be endangered, so far as their Church and people were concerned. But when the time came, such promises proved absolutely worthless. Whether the disestablishment of the Irish Church was a good thing or not, is not the question here. The essential point, for our present purpose, is that the guarantees of individual Roman Catholics, no matter how positively or how confidently stated, are of no account as against the steady age-long policy of the Roman Church.

It is well known to all students that, while other religious bodies have, both in theory and in practice, renounced certain old methods of persuasion, the Roman Church still formally claims the power to control states, to depose princes, to absolve subjects from their allegiance, to extirpate heresy. She has never accepted the modern doctrine of toleration. But there are many who think that these ancient claims, though not renounced, are so much out-of-date in the modern world that they mean practically nothing. Such is the opinion of the average Englishman, and the mild and cultivated form of Romanism which is to be met with usually in England lends colour to the opinion. In Ireland we know better.

The recent Papal Decree, termed _Ne Temere_, regulating the solemnisation of marriages, has been enforced in Ireland in a manner which must seem impossible to Englishmen.

According to this Decree, "No marriage is valid which is not contracted in the presence of the (Roman) parish priest of the place, or of the Ordinary, or of a priest deputed by them, and of two witnesses at least." This rule is binding on all Roman Catholics.

It is easy to see what hards.h.i.+p and wrong must follow the observance of this rule in the case of mixed marriages.

As a result, it is now the case that, in Ireland, marriages which the law of the land declares to be valid are declared null and void by the Church of Rome, and the children of them are p.r.o.nounced illegitimate.

Nor is this a mere academic opinion: such is the power of the Roman Church in this country that she is able to enforce her laws without deference to the authority of the State.

The celebrated McCann case is the most notable ill.u.s.tration. Even in the Protestant city of Belfast we have seen a faithful wife deserted and her children spirited away from her, in obedience to this cruel decree. And we have seen an executive afraid to do its duty, because Rome had spoken and justified the outrage. Those who know intimately what is happening here are aware of case after case in which husband or wife is living in daily terror of similar interference, and also know that Protestants married to Roman Catholics, and living in the districts where the latter are in overwhelming majority, often find it impossible to stand against the odium arising from a bigoted and hostile public opinion. Nor does such interference stop here. Only a few weeks ago the kidnapping of a young wife by Roman Catholic ecclesiastics was prevented only by the brave and prompt action of her husband. In this case a sworn deposition, made in the presence of a well-known magistrate and fully attested, has been published, and no attempt at contradiction or explanation has been made. Let none imagine the _Ne Temere_ question is extinct in Ireland.

It is at this moment a burning question. Under Home Rule it would create a conflagration. And surely there is reason for the indignation of Protestants. Here we see the most solemn contract into which a man or woman can enter broken at the bidding of a system which claims supreme control over all human relations, public and private; and this, not for the maintenance of any moral principle, but to secure obedience to a disciplinary regulation which is regarded as of so little moral value that it is not enforced in any country in which the Government is strong enough to protect its subjects.

As if to define with perfect clearness, in the face of the modern world, the traditional claim of the Roman See, there has issued from the Vatican, within the last few weeks, a Decree which sets the Roman clergy above the law of the land. This ordinance, which is issued _motu proprio_ by the Pope, is the re-enactment and more exact definition of an old law. It lays down the rule that whoever, without permission from any ecclesiastical authority, summons any ecclesiastical persons to a lay tribunal and compels them to attend publicly such a court, incurs instant excommunication. The excommunication is automatic, and absolution from it is specially reserved to the Roman Pontiff. This fact adds enormously to the terror of it, especially among a people like the Irish Roman Catholics. Great discussion has taken place as to the countries in which this Decree is in force. No one was surprised to hear that Germany was exempt. Archbishop Walsh, the Roman Catholic Archbishop of Dublin, in an elaborate discussion, gives the opinion that the Decree is abrogated under British law by the custom of the country, which has in the past rendered impossible the observance of the strict ecclesiastical rule in this matter, but is careful to add that this is only his opinion as a canonist, and is subject to the decision of the Holy See. When this plea is examined, it is found to mean simply this, that the law is not strictly observed in case of necessity. That this is the meaning of Archbishop Walsh's plea is proved by a quotation which he makes from Pope Benedict XIV. The principle laid down by Pope Benedict is that when it became impossible to resist the encroachment of adverse customs, the Popes shut their eyes to what was going on, and tolerated what they had no power to prevent. It is exactly the principle of toleration as a temporary expedient. The re-enactment of the law by the present Pope means surely, if it means anything, that such toleration is to cease wherever and whenever the law can be enforced. But, be it observed, this necessity is entirely dependent on the strength of the authority which administers the civil law. The moment the civil authority grows weak in its a.s.sertion of its supremacy, the plea of necessity fails, and the ecclesiastical law must be enforced. Those who know Ireland are well aware that this is exactly what would happen under Home Rule. Here is the crowning proof of the truth that, above all the well-intentioned persons who give a.s.surances of the peace and goodwill that would flourish under Home Rule, there is a power which would bring all their good intentions to nothing.

But what of the Church of Ireland under Home Rule? Formerly the Established Church of the country, and as such occupying a position of special privilege, she still enjoys something of the traditional consideration which belonged to that position, and is more than ever conscious of her unbroken ecclesiastical descent from the Ancient Church of Ireland. Her adherents number 575,000, of whom 366,000 are in Ulster.

As part of her heritage she holds nearly all the ancient ecclesiastical sites and the more important of the ancient buildings which still survive. These possessions, thus inherited from an immemorial past, were secured to her by the Act of Disestablishment. For the rest, the endowments which she enjoys at the present time have been created since 1870 by the self-denial and generosity of her clergy and laity. Under British law, her position is secure. But would she be secure under Home Rule? Those of her advisers who have most right to speak with authority are convinced that she would not. The Bishop of Ossory, in an able and very moderate statement made at the meeting of the Synod of that Diocese, last September, showed that both the princ.i.p.al churches and the endowments now held by the Church of Ireland have been claimed repeatedly by prominent representatives of the Church of Rome. It is stated that the Church sites and buildings belong to the Roman Communion in Ireland because, on Roman Catholic principles, that communion truly represents the ancient Irish Church, and no lapse of time can invalidate the Church's t.i.tle; and that the endowments belong to the same communion because they "represent moneys derived from pre-Disestablishment days, which were, in their turn, the alienated possessions of the Roman Church" (see Bishop of Ossory's Synod Address, p. 7). As regards this last statement, it must be noted that the only sense in which it can be truly said that the endowments represent moneys derived from pre-Disestablishment days is that the foundation of the new financial system was laid by the generosity of the clergy in office at the time.

They entrusted to the Representative Body of the Church the capitalised value of the life-interests secured to them by the Act. The money was their private property, and their action one which involved great self-denial, for they gave up the security offered by the State. The money was so calculated that the whole should be exhausted when all payments were made. By good management, however, it yielded considerable profit, and meanwhile formed a foundation on which to build. It was, however, in no sense an endowment given by the State, nor was it a fund on which any but the legal owners (_i.e._ the clergy of the time) had a justifiable claim.

The Bishop of Ossory's statement excited much discussion, but, though many Roman Catholic apologists endeavoured to laugh away his fears as groundless, not one denied the validity of his argument. The fact that, as he showed, the Church of Ireland holds her churches by exactly the same t.i.tle as that by which the English Church holds Westminster Abbey, and that, for the Irish Church, there is the additional security of the Act of 1869, count for nothing in the eye of Roman Canon Law.

In an Ireland ruled by a Parliament of which the vast majority would be Roman Catholics, devout and sincere, representing const.i.tuencies peopled by devout and sincere persons who believe that the laws of the Vatican are the laws of G.o.d, with a clergy lifted above the civil law by the operation of the recent _Motu Proprio_ Decree, an Ireland in which even the school catechisms (see the "Christian Brothers' Catechism," quoted by the Bishop of Ossory, _op. cit._ p. 8) teach that an alien Church unlawfully excludes "the Catholics" from their own churches, how long would it be before a movement, burning with holy zeal and pious indignation, against the usurpers, would sweep away every barrier and drive out "the heretics" from the ancient shrines?

Irish Churchmen who know their country are aware that even the most stringent guarantees would be worthless in such a case, as they proved worthless in the Act of Union, and at the time of Catholic emanc.i.p.ation.

Some English Liberals imagine that Home Rule would be followed by an uprising of popular independence which would destroy the power of the Roman Church in Ireland. Let those who think this consider that the more independent spirits among the Irish Roman Catholics go to America, and let them further consider what has happened in the Province of Quebec in Canada. The immense strength of the bonds--religious, social, and educational--by which the ma.s.s of the people in the South and West of Ireland are held in the grip of the Roman ecclesiastical system, and the power which would be exerted by the central authority of that system by means of the recent decrees, make it certain that clerical domination would, from the outset, be the ruling principle of an Irish Parliament.

There is no desire nearer to the hearts of the clergy and people who form the Church to which the writer belongs than that they should be enabled to live at peace with their Roman Catholic fellow-countrymen, and work in union with them, for the good of their country and the promotion of that new prosperity which recent years have brought. They dread Home Rule, because they know that, instead of peace, it would bring a sword, and plunge their country once again into all the horrors of civil and religious strife.

THE RELIGIOUS DIFFICULTY UNDER HOME RULE

(ii) THE NONCONFORMIST VIEW

BY REV. SAMUEL PRENTER, M.A., D.D. (DUBLIN),

_Moderator of General a.s.sembly of Presbyterian Church in Ireland in_ 1904-5.

For obvious reasons, the Religious Difficulty under Home Rule does not receive much attention on the political platform in Great Britain. But in Ireland a religious problem flames at the heart of the whole controversy. This religious problem creates the cleavage in the Irish population, and is the real secret of the intense pa.s.sion on both sides with which Home Rule is both prosecuted and resisted. Irishmen understand this very well; but as Home Rule, on its face value, is only a question of a mode of civil government, it is almost impossible to make the matter clear to British electors. They say, What has religion got to do with Home Rule? Home Rule is a pure question of politics, and it must be solved on exclusively political lines. Even if this were so, might not Englishmen remember that the Nationalist Members of Parliament have been controlled by the Church of Rome in their votes on the English education question? I mention this to show that under the disguise of pure politics ecclesiastical authority may stalk in perfect freedom through the lobbies of the House of Commons. Is it, then, an absolutely incredible thing that what has been done in the English Parliament in the name of politics may be done openly and undisguised in the name of politics in a Home Rule Parliament? That such will be the case I shall now attempt to show.

Let us begin with the most elementary facts. According to the official census of 1911 the population of Ireland is grouped as follows:--

Roman Catholics 3,238,656 Irish Church 575,489 Presbyterians 439,876 Methodists 61,806 All other Christian denominations 57,718 Jews 5,101 Information refused 3,305

I beg the electors of Great Britain to look steadily into the above figures, and to ask themselves who are the Home Rulers and who are the Unionists in Ireland. Irish Home Rulers are almost all Roman Catholics, and the Protestants and others are almost all stout Unionists. Does this fact suggest nothing? How is it that the line of demarcation in Irish politics almost exactly coincides with the line of demarcation in religion? Quite true, there are a few Irish Roman Catholics who are Unionists, and a few Protestants who are Home Rulers. But they are so few and so uninfluential on both sides that the exception only serves to prove the rule. These exceptions, no doubt, have been abundantly exploited, and the very most has been made of them. But the great elementary fact remains, that one-fourth of the Irish people, mostly Protestant, are resolutely, and even pa.s.sionately, opposed to Home Rule; and the remarkable thing is that the most militant Irish Unionists for the past twenty years have not been the members of the Irish Church who might be suspected of Protestant Ascendency prejudices, but they are the Presbyterians and Methodists who never belonged to the old Protestant Ascendency party. It is of Irish Presbyterians that I can speak with the most ultimate knowledge. Their record in Ireland requires to be made perfectly clear. In 1829 they were the champions of Catholic Emanc.i.p.ation. In 1868 they supported Mr. Gladstone in his great Irish reforms. They have been at all times the advocates of perfect equality in religion, and of unsectarianism in education. They stand firm and staunch on these two principles still. But they are the sternest and strongest opponents of Home Rule, and their reason is because Home Rule spells for Ireland a new religious ascendency and the destruction of the unsectarian principle in education.

I ask on these grounds that English and Scottish electors should pause for a moment, and open their minds to the fact that there is a great religious problem at the heart of Home Rule. Irish Presbyterians claim that they know what they are doing, and that they are not the blind dupes of religious prejudice and political pa.s.sion. It is for a great something that they have embarked in this conflict; they are determined to risk everything in this resistance, and in proportion as the danger approaches, in like proportion does their hostility to the Home Rule claim increase.

What, then, is the secret of this determination? It lies in a nutsh.e.l.l.

A Parliament in Dublin would be under the control and domination of the Church of Rome. Two facts in Irish life render this not only likely and probable, but inevitable and certain. The first fact is that three-fourths of the members would be Roman Catholic, and the second fact is that the Irish people are the most devoted Roman Catholics at present in Christendom. No one disputes the first fact, but the second requires to be made clear to the electors of Great Britain. Let no one suppose that I am finding fault with Irishmen for being devoted Roman Catholics. What I wish to show is that the Church of Rome would be supreme in the new Parliament, and that she is not a good guardian of Protestant liberties and interests. Ireland has been for the last two generations brought into absolute captivity to the principles of ultramontanism. When Italy a.s.serted her nationality, and fought for it in 1870, Ireland sent out a brigade to fight on the side of the Pope.

When France, a few years ago, broke up in that land the bondage of Ecclesiasticism, the streets of Dublin were filled Sunday after Sunday for weeks with crowds of Irishmen, headed by priests, shouting for the Pope against France. The Church first, nationality afterwards, is the creed of the ultramontane; and it is the avowed creed of the Irish people. But this would be changed in an Irish Parliament, British electors affirm. Let us hear what Mr. John Dillon, M.P., says on the point. Speaking about a year ago in the Free Trade Hall in Manchester, Mr. Dillon said--

"I a.s.sert, and it is the glory of our race, that we are to-day the right arm of the Catholic Church throughout the world ... we stand to-day as we have stood throughout, without abating one jot or t.i.ttle of that faith, the most Catholic nation on the whole earth."

What Mr. Dillon says is perfectly true. The Irish Parliament would be const.i.tuted on the Roman model. If there were none but Roman Catholics in Ireland, Ireland would rapidly become a "State of the Church." But how would Protestants fare? Just as they fared in old Papal days in Italy under the temporal rule of the Vatican. But it may still be said that Irishmen themselves would curb the ecclesiastical power. This is one of the delusions by which British electors conceal from themselves the peril of Home Rule to Irish Protestants. They forget that Irishmen are, if possible, more Roman than Rome herself. I take the following picture of the Romanised condition of Ireland from a Roman Catholic writer--

"Mr. Frank Hugh O'Donnell, who 'believes in the Papal Church in every point, who accepts her teaching from Nicaea to Trent, and from Trent to the Vatican,' says, 'While the general population of Ireland has been going down by leaps and bounds to the abyss, the clerical population has been mounting by cent. per cent. during the same period....' A short time ago, when an Austrian Cabinet was being heckled by some anti-clerical opponents upon its alleged encouragement of an excessive number of clerical persons in Austria, the Minister replied, 'If you want to know what an excessive number of the clergy is like go to Ireland. In proportion to their population the Irish have got ten priests and nuns to the one who exists in Austria. I do not prejudge the question. They may be wanted in Ireland. But let not honourable members talk about over-clericalism in Austria until they have studied the clerical Statistics of Ireland.' A Jesuit visitor to Ireland, on returning to his English acquaintances, and being asked how did he find the priests in Ireland, replied, 'The priests in Ireland! There is n.o.body but priests in Ireland. Over there they are treading on one another's heels.' While the population of Ireland has diminished one-half, the population of the Presbyteries and convents has multiplied threefold or more. Comparisons are then inst.i.tuted between the Sacerdotal census of Ireland, and that of the European Papal countries. I shall state results only. Belgium has only one Archbishop and five Bishops; but if it were staffed with prelates on the Irish scale it would have nine or ten Archbishops and some sixty Bishops. I suppose the main army of ecclesiastics in the two countries is in the same grossly incongruous proportions--ten or twelve priests in Ireland for every one in Belgium! The German Empire, with its 21,000,000 Roman Catholics, has actually fewer mitred prelates than Ireland with its 3,000,000 of Roman Catholics.

The figures of Austria-Hungary with its Roman Catholic population of 36,000,000 are equally impressive. It has eleven Archbishops, but if it were staffed on the Irish scale it would have forty-eight. It has forty Bishops, but if it were like Ireland it would have 288. Mr. O'Donnell goes on: 'This enormous population of Churchmen, far beyond the necessities and even the luxuries of religious wors.h.i.+p and service, would be a heavy tax upon the resources of great and wealthy lands. What must it be for Ireland to have to supply the Episcopal villas, the new Cathedrals, and handsome Presbyteries, and handsome incomes of this enormous and increasing host of reverend gentlemen, who, as regards five-sixths of their number, contribute neither to the spiritual nor temporal felicity of the Island? They are the despotic managers of all primary schools, and can exact what homage they please from the poor serf-teachers, whom they dominate and whom they keep eternally under their thumb. They absolutely own and control all the secondary schools, with all their private profits and all their Government grants. In the University what they do not dominate they mutilate. Every appointment, from dispensary doctors to members of Parliament, must acknowledge their owners.h.i.+p, and pay toll to their despotism. The County Councils must contribute patronage according to their indications; the parish committees of the congested districts supplement their pocket-money. They have annexed the revenues of the industrial schools. They are engaged in transforming the universal proprietary of Ireland in order to add materials for their exactions from the living and the moribund. I am told that not less than 5,000,000 are lifted from the Irish people every year by the innumerable agencies of clerical suction which are at work upon all parts of the Irish body, politic and social. Nor can it be forgotten that the material loss is only a portion of the injury. The brow-beaten and intimidated condition of the popular action and intelligence which is necessary to this state of things necessarily communicates its want of will and energy to every function of the community.'"

Of course Mr. F.H. O'Donnell has been driven out of public life in Ireland for plain speaking like this; and so would every man be who ventured to cross swords with his Church. It aggravates the situation immensely when we take another fact in Irish life into account.

In quite recent months Mr. Devlin, M.P., has brought into prominence a society called the Ancient Order of Hibernians (sometimes called the Molly Maguires) which, according to the late Mr. Michael Davitt, is "the most wonderful pro-Celtic organisation in the world." This is a secret society which at one time was under the ban of the Church; but quite recently the ban has been removed, and priests are now allowed to join the order. The present Pope is said to be its most powerful friend. It has branches in many lands, and it is rapidly gathering into it all the great ma.s.s of the Irish Roman Catholic people. This is the most wonderful political machine in Ireland.

Mr. William O'Brien, M.P., has recently given an account of this society which has never been seriously questioned.

"The fundamental object of the Hibernian Society is to give preference to its own members first and Catholics afterwards as against Protestants on all occasions. Whether it is a question of custom, office, public contracts, or positions on Public Boards, Molly Maguires are pledged always to support a Catholic as against a Protestant. If Protestants are to be robbed of their business, if they are to be deprived of public contracts, if they are to be shut out of every office of honour or emolument, what is this but extermination? The domination of such a society would make this country a h.e.l.l. It would light the flame of civil war in our midst, and blight every hope of its future prosperity."

And now we reach the core of the question. It is perfectly clear that Home Rule would create a Roman Catholic ascendency in Ireland, but still it might be said that the Church of Rome would be tolerant. On that point we had best consult the Church of Rome herself. Has she ever said that she would practise toleration towards Protestants when she was in power? Never; on the contrary, she declares most clearly that toleration of error is a deadly sin. In this respect the Church of Rome claims to differ _toto coelo_ from the churches of the Reformation. In Ireland she has pa.s.sed through all the stages of ecclesiastical experience from the lowest form of disability to the present claim of supremacy. In the dark days of her suffering she cried for toleration, and as the claim was just in Protestant eyes she got it. Then as she grew in strength she stretched forth her hands for equality, and as this too was just, she gradually obtained it. At present she enjoys equality in every practical right and privilege with her Protestant neighbours.

But in the demand for Home Rule there is involved the claim of exerting an ecclesiastical ascendency not only over her own members but over Irish Protestants, and this is the claim which is unjust and which ought not to be granted. Green, the historian, points out that William Pitt made the Union with England the ground of his plea for Roman Catholic emanc.i.p.ation, as it would effectually prevent a Romish ascendency in Ireland. Home Rule in practice will destroy the control of Great Britain, and, therefore, involves the removal of the bulwark against Roman Catholic ascendency.

The contention of the Irish Protestants is that neither their will nor their religious liberties would be safe in the custody of Rome. In an Irish Parliament civil allegiance to the Holy See would be the test of members.h.i.+p, and would make every Roman Catholic member a civil servant of the Vatican. That Parliament would be compelled to carry out the behests of the Church. The Church is hostile to the liberty of the Press, to liberty of public speech, to Modernism in science, in literature, in philosophy; is bound to exact obedience from her own members and to extirpate heresy and heretics; claims to be above Civil Law, and the right to enforce Canon Law whenever she is able. There are simply no limits even of life or property to the range of her intolerance. This is not an indictment; it is the boast of Rome. She plumes herself upon being an intolerant because she is an infallible Church, and her Irish claim, symbolised by the Papal Tiara, is supremacy over the Church, supremacy over the State, and supremacy over the invisible world. Unquestioning obedience is her law towards her own subjects, and intolerance tempered with prudence is her law towards Protestants. It is a strange hallucination to find that there are politicians to-day who think that Rome will change her principles at the bidding of Mr. Redmond, or to please hard-driven politicians, or to make Rome attractive to a Protestant Empire. Rome claims supremacy, and she tells us quite candidly what she will do when she gets it.

Here is our difficulty under Home Rule. Irish Protestants see that they must either refuse to go into an Irish Parliament, or else go into it as a hopeless minority, and turn it into an arena for the maintenance of their most elementary rights; in which case the Irish Parliament would be simply a c.o.c.kpit of religio-political strife. But it would be a great mistake to suppose that the religious difficulty is confined to Irish Protestants. It is a difficulty which would become in time a crus.h.i.+ng burden to Roman Catholics themselves. The yoke of Rome was found too heavy for Italy, and in a generation or two it would be found too heavy for Ireland. But for the creation of the Papal ascendency in Ireland, the responsibility must rest, in the long run, on Great Britain herself.

England and Scotland, the most favoured lands of the Reformation, by establis.h.i.+ng Home Rule in Ireland, will do for Rome what no other country in the world would do for her. They would entrust her with a legislative machine which she could control without check, hand over to her tender mercies a million of the best Protestants of the Empire, and establish at the heart of the Empire a power altogether at variance with her own ideals of Government, fraught with danger, and a good base of operations for the conquest of England. Can this be done with impunity?

Can Great Britain divest herself of a religious responsibility in dealing with Home Rule? Is there not a G.o.d in Heaven who will take note of such national procedure? Are electors not responsible to Him for the use they make of their votes? If they sow to the wind, must they not reap the whirlwind?

In brief compa.s.s, I hope I have made it quite clear what the Religious Difficulty in Ireland under Home Rule is. It is not a mere accident of the situation; it does not spring from any question of temper, or of prejudice, or of bigotry. The Religious Difficulty is created by the essential and fundamental genius of Romanism. Her whole ideal of life differs from the Protestant ideal. It is impossible to reconcile these two ideals. It is impossible to unite them in any amalgam that would not mean the destruction of both. Under Imperial Rule these ideals have discovered a decently working _modus vivendi_. Mr. Pitt's contention that the union with Great Britain would be an effectual barrier against Romanism has held good. But if you remove Imperial Rule than you create at a stroke the ascendency of Rome, and under that ascendency the greatest injustice would be inflicted on the Protestant minority.

Questions of public situations and of efficient patronage are of very subordinate importance indeed. Mr. Redmond demands that Irish Protestants must be included in his Home Rule scheme, and threatens that if they object they must be dealt with "by the strong hand," and his Home Rule Parliament would be subservient to the Church of Rome. Does any one suppose that a million of the most earnest Protestants in the world are going to submit to such an arrangement? Neither Englishmen nor Scotsmen would be willing themselves to enter under such a yoke, and why should they ask Irishmen to do so?

It is contended, indeed, that the power of the priest in Ireland is on the wane. This is partly true and partly not true. It is true that he is not quite the political and social autocrat that he once was. But it is not true that the Church of Rome is less powerful in Ireland than she was. On the contrary, as an ecclesiastical organisation Rome was never so compact in organisation, never so ably manned by both regular and secular clergy, never so wealthy nor so full of resource, never so obedient to the rule of the Vatican, as at the present moment. Give her an Irish Parliament, and she will be complete; she will patiently subdue all Ireland to her will. Emigration has drained the country of the strong men of the laity, who might be able to resist her encroachments.

Dr. Horton truly says: "The Roman Church dominates Ireland and the Irish as completely as Islam dominates Morocco." By Ireland and the Irish Dr.

Horton, of course, means Roman Catholic Ireland. Are you now going to place a legislative weapon in her hand whereby she will be able to dominate Protestants also? It is bad statesmans.h.i.+p; bad politics; bad religion. For Ireland it can bring nothing but ruin; and for the Empire nothing but terrible retribution in the future.