The clergy in the early part of the nineteenth century were brought up in foreign seminaries, where passive obedience to the established order was inculcated, and where, as was natural in such places, a horror of the Jacobinical principles of the French revolution created among them an antagonism to any violent agitation, which admittedly or not drew its inspiration from that source, but the names of Dr. Doyle of Kildare, of Dr. Duggan of Clonfert, of Dr. Croke of Cashel, of Dr. M’Cormick, to name only four, show how much support was given to the popular cause in Ireland by a considerable section of the higher clergy.

To Protestant Nationalists I would commend that expression of opinion of the greatest of their number—­Edmund Burke—­who, speaking of the religion of the mass of his countrymen, declared that in his opinion “it ought to be cherished as a good, though not the most preferable good if a choice was now to be made, and not tolerated as an inevitable evil.  It is extraordinary that there should still be need to emphasise the fact that the Catholicism of Ireland is inevitable and that there is no hope of making the country abjure it—­but this is the case.”

Half a century ago, when proselytism was in full swing in a country weakened by famine, Protestants were sanguine on this point.  Sir Francis Head, in a volume which bears the very naive title of “A Fortnight in Ireland,” declared that within a couple of years there can exist no doubt whatever that the Protestant population of Ireland will form the majority, and Rev. A.R.  Dallas, one of the leading proselytisers in the country, borrowing a Biblical metaphor, announced that “the walls of Irish Romanism had been circumvented again and again, and at the trumpet blast that sounded in the wailings of the famine they may be said to have fallen flat.  This is the point of hope in Ireland’s present crisis.”

With the maintenance by the Church of her hold over the people governments have recognised the influence of the priests, and have tried to turn it to their own use by methods into which they have been afraid to let the light of day; and for the rest, with every trouble and every discontent, has arisen the parrot cry of cherchez le pretre.  Conscientious objections to certain forms of education are respected in England when they are emphasised by passive resistance.  How many times have the same objections in Ireland been put down to clerical obscurantism?  The priest in politics we have been told ad nauseam is the curse of Ireland, but clerical interference is not unknown in English villages, and one has heard of dissenting ministers whose hands are not quite unstained by the defilement of political partisanship.  It is not the habit that makes the monk, and it is possible for sacerdotalism to be as rampant among the most rigid of dissenters as in Church itself.  An example of the falsehoods which have at intervals to be nailed to the counter was the one which declared