press cried out the people are sick of the agitation.  Whenever righteous discussion took place in our councils, they exulted over our ‘fatal divisions,’ and at the beginning of each new blunder of the cabinet, they sang victory.

“If the Irish be a hot or capricious race, who plunge into a new policy because it is new, and abandon their dearest interests and most solemn vows because their success needs time, then indeed Repeal was hopeless and was always so.  If the leaders have not sagacity enough to embrace the business of an empire and pierce through time, unwearied industry, pure hands and resolute spirits, then to repeal is hopeless until a new race of chiefs appears.”

Almost contemporaneously with this article, the Catholic Primate contradicted Mr. O’Connell’s assertion respecting the rescript, and laid rescript and contradiction before the public.  “I was surprised and sorry,” he writes, “to find that you had ventured to assert that a letter sent to me some time past from the Propaganda was not a canonical document.”  He adds that he laid the document before the assembled prelates, and appends the resolution in which they acknowledged its authenticity and approval of its counsel.[6]

Mr. O’Connell at once expressed his entire acquiescence and deep contrition.  He bowed reverentially to the resolution of the prelates, retracted the hasty opinion, and apologised for his error, which, he said, resulted from his great anxiety of mind, caused by the avowal of the Morning Chronicle that the Whigs had a secret agent in Rome.

But the prelates were far from unanimous in their construction of the rescript which they promised unanimously to obey.  With the resolution among his papers, the Archbishop of Tuam proceeded directly from the Episcopal meeting to the Repeal banquet at Limerick, where he delivered a speech stronger in language and more violent in character than any he had ever uttered.  Some passages in that speech, wherein he eulogised the heroism of the women of Limerick who cut their long hair to supply the defenders of the city with strings for their bows, excited the wildest enthusiasm and most rapturous applause.  Doctor Cantwell, in the letter already referred to, gives his construction, which he says was that of the majority.

“The Cardinal only evidently censures violent and intemperate language, in either priest or bishop, whether they address their flocks in their temples, or mix with their fellow-countrymen in banquets or public meetings.  We inferred, and I think we were justified in the inference, that conduct and language at all times unbecoming our sacred character, and not our presence on such legitimate occasions, were the object of this salutary caution.”

His construction was sustained more clearly and forcibly by Thomas Davis.  “It [the rescript] announces the undoubted truth that the main duty of a Christian priest is to care for the souls of his flock, and both by precept and example to teach mildness, piety and peace.  It does not denounce a Catholic clergyman for aiding the Repeal movement in all ways becoming a minister of peace.  Nowhere in the rescript is the agitation as a system, or repeal as a demand, censured; but some reported violence of speech is disapproved.”