n America, England, or
elsewhere, are loyal and averse to Home Rule. The modern priest,
usually the son of an Irishman such as visits England at harvest time,
brought up amidst squalor and filth, is in full sympathy with the
limited ideas of the peasantry among whom he was reared. The
conversation of his parents and associates would relate to the burden
of the Saxon yoke, and his surroundings would perpetually re-echo the
stories of Ireland's wrongs and woes. Any literature he might absorb
would be a priest-written history of Ireland, with the rebel doggerel
of 1798 and the more seductive sedition of later years. At Maynooth he
meets a crowd of students like himself, crammed to the throat with his
own prejudices, viewing everything from the same standpoint. He
returns to the people a full blown ecclesiastic, saturated with a
sense of his own importance and the absolute supremacy of the Church
he represents; knowing nothing of mankind outside his own narrow
sphere, profoundly ignorant of the world's political systems, and
intensely inimical to England. Average Keltic priests fully bear out
the description furnished by a loyal priest of Donegal, who, on
alluding to their social status and Maynooth course, said:--"They are
merely shaved labourers, stall-fed for three years."

As to their exceptional claims. The attitude of omniscience and
omnipotence has often been crudely stated by the Catholic hierarchy.
Archbishop Walsh, of Dublin, has declared that there is no dividing
line between religion and politics. Dr. Walsh has also laid down the
dictum that, "As priests and independent of all human organisations,
we have an inalienable and indisputable right to guide our people in
every proceeding where the interests of Catholics as well as the
interests of Irish nationality are involved." This prelate rescinded
the wholesome rule enforced by his predecessors, forbidding the clergy
to take part in political demonstrations. He went further. He ordered
that at all political conventions an _ex-officio_ vote should be given
to the priests. It is in view of this fact that the Unionists of
Ireland not unreasonably declare that under a Home Rule Bill the Roman
Catholic clergy would become endowed with civil privileges which
would make them absolute rulers of Ireland. It may be urged that
Bishop Walsh is discredited at Rome, and that therefore his utterances
may be somewhat discounted. But what of the new Irish Cardinal,
Archbishop Lo