s crept? A corrupt Press. The devil found men whose lives
were filled with pain and want; he came breathing through the
Press telling them to distrust God, and to make war upon society.
The Reformation, the Revolution, the social anarchy of to-day are
the direct offspring of a licentious Press. Permit a nation's
mind to be poisoned, and that nation's heart must rot. _Nihil
volitum nisi cognitum_.

[Side note: Fifty years ago]

In proof of this we need not look outside our own shores. Fifty
years ago the priests of Ireland often had recourse to rough
methods with the people. Even the aid of the "blackthorn" was
occasionally invoked as an effective instrument for securing
correction or impressing conviction. Yet, on the morrow, all was
forgotten; and the people would die for the man who punished
them. Let the priest of to-day but thwart the grand-children of
that generation, even in a small matter, and mark their rancour.
How bitter! how relentless! The Catholic spirit of half a century
ago was not operated on by the literature of a nation that is
daily losing even the veneer of Christianity.

You may gash a man with healthy blood to the bone, and time will
quickly heal the wound and scarcely leave a scar, but if the
man's blood be corrupt the scratch of a thorn may involve
consequences demanding the surgeon's knife.

The spirit that Catholic Ireland had fifty years ago is sadly
changed to-day; and its tendency to fester on slight provocation
is due to the poison distilled into it from an unwholesome,
anti-Catholic literature. Only twenty years ago we had a painful
illustration of the silent but terrible mischief that has been
done by England's Press upon the Catholic mind of this country.

[Side note: An evil crisis]

Up to the time of the Parnell crisis the priests imagined their
feet were planted upon a solid rock; they discovered they were
standing on a pie-crust. What a startling revelation was in store
for them. Small wonder they rubbed their eyes and asked in
bewilderment, Are we in Catholic Ireland?

The ground broke; the fiery breath of hell belched forth. We saw
the devil spitting hate through the lips of politicians, the
columns of the Press, and the resolutions of the schoolmasters.
Terrible as was this outward exhibition, it revealed but a
fraction. The spirit of revolt and infidelity that raged within
the breasts of young men and darkened their conversation was
awful. The writings of avowed freeth