he rostra from
which they declaim on the subject of Roman Catholic grievances, exhort
to the collection of rent, or denounce their Protestant neighbours in
a mode perfectly intelligible and effective, but not within the grasp
of the law. In several towns no Roman Catholic will now deal with a
Protestant shop-keeper, in consequence of the priest's interdiction,
and this species of interference, stirring up enmity on one hand and
feelings of resentment on the other, is mainly conducive to outrage
and disorder.... The first vacancy on the Roman Catholic bench is to
be supplied by Dr. England from America, a man of all others most
decidedly hostile to British interests and the most active in
fomenting the discord of this country.... With such leaders it is
reasonable to anticipate the worst. It is impossible to detail in a
letter the various modes in which the Roman Catholic priesthood now
interfere in every transaction of every description, how they rule the
mob, the gentry, and the magistracy, and how they impede the
administration of justice.' Their power is greater than any other in
the State, 'and they love to display it, and omit no opportunity of
taunting their adversaries.' 'The state of society here is so
disorganised, and the Government has so inferior an authority to other
powers acting on the people, that the opinion formed to-day may be
quite changed to-morrow.'[39]

The election of 1826 virtually carried Catholic emancipation, for it
reduced Ireland to a state in which it was impossible long to resist
it. Clear-sighted men had no difficulty in perceiving that the policy
of Peel had failed to avert it, though it had succeeded in making
impossible the securities which Grattan and the wisest men of his
generation had pronounced indispensable for its safe working, in
kindling religious hatreds as intense as in the darkest period of the
eighteenth century, in breaking down that healthy relation and
subordination of classes on which beyond all other things the future
well-being of Ireland depended. Peel was not wholly blind to what was
happening. 'A darker cloud than ever,' he wrote, 'seems to me to
impend over Ireland, that is if one of the remaining bonds of society,
the friendly connection between landlord and tenant, is
dissolved.'[40] He still persuaded himself, however, that the
political power of the priests was transient, and that a reaction
would set in that might destroy it. The defeat of the Catholic
qu