which the English Church holds Westminster Abbey,
and that, for the Irish Church, there is the additional security of the
Act of 1869, count for nothing in the eye of Roman Canon Law.

In an Ireland ruled by a Parliament of which the vast majority would be
Roman Catholics, devout and sincere, representing constituencies peopled
by devout and sincere persons who believe that the laws of the Vatican
are the laws of God, with a clergy lifted above the civil law by the
operation of the recent _Motu Proprio_ Decree, an Ireland in which even
the school catechisms (see the "Christian Brothers' Catechism," quoted
by the Bishop of Ossory, _op. cit._ p. 8) teach that an alien Church
unlawfully excludes "the Catholics" from their own churches, how long
would it be before a movement, burning with holy zeal and pious
indignation, against the usurpers, would sweep away every barrier and
drive out "the heretics" from the ancient shrines?

Irish Churchmen who know their country are aware that even the most
stringent guarantees would be worthless in such a case, as they proved
worthless in the Act of Union, and at the time of Catholic emancipation.

Some English Liberals imagine that Home Rule would be followed by an
uprising of popular independence which would destroy the power of the
Roman Church in Ireland. Let those who think this consider that the more
independent spirits among the Irish Roman Catholics go to America, and
let them further consider what has happened in the Province of Quebec in
Canada. The immense strength of the bonds--religious, social, and
educational--by which the mass of the people in the South and West of
Ireland are held in the grip of the Roman ecclesiastical system, and the
power which would be exerted by the central authority of that system by
means of the recent decrees, make it certain that clerical domination
would, from the outset, be the ruling principle of an Irish Parliament.

There is no desire nearer to the hearts of the clergy and people who
form the Church to which the writer belongs than that they should be
enabled to live at peace with their Roman Catholic fellow-countrymen,
and work in union with them, for the good of their country and the
promotion of that new prosperity which recent years have brought. They
dread Home Rule, because they know that, instead of peace, it would
bring a sword, and plunge their country once again into all the horrors
of civil and religious strife.

THE