fact, but the second
requires to be made clear to the electors of Great Britain. Let no one
suppose that I am finding fault with Irishmen for being devoted Roman
Catholics. What I wish to show is that the Church of Rome would be
supreme in the new Parliament, and that she is not a good guardian of
Protestant liberties and interests. Ireland has been for the last two
generations brought into absolute captivity to the principles of
ultramontanism. When Italy asserted her nationality, and fought for it
in 1870, Ireland sent out a brigade to fight on the side of the Pope.
When France, a few years ago, broke up in that land the bondage of
Ecclesiasticism, the streets of Dublin were filled Sunday after Sunday
for weeks with crowds of Irishmen, headed by priests, shouting for the
Pope against France. The Church first, nationality afterwards, is the
creed of the ultramontane; and it is the avowed creed of the Irish
people. But this would be changed in an Irish Parliament, British
electors affirm. Let us hear what Mr. John Dillon, M.P., says on the
point. Speaking about a year ago in the Free Trade Hall in Manchester,
Mr. Dillon said--

"I assert, and it is the glory of our race, that we are to-day the
right arm of the Catholic Church throughout the world ... we stand
to-day as we have stood throughout, without abating one jot or
tittle of that faith, the most Catholic nation on the whole earth."

What Mr. Dillon says is perfectly true. The Irish Parliament would be
constituted on the Roman model. If there were none but Roman Catholics
in Ireland, Ireland would rapidly become a "State of the Church." But
how would Protestants fare? Just as they fared in old Papal days in
Italy under the temporal rule of the Vatican. But it may still be said
that Irishmen themselves would curb the ecclesiastical power. This is
one of the delusions by which British electors conceal from themselves
the peril of Home Rule to Irish Protestants. They forget that Irishmen
are, if possible, more Roman than Rome herself. I take the following
picture of the Romanised condition of Ireland from a Roman Catholic
writer--

"Mr. Frank Hugh O'Donnell, who 'believes in the Papal Church in
every point, who accepts her teaching from Nicaea to Trent, and
from Trent to the Vatican,' says, 'While the general population of
Ireland has been going down by leaps and bounds to the abyss, the
clerical population has been mou