wn of such a thing I would have felt it my duty to
make proper representations to the Holy See."

In view of this it is interesting to read the naive record in the
_Tablet_ of those who signed the address to Persico on the totally wrong
assumption that he and his report were the _causa causans_ of the
decree. "The signatures," says the _Tablet_, "comprise those of all the
Catholic peers in Ireland (14 in number), four Privy Councillors, ten
honourables, two Lords Lieutenants of counties, nineteen baronets,
fifty-four deputy-lieutenants, two hundred and ninety-seven magistrates,
and a large number of the learned and military professions." The
remarkable thing about this memorial was the absence of the names of any
clerics, regular or secular, parish priests or prelates.

There are in Ireland a great many more Protestant Nationalists than the
English Press allows its readers to suspect, and it is one of these who,
in a recent novel, declares in a wild hyperbole that if the bishops can
secure the continuance of English Government for the next half century
Ireland will have become the Church's property. No one, of course, with
any sense of proportion takes seriously such a statement as this, but I
allude to it as showing, in its extreme anti-clericalism, the same
tendency, very much magnified, as I have observed to a great extent in
the Protestant Nationalist as a class, who has not, as I believe, had
time to eliminate the last taint of No Popery feeling in which for
generations he and his forbears have been steeped. The existence of this
anti-clerical spirit, and, what is more to the point, its expression
with the proverbial tactlessness of the political convert, for such a
one the Protestant Nationalist usually is, make it very essential that
the Catholic clergy should walk warily and avoid giving any handle to
their detractors, for in Ireland, and perhaps most of all in the Church
in Ireland, there is need to use the prayer of the faithful
Commons--"that the best possible construction be put on one's motives."
How small is the basis for the allegation that the clergy are playing
only for the Church's hand and are prepared to sacrifice for this end
the welfare of the country is shown, I think, by the evidence which I
have adduced. But in spite of their ill success in the past there is a
persistent notion on the part of both English parties that they can drag
in ecclesiastical influence to redress the political balance in