their
favour. The exposure in the Life of Lord Randolph Churchill of the
manner in which he proposed to Lord Salisbury to win over the Church to
Unionism is an example of what I mean:--[16]

"I have no objection to Sexton and Healy knowing the deliberate
intention of the Government on the subject of Irish education, but it
would not do for the letter or communication to be made public, for the
effect of publicity on Lancashire would be unfortunate.... It is the
bishops entirely to whom I look in future to mitigate or postpone the
Home Rule onslaught. Let us only be enabled to occupy a year with the
education question. By that time I am certain Parnell's party will have
become seriously disintegrated. Personal jealousies, Government
influences, Davitt and Fenian intrigues, will be at work upon the
devoted band of eighty. The bishops, who in their hearts hate Parnell,
and don't care a scrap for Home Rule, having safely acquired control of
Irish education, will, according to my calculation, complete the rout.
That is my policy, and I know it is sound and good, and the only
possible Tory policy." And again he wrote--"My opinion is that if you
approach the archbishops through proper channels, if you deal in
friendly remonstrances and active assurances ... the tremendous force of
the Catholic Church will gradually and insensibly come over to the side
of the Tory Party."

All this, of course, is perfectly consistent with the views which in
1884 the leader of the Fourth Party had expressed when, speaking on the
Franchise Bill, he declared his opinion that "the agricultural peasant
is much more under the proper and legitimate influence of the Roman
Catholic priesthood than the lower classes in the towns."[17] But how is
one to reconcile either of these declarations with his action in 1886,
when, the tremendous force of the Catholic Church not having come over
to the Tory side, he "decided to play the Orange card, which, please
God, will prove a trump," and went, with his hands red from making
overtures to what they considered the scarlet woman, to rally the
Orangemen with the haunting jingle that Home Rule would be Rome Rule.

This was before the general election of 1886. Seven years later, when
another election was approaching, he returned to the charge, this time
in a letter to Lord Justice FitzGibbon:--"What is the great feature," he
wrote, "of the political situation in Ireland now? The resurrection in
great force of prie