y the help of the
civil power, have been found no match for oppressed and destitute error?
The fuller our conviction that our doctrines are right, the fuller, if
we are rational men, must be our conviction that our tactics have been
wrong, and that we have been encumbering the cause which we meant to
aid.

Observe, it is not only the comparative number of Roman Catholics
and Protestants that may justly furnish us with matter for serious
reflection. The quality as well as the quantity of Irish Romanism
deserves to be considered. Is there any other country inhabited by a
mixed population of Catholics and Protestants, any other country in
which Protestant doctrines have long been freely promulgated from the
press and from the pulpit, where the Roman Catholics spirit is so strong
as in Ireland? I believe not. The Belgians are generally considered as
very stubborn and zealous Roman Catholics. But I do not believe that
either in stubbornness or in zeal they equal the Irish. And this is
the fruit of three centuries of Protestant archbishops, bishops,
archdeacons, deans, and rectors. And yet where is the wonder? Is this
a miracle that we should stand aghast at it? Not at all. It is a result
which human prudence ought to have long ago foreseen and long ago
averted. It is the natural succession of effect to cause. If you do not
understand it, it is because you do not understand what the nature and
operation of a church is. There are parts of the machinery of Government
which may be just as efficient when they are hated as when they are
loved. An army, a navy, a preventive service, a police force, may do
their work whether the public feeling be with them or against them.
Whether we dislike the corn laws or not, your custom houses and your
coast guard keep out foreign corn. The multitude at Manchester was not
the less effectually dispersed by the yeomanry, because the interference
of the yeomanry excited the bitterest indignation. There the object was
to produce a material effect; the material means were sufficient; and
nothing more was required. But a Church exists for moral ends. A Church
exists to be loved, to be reverenced, to be heard with docility,
to reign in the understandings and hearts of men. A Church which is
abhorred is useless or worse than useless; and to quarter a hostile
Church on a conquered people, as you would quarter a soldiery, is
therefore the most absurd of mistakes. This mistake our ancestors
committed. Th