fession, rises as much above the ordinary
standard as Scotland falls below it: and as regards intemperance,
there has been in Ireland of late years a marked improvement, for
which unhappily no counterpart is to be found in any other part of
the United Kingdom. Yet we are gravely invited to believe, on the
testimony of a few hot-brained fanatics, that the whole Catholic
system in Ireland is one vast conspiracy against piety, happiness,
and civilisation....

"That Protestants are perfectly well aware of the mortification
entailed upon their Catholic fellow-subjects by the existing state
of things, and regard it with complacent acquiescence, is not the
least painful feature of the case. The Irish Church is bad, not
only in itself, but as being the last of a long series of
oppressions which fear, passion, or necessity have at various times
led the English to inflict upon their feeble neighbour. There have
been periods when the deliberate idea of even intelligent
politicians was, that the one population should exterminate the
other; and Burke has pointed out how the religious animosities,
which seem now the great cause of dispute, are in reality only a
new phase of far earlier hostility, grounded originally on
conquest, and strengthened by the cruelties which conquest
involved. It is to some such fierce mood, traditionally familiar to
the ruling race, that an institution so unjust in principle, so
troublesome in practice, so incurably barren of all useful result,
can appeal for sanction and support. The blind and almost ferocious
bigotry of Irish Presbyterians is owing, one would fain hope, less
to personal temperament than to the tastes and convictions of a
ruder age, embodied in evil customs and a conventionally violent
phraseology. And the same is more or less true of their
Episcopalian brethren. It is from the calmer feelings and more
discriminating judgment of the English nation that any remedial
measure is expected"--pages 33-37.

We have nothing to add to this. Every Catholic will recognize the truth
of the picture thus ably drawn. Our obligations to Mr. Cunningham do
not, however, end here. There is still another lesson which, although he
does not mean to teach it, we are glad to learn from him. It is this.
Speaking of the paid clergy of the Establishment, he says