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TEE POPE.
A BRIEF HISTORY
OF
PAPAL INTRIGUES
Aaa^msT Irish Liberty *
FROM
Adrian IV. to Lieo XIII.
By James G. Maguire,
EX-JUOGE OF THE SUPERIOR COURT OF SAN FRANCISCO, CALIFORNIA.
THIRD EDITION
SAN FRANCISCO :
JAMES H. BARRY, 429 MONTGOMERY STREET
1890.
m^
-^3
It^cland and
The Pope.
A BRIEF HISTORY
OF
PAPAL INTRIGUBS
Against Irish Liberty
FROM
fldman IV. to Lieo XIII.
By James G. Maguire,
JUDGE OF THE SUPERIOR COURT OF SAN FRANCISCO, CALIFORNIA.
" The Rescript must be obeyed.""
J. Cardinal Simeoni.
"Aye,
They can crush us as in ages flown.
What to them is a nation's anguish? —
Nothing more than a dying groan."
Una.
SAN FRANCISCO:
JAMES H. B.\RRY, 429 MONTGOMERY STREET.
1888.
76 /Wi
Copyright, 1888, by James G. Maguire.
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
V
DEDICATION.
To the heroes who, in spite of popes and kings,
poured their blood on the altar of Irish liberty, and
thus kept alive the patriot flame, through the long
centuries of Ireland's night of slavery; and to all
the living priests and people who believe that Ire-
land's struggle for liberty should not be postponed
to await the pleasure of any foreign potentate, this
book is affectionately dedicated.
The AuTHoji.
CONTENTS.
» Page.
Dedication 3
Preface 5
Chapter I — Introduction 9
II— Bull of Adrian IV 14
III — The Bull of Pope Alexander III. and the Synod
of Cashel 20
IV — Humiliating the Irish Priests and People 26
V — Papal Interference with Irish Struggles for
Liberty after the Conquest 38
VI— The Religious Wars 41
VII — A sop to Cerberus 45
VIII — The Repeal Movement killed by a Rescript. ... 49
IX — The Young Ireland Movement killed by Bishops
and Priests 57
X — The Fenian Movement Opposed by the Church 71
XI — The Home Rule Movement Opposed by the
Church 73
XII — The Land League Opposed by the Pope 76
XIII— The Last Rescript 83
XIV — Plan of Campaign and Boycott vs. Rack Rent,
Eviction and Rules of Estate 84
XV— Pope Leo's Boycott on Dr. McGlynn 96
XVI — Vatican Politics — the Italian Ring 100
XVII— Conclusion 110
List of Authorities 114
Appendix A — Full translation of the Bull of Pope Adrian IV.
granting Ireland to King Henry II 115
Appendix B — Full translation of the Bull of Pope Alexander
III. confirming the grant of Adrian 116
Appendix C — The text df the last Rescript 117
PREFACE,
This book is written to supply what I conceive
to be not only a demand but a real necessity. Its
purpose is to show the wrong- and injustice of
papal interference with the struggles of the Irish
people to regain the national independence which
they lost through the treachery of an English
pope.
To show the extent, persistence and deadly
character of that interference.
And to point out the necessity, and the patriotic
duty of firmly and constantly rejecting and resist-
ing every political edict, issued by a pope or inqui-
sition, respecting Irish affairs.
I am painfully aware of the extreme difficulty, if
not impossibility, of exposing and condemning
the political errors and faults of one who is the
spiritual head of a church, without working some
injury to the church which he represents.
To the delicacy and difficulty of this position, I
attribute the otherwise remarkable circumstance
that the very interesting and important facts
herein set forth have never before been presented
in any collected or connected form.
But the occasion demands that those facts be
now given to the world fully and fairly, without
either malice or timidity. Whatever the reader
6 PREFACE.
may think of the conclusions, which I have freely
and candidly stated, he will find the statements of
fact to be reliable and can readily verify all the
more important of them by referring to the author-
ities which I have fully cited,
I conceive it to be a most marvelous record of an
alliance of centuries, which has been characterized
by constant and simple faith and confidence, on
one side, and equally constant duplicity, ingratitude
and tyranny on the other.
To the ultramontanes who may read this book
and whose stereotyped criticism I may now fairly
anticipate, I have but to say, that it is not my
fault that the spiritual heads of the Catholic
Church claim also to be, by divine right, temporal
rulers, theoretically, over all nations, and in ter-
rible reality over Ireland.
It is not my fault, but more shame to them, if
the publication of the political history which they
have made, shall disadvantage the church whose
spiritual interests were confided to them, and
should have been their first and constant care.
On this subject I can only add that I am not
in the business of proselyting and disclaim any
such purpose.
I speak neither as a friend nor as an enemy of the
Catholic religion, and have said not a word con-
cerning its doctrines, its principles, its sacraments
or its forms.
The truth, or falsity, the soundness or unsound-
ness of the articles and rules of faith of that reli-
PREFACE. 7
gion have nothino' to do with Ireland's right to in-
dependent nationality or to Home Rule.
I desire, above all things, to separate those two
questions by a wide and unmistakable Hne, and to
distinguish, as well as I may, between the dual
— religious and political — capacities which the
Pope, unfortunately, occupies.
I speak as an American descendant of the
Irish race; as an admirer of the Irish character;
as a sympathizer in the struggles and trials of the
Irish people and in their hereditary aspirations for
liberty.
That a man may be a good Catholic and at the
same time an Irish patriot, seven centuries of so-
called "sedition," in which the people were often
led by their soggarths aroon, attest.
That a man may reject the tenets of the Catho-
lic religion and yet be an equally good Irish
patriot, bear witness: Grattan, Emmet, Wolfe
Tone, Davis, Mitchel, Parnell, and all the brave
leaders and soldiers of Protestant faith, who, for
more than a century, have graced and glorified the
political and military struggles for Irish liberty.
While I believe and declare that relio^ion has
and should have nothing to do with Irish poli-
tics, I have, in writing this book, a purpose which
the public mind will not wholly disconnect from
religion, principally because the art and finesse of
religio-political Italian statesmanship have so
interwoven questions of religion and politics.
That purpose is to assist in raising my father's
8 PREFACE.
countrymen and my own kinsmen above that
groveling fear of the Pope, which makes so
many of them nerveless when he strikes a blow at
their country and their race, and above their
present discreditable confidence in men who have
proved themselves " the veriest slaves of treach-
ery.
There is no other people on earth that the Pope
would treat as he is treating, or as he has treated,
the Irish; and this is simply because there is no
other people on earth — not' even one of the half-
Indian states of South America — that would tol-
erate such political interference at his hands.
The Pope, in this respect, enjoys the unenviable,
not to say infamous, distinction of being dangerous
only to those zv/io con-fide in him. I confidently
expect that my work will meet with the approval
not only of Irish patriots, of all shades of religious
belief, but that it will be acceptable to the think-
ing Catholics of every country, who cannot fail to
realize how greatly the true interests of the Catho-
lic Church would be advanced by relieving it of
the incubus of political intrigue against which my
blows are aimed.
James G. Maguire.
San Francisco, June 4th, 1888.
CHAPTER I.
INTRODUCTION,
" The Holy Father must have been misinformed
by evil advisers, or he would never have taken
sides with English tyranny and landlord robbery
against our sorely oppressed and long suffering
people," said a devout Catholic and brave but dis-
heartened Irish patriot to me a few days since.
"Do you think," I asked, "that Archbishop
Walsh, who has been for some time in Rome con-
sulting with the Pope on the Irish question, made
false statements to the detriment of his people ?"
"Oh, no, indeed," he replied. "I refer to the
Duke of Norfolk, Errington, Monsignor Persico
and other anti- Irish aristocrats and Castle Catho-
lics, who are, unfortunately, nearer to His Holi-
ness than are the friends of Ireland."
This eood man is but one among thousands,
aye millions, who firmly believe that the Pope has
been imposed upon by false information concern-
ing the Irish question.
The absurdity of this theory must be at once ap-
parent to all who stop to think that there are in I re-
lO IRELAND AND THE POPE.
land about twenty-eight bishops and archbishops,
and thousands of priests, all in the immediate ser-
vice of, under the control of, and in direct com-
munication with, the Vatican, and that this great
■and intelligent body of men are thoroughly con-
versant with the minutest details of the every-day
life of the people of all parts of Ireland.
To say that he is ignorant of the true state of
Irish affairs is to assume that he does not think
the Irish priesthood worth consulting; and, to say
that he has been deceived by a few English and
pro-English intriguers, is to assume that he at-
taches more value to the statements of a few
secret emissaries than he does to the solemn offi-
cial testimony of this great body of pious and de-
voted bishops and priests.
No, the Pope is not misinformed concerning
the Irish question. He has acted deliberately,
upon full knowledge, and upon a resolution
formed more than one year ago, and, like his
sudden support of Bismarck, "the arch enemy
and persecutor of the Catholic Church," this act
had a political price, which it is to be hoped Lord
Salisbury may never be able to pay.
But, you may ask : "What evidence have you
to support the statement that the present papal
blow at the Irish national movement was premed-
INTRODUCTION. I I
itated for more than a year?" To this question
I answer by presenting the two principal and all-
sufificient facts, namely:
1, Monsignor Persico, in his letter of Octo-
ber last to the Pope, expressly shows that he was
sent to Ireland to pave the way for the destruc-
tion of the Irish National Leagfue.
2. The edict is in perfect harmony with the
course of the Vatican concerning Irish political
affairs for more than seven hundred years.
Monsio-nor Persico was not sent to Ireland
"for the purpose of learning, by actual observa-
tion, the true condition and political methods of
the Irish people," as the telegraph informed us at
the time of his visit, but for the purpose of cajol-
ing and coercing- the Irish priesthood into leaving
and opposing the Irish National League,
This purpose was disclosed by the publica-
tion at Rome of a letter sent by him to the
Pope, in October last, in which he expressed re-
gret that his mission thus far had been a failure,
because "the Irish priests would not abandon the
political struggle of their countrymen, even when
urged to do so in the name of the Pontiff and for
the good of the Church."
While this treacherous ecclesiastical statesman,
" this genial confidante and general spy," who, ac-
12 IRELAND AND THE POPE.
cordlne to his own confession, was in Ireland as a
secret enemy of the Irish cause, doing the work of
*' Bloody Balfour " and his Tory master, he was
winning loud applause from the Irish people by
praising " with mimic openness of soul," their de-
votion and submission to the Holy Father, and
assuring them of the latter's deep and unwavering
love.
It is said that when Cortez, with his little band
of freebooters, entered the populous and hospitable
districts of ^lexico, Jie won his way largely by
teachino the divine truths of Christianitv to the
people whom he had come to rob and outrage, to
enslave and murder.
I believe it was Lawrence Sterne who said:
" Of all the cants that were ever canted in this
world, the cant of hypocrisy is the worst."
But the whole history of Vatican interference
with Irish politics shows an unbroken line, for
seven hundred vears, of acts hostile to the liber-
ties and natural rights of the Irish people.
The subjugation of Ireland to English rule, as
is well known to all students of Irish history, was
not accomplished by the force of English arms,
but by the decree and grant of Pope Adrian IV.,*
* See full translation of bull, Appendix A.
INTRODUCTION. 13
supplemented and enforced by the decrees and
orders of Pope Alexander III.*
While, as I have said, these facts are well
known to all students of Irish history, and while
they are fully attested by every Irish historian
worthy of the name, clerical influences have always
kept the great masses of the Irish people in igno-
rance of them, so that to-day not one among a
hundred of the Irish people knows how their coun-
try lost her nationality, and still fewer are aware
of the persistent efforts of the successors of Adrian
and Alexander to keep Ireland in the slavery to
which their infamous bargain delivered her.
I shall, therefore, commence with the beginning,
and make a plain, brief statement of the facts in
chronological order, giving specific reference to
my authorities, so that those who have the leisure
and desire may conveniently test the accuracy of
my statements, or study the details of events and
transactions of which I can here give but a gen-
eral outline.
Findine the standard Irish and Catholic histo-
ries sufficiently full and accurate upon these ques-
tions for my purpose, I have rejected all others,
save in the matter of Lord Palmerston's intrigues
with the Vatican, the most satisfactory evidence of
* See full translation of bull, Appendix B.
*
14
IRELAND AND THE POPE,
which I find in his biography ; and in the matter
of the later intrigues of Pius IX. and Leo XIII.,
which have not yet reached the pages of authentic
Irish history, but which are fresh in the minds of
all sympathizers with the cause against which they
were aimed.
CHAPTER II.
BULL OF ADRIAN IV.
In the year 1152 Ireland was a prosperous and
independent nation, holding " her place among
the nations of the earth."
Then it was that: " Argosies, laden with riches
the rarest, gracefully dipped their proud ensigns "
to her banner.
Her people were Catholics, and had for many
generations looked lovingly to the Pope of Rome
as their spiritual father, but they neither owned
nor recognized any political allegiance to him.
Then, as now, the Irish people were noted for
their bravery, chivalry and generosity; but, then,
they were learned'^ and respected for that most
priceless quality of respectability — political inde-
pendence — whilst now, and, alas, through all the
dark and cruel centuries that have intervened, they
have been crushed in ignorance, humiliation and
* Pope Adrian himself was "instructed in philosophy and divinity by
Marianus O'Gorman, an Irish professor." O'Halloran's Hist., Bk. XIII,
Ch. Ill, p. 307.
'l
BULL OF ADRL-\X IV.
dependence between the upper and the nether
millstone of Italian intrigue and British tyranny.
In that fatal year Cardinal John Paparo appeared
in Ireland* as the special legate of Pope Eugenius
III. He was the first Italian legate ever sent to
Ireland — may Persico be the last! He summoned
the bishops and principal priests to the Synod of
Kells, and there delivered palliums^ to the arch-
bishops, taking their oaths of obedience to the
Pope.
From that hour dates the downfall of Irish
nationality. The spirit of Clontarf never ceased
to animate them, but from that hour the children
of Erin, though foremost and bravest in the
armies of libertv throucrhout the world, have been
slaves at home The people who had over-
whelmed the powerful Danes and driven them
from their shores, tamely bowed their heads to re-
ceive the yoke of the Saxons. Why? We need
* Ilaverty's Hist. Ireland, Chap. XVI. , p. 162.
tThe pallium is " a band of white wool, worn on the shoulders. It
has two strings of the same material and four purple crosses worked on it.
It is worn by the Pope and sent by him to patriarchs, primates, archbishops,
and sometimes, though rarely, to bishops^ as a token that they possess the
'fullnessof the episcopal office'. Two lambs are brought annually to the
church of St. Agnes at Rome, by the Apostolic sub-deacons, while the
'Agnus Dei" is being sung. These lambs are presented at the altar and
received by two canons of the Lateran Church. From this wool the pallia
are made by the nuns of Torre de Specchi. The sub-deacons lay the pallia
on the tomb of St. Peter, where they remain all night."
Catholic Dictionary, Addis cSc Arnold, Tit. "Pallium."
16
IRELAND AND THE POPE.
not seek far for the answer. With the comino- of
Cardinal Paparo, his palliums and his oaths of
obedience, came also the claim of temporal sov-
ereignty asserted by the Pope.
This temporal power was speedily turned to the
Pope's financial and political advantage. In the
year 1154 Henry II. became King of England, and
shortly afterwards sent John of Salisbury to Rome
as a Royal emissary.* The King desired to add
Ireland to his kingdom, and the Pope desired to
put Ireland under tribute to the Vatican ; the
Irish people having previously "paid those
small dues called Peter's pence to the See of
Armagh, which the rest of Europe paid to Rome."t
In the year 1156 Pope Adrian IV. gave to
Henry II., King of England, a bull granting to
him the political sovereignty of Ireland: address-
ing him as " my dearest son in Christ, the illustri-
ous King of England;" authorizing him " to enter
Ireland, to reduce the people to obedience under
the laws, and to extirpate the plants of vice," on
condition that he would " pay from each (meaning
from each Irish family) a yearly pension of one
penny to St. Peter, and that you will preserve the
rights of the churches of this land inviolate.";^
*Haverty'sHist., Chap. XVIII., p. i88.
+ O'Halloran's Hist. Ireland, Bk. XII., Chap. VI., p. 285.
i This bull, copies of which are in the ancient Vatican records, is pub-
BULL OF ADRIAN IV. 1 7
The genuineness of this bull is attested by all
of the Irish historians, except Abbe MacGeoghe-
ean* and Thomas Moonev, from Geraldus Cam-
brensis in 1178, to the Nun of Kenmare in 1876,
and the last edition of Haverty by Thomas
Kelly in 1885.!
The Nun of Kenmare says of this bull:
" There can be no reasonable doubt of the authen-
ticity of this document. Baronius publsihed it
from the Codex Vaticanns\ John XXII. (Pope),
annexed it to his brief addressed to Edward II.
(Edward 111.); and John of Salisbury (Catholic
Bishop of Chartres, then secretary to the Arch-
of Canterbury, states distinctly in his Jlletaiogiais,
that he obtained this bull from Adrian."!
To the same effect, citing further proofs, is
Haverty, ll while Dr. O'Halloran ("The Irish
lished in full, in the original I,atin text, by Dr. O'Halloran (Hist. p. 310),
and full translations are published by O'Halloran (Hist. p. 305); Haverty
(Hist. p. 1S9) ; Wright (Hist. Ireland, p. 85) ; Ferguson (The Irish Before
the Conquest, p. 2S8); and Walsh (Irish Hierarchy, p. 662.) See Ap-
pendix A.
* In his history of Ireland, as translated by Dr. Kelly (p. 18), the Abbe
states that the bull was procured from Adrian, but he subsequently makes
an argument to discredit its genuineness.
t O'Halloran's Hist., pp. 305 to 31 1 ; Haverty's Hist., pp. 1S7 to 193 ;
McGee's Hist. Ireland, Vol. I, p. 136; Carew's Ecclesiastical Hist. Ire-
land, pp 2S2-3-6 ; Cusack (Nun of Kenmare) Hist. Ireland, pp. 274-5;
McCarthy's Outlines of Irish Hist., p. 24; O'CalLighan's Notes and
Illustrations in "Macariae Excidium" ; Wright's Hist. Ireland, p. 85;
Walsh's Irish Hierarchy, pp. 661-2.
t Hist., p. 275, note.
II Hist., p. 190 and note.
l8 IRELAND AND THE POPE.
Livy") and Dr. O'Callaghan very conclusively
prove its genuineness.
St. Lawrence O'Toole and other leadino- bish-
ops of Ireland conversed with Pope Alexander
III, about this bull, and his own confirmatory bull,
at the third general council of Lateran in 1179,
and the Pope "became at length convinced that in
the con firmaiory brief zvhich he had di^awn up for
Heniy, he had been grossly deceived, and that the
terms that were employed in that official document
were as severe as they had been unmerited and
uncalled for."* He was justly indignant, but he
did not recall the bull.
Gerald de Barri (Geraldus Cambrensis,) a lead-
ing Catholic prelate of the time of Popes Adrian
and Alexander, noted for having preached the
principal sermon before the Synod of Dublin in
1 1 77, published in the year 11 78, during the life-
time of Alexander, a hiscory of Ireland in which
he inserted, in full, the bulls of both Adrian and
Alexander in the Latin text, and their genuineness
was not challenged. t
In addition to the frail denials of i\IacGeogheo-an
and Moonev, followinof him, 1 have before me a
very ingenious but radically defective essay by
* Walsh's Irish Hierarchy, pp. 663-4.
t O'Halloran Hist., Bk. XIII., Chap. III., pp. 306-7.
i
BULL OF ADRL\N IV. 1 9
Bishop Moran of Ossory,'* written to prove that
the alleged bull of Adrian was "a great Norman
forgery." He discredits the statement of Cardi-
nal Baronius, made three hundred years ago, that
he had copied the bull of Adrian from the "Vati-
can Manuscript," because he (Moran) could not
find the same manuscript three hundred years
later.
He also discredits the Bullariiim Ronianum (a
collection of papal bulls made under the authority
of the Holy See), printed over one hundred and
fifty years ago.
He also discredits the statement of John of
Salisbury, Bishop of Chartres, made and pub-
lished over seven hundred years ago, that he
(John) had personally received the bull from
Adrian and delivered it to Henry II,
Verily, ''faith will move mountains" of histor-
ical evidence. There are other verv conclusive
proofs of its genuineness, to which he does not
refer at all.
Father Burke's statement that this bull was a
forgery is based entirely on this essay of Dr.
Moran, and may be dismissed with it.f
* Irish Am. Library, "English Misrule in Ireland," p. 224.
+ English Misrule in Ireland, pp. 27-8.
20
IRELAND AND THE POPE.
CHAPTER III.
THE BULL OF POPE ALEXANDER HL AND THE
SYNOD OF CASH EL.
Henry II., for various reasons connected with
the vicissitudes of England, did not make any use,
now known to us, of the Bull of Adrian for fifteen
years after receiving it. Adrian being then dead,
Henry applied to Pope Alexander HI. for a con-
firmation of the grant of Ireland. In the year
1 1 72 Pope Alexander issued a bull addressed- to
his " most dear son in Christ, the illustrious Kino-
of England," and commencing thus : " For-
asmuch as these things which have been, on good
reasons, granted by our predecessors, deserve to
be confirmed in the fullest manner; and consider-
ing the grant of the Dominion of Ireland by the
venerable Pope Adrian, we, pursuing his foot-
steps, do ratify and confirm the same, reserving to
St. Peter and to the Holy Roman Church, as well
in England as in Ireland, the yearly pension of
one penny from every house."*
That everlasting yearly "penny from every
house" again — the price of poor Ireland's liberty !
* O'Halloran's Hist., p. 306; Wright's Hist., p. 86; Haverfcy's Hist., p.
191.
THE SYNOD OF CASHEL.
21
It has been faithfully paid. England's promise
to the Vatican has been faithfully fulfilled to the
letter; but alas, every penny of the tribute has
been stained with the blood and tears of Erin's
subjugated children.
Armed with these bulls, King Henry, who,
before receiving the last, had entered Ireland
(October iSth, 1171), claimmg it under that of
Adrian IV., immediately summoned the principal
clergy of Ireland to meet in conference at Cashel.
This conference is historically known as the
" Svnod of Cashel." Here the Bulls of Adrian
and Alexander were read, and, "in the name of
the Sovereign Pontiff, the clergy and people of
Ireland were called upon to receive Henry the
Second of England as their kino^."'*
At this Synod the Pope's Legate presided, St.
Gelasius, the Primate of Ireland, having refused
to attend. t
IMooney (who attempts to prove the bulls for-
geries, to shield, as far as possible, the honor of
the Vatican) says that they were read at this
Synod, and thus graphically describes their effect:
" Each man looked at his neighbor, not knowing
what decision to make. The ecclesiastics were
* O'Halloran's Hist., p. 305; Mooney's Hist., p. 561, et seq.
t O'Halloran's Hist., pp. 310 and 313; Walsh's Irish Hierarchy, p. 195.
et seq.
22
IRELAND AND THE POPE,
seized with panic and indecision. Some of the
clergy inclined to the admonitions of the Pope and
submitted to Henry, whilst others went their ways
to their respective provinces, as much in grief as
in anger. Some of the secondary chiefs of the
south gave up their territories to Henry, receiving
the same back to hold as his vassals; and, as this
act of submission appeared not humiliating, owing
to the acquiescence of so many of the clergy in the
ordinance of the See of Rome, Henry obtained
the adherence of seven counties ivithout striking a
bloiu^^
Martin Haverty, while admitting the genuine-
ness of the bulls, also attempts to shield the Popes,
by claiming that the bulls had very little to do
with the submission of the Irish people to the rule
of England. This is contrary to the proofs of all
contemporaneous history, and is simply absurd. f
Five hundred and seventy-three years ago, when
the details of her subjugation were fresh in the
public and private annals of Ireland, and in the
full traditions of her sorrowing people, Donnell
O'Neill, King of Ulster, wrote his celebrated,
learned, and statesmanlike letter to Pope John
XXII., protesting against the great injustice done
to Ireland by the Vatican, and declaring that
* Mooney's Hist., p. 561.
t Hist., p. 189.
o'neill's letter to pope joiix. 23
Ireland was subjugated solely by the bull of
Adrian.
Here is a striking passage from his letter .
"During the course of so many ages (three
thousand years) our sovereigns preserved the in-
dependency of their country; attacked more than
once by foreign powers, they wanted neither force
nor courage to repel the bold invaders: but that
which they dared to do against force, they could not
do against the simple decree of one of your prede-
cessors — A drian . " *
Whether the bulls of Adrian and Alexander
were forged or genuine is a matter of small conse-
quence compared with the doubly established fact
that the claim of temporal, kingly authority (as
distinguished from religious authority) over Ire-
land by the popes, and the acknowledgment of that
claim by the Irish people, caused the subjugation
of Ireland to English rule. If that claim had not
been acknowledged, the bulls, whether forged or
genuine, would have been repudiated, and the
armies of Henry would have been driven into the
sea.j
But the genuineness of these bulls is over-
whelmingly proved by historical evidence, and
* O'Halloran's Hist., p. 307; Mooney's Hist., p. 564; Haverty's Hist.,
P- 255-
+ O'Halloran's Hist., p. 305;]_ Mooney's Hist., pp. 560-2-4-8.
24
IRELAND AND THE POPE.
that which I have cited is, for the present, quite
sufficient.
The contradictions among recognized Irish
historians, concerninor the reading of the bulls at
the Synod of Cashel, results, probably, from the
fact that no formal action was taken on them by the
Synod as a body.
But that they were read and that there were in-
dividual submissions of the clergy to King Henry,
in consequence, is well attested.
Henry's only ostensible purpose in summoning
the Synod of Cashel was to make a pretense of
carrying out the church reforms confided to him
by the bulls, and his only real purpose was to se-
cure, upon the strength of the bulls, the submission
of as many of the political and religious leaders of
the country as possible.
Strange indeed, if he failed to produce or men-
tion documents from which he expected, and had
good reason to expect, so much. He did produce
them and the people were paralyzed by them. Just
as the Roman populace was paralyzed with terror
by the excommunication of the gallant Rienzi,
who had led them in driving the plundering Orsini
and Colonna families and their brigand followers
from the Eternal City.
But the efforts of the Vatican in aid of Kinof
.
SYNOD OF DUBLIN. 25
Henry's conquest of Ireland did not end with the
Synod of Cashel.
In the year 1177 a Synod was summoned in
Dublin by, and was held under, Vivian, the Pope's
Leeate for Ireland.
"In this Synod,-" says Rev. P. J. Carew,
Professor of Divinity in the Catholic College of
Maynooth, Ireland (citing Dr. Lanigan's History),
"the Legate set forth Henrv's riorht to the sover-
eignty of Ireland, in virtue of the Pope's author-
ity, and inculcated the necessity of obeying him
under pain of excommunication^^
Until that time the Catholic Churches were in-
violable sanctuaries into which the hunted people
might flee, and in which their lives were safe
from murder and their property from spoliation.
At this Synod of Dublin, the Pope through his
Legate made Ireland an exception to this rule,
and eave leave to the Eno-lish soldiers to enter
the churches and strip the people of the food
brought there for safety.f Since these things were
done by the Vicar of Christ, how terrible to con-
template what the Vicar of Hell would have done
under similar circumstances.
* Carew's Ecclesiastical Hist. Ireland, p. 437 ; Walsh's Irish Hierarchy,
p. 109; Dolby's Hist. Ireland, p. 31.
+ Dolby's Hist., p. 31.
26
IRELAND AND THE POPE.
CHAPTER IV.
HUMILIATING THE IRISH PRIESTS AND PEOPLE.
In the year i i8o King Henry, "who persecuted
the Holy Prelate, St. Lawrence, for his ardent at-
tachment to the land of his birth, resolved that
an office of so much importance (the Arch-
bishopric of Dublin), should not be entrusted to
an Irishman. ^ * Accordingly on the monarch's
recommendation,' his Chaplain, John Comyn, a
native of England, was elected to the Arch-
bishopric of Dublin, by some of the clergy who
had assembled at Evesham for that purpose.
John was not then a priest, but was in the follow-
ing year ordained, and was consecrated by Pope
Lucius III.," who, at the request of the King,
released the new archbishop and his arch-
diocese from the control, and even from the visi-
tations, of the Irish Primate of Ireland.*
From that time to the present — from Comyn to
McCabe, at least — the British Government, as
well since it became Protestant as while it was
Catholic, has generally dictated, either directly or
indirecdy, the appointment of most of the Catholic
archbishops and even bishops of Ireland. It be-
came at one time a common saying that : " Ire-
land gets her rent receipts and archbishops from
England."
* Walsh's Irish Hierarchy, p. no; Dolby's Hist., p. 33;
ENGLISH INTRIGUES. 2'J
Since the reformation, the g-overnment negoti-
ations with the Vatican have been conducted by
secret emissaries and are difficult of discovery, but
occasionally an uncovered track is found which
^/V^/^^^i- something, and indicates a great deal more.
For example, in a letter written by Lord Palmers-
ton (then English secretary of foreign affairs) to his
brother, May 12th, 1834, occurs the following:
" I am sending off a messenger suddenly to Flor-
ence and to Rome to try to get the Pope not to
appoint an agitating prelate Archbishop of Tuam,
and I write a few lines by him to you, as he may
as well go on to Naples from Rome while the
Pope is pondering upon his answer."*
Greville's Memoirs shed further light on this
subject. Speaking of Lord Melbourne (then
Home Secretary under Grey's Administration) he
says : " He told me that an application had been
made to the Pope * * * * not to appoint
McHale to the vacant Catholic bishopric. ^ *
* * His Holiness said that he 'had remarked
for a long time past that no piece of preferment
of any value ever fell vacant in Ireland that he
did not get an application from the British Gov-
ernment asking for the appointment.' Lord Mel-
bourne, * * * * in reply, to my question,
admitted that the Pope had gene^'-ally conferred the
* Evelyn Ashley's Life of Lord Palmerston; Chas. Gavan Duffy's Young
Ireland, p. 2il.
28
IRELAND AND THE POPE.
appomtmeiit according to the wishes of the Gov-
ernment." After commenting- upon the "regular
underhand intercourse" established between the
Government and the Vatican and the constant
solicitation of appointments from the Pope, he
adds : "■the Pope, who is the object of our ortho-
dox abhorrence and dread, good-humoredly cofn-^
plies with all, or nearly all, of their requests T'^'
On the 14th of September, 1808, the Catholic
bishops of Ireland met in synod in Dublin
and passed, among others, the following resolu-
tion : " That the Roman Catholic prelates pledge
themselves to adhere to the rules by which they
have been hitherto uniformly guided — namely, to
recommend to his Holiness (for appointment as
Irish Roman Catholic \:i\^o'^'^ only such persons
as are of unimpeachable loyalty." '\
This accounts for the pro-English sentiments of
so many Irish bishops, and accounts for the ap-
pointment of the Murrays, and Moriartys, and
Cullens, and McCabes, and so on ad nauseam, ad
infinitum.
But, enough; the story of the humiliation and
degradation of Ireland's patriotic priests to the
domination of Englishmen, Italians, Spaniards and
* Young Ireland, p. 211.
+ Haverty's Hist., p. 746.
ENGLISH FLESH AND IRISH FISH. 29
anti-Irish Irishmen is a long one, and interesting,
but the studied attempt to degrade the Irish race,
as such, is of more importance.
In the 13th and 14th centuries such race preju-
dices had arisen between the Irish and Anglo-
Irish in Ireland that they each established rules,
excluding the other from their canonries (religious
colleges) and religious houses.
Complaint being made to Pope Innocent W.,
he issued a bull requiring the Irish ^0 admit the
English and Anglo-Irish to their canonries.
Complaint being afterwards made by the Irish
to Pope Leo X., he issued a bull confirming the
riofht of the English to exclude the Irish from their
canonries.*
Under this bull Irish ecclesiastics and students
were excluded from institutions which had been
founded and endowed by their own Irish ances-
tors, t
"Consistency, thou art a jewel," but, surely,
Rome cannot be charged with inconsistency in
dealing with the Irish. She has been consistently
and constantly unjust and insulting to them.
She has found them confiding and obedient,
while she has spurned and spat upon them, and
* Cambrensis Eversus, by Dr. Kelly, Vol. II., p. 543; Haverty's Hist.,
pp. 253-4, note.
t Haverty's Hist., p. 255.'
30
IRELAND AND THE POPE.
she has spurned and spat upon them inces-
santly, apparently for no other reason than that
she has found them still confiding and obedient,
and that their humiliation pleased and conciliated
a more independent power.
There is a general impression to the effect that
the persecution of the Irish is due mainly to reli-
gious prejudice, but no man who has read deeply
of Irish history can harbor such a delusion.
The Enoflish grovernment and the Irish land-
lords (joint persecutors and plunderers of the race)
care very little to what church an Irishman goes
while living, or to what sphere his soul may be
consigned after his death. The pretense to the
contrary is a hollow sham, but it has a purpose.
By dividing the people into hostile religious fac-
tions, and setting them to fight each other, the
natural power of the Irish is greatly reduced, and
the difficulty of perpetuating the enslavement of
both factions is greatly lessened.
Besides, one of the factions would naturally ally
itself to the Protestant Government of England,
while the other would as naturally ally itself to the
head of the Catholic Church. The Government
and the Pope acting in concert through the ''reg-
ular underhand intercourse" of which Greville
speaks, and which Petre, Errington and Norfolk
RACE AND RELIGION. • 3 1
have so lately exemplified, the vvisdom of the Gov-
ernment's promotion of religious feuds among the
Irish people is apparent.
"It should not be forgotten that it has always
been the policy of the English Government in
Ireland to foment religious dissentions there as a
powerful means of perpetuating its own dominion."*
That religious differences are not the cause of
Irish persecution, is conclusively proved by the
fact that the most cruel and barbarous persecution
of the Irish people took place during and through-
out the period of four hundred years before Eng-
land became protestant; and while the Kings of
England were the Pope's "beloved sons in Christ,"
as they were affectionately termed.
Speaking on this subject. Rev. R. A. Byrne, in
a lecture on "The ^'ee Schools of Ancient Ire-
land," pertinently said: "In 1380 it was enacted
(at Downpatrick Abbey) that no mere Irishman
should be allowed to make his profession in the
Abbey.
This is but in keeping with the spirit of English
Catholic domination in Ireland everywhere. This
anti- Irish feeling is of no modern date, and by no
means owes its origin to the introduction of Pro-
testantism. Heny VIII. was a bad man , * *
* Ireland of To-day, by M. F. Sullivan, p. 369.
32
IRELAND AXD.THE POPE.
but the deadly wounds that laid Erin low zuere
strtick by the assassin Jiands of his Catholic fore-
fathers r^
It was this same English Catholic spirit that an-
imated that typical English priest, Monsignor
Capel.t when he said at Metropolitan Hall, in this
city, that, in his opinion, ''the Irish famine of
1847-8 was a God's blessing."
Daniel O'Connell, in 1813, said ''The English
do not dislike us as Catholics; they simply hate
us as Irish. "I
John Mitchell most happily and truly stated the
situation when he said, that to England the ma-
terial wealth of the Irish was "far more valuable
than their souls."
But the English Protestant people, as a people,
where they are even partially free from the in-
fluence of caste, which affects both Protestants and
Catholics alike, and from that hydra-headed mon-
ster of bigotry, which in both countries is mis-
called religion, have no such prejudice against the
Irish race. This was well proved during the years
of famine, when "the Q^ood will of the English
people" was shown by their subscription of more
than two million dollars, to relieve the distress of
* Ireland as She Is, by J. J. Clancy, p. 82.
+ "Domestic Prelate to His Holiness Pope Leo XIII." The Pope, p. i.
\ Ireland as She Is, p. 80.
,
MARKET VALUE OF IRISHMEN. ^3
the Irish; some, at least, of the English people,
going even without butter on their bread, "in order
that some money might be saved for the starving
poor of Ireland."*
It is therefore not to English Catholics nor to
Italian Catholics that Ireland must look for sym-
pathy and succor in her struggle for political lib-
erty and civil justice, but to the lovers of Liberty
and Justice, of all shades of religious belief,
throughout the world.
She has been sadly handicapped in her struggle,
by her dependence on the broken reed of Roman
honor.
I must close this prolific branch of my subject
with one more general statement and a couple of
historical examples.
Under all "their Catholic Majesties," from
Henry II. to Henry VIII. (nearly 400 years), the
Irish people, with the exception of five families,
were oudaws. They were murdered at will, like
dogs, by their English Catholic neighbors in Ire-
land, and there was no law to punish the murder-
ers. f
Yet, during all Of this unparalleled reign of ter-
ror, history fails to show a single instance in which
* The Parnell Movement, by T. P. O'Connor, p. 117.
+ Ireland as She Is, pp. 18 to 27 and citations.
34
IRELAND AND THE POPE,
the power of the Catholic Church was ever exer-
ted or suggested, by any pope, for the protection
of her faithful Irish children.
In the year 131 1, for example, and as a mere
illustration of the esteem in which Irish lives were
held by these Catholic princes: "Wm. Fritz
Roger, being arraigned for the felonious slaying
of Roger de Cantelon, comes and says, he could
not commit felony by means of such killing, be-
cause the aforesaid Roger (de Cantelon) was an
Irishman and not of free blood. And the jury
upon their oath say that the aforesaid Roger was
an Irishman, and therefo7-e the said William as far
as regards the said felony is acquitted.'' *
But as the aforesaid Roofer was found to be an
Irishman belonging to the King, the unlucky mur-
derer was "recommitted to jail, until he shall find
pledges to pay five marksf to our Lord the King,
for the vahie of the aforesaid lrishmany\
I suppose this penalty was imposed under some
of the English laws against poachmg, but as to
that, I am not prepared to make a positive state-
ment, and do not deem the subject of sufficient
importance for investigation, since the fine was
* Davies' Hist. Tracts, p. 78, et. seq. ; Ireland as She Is, p. 20; Dolby's
Hist., p. 58.
t About $16.50.
X Dolby's Plist., p. 58.
BOUNTIES FOR KILLING IRISHMEN. 35
manifestly not imposed for the protection of the
hves of Irishmen, but merely to preserve them ag»
chattels of the King.
In 1465 an act was passed (indirectly but effec-
tualty) giving rewards for the killing of Irish-
men, just as with us rewards are given for the
killing of coyotes;* and the marriage, fostering,
gossip and trade of English Catholics with Irish
Catholics, were made penal offenses by Catholic
parliaments and Catholic kings.''^ Under these
laws, murders innumerable — causeless, cruel,
sportive murders — were committed with impunity.
Through their bishops, archbishops, primates and
legates the popes must have been fully advised
concerning these atrocities; the English rulers and
people were Catholics, and as much subject to the
popes as the Irish now are; yet there was no ex-
communication and no threat of excommunication,
by any of the popes, against the English for their
hellish practices. But assuming that all of the
pope's legitimate advisers in Ireland were such
scoundrels and conspirators with the kings, upon
whose favor their offices depended, yet the plea of
ignorance could not be made for the popes.
O'Neill, King of Ulster, and other Irish princes,
* Ireland as She Is, p. 21.
+ Ireland as She Is, p. 20.
36
IRELAND AND THE POPE.
fully represented those grievances to Pope John
KXII., who paid no attention to them for more
than twelve years, when, at last, he sent a letter
to King Edward III., mildly advising that mon-
arch to adopt a different policy and to reform the
evils as speedily as possible. On what ground.-*
Solely on the ground of expediency; namely:
• " lest it might be too late hereafter to apply a
remedy when the spirit of revolt has grown
stronger.'"* »
If he had been dealino- with the Irish he would
have sent a bull commandinof them to desist with-
in a fixed time on pain of excommunication, but
the English, although Catholics, were not so much
afraid of bulls as were the Irish. Hence their
milder treatment.
Hence the Vatican, now so anxious to shield
the enemies and plunderers of the Irish people
from peaceful ostracism (boycotting), never lifted
the scepter of Church authority to shield the Irffeh
from wanton murder, outrage and robbery, when
those crimes, through centuries, were being per-
petrated by the English Catholic children of the
Church, t
* Haverty's Hist., pp. 255-6.
t King John of England was excommunicated by Pope Innocent III. , in
the year 1208, while the former was engaged in murdering the Irish and
devastating parts of their country ; but the excommunication had nothing to
do with his persecution of the Irish. It grew out of the Pope's refusal to
FEAR OF PAPAL BULLS. ZJ
The whole history of the Vatican shows that
ever since it assumed to be the political as well as
the religious head of the world (about the year
860),* its universal policy has been to crush
the weak; to friorhten the timid and to conciliate
the stronof and defiant.
Acting on this policy, and finding the Irish
people afraid of papal wrath, each succeeding
pope has traded for political and other advantages
with England on the strength of his power to
coerce and subdue the Irish people.
appoint the King's nominee as Archbishop of Canterbury, and the King's
refusal to allow Stephen Langdon, whom the Pope appointed, to act in
that capacity. The Pope ha\'ing frightened the King by inviting the
Catholic powers of Europe to invade England, this trouble was compromised.
The King agreeing to accept Langdon as Archbishop and to lay his crown
at the feet of Cardinal Pandulf, the Pope's Legate, who, after kicking it
contemptuously, replaced it on the King's head. Henr>' VIH. and Queen
Elizabeth, both cruel enemies of Ireland, were also excommunicated: the
first by Pope Paul IIL, in 1535, and the latter by Pope Pius V., in 1570;
but it is needless to say that these excommunications grew out of troubles
connected with the Protestant Reformation, and had nothing to do with the
persecution of Ireland. — J. G. M.
* Catholic Dictionary, Addis and Arnold, Tit. "Tiara."
38
IRELAND AND THE POPE.
CHAPTER V.
PAPAD INTERFERENCE WITH IRISH STRUGGLES FOR
LIBERTY AFTER THE CONQUEST.
Many Irish historians are specially severe in
their strictures on Adrian IV., ''the only English-
man who ever occupied the Papal throne," as if
he were the only pope who had ever interfered
with the political liberties of the Irish people, but
the acts of his successors are not a whit less
iniquitous.
I have already mentioned the bull of Pope Alex-
ander III., confirming the grant of Adrian, and the
action of his Legate at the Synod of Dublin in
1 1 77, wherein he threatened the excommunication
of such of the Irish people as refused to recognize
the right of King Henry to the sovereignty of Ire-
land.
I have also referred to the appointment, by the
popes, of English and pro-English bishops, arch-
bishops, primates and legates to rule over the
church in Ireland.
These prelates deemed it a part of their duty, no
doubt a pleasant part, to bless the loyal English
and to curse the rebellious Irish, in the name of
O NEILL S REBELLION. 39
the Catholic Church, in all controversies between
the races.
But, so strong was the love of liberty among the
Irish people (said to have been the growth of
thirty centuries),* that the ban of1;he local church
dignitaries was not sufficient to restrain it ; and,
even in the 14th century, 'England was obliged to
call for special interference from the Vatican.
In the year 13 15, after the memorable Scottish
victory on the field of Bannockburn, the princes
and popular leaders of the Irish people invited
Edward Bruce (brother of Robert Bruce) to enter
Ireland and make common cause with them in
their struggle for liberty. Accordingly, on May
25th of that year, Bruce landed in Ireland with six
thousand veterans. These were at once joined
by the Irish armies of Ulster. Castles were
stormed, cities were burned, "and," says the his-
torian, " in a very short space of time, no trace
of the English remained in Ulster but the desola-
tion of their former dwellings."t
Felim O'Connor, King of Connaught (whose
"dignity and possessions had been restored to
him by the English"), deserted the English and
cast his fortunes with the advancing armies of
* O'Halloran's Hist., p. 19.
j Dolby's Hist., p. 58.
40
IRELAND AND THE POPE.
O'Neil] and Bruce. " The O'Briens of Thomond,
and a great proportion of the toparchs of Mun-
ster and Meath (then a province), followed his ex-
ample." Their victorious armies swept over
Ossory and entered Munster. Here they met with
some reverses. English supremacy in Ireland
had reached a crisis, and, in the supreme moment,
England turned to Pope John XXII. "The
English interest soon began to revive, and the
Pope lent his powerful assistance to restore its as-
cendancy. Sentence of excommunication was
solemnly pronounced against Bruce and all his
adherents." *
Then followed the famous battle of Dundalk,
which sealed the fate of Ireland for all the suc-
ceeding centuries. The Pope's decree presided as
a grim spectre over the battle. " The Irish felt
that they foitght tmdei' the curse of the church ;
while the English were roused by the belief that
Heaven was on their side, and that the blessing
pronounced on their arms by the Primate, that very
morning, rendered them invincible."t
"Under the curse of the church!" Yes, every
battle for Ireland's liberty and for natural justice
to her plundered people, has been fought under
* Dolby's Hist., p. 59.
+ Dolby's Hist., p. 60.
I
THE CURSE OF THE CHURCH. 4I
the curse of the church. The orallant Irish, who
never shrank from the whistHng bullets or the cold
steel of their armed foes, have always withered
and failed under the bligliting breath of Roman
curses.
"How long, O Lord! how long". will the Irish
people stand divided between two opinions con-
cerning the Pope's authority to keep them in
political thraldom ?
So complete and demoralizing was the English
victory at Dundalk, and so crushing was the ven-
gence dealt out to the surviving leaders and help-
less people, that the Pope's personal services
were not again required by England in maintain-
ing the subjection of Ireland prior to the refor-
mation (1534).
CHAPTER VI.
THE RELIGIOUS WARS.
The religious rupture between England and
the Vatican, following the abolition of Papal
authority in English territory, led Pope Cle-
ment VIII. to foster the Irish rebellion of
1598 — not for the purpose of freeing Ireland, but
for the purpose of securing from England better
terms for the church — and accordingly in the year
42 IRELAND AND THE POPE.
following, he sent with Oviedo, a Spaniard whom
he had appointed Archbishop of Dublin, a number
of indulgences, with power to grant other indul-
gences, ''to those of the Irish who fought against ^|
the English in defense of the ancient religion."^
In the year 1643 Father Scarampi came to
Ireland as the Legate of Pope Urban VII I.,
bearing " a bull of indulgences to the Irish
Catholics; and he also brought with him from
Father Wadding (representative of the Catholic
Confederates of Ireland, at the Vatican) a sum of
$30,000, with a quantity of arms and ammuni-
tion."!
The insurrection of 1641 was then in progress,
but this uprising was not a struggle for Irish
nationality nor for the political emancipation of
the Irish people. Its purpose was to secure " a
partial transfer of property, and certain stipula-
tions in favor of the Church of Rome, "J the most
radical demand by the insurgents being "perfect
religious liberty. "||
It was directed and governed by " The Supreme
Council of the Confederate Catholics of Ireland,"§
* Dolby's Hist., p. 238 ; Haverty's Hist., p. 437.
t Haverty's Hist., p. 502.
X Haverty's Hist., pp. 480, 508, 517-18.
II Haverty's Hist., p. 501.
§ Haverty's Hist., p. 491.
\
^■P THE A.
"CTNIVERSITY ]
MUSKETS AND POWDER FROM THE POPE. 43
and was encouraged not only by the Pope but
also by the Catholic nations of Europe, especially
France and Spain.*
I dwell upon these details not for the purpose
of belittling the movement, nor to discredit the
Pope's services, but to show that in its true char-
acter it was a religious war between Catholic
Europe and Protestant England, of which Ireland
was the battle ground, in which the Pope was
equally interested with the Irish people, and that,
as in the struggle of 1598, the Irish armies, while
fighting for the grand and just and holy principle '
of religious liberty at home, were really helping
the Pope far more than they were being helped
by him. It may be justly said to have been
essentially his war, since, by abandoning him, all
the immunities claimed by the Irish would have
been promptly secured to them.
In 1645 Pope Innocent X., continuing the
policy of his predecessor, sent a nuncio to the
Council of the Confederate Catholics, and also
sent a few men, a little money, some munitions
and implements of war, and one ship, to aid them
in the struggle against religious persecution and
anti-Catholic penal laws.f
* Haverty's Hist., p. 502-7.
+ Haverty's Hist., p. 507.
44 IRELAND AND THE POPE.
These religious feuds necessarily estranged the
English Government from the Vatican for at least
two centuries, and apparently for a much longer
period. But none may know when or how the
subsequently discovered "regular underhand
intercourse"* was established, for it appears that,
even in the midst of this war, King Charles I . had an
emissary (Lord Herbert) in secret conference with
the papal nuncio (Father Rinuccini) with the
knowledge, however, of the Catholic Council, but
unknown to the regular representatives of his
own government. So that when an attempt was
made to negotiate a peace, the Catholic clergy
were "secretly acquainted with the intention of
the Kine to erant much more than Ormond
(Lord Lieutenant) stipulated for."t It would seem
that very little affecting Ireland for good or evil
was done by the Vatican from the close of this war
until the beginning of the present century.
* See p. 28.
+ Haverty.'s Hist., pp. 505-6.
IRELAND AND THE TOPE. 45
CHAPTER VII.
A SOP TO CERBERUS.
In the year 1795 a most extraordinary, but
keen, far-sighted and statesmanHke change was
made by the English Government in the matter
of governing the restless, liberty-craving Irish.
The preceding generations of religious perse-
cution had blended in the minds of the Irish peo-
ple the trials of the Catholic church and its priest-
hood with the wrongs of their race.* The priests
(a brave, noble and patriotic body of teachers and
comforters), had become their traditional advisers
in politics as well as in religious matters. No
priesthood in the world was ever nearer to the
hearts of its people, and none was ever more de-
servedly beloved. Though severe in discipline,
they were kind, generous and attentive and in full
sympathy with the national aspirations of the peo-
ple. Edmund Burke, Wm. Pitt, Lord Granville,
Chas. J. Fox and other English statesmen resolved
upon a plan, acceptable to the Vatican, and also
to the Irish bishops and representatives, by which
the great influence of the Irish priesthood might
* Mc'Carthy's Hist, of Our Own Times, Vol. IV, pp. 190 to 196.
46 IRELAND AND THE POPE.
be made, at least negatively, to serve the purposes
of the English Government.
This plan was no less than the establishment of
a royal college for the education of Irish Catholic
priests at the expense of the English Protestant
Government.
Accordingly, In that year the Pitt ministry
"recommended the Irish Parliament to appropri-
ate a grant of eight thousand pounds ($40,000) per
annum, to support a college for the education of
the Irish priesthood,"* and that sum was there-
upon appropriated for the maintenance of the
Catholic Theological College of Maynooth.
In the year 1807 (after the Union) this grant
was increased by the British Parliament to ^13,-
000 ($65,000) per annum.
The purpose was to educate for the priesthood,
in this college, the sons of the common people of
all parts of Ireland; to educate them out of ''the
Irish idea" into a sort of patriotic conservatism.
The idea was not to make them pro-English, nor
even unpatriotic, for that would destroy their very
valuable influence with the people, but it was to
make them more Catholic than Irish, eager to
struggle for Ireland when unrestrained, but ready
to sacrifice the cause of Ireland to the cause of the
* Mooney's Hist., p. 1535.
RELIGIO-POLITICAL GOVERNMENT.
church, or to church discipHne, at any moment,
upon the call of their religious superiors.
The priests so selected and educated were to be
distributed through all the 2,500 parishes of Ire-
land, at least one being assigned to each parish.
The strength and elasticity of this new scheme
of religio-political government must be at once
apparent. This great body of pro-Irish priests,
moving and sympathizing with the people, yet
bound to an absolute obedience, to a small body
of pro-English bishops, selected for their ''unim-
peachable loyalty"* to the English Government
and all controlled as absolutely as if they were
automatons by an Italian pontiff, f the latter (gen-
erally a member of the Italian nobility, or 7ioblesse
— a most important fact — as I will presently show),
being in league with the British Government
through unofficial, but all powerful, secret ambas-
sadors.
This was the scheme, J and from all that we can
glean from the pages of Irish history, the Vatican
and the government seem to have been in full
accord concerning it.
Its immediate success was greatly hindered by
* See p. 2S.
t "In his subjects the Holy Father has inculcated the union of all hearts
in the cause of Holy Church; * * * * a loyal obedience of people to
pastors, and of people and pastors to the Holy See." (The Pope, by Mon-
signor Capel, Domestic Prelate of his Holiness Pope Leo XHI,, p. 38.
X See pp. 53-5.
48 IRELAND AND THE POPE.
the hostility or indifference of those who succeeded
to the control of public affairs after the increased
grant of 1807, but the college endowment did not
cease to form a strong bond of union between the
government and the Vatican.
The strength of this bond may be surmised from
the fact that the Vatican favored a public statute,
giving the English Protestant government a
voice m the selection of Irish Catholic bishops.
My authority for this statement is that in 18 10 I
the English Catholics charged the Irish with
"wavering in their allegiance to the pope" be-
cause they opposed the measure,* and in 18 14 pub-
liehed a rescript from Pope Pius VI I, , expressly
recommending that concession. Daniel O'Connell,
subsequently (in 1832), speaking of this period
said: "the Catholic laity were totally repugnant to
allow the crown any power to nominate the Cath-
olic bishops of Ireland.
We steadily opposed the Court of Rome, as vv^ell
as the inclination shown by our own prelates; we
resolutely resisted the wishes of our nobility, and
of so many of our merchants, backed as they were
by the almost universal voice of the Catholics of
England."t
In view of the secret relations of the govern-
* Haverty's Hist., p. 748.
t Haverty's Hist., p. 761.
M
%
THE REPEAL MOVEMENT. 49
ment and the Vatican, as subsequently discovered,
this measure seems to have been unimportant,
since the government already enjoyed the secret
privilege of doing all that the act contemplated.
CHAPTER YIII.
THE REPEAL MOVEMENT KILLED BY A RESCRIPT.
In the year 1829, O'Connell organized the great
Repeal movement, which has immortalized his
name, and which gave such bright promise of ful-
filling the last prayer of the illustrious Emmet.
It grew with amazing rapidity. Around the
leader gathered a grand galaxy of statesmen,
poets, and orators, whose words and works cast
an imperishable luster over Erin's race, and lent
a new dignity to the character of man. The peo-
ple of Ireland believed in them and flocked, not
in thousands, nor in tens of thousands merely,
but in hundreds of thousands, to their meetings,
eager to learn the gospel of political deliverance
from their lips. The tide of this political move-
ment rose and rolled with majestic power. Re-
form after reform was accomplished. Proposi-
tion after proposition was made by the English
•
Government. Anything short of a total repeal of
the Union could be had by the Irish for the ask-
50 IRELAND AND THE POPE.
ing ; and even repeal, with broader, better, hap-
pier conditions than those that had been lost by
the Union, seemed almost within reach. O'er the
long-watched horizon of hope deferred, the sun-
burst of freedom was breakine. But lo ! the God-
dess of Irish Liberty, lately so joyful, is weeping.
She faints, she reels ! What evil fortune has be-
fallen her ? Alas ! the fano-s of the Vatican ser-
pent have been driven again to her heart. The
learned and patriotic priesthood of Ireland had be-
come the teachers and leaders of the people of this
movement, in every parish. Pope Gregory XVI.,
in the year 1843, '' at the urgent instigation of the
British Ministry, through the Austrian Ambassa-
dor at Rome, and through the more direct agency
of a Mr. Petre, who, it appears, had acted on be-
half of England at the Court of the Holy See " * |
issued a rescript commanding the priests of Ire-
land to refrain from attending the repeal meet-
ings. This treacherous and unexpected blow had
a stunning effect upon the movement. It silenced
at once thousands of its active and trusted leaders.
It was as if all the commissioned officers of their
mighty army had been captured at once by the
enemy.
O'Connell saw in this rescript the doom of his \
i^-..,. _
* Mooney's Hist., Vol. H., p. 1530.
KILLED BY A RESCRIPT. 5 1
race and country; the blasting of all his cherished
hopes.
He rose in the grandeur of his almost super-
human power to meet and turn the blow of the
Holy See. He published a letter to prove that
the rescript was an illegal interference with the
civil liberties of the clergy.* In the agony of his
soul be uttered his famous cry: ''As much religion
as you please from Rome, but no politics^
He called upon the clergy to stand by the
movement and they did, at least mechanically, re-
spond, Mooney thereupon says: "The clergy
are as much repealers as they ever were, and the
current of agitation goes on quite as steadily and
powerfully as before the document was issued. "f
Alas ! the events prove the contrary. During
the paralysis, which resulted from the blow, the
fatal decay of disentegration had set in.
The priests came forward as before, but not
with the firm step and earnest purpose of their
former enthusiasm. They wavered between love
of country and vows of obedience. The mighty
movement, then in its prime, |; which had grown
and flourished and triumphed for fifteen years,
withered and died. Within three years from the
* Mooney 's Hist., pp. 1 530-1.
t Mooney's Hist., p. 1531,
i Haverty's Hist., 786-7,
52 IRELAND AND THE POPE.
date of the rescript it had joined the empire of the
eternal past.
Poor O'Connell, most faithful son of the Church,
truest friend of the Vatican, he must have felt
most keenly:
"How colder than the wind that freezes,
Founts that but now in sunshine played,
Is the congealing pang which seizes
The trusting bosom when betrayed."
He died at Genoa of a broken heart on May
15th, 1847, and strangely willed his heart* to the
destroyers of his life and his country.f
THE PRICE OF THE RESCRIPT.
What was the consideration which moved the
Vatican to issue the rescript ?
As it was the result of secret negotiations, the
details of which have never been direcdy published
or made known, it is impossible to say, authorita-
tively, what was its price ; but certain it is that
shortly before and shordy after its issuance the
British Government- made legislative concessions
to the Church which were most pleasing to the
Vatican.
The first was the repeal of the obnoxious stat-
* The Parnell Movement, p. 69.
t It is but just to his memory to state that he was then suffering from
softening of the brain, superinduced by the mental agony involved in
witnessing the dying struggles of his cherished movement. Young Ireland, p.
531; the Parnell Movement, p. 13.
«S
«!
PRICE OF THE RESCRIPT.
53
ute of Mortmain, in 1842. The repeal of this law-
was a just and proper measure, and was generally
supposed to have been forced from the government
by the Repeal Association, but, in the light of
events following so closely after it, there may be
some force in the suggestion that it was in part
the result of the repeal agitation and in part the
price of its destruction.
The other concession was an act of Parliament
passed in [845, increasing the grant to Maynooth
College from ^13,000 to ^26,000 ($130,000) per
annum, and making an additional appropriation of
^30,000 ($150,000) for the enlargement of its
buildings.
Speaking of this grant, Mr. Thomas Power
O'Connor says : " Sir Robert Peel, by the con-
cession of a larger grant to Maynooth, still further
disintegrated the forces of O'Connell by bringing
pressure on the Vatican, and, through the Vatican,
on some of the bishops ; and so O'Connell's
power began gradually to melt away." *
On the passage of this act, Richard Lalor Shiel,
Catholic member of Parliament for Dungarvan,
who had discredited his patriotism by accept-
ing an appointment to office under the
* Pamell Movement, p. 15.
>i
I
54 IRELAND AND THE POPE.
English Government, * made a most remark- •
able speech, openly avowing, reviewing, and
enforcing the purposes of the original College
grant, of which it may not be uninteresting to
quote a few passages here : '' You are taking a
step in the right direction," he said. ''You are
advancing in a career of which you have left the
starting post far behind, and of which the goal
perhaps is not far distant. You must not take the f
Catholic clergy into your pay, but you can take the
Cat Jiolic Church under yom^ care. * * * May-
nooth was founded in a p-reat measure at the suof-
gestion of the apostle of order, the great Edmund
Burke. Let him be assured that he has made f
great progress in the art of governing Ireland, by
whom the works of Edmund Burke are perused
with admiration. That sagacious man saw that it
was not to the interest of Protestant Engfland that
the priesthood of Catholic Ireland should be edu-
cated in France ; he thought that evils could arise
from a French and Irish ecclesiastical fraterniza-
tion ; he did not wish that French principles
should be imported into every Irish parish, and
he denounced the introduction of a Gallo-Hiber-
nian establishment into Ireland. Edmund Burke
was of opinion that the Irish Catholic priesthood
should be educated by the state and for the state.
* Parnell Movement, p. 76.
%l
PRIESTS TO KEEP DOWN SEDITION. 55
Give the Catholic priest and the Irish Protest-
ant proprietor a common interest in maintaining
the institutions of their country and their reconcil-
iation will be immediate and complete. Indeed
the only danger to be apprehended is, that their
alliance may become too unqualified and too com-
pact. * * * * Great ability will be allured into
Maynooth — gold for genius has a magnetic power.
* * "^ Locate in every parish an educated Cath-
olic priest, whose mind has undergone the process
of literary refinement, and you will accomplish
much in the way of national amelioration. * * *
Even if the sum to be granted were five times
what the minister recommends you to concede,
there is so much true economy in the results of
wise legislation that your very love of saving
should induce you to act with liberality to Ireland.
Are not lectures at Maynooth cheaper than State
prosecutions ? Are not professors less costly than
crown solicitors ? Is not a large standing army,
and a g7'eat constabulary foi'ce, more expensive than
the moral police with which, by the priesthood of
Ireland, you can be thriftily and efficaciously sup-
plied r'^
Why did Shiel suppose that the priests educated
at Maynooth would render the same service for
* Shiel's Speeches, by MacNevin, p. 338, et seq.
56 IRELAND AND THE POPE.
England that had previously been rendered by-
state prosecutors, crown solicitors, the standing
army, and the constabulary force?
Why did the English Government believe the
promise and make the grant ?
There can be but one answer. The English
Government, then in secret diplomatic correspond-
ence with the Vatican,^ had satisfactory assurances
that none but pro-English bishops and archbish-
ops would be appointed for Ireland, and that, by ed-
ucating her priesthood into a sufficiently rigid polit-
ical subserviency to their religious superiors, they
might readily be made the unconscious instru-
ments of English tyranny, and might ultimately
aid in eliminating the spirit of nationality from the
Irish character.
These, at least, were the hopes and expecta-
tions of the English Government, and, if they have
in anything failed, the failure has certainly not
been the fault of the Vatican or its Anglo-Irish
bishops, as we shall see.
* See p. 28.
IRELAND AND THE POPE.
57
I
CHAPTER IX.
YOUNG IRELAND MOVEMENT KILLED BY BISHOPS
AND PRIESTS.
When the repeal movement passed away, the
spirit of Irish nationality was represented by the
Young Ireland Party — "the men of '48."
Of this party the illustrious Alexander M. Sul-
livan says : "They were pre-eminently the party of
religious tolerance. The leading idea, in what
may be called their home policy, was to break down
the antagonism between Catholics and Protestants
in Ireland."*
The following lines, from the pen of the immor-
tal Thomas Davis, well illustrates the noble and
truly fraternal spirit of the movement :
"Wliat matter that at different shrines
We pray unto one God ?
^^Tlat matter that at different times
Our fathers won this sod ?
In fortune and in name were bound
By stronger links than steel ;
And neither can be safe or sound
But in the other's weal.
* * * * *
And oh, it were a gallant deed
To show, before mankind,
How every race and every creed
Might be by love combined —
Might be combined, yet not forget
The fountains whence they rose,
As filled by many a rivulet
The stately Shannon flows."
* New Ireland, p. 98.
58 IRELAND AND THE POPE.
Equally grand, liberal and inspiring was his
famous "Orange and Green," addressed to his
fellow Protestants of Ulster, in which these lines
occur :
" Freedom fled us ;
Knaves misled us ;
Under the feet of the foeman we lay ;
But in their spite
The Irish unite
For Orange and Green will carry the day."
In like strain wrote also those glorious daughters
of Erin: "Eva,"* " Mary."t and " Speranza."t
In one of the last poems of " Speranza," pub-
lished in the Nation, occurs the following :
" We are bUnd, not discerning the promise,
'Tis the sword of the spirit that kills ;
Give us Ught and the fetters fall from us,
For the strong soul is free when it wills,"
Did these lines have reference to the subject
which I am now discussing ?
In vain, in vain! all, all in vain ! Again, as at
Dundalk, the champions of Irish liberty "fought
under the curse of the Church."
The Catholic clergy set themselves invincbily
against the movement.
Quoting again from Sullivan, who was an
* Eva Mary Kelly, afterwards Mrs. Kevin O'Dougherty.
t Ellen Downing. She died of grief, on being discarded by Joe Brennan,
her patriot lover.
X Jane Frances Eglee, daughter of a Protestant minister; now Lady
Wilde and mother of Oscar Wilde.
HOSTILITY OF THE CLERGY. 59
active participant, and, at the same time, an
earnest Catholic, and even an extreme Ultramon-
tane (being one of the chief organizers of the "Irish
Brigade " for the Pope's army in i860),* we find :
"At this time, in 1848, the power of the Catholic
priests was unbroken — was stronger than ever.
The famine scenes, in which their love for the
people was attested by heroism and self sacrifice
such as the world had never seen surpassed, had
given them an influence which none could ques-
tion or withstand. Their antagonism was fatal to
the movement — more surely and infallibly fatal to
it than all the power of the British Crown. "f
The famine-years undoubtedly called forth the
noblest traits of all true characters. All honor to
the Catholic priests for having done their priestly
duty so nobly in that awful period, but it should
be remembered that many of their Protestant
brethren of the cloth were also self-sacrificing.
Of this the following instance, given by Mr.
Sullivan, is a striking example:
" The Protestant curate of my native parish, in
1847, was the Rev. Alexander Ben Hallowell,
* New Ireland, pp. 277 to 286.
t New Ireland, p. 119; John Mitchell says: "About the year 1850
Ireland became thoroughly subjugated, without almost a hope of escape.
Everything was fitted to the hand of her enemy, and that enemy made most
unrelenting use of the advantage. The Catholic bishops counselled obedi-
ence and submission." Hist. Ireland, Vol. II, p. 252.
1ft
60 IRELAND AND THE POPE.
subsequently rector of Clonakilty, and now I be.
lieve residing somewhere in Lancashire. There
were comparatively few of his own flock in a way
to suffer from the famine, but he dared death
daily in his efforts to save the perishing creatures
around him. A poor hunchback, named Richard
O'Brien, lay dying of the plague in a deserted '
hovel at a place called ' The Custom Gap.' Mr. '^:
Hallowell passing by heard the moans and went |
in. A shocking sight met his view. On some
rotten straw, in a dark corner, lay poor ' Dick ' '
naked, except a few rags across his body. Mr.
Hallowell rushed to the door and saw a young |
friend on the road. ' Run, run with this shilling ^^
and buy me some wine,' he cried. Then he re-
entered the hovel, stripped off his own clothes,
and with his own hands put upon the plague- *
stricken hunchback the flannel vest and drawers
and shirt of which he had just divested himself.
/ hzow this to be true. I was the 'young friend '
who went for and brought the wine^^
Noble priests ! noble ministers ! Surely none
of such men will be cast out of Heaven for mak-
ing a mistake in the selection of his creed !
But why did this devoted Irish Catholic priest-
hood destroy the "Young Ireland" movement.^
* New Ireland, p. 91.
THE ALLEGED REASON. 6l
It is said in their defense that "they regarded the
Young Irelanders with suspicion." That: "They
fancied they saw in this movement too much that
was akin to the work of the continental revolu-
tionists, and, greatly as they disliked the domina-
tion of England, they would prefer it a thousand
times to such 'liberty' as the carbonari would pro-
claim."*
If I could believe that the Irish Catholic clergy
acted in good faith on their own judgment, even
on this ridiculously mistaken opinion of the
"Young Irelanders," I would not feel privileged
to say one word in denunciation of their conduct;
for, as Irishmen, each had an unquestionable
right, according to his honest judgment, to favor
or oppose any movement affecting the political
liberty of his country.
But I cannot believe that they opposed the
movement for any such reason nor upon their in-
dependent judgment.
They knew that the movement was led by great
and gifted statesmen, who fully realized their re-
sponsibility, and who, in public and in private.f
opposed the methods of the carbonari and of the
continental revolutionists. They knew also that
* New Ireland, p. 119.
t See letter of Gavan Duffy to Wm. Smith O'Brien, from Newgate
Prison. Ncw Ireland, p. 117.
62 IRELAND AND THE POPE.
neither the French Revolution then in progress,
nor even the "carnival of fire and blood" which
reigned in France at the close of the last century,
could add one terror to the sufferings which the
Irish people had endured and were enduring.
The artificial famine produced by English mis-
government and landlord avarice was still upon
them, and held them in its torturing grasp. v.
On the combination rack of landlord-bred >
>
famine and famine-bred fever, the Irish people, in
tens of thousands, were dying in agony, homeless
and shelterless, in sight of the cabins which their I.
own hands or the hands of their ancestors had |
built, but from which inhuman landlordism had |
evicted them, in their hour of direst affliction. ^^' .
Thev were huneerinof to death in sight of grana-
ries filled with fruits which the God-given soil of I
Ireland had yielded to the inspiration of their \
own toil, but which, under the malign power of \
English laws, they had been compelled to sur- |
render to idle landlords. f
These landlords had, and have, no purpose in I
living, save that of collecting toll from their in- \
dustrious fellow-men; giving absolutely nothing in
return except a superfluous assent to their victims'
God-given privilege of using the natural resources
of their native land.
THE FAMINE ARTIFICIAL. 63
Justin McCarthy, an eye witness, speaking of
this period (1847 to 1857), says: "Evictions
took place by the hundred, by the thousand, by
the ten thousand — evictions as much for grazier's
purposes as for non-payment of rent, which in
those evil days of famine and failure they could
not pay. Winter or summer, day or night, fair or
foul weather, the tenants were ejected. Sick or
well, bed-ridden or dying, the tenants — men, women
or children — were turned out. They might go to
America if they could ; they might die on the
roadside, if so it pleased them. They were out
of the hut, and the hut was unroofed that they
miofht not seek its shelter agfain, and that was all
the landlord cared about."*
These evictors and their allies, bear in mind,
are the hell-hounds whom the Holy Father (?) is
now so eager to shield from peaceful ostracism
and legal embarrassments at the hands of their
victims.
There was not even a scarcity of food in Ire-
land during the years of famine, but only a failure
of the immediate crops on which the plundered
tenantry depended. f
* Ireland since the Union, p. 141.
t "The harvest of 1847 was also very abundant in Ireland, and it was
one of the deadliest years of famine. The English offered thanksgivings to
God for the Irish harvests, and then devoured them," Mitchell's Hist., Vol.
II, p. 252.
64 IRELAND AND THE POPE.
Mrs. Nicholson, another eye witness, in her
soul-harrowing work, "Lights and Shades of Ire-
land," says : " What shall be said of the pitiful
landlords, who were still drinking their wine,
while pouring their doleful complaints into gov-
ernment's ears, that no rents were paid. * * * *
But these afflicted landlords were exporting to
the continent vast quantities of grain, which their
poor starving tenants had labored to produce.
They were not allowed to eat a morsel of their
food, but must buy it from others or starve."*
And again. "Next to the absurdity of Cork
and Limerick exporting cargoes of Irish grain for
sale, and at the same time receiving cargoes of
American grain to be given away at the cost of
the English people, may be ranked the folly, if it
may not properly be called by some worse name,
of seeing hundreds dying for want of food, at the
same time permitting the conversion of as 7iutch
grain as would feed the whole of those dying of
■ii
starvation, and many more, into a fiery liquid \
which * * * * never saved a single life or im
proved a single character. "f
Was this abject poverty of the Irish tenantry 1
due to idleness or improvidence .'^ No. In years ij'.,
*pp. 30-1.
I
" pp. ^u-i.
+ Lights and Shades, p. 130.
IRISH SELF-SACRIFICE. 65
of plenty as well as in years of scarcity the tenant
is robbed of all the fruits of his labor, except that
in good years he is left a slave's portion, enough
to keep body and soul together.
Industry, providence and self-sacrifice are and
were the general characteristics of the Irish peas-
antry. One illustration, among thousands that I
might cite, must here suffice. It is also from the
pen of Mrs. Nicholson. She had been riding on
a car on which a tattered and repulsive looking
man was also seated. On alighting from the car
this man fell prostrate in the passage. She found
that his weakness "was exhaustion, occasioned by
hunger," and thus proceeds: "When he could
speak in a whisper, he begged Mrs. Arthur to
take a few sovereigns which he had sewed in his
raeeed coat, and send them to his wife and chil-
dren, who were suffering for food. He had been
at work in England, and, knowing the dreadful
state his family were in at home, had saved a few
sovereigns, not willing to break one, and endea-
vored to reach home on a few shillings he had, and
being so weak for want of food he occasionally
rode a few miles when it rained and had not eaten
once in two days."*
It is to be hoped that the poor wife and children
* Lights and Shades, p. 1 19.
66 IRELAND AND THE POPE.
obtained the money without the knowledge of the
landlord's factor, as, otherwise, it must surely have
gone to buy wine for the landlord instead of food
for them.
This spirit of self-sacrifice was not confined to
mothers and fathers : " It is expected that mothers
will suffer and even die for their famishing little
ones, if needful ; but to see children suffer for one
another, was magnanimity above all. Two house-
less, starving little orphan boys," says Mrs. Nich-
olson, "one about nine and the other five, called
at the door of a rich widow of my acquaintance
and asked for food. The woman had consumed
all her bread at breakfast but a small piece, and
giving this to the eldest she said : You must
divide this with your little brother; I have no
more." She then tells us that the lady "looked
after them unperceived" and saw the elder boy
give the whole piece to the other, and turn away
to stifle the pangs of his own hunger while his
weaker companion devoured it.*
And these, bear in mind incidentally, are the
people from whom the present Pope, by the spir-
itual terror and coercion of his rescript, seeks to
take away the only effective peaceful weapons of
self-defense that they have ever had against the
* Lights and Shades, p. 120.
I
IRELAND S CONDITION.
67
murderous and thrice damnable institution of land-
lordism.
Everywhere throughout the Island these scenes
appeared, shocking the sight, freezing the souls
and haunting the memories of beholders, and all
produced directly by the two institutions against
which the gallant Young Irelanders were contend-
ing.
With the white lips, the glassy eyes and the
bony fingers of gaunt visaged famine thus every-
where pleading for succor or death, what had Ire-
land to fear from "the methods of the continental
revolutionists?" Absolutely nothing.
Why then did the priesthood oppose the only
movement that had for its object the removal of
the causes, or any of the causes, of this artificial
famine and this systematic plunder of the indus-
trious bv the idle ?
■
My answer is, that they must have been acting
under orders from the Pope and the bishops.
John Mitchell says: "The Catholic bishops
counseled obedience and submission" to the English
Government,* and we know that the bishops, besides
being appointed for their " unimpeachable loyalty,"
are directed largely by secret orders from the Vat-
ican, which they are sworn to keep secret even
* Mitchell's Hist., Vol. II, p. 252.
68 IRELAND AND THE POPE. "
from the priests of their jurisdictions. In such
cases the orders of the Pope are issued to the
priests and people as if they originated with the
bishops.
Assuming that, if the Pope did directly bring
his authority to bear on the Irish bishops, "^ and
through them on the priests and people to de-
stroy the Young Ireland movement, his action
must have been induced by some consideration
moving from the English Government, I immedi- -
atelv looked for acts of Parliament relating to the
church and the Vatican.
Strangely enough, I find that in the year 1848
— the pivotal year of the Young Ireland struggle
— a political privilege vi^hich had previously been
denied for over three hundred years, was accorded
to the Pope by an act of Parliament. f
By this act the Government was authorized to
re-open diplomatic relations with the Pope and to
receive, in regal state, a papal ambassador at the
Court of St. James.
To those not familiar with the history of the J
Vatican, since it has fallen under the absolute do- 5
minion of what has been most aptly called " the ?•
Italian Ring," this may seem a small price to en-
* Parnell's Movement, p. 15.
T Stats. II and 12, Vict. (1848), Chap. 108, p. 686. %
THE VATICAN AGAIN.
69
gage the head of the Catholic Church in assisting
to perpetuate the bondage of six miUions of faith-
ful Catholics,* but to those who have read and
watched the political history and movements of
that ring, the sufficiency of the consideration will
be quite apparent.
Those who have observed the painful eager-
ness with which the cardinals and popes — " the
princes" f and "supreme rulers of the world" I —
have bent " the pregnant hinges of their knees,"
and extended their hands, for small political favors,
from the temporal rulers of European nations, will
realize the tremendous importance attached by
the Vatican to this recognition at the Eno-lish
Court. II
This act constitutes the missing link and com-
pletes the chain of causation. It makes plain the
fact, and the reason, that the Vatican required the
Irish priesthood to oppose the Young Ireland
movement. The English Government had pur-
chased its support and the quid pro qtio must be
given.
* The sad remnant of the eight millions of two years before; Hist, of Our
Own Times, Vol. I, p. 324.
+ "The rank of Cardinal, in its temporal aspect, is equivalent to that of
a reigning prince. On their seals they have their own arms, with the red
hat as crest." Catholic Dictionaiy, Tit. "Cardinal," p. 120.
X Catholic Dictionary, Tit. "Tiara," p. 796.
II For the enlightenment of those to whom this knowledge may not be
common, I have inserted a chapter on Vatican politics.
70
IRELAND AND THE POPE.
What did it matter that Ireland was on the rack
of a law-imposed famine ?* What did it matter
that two millions of her people were dyingf for
want of the bread which they had produced from
mother earth, but of which they had been robbed
by landlordism— the cruel creature of Eng-lish
law ? What did it matter that extermination by
famine was the declared purpose of the govern-
ment presSjJ and of government representatives, ||
with respect to the Irish question ? As a com-
pensation for all this, it was surely sufficient
that the church (which meant, and still means, the
Italian Ring in the chiircJi) had made a great ad-
vance. The political ambition of three centuries
had been attained ! Glory hallelujah ! the Pope's
legate was again permitted to strut in the Court of
St. James !
Joy reigned in Rome ! Gloom spread over the
camp of the Irish patriots !
" Their tents were all silent, their banners alone,
Their lances unlifted, their trumpets unblown."
* Irish famines are not natural famines, they are artificial famines ;
they are not made by the Lord, but by the landlord ; they are not famines
of food — there is always plenty of that in Ireland — but famines of money
with which to buy^food from landlords, who have taken the fruits of the soil
as rent for land, to which they have generally no moral title." Ireland of
To-day, p. 184.
t Hist, of Our Own Times, Vol. I., p. 324.
t "In a few years," said the London Times, exultingly, "a Celtic Irish-
man will be as rare in Connemara as is the red Indian on the slopes of the
Manhattan." Ireland Since the Union, p. 144.
II Ireland of To-day, pp. 46 and 191.
THE CHURCH AGAINST THE FENIANS. /I
Ri^ht or wrong, for good or evil, another " Irish
movement" lay dead at the feet of the triumphant
Vatican !
The principal leaders of the movement were
sentenced to be " hanged, disemboweled and quar-
tered," but this barbarous sentence was commuted
by Act of Parliament to transportation for life,*
Of the others, numbers were convicted and hun-
dreds fled to exile, and Ireland suffered not only
the sacrifice of many of "her best and noblest
sons," but also " in the terrible re-action, prostra-
tion, terrorism and disorganization that ensued. "f
CHAPTER X.
THE FENIAN MOVEMENT OPPOSED BY THE CHURCH.
Passing over the Tenant League agitation, the
next serious effort for the liberation of Ireland
was the Fenian movement, organized by a few
daring spirits in May, 1858.
The purpose was to organize and drill an Irish
army; to have them supplied with munitions of
war by similar organizations of Irishmen in Amer-
ica ; to rise at a given signal ; storm the English
strongholds and proclaim Ireland free.| It was
* New Ireland, p. 125.
+ New Ireland, p. 125.
t New Ireland, p. 264, et. seq.
72 IRELAND AND THE POPE.
too loosely oro-anized, for a movement so serious^
and was in many respects impracticable and reck-
less, but it was full of genuine patriotism, and love
of a country whose condition was so wretched and
desperate that it could not be seriously injured by
their adventure.
Bishop Moriarty, of Kerry, within an hour after
learning of the movement,* commenced a bitter
warfare against it. The Catholic clergy were soon
denouncing it throughout Ireland as a "secret
society" unauthorized by the church.
Over this issue '' the Fenian movement, on its
very threshold, was plunged into a bitter war with-
the ecclesiastical authorities of the Catholic
Church. ' The priest has no right to interfere in or
dictate our politics,' said the Fenian leaders ; 'ours-
is a political movement ; they must not question %
us or impede us. ' ' You cannot be admitted to |
the sacrament until you give up and repent of illi- j
cit oaths,' responded the Catholic priests, ' and if I
you contumaciously continue in membership of an
oath-bound secret society, you are liable to excom-
munication.'"
" Do you hear this ? We are cursed by the
church for loving our country !" exclaimed the
Fenians;" and thus the quarrel continued for five ^
* New Ireland, p, 264.
MORIARTY S REGRET.
years.* The movement grew, and attained con-
siderable proportions, but in face of such opposi-
tion it could not accomplish much.
In 1867 three of its promoters — Allen, O'Brien
and Larkin — were hanged. These men died
with the prayer: " God Save Ireland," on their
lips; while their gentle Christian antagonist, Bish-
op Moriarty, of " unimpeachable loyalty "f re-
gretted that "hell was not hot enough nor eter-
nity long enough to punish such miscreants.''^
CHAPTER XI.
HOME RULE MOVEMENT OPPOSED BY THE CHURCH.
On the 19th day of May, 1870, the present
Home Rule Movement was instituted. It was a
purely peaceable movement to secure, by constitu-
tional agitation, "the establishment of an Irish
parliament, with full control over domestic af-
fairs."|l At this meeting were " men who never
before met in politics save as irreconcilable foes.
The Oraneeman and the Ultramontane, the
staunch Conservative and the sturdy Liberal, the
National Repealer and the Imperial Unionist, the
* New Ireland, p. 312.
t See page 28.
t Parnell movement, p. 227.
II New Ireland, p. 450.
74 IRELAND AND THE POPE.
Fenian Sympathizer and the devoted loyalist, sat
in free and friendly counsel."*
Even at this heteroo-eneous meeting the resolu-
tion in favor of Home Rule was adopted unani-
mously.
But the Catholic Bishop of Derry was more
loyal to English rule than all of these, so he op-
posed the movement, and in January, 1S71, he
publicly denounced it. ;
Like Cardinal Cullen he " was always on the <•
-^
side of the Government as against all struggles of ?f
Nationalists, on the principle that England could :'
do more for the interests of the church than any %
National Party. "f
The British Government was at that time hold-
ing out a proposition to establish a Catholic Uni-
versity in Ireland, for the purpose of drawing the |
Catholic clergy away from the popular move- "
ment, and it had "a powerful effect with some of
the Catholic bishops and clergy. "J Early in 1872 the
Home Rulers noticed that important newspapers
under the control and influence of the Catholic
clero-v " beo-an to draw off from the movement
and to say that the demand for Home Rule was,
* New Ireland, p. 444.
t Parnell Movement, p. 140.
i New Ireland, p. 456.
THE CLERICAL PARTY. 75
no doubt, very right and just, but it was inoppor-
tune.^'*
Did the finger of Rome direct this change of
heart on the part of the Irish clergy ? I cannot
prove it by direct evidence, but viewing and judg-
ing the circumstances in the light of experiences
prior and subsequent to that time, I may fairly
say that it so appears to a moral certainty and
beyond all reasonable doubt.
The movement grew and prospered, but the
opposition of the clergy continued. On the 6th
of August, 1875, ^t ^ banquet given in honor of
the centenary of the birth of Daniel O'Connell, a
•number of Catholic clergymen, native and foreign,
were present, and an unseemly discussion arose
between the clergymen and the Home Rulers on
the question of Home Rule, which resulted in much
dissension, and, immediately afterwards, Mr.
McSwiney, Lord Mayor of Dublin, organized, or
tried to organize, a sort of clerical counter move-
ment to draw away the strength of the Home
Rule Party, calling it the "Faith and Fatherland
Party."
On the 15th of August, 1879, the price of this
clerical opposition to the Home Rule movement
was duly paid by Parliament, by the abolition of
* New Ireland, p. 456,
76
IRELAND AND THE POPE.
the Queen's University in Ireland and the estab^
lishment in its stead of a new University for Ro-
man Catholics.
CHAPTER XII.
THE LAND LEAGUE OPPOSED BY THE POPE.
In September, 1879, the Irish National Land
League was formed, not to replace, but to supple-
ment, the Home Rule movement.
Another artificial famine was approaching, and
the real purpose of the League was to intercept
landlord extortion and to check evictions ; thus
preventing the re-enactment of the horrible fam-
ine scenes of 1847-8.
The lives of many thousands of Irish families
were saved, and this immediate success in giving
shelter and protection to the masses of the people
from the one ever dreaded enemy — landlordism — ■
rallied the people in hundreds of thousands to the
standard of Parnell and Davitt.
In the midst of this struggle to keep the un-
fortunate tenantry under the shelter of their own
cabins during the famine ; while subscriptions to
the famine fund, for the relief of the starving
Irish, were slowly arriving from the generous
hearted of Canada, Australia, the United States,
ALL FOR A CARDINALS HAT. "J^
and even from far-off India; and while factors
and bailiffs and soldiers and constables and crow-
bar brigades were evicting^ the unfortunates and
leveling their huts, and as far and fast as the pas-
sive resistance of the unarmed people would per-
mit, re-enacting the horrors of 1847-8 — even in
this awful crisis — the Roman Catholic Archbishop
of Dublin (McCabe), in full cry with the blood-
hounds of landlordism, had a pastoral letter pub-
lished in the churches of his arch-diocese condemn-
ing the Land League agitation.
On the loth of October, 1880, and again on the
30th of October, 1881, the same Archbishop re-
newed his thunders against those who by passive
resistance defended the lives and homes of the
people, in new, and truly "loyal," pastoral letters.
In March, 1881, a Ladies' Land League was
formed for the most humane and Christian purpose
of "raising funds, inquiring into cases of eviction,
and affording relief to evicted tenants. As soon
as this new organization came into existence it
was assailed" by this red-cap-hunting hound of the
Vatican — Archbishop McCabe — "as at once im-
modest and wicked."* As a reward for these ser-
^i vices, and as an acknowledgment that he was
sufficiently anti-Irish and cold-blooded to associate
* Ireland since the Union, p. 274.
78
IRELAND AND THE POPE.
in close relationship with the Italian Ring, he was
created a cardinal* on the 27th of March, 1882.
I have spoken specially of the conduct of Arch-
bishop McCabe because his elevation to the posi-
tion of a "prince of the church" is pretty conclu-
sive evidence that he, at least, in all that he did,
was actine under the direct orders of the Vatican.
A strong circumstance tending to confirm this
view is, that the Vatican, while still pretending to
be neutral in the affairs of Ireland, was secretly
interfering with the raising of funds in America,
even to relieve the famine sufferers whose support
had been undertaken by the Leagues.
In 1882, Rev. Edward McGlynn, the most elo-
quent and popular Catholic priest in the world,
was delivering lectures in New York for the bene-
fit of the Leagues. Archbishop McCloskey re-
ceived peremptory orders from the Vatican re-
quiring him to compel Dr. McGlynn to desist, on
pain of suspension from his priestly office.
The Dr., bowing to authority, discontinued his
lectures.
In 1883, Dr. McGlynn was requested to deliver
a special lecture for the benefit of the then starv-
ing people of Western Ireland. A telegram was
immediately sent to Archbishop McCloskey from
* He was the second Irish cardinal ever appointed; Cullen, another anti-,
Irish Irishman, being the first.
^.
DAVITT SPURNED AT ROME. 79
the Vatican, signed by Cardinal Simeoni, or-
dering him to "suspend this priest McGlynn. for
preaching in favor of the Irish revolution."
These documents came to light in December,
1886, in consequence of the trouble between Dr.
McGlynn and Archbishop Corrigan at that time.
Otherwise the circumstances would never have
been made public. How many hundred similar
blows may have been dealt against the Irish cause
in secret and in darkness by these Italian allies
of England may never be known.
Another circumstance pregnant of meaning is,
that, about the time of which I am speaking, it
was reported that Sir George Errin^ton, a "Castle
Cawtholic," and emissary of England, was com-
missioned for some secret Intrigue at the Vatican.
Michael Davittwent to Rome, as the accredited
representative of the Irish people, to lay their
cause before the Pope.
He was spurned and boycotted, as if he was a
leper, by the "distinguished Catholics" then
visitine at Rome — even the guests at the hotel
where he stopped left the dining-room in which he
was seated, and threatened to leave the hotel
v> unless he was required to leave. He was refused
an audience with the Pope, on the ground that his
€
So IRELAND AND THE POPE.
reception might give the impression that the Holy
Father was taking sides on the Irish question.
A few weeks afterwards, the Prince of Wales,
apparently for no other purpose than to expose
the double face of the Vatican, had a suggestion
conveyed to the Holy Office that /le thought of
paying a visit to Rome, and inquiring if he might
expect to be accorded an audience by His Holi-
ness.
Immediately, without any fear of misconstruc-
tion, the arms of the Holy Father were opened
and extended to receive the representative of the
English side of the Irish question. He did not
go, but sent his "Castle Cawtholic" flunky. Erring-
ton, who was accorded more than one audience*
and on his ex parte representations secured at
least one important favor of which I shall presently
speak.
On the 20th of January, 1883, Pope Leo XIII.
sent a rescript to the Irish clergy commanding
them to use their power to suppress certain classes
of societies, the description being broad enough to
include the Irish political leagues.
The effect of this rescript was not to destroy, as
designed, but to divide and weaken the movement;
but it certainly was not the Pope's fault if anything
* No representative of landlordism was ever denied an audience by the
Pope.
errington's blunder.
8i
remained of the Irish movement after his poisoned
draught had been administered.
Not satisfied with this the Pope, on the nth of
May of the same year, issued a more powerful and
mandatory rescript, condemning and forbidding
disaffection to the government, and forbidding
subscriptions to the Parnell testimonial fund, a
fund then being raised by Irishmen and their
sympathizers to reimburse Mr. Parnell for losses
suffered by him through the agitation. This was
the papal favor secretly granted at the secret re-
quest of Errington, made under circumstances
which I have already detailed.
Again, upon the death of Cardinal McCabe in
February, 1885, this same Errington, still "acting
as the gutter-agent of the English Government,"
secretly secured from the Pope a rescript or order
commanding the bishops of Ireland to observe the
wishes of England in nominating a successor to
the vacant archbishopric.
Before this rescript had reached Ireland, Er-
rington. either in the intoxication of joy produced
by the success of his mission, or under the influ-
ence of anotner kind of intoxication, quite common
to his class of reveling Christians, boasted of the
promise which he had secured from the Pope.
This news, telegraphed to Ireland before the
82
IRELAND AND THE POPE.
rescript had been received, called forth such a
storm of indignation that the Pope, in fear of los-
ing his Irish "Peter's Pence," recalled it.
In April, 1885, Bishop Nulty of Meath, a brave
and noble patriot prelate, and others of his stripe,
having publicly favored the Land League and
Home Rule movements, were summoned to Rome
and rebuked by the Pope for their disloyalty.
On the 9th of May following. Bishop Nulty
published a pastoral letter warning the Vatican
that if it persisted in its unjust and oppressive
course toward the Irish people they too would
some day manifest the spirit displayed by other
nationalities and break away from the spiritual, as
well as the temporal dominion of Rome. This
pastoral is said to have "caused great displeas-
ured It did in fact cause great co7iste7'nation,
and produced the remarkable effect of keeping the
Pope's hand away from the throat of Irish lib-
erty for three full years.
IRELAND AND THE POPE. 83
CHAPTER XIII.
THE LAST RESCRIPT.
On the 20t,h of April, 1888, the Pope, at the
secret and ex parte request of the Duke of Nor-
folk, issued another rescript"^ condemning and for-
biddincr the use of two of the weapons of self-
defense invented and successfully used by the suf-
fering people in their terrible and unequal strug-
gle against the life-destroying oppression of land-
lordism, namely : the plan of campaign and the
boycott.
This condemnation is put upon the grounds: {a)
that the plan of campaign is " unjust and inequita-
ble to the landlords; and {b) that the boycott is "«
new form of persecution and proscription, al-
together foreign to natural justice and to Chris-
tian charity."
Leaving out of account for the present the un-
denied and undeniable fact that the Irish land-
lords, under the protection of English laws, and
English or pro-English judges, constables, bailiffs
and soldiers, have been able, not only to hold their
own, but to rob the whole Irish people of all the
produce of their labor above that bare subsistence
* See Appendix C.
84
IRELAND AND THE POPE.
which is the portion of chattel slaves — denying
even that to millions, whom they have willfully
condemned to death by the 'slow tortures of
famine — and to drive (as they still do) a million
a decade into exile, let us consider what the
plan of campaign and boycott are and compare
them with the methods of persecution, plunder,
and extermination which they were designed to
resist.
CHAPTER XIV.
PLAN OF CAMPAIGN AND BOYCOTT VS. RACK RENT,
EVICTION, AND RULES OF ESTATE.
The land question is at the very root, and is the
root, of all the Irish troubles. The Irish people
must live on the land, and from the land of Ire-
land, if they are permitted to live at all. There
are now about five millions of people living on the
Island, and the entire land on which and from
which they must live is the exclusive private prop-
erty of about seventeen thousand landlords, *
great and small, who have the almost absolute
power to determine upon what conditions and for
what tribute the other millions shall be permitted
to live. Having this power, the landlords, for
* MuUhall's Dictionary of Statistics, p. 266.
RACK-RENTING.
85
centuries, kept the people in a constant nightmare,
and turned the country into a vast panorama of
horrors.
They fixed rents according to the measure of
their own merciless avarice, often making it higher
than the gross yield of the land, and, in the lan-
guage of Dean Swift, ''squeezed it out of the very
blood and vitals and clothes and dwellings of the
tena7tts, who live worse than English beggars^
Whatever of the rent could not be extorted by the
terrors of threatened eviction was generously al-
lowed to accumulate in "arrearages," to pay
which unusually good crops, and contributions of
American relatives, were confiscated.
This is what, in Irelend, is called "rack-rent-
ing." It may be denominated the "rack" of
landlordism, but it is not without its flesh-rending
" spiked roller " (to use terms certainly familiar to
the Holy Office of the Inquisition) nor its "fire
wheel " and " torturing stake."
The tenant in arrears was always subjected to
summary eviction, and even if his rent were not
in arrears he was subject, on short notice, to be
similarly evicted, in order that the owner might
consolidate farms, or turn the land into a park, or
sheep pasture, or in order to gratify any whim, re-
86 IRELAND AND THE POPE.
venge, or other desire, on the part of the land-
lord.
"Our Irish landlords," says Father Lavelle,
"all Christians, many of my own creed,^ act the
landlord as if there were no God ; oppressing the
poor man and the weak of heart to put him to
death."t
A parliamentary committee appointed to in-
quire into the condition of Irish tenantry — evicted
in order to promote the consolidation of farms,
not for non-payment of rent — reported that : "It
would be impossible for language to convey an
idea of the distress to which they have been re-
duced. =^ * '* They are obliged to resort to
theft and all manner of vice and miquity to pro-
cure subsistence, and a vast number of them per-
ish of want, after having undergone misery and
suffering such as no language can describe and of
which no conception can be formed without act-
ually beholding it. "t
But the scope of this book will not permit the ^
presentation of many examples of the murderous
persecution by which landlordism has turned the \
heaven-favored land of Erin into the dark and
* Has the Pope ever excommunicated, or threatened to excommunicate,
any of these landlords for persecuting their fellow Catholics ? Not one.
+ The Irish Landlord, p. 196.
X The Irish Landlord, p. 248.
RULES OF THE ESTATE. 87
bloody arena which it has certainly been. I have
before me Father Lavelle's great and fascinating
work on "The Irish Landlord," containing five
hundred and forty pages filled with terrible but
well attested examples of landlord atrocity, but
those which I have, here and elsewhere in this
volume given, are quite sufficient to show how
unnatural is the power, and how terrible is the
threat, of eviction. They show the sort of knife
which the seventeen thousand landlords, in good
and bad seasons, hold, by legal process, to the
throats of their five million Irish tenant slaves,* to
enforce their extortionate demands.
Well has Mr. Gladstone called the writ of
eviction a "death warrant?"
But the landlord's persecution does not end
with eviction. After eviction the unfortunate
tenant must face the terrible "Rules of the
Estate."
These rules forbid any tenant in the district
giving food or shelter to any member of an evic-
ted family, on pain of being in like manner evicted
by his or her landlord. But this is not all, the
landlords of other districts have equally stringent
* Pope Leo complimented the Emperor of Brazil on having freed his
slaves, in the very week during which he ordered the Irish back into their
chains. t
88 IRELAND AND THE POPE.
rules against sheltering or harboring the doomed
wretches.
Another example from Father Lavelle will illus-
trate the working of these rules. Speaking of a
very ordinary eviction he says: " A certain land-
lord in County Galway got a cheap decree at
quarter sessions against a tenant on his property.
This was early in October ; October and Novem-
ber passed over and a gleam of hope began to
enter the poor man's soul that, at least, he would
be permitted to pass the Christmas holidays in his
old home. December was fast running out; the
sun of Christmas eve had actually risen, and with
it the poor man and his wife and family, when
horror of horrors ! what does he see approaching
his cabin door, followed by a posse comitatus of
the Crow-bar Brigade, but the Sheriff, surrounded
by a detachment of the constabulary force. The
family were flung out like vermin, and the work
of demolition occupied but a few minutes. The
evicted family passed that and the subsequent
Christmas night with no other covering but that
of the wide canopy of Heaven, as strict prohibi-
tions had been issued to all the other tenants to
harbor them on pain of similar treatment.'"*
Bishop Nulty of Meath, one of God's true
* The Irish Landlord, pp. 271-2.
EVICTION HORRORS. 89
noblemen, speaking of "a cruel and inhuman
eviction" witnessed by himself, and in which
'' seven hundred human beings were driven from
their homes in one day and set adrift on the
world," although " there was not a single shilling
of rent due on the estate at the time except by
one man." After describing the horrors of the
eviction itself, he proceeds : "The horrid scenes
I then witnessed I must remember all my life
long. The wailing of women — the screams, the
■terror, the consternation of children — the speech-
less agony of honest industrious men — wrung
tears of ^rief from all who saw them. * * ^
The heavy rains that usually attend the autumnal
equinoxes descended in cold, copious torrents
throughout the niorht, and at once revealed to the
houseless sufferers the awful realities of their con-
dition. I visited them next morning and rode
from place to place administering to them all the
comfort and cpnsolation I could. The appearance
of men, women and children, as they emerged
from the ruins of their former homes — saturated
with rain, blackened and besmeared with soot,
shivering in every member from cold and mis-
ery — presented positively the most appalling spec-
tacle I ever looked at. The landed proprietors
in a circle all around — and for many miles in
90 IRELAND AND THE POPE.
every direction — warned their tenantry, with
threats of their direst vengeance against the hu-
manity of extending to any of them the hospital-
ity of a single night's shelter. Many of these
poor people were unable to emigrate with their
families, while at home the hand of every man
was thus raised against them. They were driven
from the land on which Providence had placed
them, and, in the state of society surrounding
them, every other walk of life was rigidly closed
against them. What was the result ? After bat-
tling in vain with privation and pestilence, they at
last graduated from the workhouse to the tomb,
and in a little more than three years, nearly a
fourth of them lay quietly in their graves."*
This is landlordism, in all its cold and cruel
infamy ! Standing between God's children and
the means which he has provided freely for their
support !t Blasting their happiness and crushing
out their lives. Down with it ! Eternal Justice,
let it, and its supporters, find : *
" No shelter from the withering curse
Of God and human kind."
But what of the plan of campaign and the
boycott — the weapons of passive resistance
* The Parnell Movement, p. 173.
+ It is estimated that Ireland, if free from landlordism, is capable of sup-
porting comfortably from three to four times its present population.
PLAN OF CAMPAIGN. 9 1
with which the tenants, "contrary to natural jus-
tice and Christian charity" according to the Holy
Father, seek to defend their lives and their fami-
lies against this man-eating monster of landlord-
ism ?
The plan of campaign is a modification of the
"No-Rent Manifesto" of October i8th, 1881,
and is simply this : The tenants of a district de-
termine to act together in withholding from their
landlords enough of their crops, or of the price
thereof, to provide food for their families and seed
for their land for the approaching season, and to
give the rest up to the landlord as toll for the
privilege of using the God-given land. The ten-
ants, or their representatives, agree upon the
percentage of the fixed rents that can be paid by
them, and then, all who desire to join in the plan,
pay the amount of rent agreed upon to a secret
agent (from whom it would be taken by legal pro-
cess by the landlords if his identity were known),
subject to future agreement between the landlord
and tenants. If the landlord agrees to accept the
rent thus deposited, it is paid over to him ; other-
wise it is returned to the tenant. The tenants,
thus acting under the plan, assist each other in the
defense of eviction suits, and, in defiance of the
"Rules of Estate," give each other shelter when
evicted.
02 IRELAND AND THE POPE.
But this would be ineffectual without some
means of preventing their more unscrupulous
fellow wretches from underbidding them and tak-
ing their little holdings at the old rack-rent rates.
Here the boycott comes into play, and it is
simply this : Any person who rents the holding
of an evicted tenant is socially, commercially,
politically, and industrially ostracised by all of the
other tenants (practically the whole population) in
the district.
They will not associate with him, nor speak to
him, nor buy from him, nor sell to him, nor work
for him, nor hire him. They will not handle his
grain, nor work where it is handled.
No member of any of the Leagues will work on
any steamer which carries cattle raised by him
to the English market. There is in it no invasion
of legal right, and no aggression.
" Nothing is done ^o the obnoxious individual,
but nothing will be done /or him."*
This principle, as far as possible, is applied to
obnoxious landlords as well as to underbidding
tenants.
Thus the boycott and the plan of campaign
are the complement and supplement of each other^
* Ireland Since the Union, p. 251,
DISARMING THE VICTIMS.
93
and together they constitute a tolerably effective
moral weapon of self-defense.
With the weapons which I have thus described
the contest between landlordism and tenantry has
of late years been fought.
This is the contest in which Pope Leo has
deemed it his duty to interfere seven times, at
least, within the past six years, and always on the
side of the stronor aofainst the weak.
He now deems it his duty to disarm the un-
fortunate tenantry of even these moral weapons,
and leave them naked and helpless to the cruel
fanofs of their worse than tio;er enemies.
Vicar of Christ ! Well, — so be it.
These condemned methods have saved thous-
ands of the Irish people from starvation, and
millions from hunger and privation, during the
past six years.
They have saved to the people about fifteen
millions of dollars per annum, and have, by this
immediate benefit, consolidated the whole people
of Ireland in the mighty political struggle for
Home Rule and Land Reform.
The landlords, the Tories, and the Pope well
know that, if this advantage could be taken
away, the political movement would disin-
tegrate with it ; and so, by an agreement
94 IRELAND AND THE POPE.
confessedly made with the Duke of Norfolk,
the Pope threatens the Irish tenants with the
terrors of an eternity in hell, after death, unless
they will consent to return again to the hell on
earth from which the Land and National Leagues
have partially relieved them.
Before the condemned methods were adopted,
from one million to five million dollars were an-
nually sent to the people of Ireland by relatives
and sympathizers in America, but the contribu-
tions served only to increase the rapacity and ex-
tortion of the landlords, by increasing the tenants'
ability to pay — the only standard by which the
maxiiimm of Irish rents is measured. Any man,
not an idiot, who speaks seriously of freedom of
contract between landlords and tenants in Ireland,
betravs a contemptible hypocrisy that not even
the mask of the Gorgon would conceal.
If, by any possibility, the Pope may have been
io-norant of the true nature of the controversy in
which he has been^so persistently interfering, his
ignorance is due to his constant refusal to hear
the Irish side of it, and is not a whit less excusa-
ble than malice prepense.
The other hypocritical defense so often urged,
that the Pope does not oppose the Irish political
movement but only the methods by which it is sup-
MOVEMENTS AND METHODS. 95
ported, is puerile and childish. The methods
constitute the force and measure of the move-
ment.
They alone make the political movement possi-
ble by giving the people an immediate incentive
to combined effort, and a breathing spell from the
tortures of landlordism, during which they may
work and think.
Suppose that Germany were to commence an
invasion of France (eldest daughter of the church)
and that the Pope should forbid the French peo-
ple to use either powder or improved implements
of war in resistine the invasion, and should then,
with customary hypocrisy, say to the French peo-
ple: "My dear children, I would not for the world
interfere with your ambition to preserve the politi-
cal freedom of your country. I object only to
your met hods y
What would the French people say to this ?'
They would burn him in effigy, as they did his
predecessor, Pius VI., in 1791, when he interfered,
on behalf of the nobility, with their political as-
pirations.
The ultramontanes will hardly deny the anal-
ogy between the present case of Ireland and the
supposed case of France on the ground that
France has a nationality to preserve while Ireland
96 IRELAND AND THE POrE.
has not, since Ireland had a nationality for thirty
centuries and would probably have had it to this
time were it not for the treachery of Pope Leo's
predecessor — Adrian.
This Roman "explanation of the rescript" is
so supremely ridiculous, that, if it had been given
by a negro minstrel it would have produced roars
of laughter and would have ranked as " a good
hit."
CHAPTER XV.
POPE leg's boycott on dr. M'OLtNN.
In the Pope's rescript we are favored with the
information that boycotting is "a new form of per-
secution and proscription." In truth, however,
it is but a mild form of excommunication, suggest-
ed by, and modeled after, the Roman Catholic :.
practice of religious and civil ostracism, which, ac- y^
cording to Catholic church authorities, has been ■
practiced by the church ever since its organiza- \
t:
tion; was recommended by Christ* himself and |
actually put in practice by St. Paul.f |
We find also, that Solon (594 B. C), recom- t
mended the •' ostracism'' by the people of persons ;',
whose presence was considered dangerous to the
* Matt., XVIIL, 17.
+ I Cor., v. 3; Catholic Die, p. 327.
THE RELIGIOUS BOYCOTT. 97
peace and well being of Athens; but that boycott
included the harsher element of " exclusion from
the city."
In cases of major excommunication, non toler-
ati, pronounced by the pope or by any bishop of
the Catholic church, "the faithful are forbidden to
hold either religious or civil communication"* with
the excommunicated person.
I certainly cannot give a better definition of
boycotting than to say that it is an agreement be-
tween two or more persons not "to hold either re-
lio-ious or civil communication" with a third per-
son. Yet that is the very definition which Cath-
olic authorities give of the universal practice of
the church, and certainly the Holy Office does not
mean to condemn a regular and frequent practice
of the Catholic church as ''contrary to Christian
charitv."
The Pope himself has now a boycott in full
force against Dr. Edward McGlynn of the city of
New York; a boycott which is, in its terms, infin-
itely more rigorous and terrible than any ever de-
clared or enforced by any secular body in Ireland.
The church boycott delivers the victim imme-
diately, and for eternity, over to the devil ; f the
* Catholic Die, p. 328.
t Catholic Die, p. 327.
98 IRELAND AND THE POPE.
faithful are forbidden to hold either religious or
civil communication with him ; they cannot attend
a meeting at which he is to deliver a lecture with-
out incurring the penalty of excommunication *
by contagion ; and if a Catholic, however devout,
even if he have received communion within a
month, should suddenly die while attending a
lecture delivered by an excommunicated person,
he must be deprived of Christian burial, f
The body of a devout Catholic is now lying in
a public vault in New York City, and, because he
died suddenly at one of Dr. McGlynn's lectures
on social questions, is denied Christian burial by
the archbishop. In other words, this dead man's
body is denied Christian burial because, in his life-
time, he did not take part in carrying out the
Pope's boycott against Dr. McGlynn. A very
common regard for the ordinary proprieties
should have induced His Holiness to declare his
own boycotts off before condemning the milder
Irish boycotts as un-Christian,
. It is no answer to this " deadly parallel " to
say that the Irish boycotts, although milder, are in
fact more strictly observed than his. It is cer-
tainly not his fault that anybody associates with or ^
* So declared by Bishop McQuade of Rochester, N. Y.
+ So declared by Archbishop Corrigan, N. Y. J'
VATICAN POLITICS.
99
r
¥
speaks to, or deals with, Dr. McGlynn, after he has
given an order which requires them to avoid him.
Again, what is the penalty for violating the
Pope's resaHpt against the un-Christian practice
of boycotting .'* Why, the violators of the rescript
will simply be boycotted by the Pope I
It is fortunate, as has been fully explained, that
this document was not issued by the Pope ex
cathedra^ but was issued on the fallible advice of
the Holy Office of the Inquisition, over the delib-
erations of which the Pope presides in person, "^ and
it is therefore possible to recall it if it shall prove
to be erroneous.
If it effects its purpose without serious opposi-
tion, there will be no further action taken about
it ; so, also, if it be quietly ignored ; but if it be
strenuously resisted it will be found to be errone-
ous and withdrawn.
At any rate that Is the fixed reputation of the
Vatican in the matter of issuing political bulls
against the children of the church, and there is no
reason to suspect a change of policy at this time.
* Catholic Die, p. 447.
lOO IRELAND AND THE POPE.
CHAPTER XVI.
VATICAN POLITICS THE ITALIAN RING.
To get any clear idea of the motives and pur-
poses of the Vatican in deaHng with the Irish
question it is absolutely necessary to have a gen-
eral knowledge of the character (religious and po-
litical) of the papal office, and of the personnel of
its incumbents at various periods, and also a
knowledge of the origin, character and personnel
of the Colleoe of Cardinals.
There is a vast difference between the Catholic
religion, the Catholic church and the Catholic
hierarchy. The first consists of principles and
articles of faith; the second is the organization by
and through which these principles and articles
are taught and inculcated, and the third is the
body of priestly officers charged with administer-
ing the affairs of the church and promoting the
reliof-ion.
The religion is unchangeable, no matter how
much the interpretation of its principles and arti-
cles may vary. The organization, which includes
discipline, ceremonies, etc., may be changed by
the hierarchy as the ever changing conditions of
the world may require.
POPE AND CARDINALS. lOI
The hierarchy is constantly changing and is
subject to all the defects that are incident to hu-
man folly, ambition and vice.
It is with this changeable human hierarchy,
and with it alone, that I am dealing; and it is
acknowledged, by all Catholic writers, to have
been at various times, good and bad, weak and
strone, covetous and orenerous, worldlv and disin-
terested. I shall therefore speak freely, feeling
that none can be reasonably offended, in his re-
ligious sensitiveness, by the statement of "truths,
however painful,"* which do not concern the in-
tegrity of his religious principles.
The controlling power of the Catholic hierarchy
consists of the Pope and a college of seventy
Cardinals.f
The Pope appoints the Cardinals and the Car-
dinals elect the Pope. The whole church organ-
ization is therefore under the absolute and exclu-
sive control of a self-perpetuating body of seventy-
one men.
The tremendous power wielded by those sev-
enty-one men, cannot be questioned by any per-
son, or body of persons, in the church; and if their
political as well as their religious edicts are obeyed
by Catholics, it will at once be apparent that their
* See Lives of the Popes, by J. C. Earle, p. 6.
+ Catholic Die, p. 119.
I02 IRELAND AND THE POPE.
support must be of incalculable value to political
sovereigns, and that the temptation to corruption
and worldly ambition is enormous.
It will further appear, at once, that if the Col-
lege of Cardinals should ever fall into the hands
of a few designing- families it would be impossible
to prevent them from creating or perpetuating a
most exclusive aristocracy, as powerful and irre-
sponsible as any that ever held sway upon earth.
These are the very things that have transpired
in the See of Rome.
The College of Cardinals for over eight hundred
years (ever since it was created) * has been com-
posed almost exclusively of Italians, and these
have been nearly all members of a little Italian
nobility consisting of a very few families.
While the great teachers, preachers, bishops,
and priests, representing more than nine-tenths of
the Catholic world, have been practically excluded
(being admitted only in a small and powerless
minority), brothers, cousins, uncles, nephews, and
even fathers and sons, of the little Italian nobility,
have for generation after generation sat beside
each other in the Colleo-e of Cardinals.
To illustrate this, a few examples, from stand-
ard Catholic authorities, will suffice :
* Catholic Die, p. Ii8.
ALL "NOBLEMEN. 1 03
The present Pope, John \' . R. L. Pecci, is the
son of Count Domenico, and has a brother in the
College of Cardinals^ Pius IX., John M. M.
Ferretti, was the son of Count Jerome Ferretti
and Countess Catharine Solazzi- ; Gregory XVI.,
Bartholemew Albert Cappellari, "was born at
Belluno, in Lombardy, September i8th, 1795, of
parents belonging to the nobles of the place^ ; "
Pius VIII., Francis X. Castiglioni, was "born
(November 20th, 1761) of noble family'*" and
appointed as his secretary Cardinal Albini, of the
house of Albini, " one of the most illustrious and
noble in Italy, boasting even of imperial allian-
ces^ ; " Leo XII., Hannibal della Genga, "was
the son of Count Hillary della Genga'';" and
Pius VII., Barnabas Chiaramonti, who was a rel-
ative of Pius VI,' derived "high nobility" from
his father.^ These constitute the last five Popes,
and the statement which I have given illustrates
how the papacy is confined, not merely to Ital
ians, but to the old Italian political aristocracy.
But that is not all ; four of the Popes — Leo X.,
' 1 M. F. Egan in "The Century," May, 1888.
2 Shea's Life of Pius IX., p. 1 1.
3 The Last Four Popes, by Cardinal Wiseman, p. 376.
4 The Last Four Popes, p. 323.
5 The Last Four Popes, p. 330.
6 The Last Four Popes, p. 195.
7 The Last Four Popes, p. 328-9.
8 The Last Four Popes, p. 37.
1'
I04 IRELAND AND THE POPE.
Clement VII., Pius IV., and Leo XI. — were im-
mediate members of the" Medici family^ ; three
Popes — Innocent III,, his nephew Gregory IX.,
and Innocent XIII. — were immediate members of
the ^Conti family^ ; two of the Popes — Sixtus
IV. and his nephew JuHus II. — were immediate
members of the Rovere family^ ; two of the
Popes — Nicholas III. and Benedict XIII. — were
immediate members of the Orsini family^ ; two
of the Popes — Calixtus III. and his nephew Alex-
ander VI. — were immediate members of the Bor-
gia family.^
Cardinal Caesar Borgia was a son of Pope Al-
exander VI.,*^ and sat as a member of the College
of Cardinals,'^ over which his father presided.
These are but a few examples taken from the
lives of popes who lived and reigned since the
time of Adrian and Alexander, and during the time
that the Irish people have been taking so large a
share of their politics from Rome.
The power and prestige of the papacy have
1 Earle's Lives of the Popes, pp. 366, 374, 393 and 412.
2 Earle's Lives of the Popes, pp. 266, 279, and 436.
3 Earle's Lives of the Popes, p. 360.
4 Earle's Lives of the Popes, pp. 298 and 437.
5 Earle's Lives of the Popes, pp. 343 and 356.
6 There was nothing illicit in this. The Pope vfas a married layman.
The cardinals are not bound to choose one of their own body; a layman,,
and even a married man may be lawfully elected." Catholic Die, p. 679..
7 Earle's Lives of the Popes, p. 356.
PAPAL FAMILIES.
105
always excited the most consuming ambitions and
burning jealousies among the eligible families.
Each family, and combinations of families, in
turn, sought to gain control of the College of Car-
dinals.
An example of this is given in the life of Alex-
ander YL, who, " To satisfy his ambition and ex-
alt the princes of his oiun family, too often out-
raged the laws of justice. It was with such views
that he sought the ruin ot the houses of Colonna
and Orsini."*
This Borgia family was originally from Spain,
and Earle, with Hefele and others, speak of Alex-
ander VI. as an exceptionally "unworthy pope."
This is undoubtedly true, but it does not alter the
fact that the papacy has been in the hands of a
very wicked, ambitious and designing man, who
was duly elected to the papal chair and filled it
for nine years, and that if he had succeeded in
doing what his more favored Italian predecessors
did, the Borgia family, instead of being hunted
from Italy by Pope Julius II., as they were, might
still be in control of the Vatican, making political
trades with England and issuing rescripts to Ire-
land ; for, if they had once secured the necessary
majority of their own family in the college, no
* Earle's Lives of the Popes, p. 357 ; quoting Mariana, Lib. 26.
io6
IRELAND AND THE POPE.
power in or out of the church could have di-s
lodged them.
Besides, no candid historian will claim that Al-
exander VI. was any w'orse than his predecessors,
Sergius III., John X., John XL, John XII., John
XVI., or John XIX., the first three of whom were
"elevated to the papal throne by the intrigues of
the notorious Marozia/'* and the last of whom,
with Benedict VIII., tried to have the Holy See
made a legal ^'inheritance in their family .'"'^
These, bear in mind, were not anti-popes, but
duly elected and recognized popes of the church,
although Sergius III. was, for some years, an anti-
pope before being elected to the papal chair.J
We had, recently, an illustration of the nepotism
and family influence still prevailing at the Vati-
can, in that, while the Irish priesthood, represent-
ing more genuine Catholics than does the Italian
priesthood, had not a single representative in the
College of Cardinals, and while the Italians had
more than a two-thirds majority of that college,
two youthful offshoots of the effete Italian nobility
were sent to Queen \^ictoria, also a temporal and
spiritual sovereign (head of the Episcopal Church)
with some sort of a trinket as a jubilee gift, and,
* Earle's Lives of the Popes, p. 187, 190-2.
t Earle's Lives of the Popes, p. 209.
X Earle's Lives of the Popes, pp. 185-7.
ORIGIN OF THE CARDINALS.
107
on its safe delivery, to honor the Queen, they were
both created cardinals. This is also an illustra-
tion of the closer relation between the "nobilities"
of England and Italv than exists between the Ital-
ans and their Irish co-religionists.
The political scheming- which has been resorted
to for the purpose of securing control of the Holy
See was worthy of modern political bosses, and is
very interesting.
The Pope, who for the first six hundred years
after Christ, was recognized simply as the Bishop
of Rome; and exercised no jurisdiction beyond that
See, was, until the year 1059 "chosen like other
bishops by the clergy and people, with the assent
of the neighboring bishops."*
In that year (1059) the College of Cardinals
was instituted and consisted of six bishops. f The
number of cardinals was gradually increased by
succeeding popes, very much as our United States
Supreme Court has been increased, and, no doubt,
for the same purpose, namely : to change from
time to time the balance of power. This practice
continued for over five hundred years, when, in
1586, the number was finally fixed at not exceed-
ing seventy.;!;
* Catholic Die, p. 678.
+ Catholic Die, 118, 679.
% Catholic Die, 119.
io8
IRELAND AND THE POPE.
The Holy See, as thus constituted, claims the
Divine right to exercise political as well as relig-
ious sovereignty in every country. This claim
was emphasized by Monsignor Preston, Vicar Gen-
eral of the Arch-diocese of New York, in his" New
Year's Sermon" (January, 1888) in which he
said: "Whoever says, I will take my religion
from Rome but not my politics, is not a good
Catholic.'^
But it needed not the assurance of Monsignor
Preston to advise us of the Pope's claim of tem-
poral authority over his religious followers.
Prior to the year 860 the Pope was inducted
into office as "Vicar of our Savior Jesus Christ,"
and the miter was placed upon his head as one of
the emblems of his priestly authority.
Some time between the yea'rs 858 and 867,
Pope Nicholas I. united a kingly crown with the
miter, and between that time and the year 1200
(the exact date is uncertain), a second crown was
added,* and the third crown was added about the
year 1370, thus completing the tiara.
Ever since that time, " The tiara is placed on
the Pope's head, at his coronation, by the second
Cardinal Deacon, in the loggia of St. Peter's, with
the words, ' Receive the tiara adorned with three
Catholic Die, p. 79^
THE RESCRIPT POLITICAL. lOQ
crowns, and know that thou art Father of Princes
and Kings, Ruler of the World, Vicar of our Sa-
vior Jesus Christ '."* H, ^
Even in this coronation ceremony, as in the
practice of the Vatican, the religious office is sub- 'i
ordinated to the political offices.
In face of all these undenied and undeniable
facts, how silly it is to enter into nice disputations
about the religious character of the Pope's rescript.
The rescript was issued by the Pope as a tem-
poral sovereign, was intended as a political edict,
and obedience to it will be an acknowledgment
that the self-revolving, self-perpetuating Italian
Ring which I have described, has a Divine right
to rule in the political affairs of Ireland.
It can have no other meaning.
* Catholic Die, p. 796, citing "Beitrage," by Bishop Hefele, Vol. II., p.
236, et. seq. •
r'^
no IRELAND AXD THE POPE.
CHAPTER XVII.
CONCLUSION. •
f
The true and manly position of the Irish |1
people in this matter must be, that, whatever its ^
purpose, the 7'escript is an impudent interference ||
with Irish poHtics and ought to be promptly and
effectually repudiated.
It will not do to change the movement in order %
to avoid the letter, or meet the spirit, of the re- ',,'
script, for that will instantly destroy the confi-
dence of sympathizers everywhere.
Well may such sympathizers ask, as many even
now are asking: What is the use of helping Irish
movements if the Pope can still kill them, as for
seven hundred years he has been killing them, just
at the critical moment of dawnino- victorv ?
A quietus must now and forever be put upon
Irish political rescripts from Rome. Otherwise
confidence in " Irish movements " will be, for an-
other generation, absolutely destroyed.
The spirit displayed by so many thousands of the
Irish people, both in Ireland and America, in their
protests against this latest edict, is most gratifying
and encouraCTinor; but there have also been mani-
UNIVERSITY
>
CONCLUSION — STOP PfeT^I^S^^SE^-fCCE. Ill
fested some of the old and fatal symptoms of dis-
integration, which have always been observed to
follow papal rescripts. For example, at the meet-
ing held in Limerick on Sundav, Mav 27th, while
twenty thousand enthusiastic people, in spite of
the bishop's anathemas, attended, it was observed
that " there were no priests present, and the lead-
ing Catholics, who had previously been conspicu-
ous a^ the meetings, were to-day conspicuous by
their absence."
The meaning of this is too plain to students of
Irish history.
It means, unless checked by prompt and effec-
tive measures, disintegration and death to the
r Irish Home Rule movement.
Are there no patriotic priests in Limerick ?
Yes, but true to the prophecies of Burke and Pitt
and Sheil, Maynooth and Rome have established
in them a prmciple of subserviency stronger than
their patriotism — a readiness to sacrifice the in-
terests of Ireland and the hopes and aspirations of
her people to the discipline imposed by the church
authorities at Rome.
In this crisis and m the future political struggles
it is manifest that one of two things must be done :
the Irish priests must break away from their slav-
ish subserviencv to the Italian Rino- and reassume
112 IRELAND AND THE POPE.
the independent position which was held by the -M
clergy of Ireland from the time of St. Patrick to
the coming of Cardinal Paparo ; or if that, unfortu- ' .
nately, cannot be, then the people must break ^
away from all political alliance with the priesthood *.■
and absolutely reject it as an element in political ^
affairs; or finally, failing both of these, the Irish
people must be content to wear the chain of Eng-
land with the chain of Rome, until some future
generation shall discard both chains together.
It is not necessary that any change should be ]■,
made, either by priest or people, in their religion.
There were Irish saints, afterwards canonized
by the Roman Church, who never recognized any
allegiance to the See of Rome, except to receive
the abstract doctrines of Catholicity from that cen-
tre ; but L venture, on the authority of their
canonization, to say, that they were at least as good
Catholics as any of the ultramontane Irishmen
of the present day.
Neither is it necessary 'that there should be any
change in their relations to the church as an or-
ganization, but only that the Roman hierarchy be
held strictly to their spiritual trust and boycotted,
if necessary, out of their political pretensions.
If the people of Ireland would, by general con-
cert of action, suspend payments on the bill of
CONCLUSION — STOP PETER's PENCE. II3
sale of Ireland, given by Pope Adrian to King
Henry IL, until the liberty which that instrument
blasted shall be recovered, nothing more would be
heard forever of papal interference with Irish pol-
itics, and the Irish priests would be left free to
hasten the renewal of tribute.
V
;.
\:
LIST OF AUTHORITIES.
Of the many of the authorities which I have cited, there are several editions
differently paged. To avoid misleading and hyper-criticism, I here insert a list of
my authorities with the edition referred to:
TITLE.
History of Ireland
History of Ireland
History of Ireland
Historj' of Ireland
Historj' of Ireland
History of Ireland
History of Ireland
History of Ireland
History of Ireland
Irish before the Conquest
Irish Hierarchy
Ecclesiastical Hist, of Ireland
Irish Landlord, The
Ireland As She Is
Ireland of To-day
New Ireland
History of Our Own Times
Outlines of Irish Histoiy
Ireland Since the Union
Lights and Shades of Ireland
The Parnell Movement
Catholic Dictionary
The Last Four Popes
Life of Pius IX.
Lives of the Popes
The Pope
English Misrule
EDITION.
Kelly, 1885
Virtue, E. & R., 1845
First
2nd O'Kelly's Trans.
Cameron & F.
Kenmare Convent, I 876
Donahoe, 1857
Virtue, E. & R., 1845
Cameron & F.
First
Sadlier, 1855
Cummisky, 1838
Donahoe, 1870
Kelly, 1877
Bancroft, 1 88 1
Third
Belford, C. & Co., 1887
First
Belford, C. & Co., 1887
French, 1851
Benziger, 1886
Catholic Pub. Society, 1884
Donahoe, 1858
Kelly, 1877
Kelly, 1877
Pustet, 1885
Lvnch, C. & M., 1S77
AUTHOR.
M, Haverty
S. O'Halloran
Thos. Wright
Abbe MacGeoghegan
D'Arcy McGee
M. F. Cusack
Thos. Mooney
Wm. Dolby
John Mitchell
M. C. Ferguson
Rev. Thos. Walsh
Rev. P. J. Carevv
Rev. P. Lavelle
J. J. Clancy
M. F. Sullivan
A. M. Sullivan
Justin McCarthy
Justin McCarthy
Justin McCarthy
Mrs. A. Nicholson
T. P. O'Connor
Addis & Arnold
Cardinal Wiseman
J. G. Shea
J. C. Earle
Monsignor Capel
Rev. T. N. Burke
APPENDIX A.
I'
Full translation of the Bull of Pope Adrian IV., granting Ireland to King
Henry II.
[From O'Halloran's History of Ireland, p. 305.]
"Adrian, bishop, servant of the servants of God, to his dearest son in
Christ, the illustrious King of England, greeting, and apostolical benediction:
"Full laudably and profitably hath your magnificence conceived tfie
design of propagating your glorious renown on earth, and completing your
reward of eternal happiness in heaven ; while as a Catholic prince, you are
intent on enlarging the borders of the church, teaching the truth of the
Christian faith to the ignorant and rude, extirpating the roots of vice from
the field of the Lord, and for the more convenient execution of this purpose,
requiring the counsel and favor of the apostolic See, in wliich the maturer
your deliberation and the greater the discretion of your procedure, by so
much the happier we trust will be your progress, with the assistance of the
Lord, as all things are used to come to a prosperous end and issue, which
take their beginning from the ardor of faith and the love of religion.
" There is, indeed, no doubt but that Ireland, and all the islands on which
Christ, the sun of righteousness hath shone, and which have received the
doctrine of the Christian faith, do belong to the jurisdiction of St. Peter and
the Holy Roman Church, as your excellency also doth acknowledge; and
therefore, we are the more solicitous to propagate the righteous plantation
of faith in this land, and the branch acceptable to God, as we have the
secret conviction of conscience that this is more especially our bound en
duty. You then, my dear son in Christ, have signified to us your desire to
enter into the island of Ireland, in order to reduce the people to obedience
under the laws, and to extirpate the plants of vice; and that you are willing
to pay from each [house] a yearly pension of one penny to St. Peter, and that
will preserve the rights of the churches of the land whole and inviolate.
We, therefore, with that grace and acceptance suited to your pious and laud-
able design, and favorably assenting to your petition, do hold it good and
acceptable, that, for extending the borders of the church, restraining the
ii6
APPENDIX.
progress of vice, for the correction of manners, the planting of virtue, and
the increase of reUgion, you enter this island, and execute therein whatever
shall pertain to the honor of God and welfare of the land ; and that the
people of this land receive you honorably, and reverence you as their lord ;
the rights of their churches still remaining sacred and in\dolate, and saving
to St. Peter the annual pension of one penny from eveiy house.
"If then you be resolved to carry the design you have conceived into
effectual execution, study to form this nation to virtue and manners, and
labor by youi-self, and othere you shall judge meet for this work, in faith,
word, and Ufe, that the church may be there adorned ; that the religion "f
the Christian faith may be planted and grow up, and that ail things pertain-
ing to the honor of God, and salvation of souls, be so ordered, that you may
be entitled to the fulness of heavenly reward from God, and obtain a glo-
rious renown on earth throughout all ages. Given at Rome, in the year of
Salvation 1156."
APPENDIX B.
Full translation of the Bull of Pope Alexander III., confirming the grant
of Adrian.
[From O'Halloran's Histoiy of Ireland, page 306.]
"Alexander, bishop, servant of the servants of God, to his most dear son
in Christ, the illustrious King of England, health and apostolical benediction.
"Forasmuch as these things, which have been on good reasons gi-anted by
our predecessors, deserve to be confirmed in the fullest manner, and con-
sidering the grant of the dominion of the realm of Ireland by the venerable
Pope Adrian, we, pursuing his footsteps, do ratify and confirm the same,
(reserving to St. Peter, and to the Holy Roman Church, as well in England
as in Ireland, the yearly pension of one penny from every house) provided
that the abominations of the land being removed, that barbarous people,
Christians only in name, may, by your means, be reformed, and their live^
and conversation mended, so that their disordered church being thus re-
duced to regular discipHne, that nation may, with the name of Christians,
be so in act and deed. Given at Rome, in the year of Salvation 1172."
APrENDIX. 117
APPENDIX C.
THE TEXT OF THE LAST RESCRIPT.
(From the "Dublin Freeman," May 5th, 1888.)
The following is a translation of the Latin text of the circular addressed
by the Congregation of the Holy Office to the Irish Bishops in reference to
the Plan of Campaign and to boycotlmg:—
My Lord— a letter was issued by the Supreme Congregation of the
Holy Roman and Universal Inquisition on the 20th of the present month of
April, for transmission to the Archbishops and Bishops of Ireland.
Herewith I send your Lordship a copy of this letter, and having dis-
charged this duty, and wishmg you every blessing in the Lord, I remain
yours devotedly,
John Cardinal Simeoni, Prefect.
>j, D. Archbishop of Tyre, Secretary.
S. Congregation of the Propaganda, Rome, April 23rd, 1888.
[copy.]
My Lord— Whenever the affairs of their country seemed to require it the
Apostolic See has frequently addressed to the Irish people— towards whom
it has always shown special affection— seasonable words of warning and
counsel with the object of enabling them to defend or to assert their rights
without prejudice to justice or to public tranquillity. At the present mo-
ment our Holy Father Pope Leo XIII., fearing lest right conceptions of
justice and chanty should be perverted amongst that people in consequence
of that mode of warfare called the Plan of Campaign, which has been em-
ployed in that countiy in contests between letters and holders of lands or
farms, as also in consequence of a foi-m of proscription in connection with
the same contests known as boycotting, commissioned the Supreme Con-
gregation of the Holy Roman and Universal Inquisition to make the matter
the subject of grave and careful examination. Accordingly the following
question was submitted to the Most Eminent Fathers who share with me
the office of General Inquisitors against heretical error, viz: In contests be-
tween letters and holders of lands or farms in Ireland is it lawful to have
recourse to those means known as the Plan of Campaign and Boycotting—
ii8
APPENDIX.
and their Eminences, having long and maturely weighed the matter, re-
plied in the negative.
Our Holy Father confirmed and approved this reply on Wednesday, the
18th of the present month.
How equitable this decision is any one will see who reflects that a rent
fixed by mutual consent cannot, without violation of contract, be reduced
at the arbitrary will of the tenant alone. This the more, since for the set-
tUng of such contests courts have been established which, allowance being
made even for failure of crops or of disasters which may have occurred, re-
duce excessive rents and bring them within the Hmits of equity.
Again, it cannot be held to be lawful that rent should be extorted from
tenants and deposited with unknown persons, no account being taken of the
landlord.
Finally, it is altogether foreign to natural justice and to Christian charity
that a new form of persecution and of proscription should ruthlessly be put
in force against persons who are satisfied with, and are prepared to pay the
rent agreed on with their landlord; or against persons who in the exercise
of their right take vacant farms.
Your lordship will therefore — prudently but effectively — admonish the
clergy and the people in reference to this matter , and exhort them to ob-
serve Christian charity, and not to overstep the bounds of justice whilst
seeking rehef from the evils which afflict them. — Your devoted servant in
the Lord, R. Card. Monaco.
Rome, 20th April, 1888.
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