IRELAND AND THE POPE.
Two remarkable facts go hand-in-hand in the sister country. Dr. Paul Cullen, the leader of the ultramontane party, supported by those bishops and priests who consent to wear the Italian garb, do their utmost to check the progress, or at all events to control the course of education; to obstruct the further development of the only system calculated to bring about healthy feelings in Ireland and second the measures taken for her material pros- perity, and to obtain for themselves the power to fix the maximum of education which the Irish people of all classes shall receive. At the same time Dr. Cullen and his ultramontane battalion come forward and make a special appeal to the Irish people to help them in preserving the temporal power of the Pope, and espe- cially to assist in keeping in office the clique at Rome from whom Dr. Cullen derived his power and now derives his inspiration. The two movements are in perfect harmony. Education cannot subsist in conjunction with absolute priestly rule in any country. Every country which has succumbed to such rule—let Austria, Spain, Italy itself witness—has not only fallen in the scale of nations, if weighed in the balance of power, but has presented to the world a spectacle of poverty, crime, and oppression equalled in no other countries. Ireland herself owes what little prosperity she has to the struggle always maintained, though not by the wisest methods, to prevent priestly tyranny from obtaining the mastery. What Dr. Cullen desires to perpetuate in Rome, that he would gladly introduce in Ireland. Hence his antagonism to education, and hence his championship of the temporal power of the Pope.
But we should libel the Roman Catholic laity of Ireland, and some of her priests, were we to suppose that they largely sympa- thize with Dr. Cullen. They have shown by the support they have given to Natioifid Education, and by the increasing support
they are giving to the denounced Colleges that they do not concur in the views of the Papal representative. Still the priestly dragonade now in progress may thin their ranks, and diminish their courage. It would be well, therefore, if the deman Catholics of Ireland took warning in time, and examined for themselves not the soundness of the views of Dr. Cullen, but the accuracy of his statements ; and if they find them false, to ask themselves whether that man can be promoting a good cause who is forced to rely on misrepresentation and fictions to make out a case.
We will not ask whether it is correct to say that " thousands of the nobility and gentry, and some of the highest personages of England, were last winter enjoying hospitality and protection in Rome," nor whether they were obliged to admire the good order and peaceable disposition of the population" under a guard of 10,000 French bayonets. We will not ask whether Lord Malmesbury ever proposed to dismember the States of the Church in the winter of 1858-9. But we ask whether it is true that "the Evangelical Alliance and the Evangelical Lord Shaftes- bury" have encouraged committees to collect money to "arm banditti." We know that the Pope's subjects frequently arm themselves and act as banditti, driven thereto by the deplorable
government maintained by that entourage of his Holiness who are the patrons of Dr. Cullen. " We cannot read without horror and indignation," says the arch-ultramontane, " the misdeeds of the men who are favoured and protected by Biblical and Evan- gelicals." Where is the proof ? Nowhere but in the allocution of the Pope, who uses general terms and sweeping assertions. " It is known," continues the Papal agitator, " that every honest man is at the mercy of the assassin's dagger," and further that " many distinguished persons have been murdered or insulted, merely because they were attached to the Pope." Where is the proof ? We have heard of landlords and agents in a country where priests have great influence being at the mercy of the as- sassin's bullet, but we know of no case of political murder in Italy, except that of Anviti. Will Dr. Cullen point out the cases and specify names ? With what face can Dr. Cullen complain, even if the complaint be true, of the dispersing of religious as- semblies and of the stabling of horses in churches, remembering as he must how many religions communities have been dispersed —slain or burnt—by the agents of the Papacy, and in how many churches Roman Catholic horsemen have stabled their horses. But we should again like to know specifically the cases referred to. What does Dr. Cullen mean by talking of " the perfidy of the Evangelicals ?" Where is the perfidy ; in what does it con- sist ? We are not told. An atrocious imputation does duty for facts. A string of calumnies and falsehoods supply the place of well- founded statements. The Roman Catholic laity of Ireland, who have stoutly fought for their rights in former days, can easily sa- tisfy themselves by ascertaining the facts, and when they have done so they will not support Dr. Cullen in his attempt to rivet on Italians chains which they have themselves broken. For the penal code itself is mercy compared to the Roman code of op- pression ; since the former was devised and enforced by men of another faith, whereas the Papal system is devised and executed by Italians. Dr. Cullen's logic is of so muddled a kind that we cannot quite make out whether he sets more store by the temporal or the spiritual sovereignty of the Pope. The latter is not assailed ; nobody ever supposed it to be in danger ; such inroads as reason, thought, science can make upon it, where reason, thought, and. science are allowed fair play, will be made ; but Roman Catholics alone, by their free will, can overturn the spiritual headship of their Church. There was no need to argue well or ill for the spiritual sovereignty. The afflictions of the Pope do not arise from any contestation of that. His Church, we are told, is generally at peace with him. A feeling " favourable " to him pervades 200,000,000 of Roman Catholics and their spiritual heads. Austria, France, Spain, Portugal, Belgium, Brazil are all devoted to the Pope. Sardinia is the only "plague spot" on the Roman Catholic map of Europe ; and even there the people are suffering for their faithlessness. The spiritual sovereignty of the Pope, to borrow one of Dr. Cullen's phrases, " from the times of Martin Luther" to the present, has, when lost, been recovered by fire and sword, and maintained by cruel and repressive laws. It is not in great danger just now. As much, however, cannot be said for his temporal authority—another term for the sacrifice of some millions of Italians. That, we frankly admit, is in danger ; and, in spite of the trembling complacency with which Dr. Cullen regards the issue, we suspect that it was the danger to the temporal sove- reignty of the Pope which moved him to make his truth-distorting Dublin speech. But if it be so, it is because the temporal govern- ment of the Pope is the worst in Europe, and in saying that we say it with our eyes open to the enormities of Austria, and the cruelty of Naples. It is this government which Dr. Cullen asks the Irish people to help him in maintaining ; and it is this go- vernment which nine Italians out of ten, and most of all those subject to it, are seeking to overturn.
We repeat that the two facts we have pointed out—the opposi- tion to reasonable and liberal education and the championship of the temporal power of the Pope—demand the deepest attention from the Roman Catholic laity of Ireland, as indicating the aim of Dr. Cullen and his party, which is to bring the Irish people, so far as they can, into a position analogous to that of the Pope's Italian subjects, and to frustrate all schemes tending to bring about harmonious relations among all the Irish subjects of the Queen.
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