The dreary, rambling, and unmeaning resolutions adopted by forty of
the Irish Catholic Members against the Pope's Rescript on Thursday, will have no effect. They evade the Boycotting question altogether, and ignore the essential feature of the "Plan of Campaign." Suppose it admitted, as they contend, that many of the Irish farmers did not and could not freely contract to pay rent, yet the essence of the "Plan of Campaign" was to overbear and dictate to those tenants who did freely contract to pay it, in the interest of those who did not ; and that is precisely what the Pope's Rescript condemns, and what no honest man can excuse. Mr. Marum, M.P., who has protested against the notion that the laity have anything to do with the Rescript, because it is addressed to the Bishops and the clergy, and only professes to interpret the drift of immemorial law which the Pope could not even affect to modify, has shown his wisdom in not taking part in the meeting. The laity, by their influence over the clergy, may get the priests and the Bishops to wink very hard at what they ought to condemn, bnt they can do nothing by the help of windy resolutions such as the forty Catholic M.P.'s have been foolish enough to adopt.
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