Archbishop Walsh has written to Mr. Gladstone,—in answer to the
latter's invitation addressed to Lord de Wesci,—to say that the three great questions on Ireland now are self-government, the land, and order. The first must be settled by Home-rule,- he does not explain the form of Home-rule,—the second by buying out the landlords, and the third, he says, will settle itself. A more immorally optimistic statement was never made. Mr. O'Leary, the popular leader, is nearer the truth when he com- plains to a Young Men's Society in Cork of the moral cowardice of so many of the Irish people, and says openly that a large part of the county of Kerry seems given up to sympathy with outrage and crime. Archbishop Walsh ought not to need instruction in the simplest elements of morality. But he may be sure of this, that never yet in the world did a lawless people who are showing, as Mr. O'Leary confesses the Kerry people are showing, a dis- position to sacrifice anybody to the violence of the outrage- mongers rather than endanger themselves, settle down into tranquillity and orderliness simply because they had succeeded in extorting all they wanted. It is not the least ominous of the signs of the times that a Roman Catholic Archbishop should preach such a doctrine as this.
Previous page
