SPIRITUAL TYRANNY.
[To THE EDITOR Or THE " SPECTATOR."] Sia,—A railway journey through Ireland, from East to West, undertaken the other day, led to a curious train of reflections! The country looked beautiful, enamelled in emerald green by the recent rainfall, the crops were much better on the whole than in England. Yet poverty and squalor seemed endemic, and the land looked the illustration of the Horatian line,- "Magnas inter opes inops." These effects could hardly be attributed to landlord tyranny, for the tyrants had been muzzled for more than a decade. Possibly the solution might be found in the spiritual supremacy of the Roman Catholic priesthood, from which the people are gradually emancipating themselves ! Near Mullingar we could see great and extensive preparations made for a horse and hound show by a committee of gentlemen, of whom some were devout Catholics, the dates fixed for the function were August 15th and 16th; but the 15th is also the date of the assumption of the Virgin, and presto, an interdict came from Bishop Nulty forbidding the faithful to attend, thereby stopping the circulation of thousands of pounds in the country, and depriving many of an innocent pleasure, which need not clash with their devo- tions ! Now the Catholics claim uniformity in ritual observ- ances—" Quod semper, quod nbique, (pod ab omnibus "—and yet holy days are constantly used for secular purposes throughout Ireland. Politics and poaching, after prayers and preaching, occupy Sunday; and " sports," Gaelic or British, cheer other sacrosanct days. There seems no "semper," no ubique." A community that can be thus paralysed by a priestly interdict, seems hardly fit for autonomy.—I am,
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