5 FEBRUARY 1965, Page 20

Church and Irish State

THE extensive and detailed study of nine- teenth-century Irish history, which has been one

of the most notable features of the past decade of historical research, has thrown much light on a period of Ireland's tangled history which had been exceptionally hag-ridden with legend, propa- ganda and prejudice. But it must be admitted that the very nature of this work—original research in almost virgin historical terrain—has tended to result only too often in the production of books containing a mass of new information which might enchant the specialist but which left others struggling unhappily in a bog of detail. Mr. Norman's exhaustive examination of the part played by the Catholic Church between 1859 and 1873 runs to over 450 pages. But although the journey is laborious, it is most rewarding. His reasoning is so close, and his material so copious, that any lapse of concentration by the reader is fatal. In what is admittedly a very limited field, his book is quite exceptionally impressive and, above all, most important, for Mr. Norman rightly challenges the statement of Lord Eversley that 'for nearly twenty years after the famine of 1846-47 there was little of interest in Irish affairs in the House of Commons.' The eruption of 1879-82 stemmed from the period which Eversley and many others have lightly dismissed, and to which Mr. Norman has devoted his researches.

It is important to emphasise the fact that the Catholic agitations of the 1860s did not, of them- selves, have a direct effect on British govern- ments apart from arousing suspicions and anti- pathies. But it was the contemporaneous fear of Fenianism which convinced Gladstone in par- ticular that Ireland must be conciliated, and, on the whole, his Irish remedial legislation ran on the lines advocated by the Catholic bishops. Thus, their part in this process is of considerable—if indirect—importance.

The dominating figure of the Irish Catholic Church at this time was the shadowy and distant Cardinal Cullen. He was a Catholic first and second, an Irishman third. It was said of him , —not altogether unjustly—by a Fenian that he thought only of Ireland as 'a good Catholic machine, fashioned mainly to spread the faith over the world.' Cullen's attitude to England was basically the deep dislike and dark suspicion of the sinister forces of Protestantism. This approach was in marked contrast with that of many of his bishops and priests, of whoni the most notable was the adored Archbishop MacHale, whose in- tense antagonism to England was fundamen- tally nationalistic.

The potential politic#1 power of the Church in Ireland was immense. As Jules de Lasteyrie wrote, 'No clergy is more justly popular than the Irish Catholic clergy. It has fought for the faith, for liberty, and for the poor.' There were about 1,000 parish priests in the 1860s, minister- ing to some four and a half million Catholics; there were fewer than 700,000 Protestants. But hoW was this potential to be employed? Cullen's vehement opposition to Fenianism and his pro- hibition of priests intervening in politics con- tributed greatly t6 the mistrust and even hostility which often surrounded him inside and outside the hierarchy. On subjects like education, the Protestant Establishment, and non-Catholic uni- versities, he carried Church and people with him,

and his contribution to the partial solution of these problems owed much to his skill and per- sistence.

But on the great, abiding, agonising questions of the future course of Irish nationalism, and the part to be played by the Church, Cullen was in a difficult and hazardous position. The Church was against revolution, and had the awful ex- ample of the Italian insurrection—which par- ticularly obsessed Cullen—to goad it further in this direction. But how could it also retain its popularity in the turbulent circumstances of Ireland in the 1860s and 1870s? Moriarty of Kerry said with cynical realism that although the priests should oppose Fenianism, 'if there was a fair chance of success it would be lawful, nay duke et decorum.'

This was the dilemma. As Fenianism faded, the new Home Rule movement took its place. Cullen initially equated it with Fenianism and even the International, but this time the forces were too strong for him. The Galway and Kerry elections of 1872 found the Church deeply embroiled in politics again. As Mr. Norman re- marks, Cullen had again discovered that 'although it was possible for a Catholic prelate to embrace liberal opinions, parties established to realise them turned out, in the process, to be far from Catholic.' Mr. Norman makes this observation about the break-up of the ill-starred National Association of Ireland, but it has a wider con- notation. In very difficult circumstances, Cullen and the Church had done much for Ireland with the vital assistance of the menace of Irish anarchy hanging over Gladstone's government. But a new leader, a Protestant landowner from County Wicklow, had arrived, and a new weapon, the Ballot Act, was at hand. Charles Stewart Parnell entered the House of Commons at a by- election in April 1875. The period for gradual constitutional change was passing; and the Irish Question was about to assume a very different form.

Dr. Kitson Clark's well-known study of the Tory revival after 1832—now reissued with a new introduction some thirty-five years after it first appeared—demonstrates the extent to which the Irish Catholics distorted the course of British politics long before Cullen emerged. The active participation of the priests in the 1826 elections and the fear of widespread agrarian troubles stampeded a nervous Lord Lieutenant (Anglesey) and the Wellington government into accepting Catholic Emancipation in 1828. The episode not only had considerable long-term conse- quences on Peel's career, but foreshadowed the events of the 1860s. Peel, whose experience of Ireland had begun at the age of twenty-four when he became Chief Secretary for six years, considered that half the ills of Ireland were attributable to 'Popish superstition,' and was deeply committed against emancipation. But the pressures had been too strong to withstand.

Thereafter, Ireland dogged Peel's footsteps. It was on the issue of Irish tithes that his first minis- try fell in 1835; and, ten years later, Ireland was the prime cause of his second--and final— apostasy. Gladstone, his junior minister, whose soul was so tortured over the Maynooth Grant, and Disraeli, who excoriated him for his second 'betrayal' of the Tory Party, were to discover for themselves the hazards and intractabilities of the labyrinthine complications of the Irish Question. 'All parliamentary roads lead to Ire- land,' Henry Lucy wrote in the 1890s. They had done so throughout the nineteenth century, as these two admirable books demonstrate.

ROBERT RHODES JAMES