THE SOUTH MEATH ELECTION AND THE UNIONISTS.
WE see, with some anxiety, the tendency of the Unionist press to ally itself with the Parnellites in their view of the disclosures of the South Meath election. Now, heartily as we desire to check everything like spiritual intimidation in the Irish elections, heartily as we share the genuine indignation that has been expressed. at the use of the confessional by the priests as an engine for bringing pressure of the severest and most unjustifiable kind to bear upon the superstitious feelings of the electors, we have no wish at all to see the sort of result which, so far as we can judge, the majority of the Parnellites wish to see as the consequence of the recent exposure,—namely, a general and abrupt decay of the power of the priests in Ireland, and the growth of those violent opinions, often atheistic, which are usually found amongst the Continental Reds, in place of the disposition to consult and be guided by the priests. That would, in our opinion, be a leap from the frying-pan into the fire. It is painful and humiliating to see so many priests extenu- ating the lamentable breaches of charity and honesty which have lately been committed in Ireland. We earnestly desire to see their failure to exert even a legitimate influence following as an inevitable consequence of their over- straining it in this unscrupulous and domineering fashion. It is contrary to all the principles of the Roman Catholic faith that they should thus identify any particular political creed with the reverence of their people for the Church and the divine being whom they worship. But earnestly as we desire to see the power of the priests firmly restrained in relation to the political struggles of the Irish people, and especially important, as we think it, that this dangerous species of ecclesiastical tyranny should. not be invoked to rob the Protestants of Ireland of their civil and religious liberty, no kind of ecclesiastical tyranny seems to us so likely to result in serious disaster, as the attempt which the Parnellites appear to favour to underuiine as far as possible the religious character of the country, and to substitute for it that bold indifference to all religious considerations, and that reckless revolutionary violence, which the anarchists of Russia, France, and Germany seem to regard as the proper substitute for a religion. Bad. as the moral and social creed of Ireland has been during the last ten years, the creed of the anarchist, if it were to succeed to the influence of the priests, would be far more fatal. Yet there is very great danger that the eager Protestantism of the Unionists will bring about some sort of affiance between the Parnellites and the assailants of priestly intimidation. Already in Cork we have seen the Mayor elected by a fusion of Conservatives and Parnellites, and it is quite clear that the Unionist journals take almost as much com- fort from the success of a Parnellite petition, as they do from the defeat of a gross ecclesiastical usurpation of political authority. Instead of remembering, as they were bound to remember, that any genuine recrudescence of Parnellism proper threatens the Union with Great Britain and the safety of the United Kingdom even more seriously, if that be possible, than Home-rule itself,—for it would mean Home-rule in its most lawless, hostile, and dangerous form,—the Unionist journals and orators appear to be thinking only of the temporary advantage which is gained by dividing their enemies and inducing them to fall upon each other. No view could be more short- sighted. What we ought to desire is to improve the moral and political spirit of the whole Catholic population of Ireland, and especially, therefore, of the Irish priesthood. But how are we to do this, if we give our opponents the impression that what we are fighting for is not justice, temperateness, and self-restraint, but the fostering of quarrels and dissensions among our foes, and that, not by improvement and growth of sobriety in the least violent party, but by the triumph of the most violent party amongst our antagonists ? Even though the result should be a postponement, and even indefinite postpone- ment, of Home-rule, the advantage would be dearly bought at the cost of raising up in Ireland a powerful Jacobin party, which should use all its influence on behalf of self- will, graspingness, and anarchy. We are heartily glad to see the prevalent abuse of the priestly power checked in Ireland. But we are far more glad, because we hope that this may tend to render the priests cautious, scrupulous, and just, than we are because the check to the priests may play into the hands of Mr. John Redmond and secure him a somewhat larger following. We dread the growing influence of the episcopacy and the priesthood ; but we dread still more the growing influence of the Irish Jacobins, who recognise no restraint but that to which self-interest and political ambition make it their policy to submit. What the Unionists, however, have not only a right to say, but what it is their duty to say, about the disclosures of the South Meath election petition, is this, that it would be a perfectly monstrous injustice to put either the Pro- testants or the Liberal Roman Catholics of Ireland. under the power of a priesthood who can play such pranks with their consciences as it is clear that the priesthood of South Meath, and very probably the priesthood of many another Irish diocese, played at the General Election of last July. To both Protestants and Liberal Roman Catholics, it is of the utmost importance to preserve their political freedom un- impaired. The Protestants do not intend to be persecuted into supporting either the educational or the risky Local Government policy of the Roman Catholic episcopacy against their own will ; and the Liberal Roman Catholics have certainly no intention of being persecuted into sup- porting the land policy of the Catholic episcopacy against their own will. Yet the election petition discloses the moral certainty that if we grant Home-rule, the first result will be that persecution of this kind will take place. We hear,—rarely, no doubt, but still now and then,— of authentic cases in which the children of mixed marriages in Ireland are brought up Catholics, but wish to return to the religion of the Protestant parent, and in which a very active local persecution is instituted to prevent that result. Such injustice as this we are absolutely bound. to prevent ; and it would be simply im- possible to prevent under a Home-rule administered by the nominees of the Roman Catholic priesthood in Ireland. We hear often now, and must hear continually if Home- rule is established, of the gravest differences between the Protestants and Roman Catholics, as to the way in which religious teaching in the primary schools is to be adminis- tered in Ireland ; and we are absolutely bound to prevent a lax application of the conscience clause which would let in any amount of Roman Catholic propagandism to the administration of the mixed schools. We hear every day now, and under Home-rule we should hear in multi- tudes of cases every day, of the most violent differences between landlords, whether Protestant or Roman Catholic, and their tenants, as to the terms on which the latter are to be empowered to purchase the property of the former ; and we are absolutely bound to protect the former from the kind of active local persecution to which they would be subjected. by the latter if the terms were not exactly to the liking of the tenants. The South Meath election petition shows that in all these important matters there would be no kind of local pro- tection for the minority in Ireland under any scheme of Home-rule that Mr. Gladstone can possibly propose. When the very confessionals are perverted into oppor- tunities for violating the rights of the voter's political conscience, there is no moral limit to the scandals which will not occur. We should have thought it, we confess, all but impossible, had there not been proof positive to the contrary, that the sacredness pertaining to the confessional in all Catholic countries should be so grossly and freely ignored by the priesthood as it seems to have been under the political despotism of Bishop Nulty. Before the election, nothing would have induced us to believe that such a scandal could possibly take place ; but we know from Judge O'Brien's charge that in South Meath it fre- quently did take place. Can there be more conclusive evidence that under Home-rule no Protestant and no Roman Catholic voter who did not approve the reigning local opinion of the day, would be free from persecution for a moment ? Conscience clauses would be idle words where the confessional is not sacred, and we may be perfectly sure that no local measure which the minority disapproved could be resisted without an amount of espionage and persecution that would put an end to all liberty of conscience and judgment among the weaker party. We hold, therefore, that in the interests of the weaker party, the South Meath election dis- closures have given a final blow to the Home-rule policy. To all cool observers, the moral of the investigation is not favourable to the Parnellites. Parnellism means the sub- stitution of a Jacobin tyranny for a sacerdotal tyranny, and a Jacobin tyranny would be the worse of the two. But the South Meath disclosures do tell, in language both clear and imperative, against any policy which threatens to put the local government of Ireland under the guidance of Bishops like Bishop Nulty, and priests like the fanatics who strove to apply in practice Bishop Nulty's abstract but most tyrannical principles.
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