IRISHMEN ON IRISH GRIEVANCES.
THE indifference with which Irish Catholics seem to regard the Irish State Church, and the pertinacity with which they clamour for public money or anything except the removal of what few Englishmen now venture to defend, has been in- sisted on by the press of this country, until at last an attempt has been made to answer its reproaches. One Irish Catholic landlord has addressed an able and, with one or two exceptions, temperate letter to some of our daily contemporaries, in which the " Anti-Irish State Church" is made the head and front of English offending. But before considering the substance of his letter we beg to point out that the events of the past week afford ample evidence of the truth of our criticism. This one letter directed against the Irish Establishment we have indeed, but it comes from an anonymous writer, who can therefore claim to represent no one but himself. Even the class to which he belongs,—Catholic landlords,—are neither numerous nor influential. It is not arguments that are wanted to overthrow this great grievance, they have been supplied long ago, but a strong, well-sustained, yet temperate expres- sion of national feeling. But the Catholic clergy prefer to declaim against emigration and education, and it is they who really lead the Catholic population. The grievance put forward by the Archbishop of Tuam only last Sunday is that "it is unjust that a whole nation should have no hold whatever upon the soil on which they live—a state of things unknown in any well-conditioned country." What
this means it is of course difficult to say. Probably the Arch- bishop would say that he did not ask for confiscation of the soil, but only a prohibition of evictions; but if you reduce a landlord's rights to the right to get his rent if he can, that is in fact confiscation. Since the whole nation has no hold on the soil, Protestant landlords clearly are no part of the nation, and as the Irish peasant has at least possession of the soil, while the English peasant works under a farmer for a weekly wage, we suppose that England must be even a " worse-con- ditioned " country than Ireland. The English being a Protes- tant people this is perhaps not to be denied, but it is a hard pro- position that even a Catholic country cannot be well-condi- tioned if its landlords can choose their own tenants. All this time the Archbishop says no word about the Protestant Establishment, nor is the reason far to seek. Landlords pay the tithes, and Catholic landlords are not very numerous. Besides, if we may trust the "Irish Catholic Landlord" they " heartily disclaim all desire to obtain for the Catholic Cburch one farthing of the revenues which they wish to see secu- larized for non-sectarian purposes of general usefulness in Ireland." 'What good will this do to the Catholic clergy ? Sprung from the peasantry and sharing their prejudices, it prefers to purchase their political support by confirming their socialist doctrine that they have a right to the soil. As for the scenes of oppression of which the Archbishop speaks, doubtless injustice is sometimes inflicted on a tenant, but one may be allowed to doubt whether injustice is not quite as often inflicted on landlords. Lord Taux of Harrowden's agent can tell us something on this head. One of the tenants, he tells us, was impoverishing her land by drawing off the produce to enrich another holding where she lived. She received notice to quit, and was offered 5/. and the remission of more than a year's rent to give up possession. This being refused, proceedings at law were commenced, and she was warned to sow no more seed. In spite of warning she sowed part of the crop, and then after eviction made forcible entry and sowed the rest. To an assertion that she paid for the possession the agent replies that Lord Vaux has had the property twelve years, and it was not paid to him. If paid at all it must therefore have been to his predecessor, and she has held the land long enough to recoup herself. Yet this is a case in which the parish priest has thought fit to de- nounce Lord Vaux in a written placard as the evictor of a poverty-stricken widow and the robber of her crops. He does not talk indeed of bloodshed, but his language addressed to Irish peasants really means very little less, and we have not heard that the reverend gentleman has been even admonished by his Bishop. If, as the "Irish Catholic Land- lord" insinuates, " the more zealous of the Protestant clergy inoculate every Protestant landlord whom they can influence with a bigoted desire to evict all his Catholic tenantry in order to supplant them with Protestants "—an inuendo for which he offers no particle of evidence—he will see that charges of even a darker character can be sustained against his own Church. But why should either clergy or laity attack the Establishment? Everything the " Irish Catholic Landlord" says in favour of the Irish Vice-royalty is equally applicable to the Protestant Church. Irish landlords do not like living in Ire- land, where they are denounced by the priests, and occasionally, even when they are Catholics, shot by their tenants. So useless places are to be maintained to countervail the drain of Irish money from Ireland. What are the Protestant rectories and bishoprics but useless places ? If the personal expendi- ture of a resident gentry is really a source of wealth, what are the Protestant clergy but gentry who are obliged to reside in Ireland ? In the eyes of Irish economists they must be pure pecuniary gain. But the Irish Catholic landlord may say, " Oh! the revenues must be spent on works of general usefulness in Ireland.' " But if the Imperial Parliament can be trusted to this extent, how can we believe that the "apparent inertness" of Irishmen about "the Church grievance" is entirely due to "distrust in the Imperial Parliament ? " We cannot help thinking that it is rather to be attributed to the reasons we have given. If Irishmen generally were really outraged by the Establishment, Irish members of Parliament would declaim against it instead of denouncing imaginary fiscal wrongs and clamouring hungrily for Government ex- penditure. A movement in which half England would be on their side is surely more hopeful than fulsome addresses to a French General, which are viewed by Englishmen as in inten- tion a threat and in effect a contemptible folly. Common- sense might tell Irishmen that that is not the way to obtain what they want. They should send us Irish members who will talk less and say more.
There are other points, as when the "Irish Catholic Landlord " charges the English Government with maintaining the State Church to foment internal dissensions in Ireland, in which he is both narrow and unjust ; but we have no wish to insist on the blemishes in as argument which, on the whole, we regard with satisfaction. We sincerely hope that his letter is the harbinger of a serious national effort to be made in Parlia- ment. What he asks, the gradual secularization of the Church revenues as the benefices become vacant, is reasonable enough. But the advocates of a change so injurious to the interests and hateful to the prejudices of the Protestant gentry should remember that every unfounded accusation injures the cause they advocate, and that Irish declamation unsupported by reasoning from facts stinks in Parliamentary nostrils. They should be prepared with some definite proposition for the compensation of the owners of lay patronage. Even if the Establishment is felt far more keenly as an insult to the national feeling than we imagine, it had better be treated. from a business point of view. Above all things there should be no attempt to mix it up with the Orange Society, which is a mere voluntary association consisting mostly of Presby- terians, and which we have no more right to suppress by law because the majority of Irishmen do not like it, than we have to suppress the Jesuit Society in England—a step for which we might allege even a Papal precedent. Let the Irish Church stand out alone, with nothing to servo as a foil to its injustice. If it be regarded as a missionary Church it is not only unjust but useless. Its history is the history of three centuries of failure. The Protestant clergy can never justify their position in Ireland, except by teaching them- selves to look upon Catholicism as a crime, and a people is not converted by a body of missionaries who approach them in the temper of gaol chaplains. Again, little as we can side with the attitude of the peasantry towards the land- owners, it is idle to deny that an aristocracy originating in conquest and divided from the people by difference of creed must have been, and still no doubt is to some extent, harsh in tone and apt to stand mercilessly on its legal rights. Is it in human nature that the peasantry should abandon their own creed for that of those whom they regard as oppressors, or the priests of their own blood, their temporal as well as ecclesiastical leaders, for men who share the lineage and the sympathies of the Saxon ? There is, we agree with the "Irish Catholic Landlord," only one thing than can make the endow- ment of any religious body even decently honest, and that is the reception by the people of its teachings. The people of Ireland not only do not receive the teachings of the Estab- lished clergy, but there is no chance that they ever will. In such a state of things what can the en- dowment do but evil ? It perpetuates feelings of antagon- ism which if it were gone might bo softened, if not eradi- cated. It is an eternal reminder to Irishmen of a melancholy past which Catholics must regard as an outrage, and both Protestant and Catholic ought to regard as a disgrace. Whether the scheme of simple secularization is really the best remedy for this calamitous state of things wo cannot pretend to say. An indiscriminate endowment of all clergy of every denomination in proportion to their congregations, paid by the State in return for the secularization of the Church revenues, would seem to be preferable, and it may be some recommendation of it to some Irishmen that it is the plan which commends itself to the people of France. It will be in its favour with all economists that it would then no longer be the interest of the Irish clergy to discourage emigra- tion because it diminishes their fees. But wo freely admit that this is a question to be decided by the wishes of the Irish people. Let the 78,000 petitioners of whom the "Irish Catholic Landlord" tells us speak out through their represen- tatives in Parliament. English Liberals will be willing to compound and accept simple secularization.
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