The only scene of critical change in politics—of political fermentations
which. are likely to result in new political affinities— is at present Ireland. There, as we indicated last week, and have shown at length this week, the Roman Catholic Bishops are already preparing for a new campaign on the educational question, buying the support of the peasantry, who are comparatively indif- ferent on this head, by abstract resolutions in favour of a settle- ment of the land question satisfactory to tenant-farmers. There, again, Mr. Johnston, the Orange Member for Belfast, has been thundering away against the Bishops and the Pope, pledg- ing himself to provoke a new battle of the Boyne before he would submit to Papal ascendancy, and calling on the Irish Protestants not to be misled by the great event of last session to distrust the hearty sympathy of their English brethren. But in the midst of all this blood and thunder, Sir John Gray, M.P. for Kilkenny, acting on behalf of the Roman Catholic peasantry, has despatched a herald with a white flag to Mr. Johnston as leader of the Ulster Protestants, entreating him to sanction an alliance between the Green flag and the Orange to carry the principle of Ulster tenant-right. The message is couched in somewhat puzzle-headed, though not, perhaps, really ambigu- ous language :—" If you do this, if your brethren of the Orange lodges join you in demanding the legislation of their tenant-right custom—the sacred legacy of their Puritan fathers—and security against the devouring of it by the process of capriciously increasing rent, the united cry of North and South will sound the death-knell of tenant injustice and of agrarian crime in Ireland. Effect this, and your name will live in history as one of those who loved his race," &c., &c. Even a provisional outpouring of blessings by an Irish Catholic on the head of an Irish Orangeman is a significant thing. What will the Orange hero do ?—join in agitating for that very remarkable formula, "Security against the devouring of the tenant-right custom by the process of capriciously increasing rent"? If so, his battle of the Boyne No. 2 will disappear into the region of the Armageddons, and the Irish Catholic Episcopacy will begin to tremble for their education measure.
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