THE NONCONFORMISTS AND HOME RULE./. IN 1687, when James II.
was seeking to make his own faith dominant in England, he endeavoured to bring over the Non- conformists to his side by offering them a heavy bribe in the Declaration of Indulgence. The offer must have been a great temptation. The Penal Laws were a monstrous injustice ; many had been wronged by them in person and property ; much could be said for any method of obtaining exemption from them. But the Nonconformists as a body stood firm It was against their principle to admit the right of the Crown to override the law. It is Mr. McCarthy's contention that the Nonconformists of 1912 are doing what their predecessors of 1687 refused to do. The circumstances are, indeed, changed. Instead of a' tyrannical Crown we have a tyrannical combina- tion of Parliamentary parties. Of these parties, one, the Irish Nationalists, commands the situation. By their help a Ministry, which may be described as under Nonconformist control, holds power : the price of this support is Irish Home Rule, and Home Rule Means the ecclesiastical domination which it is of the very essence of Nonconformist principle to resist. They see an example of this domination in the Anglican Church, and one of their dearest hopes is to deal it a deadly blow by Welsh Disestablishment ; their hope is that what is to be done in * SR/Velar of the Shakespearp Memorial National Theatre .hall. Edited by Mrs. George Cornwallis West. London Published for the Shakespeare Ball Committee by Frederick Warne and Co. [B5 Se. net.] + TIM N'anconfarmist Treason. • By Michael J. F. McCarthy, London : W. .BlaekwoOd andBous. [Os.] Wales to-morrow shall be done in England on the day after. And yet they are giving over Ireland to a domination such as Anglicanism never practised or even imagined. But does Home Rule for Ireland really mean this ? It can scarcely he denied that there is much to make us think so. There is the general fact that what Rome has once claimed Rome never- gives up, whatever economy she may use in asserting it, and these arc particular proofs of no small cogency. These Mr. McCarthy sets forth in this volume, a most timely publi- cation which is a regular armoury of weapons for the defenders of the Union. We cannot attempt anything like a catalogue of them. But we must tell the very apposite story which Mr. McCarthy tells of himself and Mr. Silvester Horne. Mr. Horne asked him to deliver an address at W hitefield'e Tabernacle on the " Priest in Politics "—it was on the day after the Dublin Convention had condemned the Irish Councils Bill of 1907. "I pointed out," writes Mr. McCarthy,. "amidst terrific hand-clapping from Mr. Horne and the audience, that the hierarchy were the real masters of the situation in Dublin and Westminster." What does Mr. Horne think now ?
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