The Rev. Austin Powell, Roman Catholic priest, of Birchley, Lancaster,
is a man who is not afraid to speak out when he sees a Home-rule movement degenerating into a movement for excusing the most flagrant breaches of the moral law. In 1886, he had supported Sir George Errington as a Liberal Home-rule candidate for the Newton Division of Lancashire, on the understanding that no means would be used to gain Home- rule except such as were "constitutional and moral." But he has just written to Sir George Errington, to remark that those hopes of 1886 arising out of the new attitude then taken up by the Liberal Party, have now all vanished. " For myself," he writes, "I must rein-in, in front of the ditch of perjury and robbery. I cannot imagine it lawful for a Catholic to afford aid to a cause which appears undoubtedly linked with the nefarious practices of the condemned conspiracy." And Sir George Errington, who in 1886 accepted Home-rule as he then supposed that Mr. Gladstone understood it, and was beaten after a good fight, replies :—" I should be wanting in frank- ness to you and in consistency to myself, if I hesitated to say plainly that as I withdrew from the degraded Home-role of 1880, so I have now to dissociate myself from this fresh and more dangerous degradation,—more dangerous, because in addition to destroying the fairest prospects of local liberty and happiness for Ireland, it has lowered the honour of English public life, and even threatens the safety of the Empire." Sir George adds significantly, while giving in his hearty adherence to the Papal Rescript as to "Boycotting" and the " Plan of Campaign," that " loyalty and obedience to the Holy See have not always been forthcoming even from quarters whence they were most to be expected, and whence they have not without grave scandal been withheld." The Irish Bishops will feel the force of that remark.
Previous page
