The Conservatives got up a meeting in defence of the
Irish Church yesterday week in St. James's Hall, and produced a live Catholic, a Mr. Boylan, to speak in favour of the Protestant .Establishment, which he did do,—in the sense, at least, of uttering -articulate words, apparently intended to depreciate the import- ance of the injustice it inflicts, but not in the sense of producing -even a show of reason in its favour. Mr. Boylan diminished the force even of this equivocal advocacy by boasting of his connec- tion with " the Protestant nobility of Ireland,"—an honour, he said, which many of his opponents—the Gladstonians—never had. Very likely, but a wish to devote national property to a Church which you think heretical, founded on a " connection since child- -hood" with heretic nobles, is not of a kind to inspire any profound respect. Mr. J. C. Colqnhoun took the chair, and made a very silly speech, which consisted chiefly in dwelling on the all but necessary disloyalty of all Catholids to a Protestant State. He seems to suppose that, if this once be admitted, it follows as a matter of course that we are wise in making the disloyal Catholics pay to keep the loyal Protestants in good temper. Well, if so, why not put all the taxation on the -Catholics, and exempt the Protestants qua Protestants from tax- ation altogether ? It would only be a rather more effectual application of the same principle.
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