MR. GLADSTONE AND ROMAN CATHOLIC ASCENDANCY.
WE agree with Mr. Gladstone that the revival of direct religious persecution in Ireland is, on the whole, improbable. Nay, we will go even further, and maintain that, if under any circumstances the Protestant minority again became absolute rulers in Ireland, we should have more reason to fear the revival of something like it, the revival of exclusive religious dealings, than we should in the case of the similar rule of the majority over the minority. Indeed, minorities, when they do get the upper hand, are usually more exclusive, because more afraid of their antagonists, than the majority, where there is any tendency to bigotry. In Ireland we have had considerable experience of both evils, the evils of Roman Catholic persecution and the evils of Protestant perse- cution. But the latter have certainly been the worse of the two, and not unnaturally, considering that the cruel panic of a minority is almost always keener than the cruel panic of a majority. And no doubt, as Mr. Gladstone says, Belfast has really shown less tolerance of Roman Catholic office-holders, than Dublin has shown of Protestant office- holders. So far we agree with Mr. Gladstone ; but then, that is a very small part indeed of the question, while Mr. Glad- stone makes it the whole question. The real issue is not the issue between the religious results of leaving the Irish minority to govern the majority, and leaving the Irish majority to govern the minority ; but between the religious results of leaving the Irish majority to govern the minority, and continuing to govern both majority and minority, through the Parliament at Westminster, which has long ago, and most decisively, repudiated all religious bigotry, and, under Mr. Gladstone's own influence, has put the last key. stone to that policy in the Dis- establishment of the Protestant Church in Ireland. It is therefore quite irrelevant to argue the relative claims of the Irish majority and the Irish minority to religious impartiality. For our own part, were either of them to be again invested with full political power to per- secute the other, we should expect mischief, though not mischief so serious as in former generations ; but no Unionist wishes, as Mr. Gladstone very well knows, to invest either majority or minority with the power to govern the other, while every Unionist believes that the Parlia- ment at Westminster can be implicitly trusted to govern for the future as it has governed for the last sixty years, with a steady bias to religious equality, which for the last twenty-three years has become a deep-seated and positive principle of religious impartiality. The real question is : Why put it into the power of one of the two faiths in Ireland to mortify and injure the other, when we have already an authority which we can trust, and which has shown its trust- worthiness by voluntarily abolishing religious privileges be- longing to its own friends which it had the power to retain ? Mr. Gladstone, in his speech at Chester, enlarged much on the willingness of Catholic constituencies to return Protestant representatives, which no one denies, but which is by no means conclusive evidence of the religious impartiality of the Roman Catholic constituencies. Indeed, it has often been asserted, and we believe truly asserted, that a Protestant representative of a Roman Catholic con- stituency is more useful to the priests, and more to be trusted for the strenuous advocacy of their interests, than an ordinary Roman Catholic representative would be. The very fact of his being of a religion different from that of his constituents, makes it the more necessary for him to be, as it were, almost ostentatiously devoted to carrying out the wishes of his constituents in relation to religious policy. And, as a matter of fact, no Roman Catholic representative has ever watched more jealously on behalf of the interests of the Roman Catholics, whether as regards education or other- wise, than did the Parnellite Party during the rule of Mr. Parnell. Protestant representatives are, very naturally, more anxious to prove that they are faithful stewards of Roman Catholic trusts, than even Roman Catholics them- selves. And we do sincerely believe that for that very reason they have been rather preferred by the Roman Catholic hierarchy to representatives of their own faith. To that part of Mr. Gladstone's argument, therefore, we attach no importance at all.
The real danger of putting the Irish Catholic majority in full command of the political situation in Ireland, is not the danger that it will take up a policy of religious persecution and tyranny, but that it will take up a policy of class persecution and tyranny. And the solid ground for regarding this danger as very imminent, is that within the last fifteen years such a policy has been taken up, has been pursued, and has been excused and defended by the Irish priesthood as a class, and that, too, even when the supreme authority of their own Church was exerted to the utmost against the course they pursued. Mr. Gladstone, in his speech at Mr. Guinness Rogers's party, put this forward as evidence that they were not influenced by Rome. No, they were not influ- enced by Rome, because Rome happened to be on the side of honesty and justice, and they were on the side of the tenant-farmers and the peasantry when the tenant- farm era and the peasantry desired to repudiate obligations which they had voluntarily assumed, and which they had power to fulfil. How Mr. Gladstone can possibly think that this great class-rebellion against Catholic doctrine and Catholic authority, proves that there is no danger of very grave and terrible religious interference in political strife,—an interference which would throw the shield of priestly authority over the most iniquitous violations of honesty and charity,—when we have the example before us of what has been done in the last fifteen years to shield moonlighters, and boycotters, and campaigners, we cannot conceive. It would be childish enough to exchange an authority which has shown its own impartiality in reli- gious matters by such an act as the Disestablishment by a Protestant Parliament of the Protestant Church in Ireland, for an authority which would at least be sorely tempted by religious jealousy to proceed on different principles, even if we had no experience to prove its unjust and tyrannical bias. But with the large experience that we have had of its unjust and tyrannical bias, not, indeed, in directly religious quarrels, but in quarrels in which the priesthood ranged themselves with the peasantry, even when Rome was compelled to range itself on the opposite side, it seems to us sheer madness to depose the just ruler, and to en- throne in his place a majority which has distinguished itself by its complete indifference to moral principles of the very plainest and most elementary kind. What difference does it make whether the Irish priesthood has used its vast influence unfairly against Protestants as such, or only against political and class opponents as such ? For our own part, we think the latter abuse the worse of the two. There might be, not indeed justification, but at least excuse for a violent prejudice against religious opponents ; but there is no excuse for prejudice against paying debts voluntarily incurred, for prejudice against yielding up murderers to justice, for prejudice against treating those who take farms from which idle and dishonest tenants have been evicted, with common justice and respect. Yet this is the kind of prejudice which priests and prelates in Ireland have countenanced, and even fostered. Mr. Gladstone entirely ignores the true issue when he compares the religious toleration of Catholics with the religious toleration of Protestants. What he ought to compare is the religious equity of a caste who have been guilty of these violent acts of injustice and ill- will, with the religious equity of a Parliament and Govern- ment which for the last six years have been engaged in one protracted effort to assert the rights of the weak, to enforce the punishment of crime, and so to reform the Land Laws of Ireland as to prevent for the future anything like the oppression of a class,—whether that class be the class of landlords who demand unjust rents, or peasants who are bent on a policy of unscrupulous revenge.
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