TOPICS OF THE DAY.
PRIESTLY INTIMIDATION IN IRELAND.
WE have never been amongst those who have grudged the Irish priests a very great moral influence with the Irish peasantry in political affairs. Though for the last ten years we have considered their political influence predominantly mischievous, and too often even morally disastrous, still their long and most honourable fidelity to the peasantry during many generations in which British Governments treated Ireland with worse than neglect, and through later generations during which British Governments treated Ireland with a bewildered sort of impatience, or even irritability, bad properly earned for them a place in the confidence of the Irish people which it was not human nature that the priests should have forfeited (though they deserved to lose much more than they did lose) by ranging themselves on the side of the people, even when the people were plotting to cheat their landlords and to render the lives of those who played into the bands of the landlords, a burden and a sorrow to them. Taking Irish history and tradition as a whole,—and that is how they ought to be taken —the ecclesiastics of Ireland are still the natural advisers of the people even in political affairs, and far from blaming, we heartily approve the instinct which prompts the Irish people to consult their priests, and, on the whole, to follow their advice, even should that advice counsel them to throw over a leader whom they had formerly trusted, and to accept others who had been, or had appeared to be, dis- loyal to the leader whom they had thus trusted. If the use of the priestly influence had gone no further than this, we do not believe that any fault would or could have been found with it by the Court which tried the election peti- tion for South Meath. But it is quite a different thing when we find a Bishop like Dr. Nulty stretching his power so far as to lay it down, to quote the Judge's words, " That no intelligent or well-informed person could remain a Catholic and adhere to Parnellism," and to imply that political Parnellism is simply a sin. The presiding Judge, himself a sound Catholic, declared that " the shadow of sin " was cast over the whole conflict. One of the priests had told his people that the distinction between Parnellites and Anti-Parnellites was identical with that between "adulterers and non-adulterers." Another had given to one witness the impression that if he voted for a Parnellite, he would be refused absolution on his death-bed. A third had been understood to suggest that voting for a Parnellite might cost the voter the right of Christian burial. Others had used the confessional itself as a means of canvassing for the Anti-Parnellite candidate. One priest had threatened to " fire the heels and toes" of certain persons. In a word, the Judge suggested a doubt whether the ardent character of the sacerdotal canvas did not almost suggest that the principals in the contest were really the priesthood, while the political candidate was nothing better than their agent. Now, no one who knows anything of Roman Catholic principles with regard to political contests of this sort, could doubt for a moment that menaces of this kind would get no sanction from any instructed Roman Catholic theologian. Mr. Parnell's private immoralities had about as much to do with the policy of the party which call themselves by his name, as Charles James Fox's gaming propensities had to do with the political creed of his Parliamentary party. Any ecclesiastic who had really refused to absolve an Irish peasant for voting for the Parnellite candidate, —a matter on which he had no kind of right to put any question to his penitent,—would have incurred the heavy censure of the Church of Rome. And that being so, nothing could be more reprehensible than to use language and take up an attitude towards the Parnellites which would convey to them, however inexplicitly, that it would be as much as their salvation was worth to give a vote for a Par- nellite candidate. We say this without feeling the smallest sympathy with the Parnellites. There is little to choose, in our opinion, between Parnellites and Anti-Parnellites ; but whatever there is, is in favour of the latter. Mr. Dillon and Mr. O'Brien are not trustworthy leaders ; but Mr. John Redmond is still less trustworthy. We should have said precisely what we say now, if Catholic priests had intimi- dated voters prepared to vote against the Parnellite candi- date, just as they did actually intimidate, or at least were declared to have intimidated, voters prepared to vote in favour of him. It is not for the priests' temperate advice and counsel, whichever way it may have been given, but for their use of a language and a manner which tended to suggest, and was calculated to suggest, the elector's condem- nation in the next world as the consequence of giving his vote to Mr. Fullam, that the Judges declared the election invalid ; and we do not doubt for a moment that the Judges were perfectly right. The priests were perverting the teaching of their own Church when they ventured to stretch it into such illegitimate menaces as these. We observe that some of the Anti-Parnellite speakers and writers have tried to represent the unseating of Mr. Fullam as if it were a blow struck at the moral influence of the Catholic priest- hood in Ireland. That is so far from being the case that it is really a blow struck on behalf of their moral influence.
Ireland is exceedingly backward in its political develop- ment ; but it is easy to see that, backward as it is, the priests really injured their influence instead of increasing it, by the arbitrary and dictatorial fashion in which they used it in the South Meath election. Democracy has got sufficient hold, however, of Ireland to disgust the Irish peasantry with interference of this insolent kind. The very talk about Home-rule itself has filled the Irish with the feeling that they ought to be masters and not slaves in relation to the politics of the hour. So long as the priests advise, persuade, suggest, lead their minds to the conclusion they wish to promote, they will be influential. But if they affect the manner of masters to servants, and assume the right to order, they will lose the influence they now have. The South Meath election itself proved this. In spite of all this hectoring and this free use of the confes- sional as a mode of canvassing on behalf of their can- didate, Mr. Fullam only obtained the narrow majority of 83 out of a total poll of 4,341 votes. That majority would have been much larger if Irishmen had really been in the abject state of political tutelage which the tactics of the priesthood seemed to assume. The Irish priests may be sure that Mr. Justice O'Brien was their friend, and not their foe, when he showed them that an attitude such as they had taken up under Dr. Nulty's direction, was a fatal mistake, as well as a breach of the law. Democracy is an infectious principle even in Ireland. In campaigns intended to forward the cause of self- govern ment, it will not do, even in Ireland, to ignore altogether the notion that the voter should decide for himself. Irishmen are not, as yet, " free and independent electors," but they are beginning to resent being treated as servile and dependent electors ; and they will not suffer themselves to be so treated much longer. If the priests wish to retain their legitimate influence, they must abandon their illegitimate influence, and become real counsellors and pleaders, not angry and insolent dictators.
Again, it was evidently a great mistake for the priest- hood to overdo the argument derived from Mr. Parnell's immoralities as they did. Mr. Parnell being dead, and the moral character of his personal influence no longer a practical question at all, there was a certain violence, and, as one at least of the witnesses evidently thought, an indelicacy and ingratitude towards a leader who had done so much to give political importance to their cause, in this mode of handling the subject ; and this many of the electors were quite sharp enough to dislike. To insist that all who took the side of Mr Parnell's successor were partisans of adultery, was not only irrational, but involved a sort of contempt for the intelligence of their people which even the least instructed of Irishmen are quick enough to perceive and resent. Nobody is sharper at seeing the difference between the personal shortcomings of a political leader and his political position than an Irishman ; and to make one of Mr. John Redmond's followers responsible for Mr. Par- nell's vices, implied a disbelief in their acuteness which touched their personal pride. Indeed, we are rather sur- prised that the Irish priests were not themselves too quick, and too much in sympathy with the quickness of their people, to take up such a line of argument at all. It looks more like the blundering Saxon than the humorous Celt. If they had not thought that any stick was good enough to beat a Parnellite with, they would never have picked up such a stick as that. But, as a matter of fact, any stick is not good enough to beat an Irishman of any party with. And this stick was evidently a very ineffective stick indeed. Nobody knows better than the most illiterate of Irish electors that if you begin inquiring not only into the personal morality of all the candidates, but into the per- sonal morality of all their former leaders, there would be very few candidates in Ireland who could stand the test. The South Meath election petition should be a serious warning to Irish priests not only to avoid dictating in any coarse fashion, but also to respect the quick intelligence of their flocks. We are not surprised that they should need the former warning. We are surprised that they should need the latter.
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