IRELAND.
The great aggregate meeting of the Roman Catholics of Ireland, so long In preparation, took place at the Rotunda in Dublin on Tuesday. Though the admission was by ticket the building was over-crowded. The class of the hearers was, "for the most part, very respectable" ; "but viewing the meeting as a whole," says the reporter of the Times, "it Could scarcely be termed a national' display of feeling." The Mayors of Cork, Limerick, Kilkenny, Drogheda, and Clonmel, and Sir Colman O'Loghlen, were among the most notable of those on the platform who did not participate in the speaking. The chair was taken by the Honour- able Charles Preston son of Lord Gormanstown. Letters of regret- ful excuse were read from Dr. Cullen, the Roman Catholic Primate of Ireland, who promised to "assist in carrying out any measures " ; from Archbishop Murray ; and from the Roman Catholic Bishops of Cashel, Dromore, Derry, Kilkenny, Ross, Clonfert, and Cloyne. The first resolu- tion was moved by Mr. Fitzsimon, QC., with denunciations of Lord John Russell's after-dinner letter audaciously terming the practices of the holy Catholic religion as mummeries of superstition : " for those practices every man and woman in that great assembly would be ready if re- quit' ed to lay down their heads upon the scaffold." (Tremendous ap- plause.) Mr. Sergeant O'Brien endeavoured to guide the devotion thus avowed : he said, there is too much reason to fear that this measure will pass into law "unless the people of Ireland are fixed in their determination to resist it." Mr. W. Keogh, M.P., castigated Mr. Sergeant Murphy, and those people who call themselves friends, but Who will slip away out of the ranks if they are not kept up to the scratch : the other day Mr. Sergeant Murphy had what Mr. Keogh would call not the effrontery, but the presence of mind, to term the Ecclesiastical Titles Bill only a brutum fulmen ": why "that bill has been introduced de- cidedly and designedly to trample upon the Catholic religion." Mr. M'Carthy moved this resolution-
" That we call upon our representatives in Parliament, and our countrv- men in general, not only to oppose by every constitutional means the bill itself, but also to give an active opposition to any Administration which pro- poses or supports that or any other similar measure."
Mr. J. D. Fitzgerald followed up the practical hints given by Mr. Sergeant O'Brien. If they did nothing more than give instructions to their representatives, the bigoted Ministry of England would only laugh them to acorn: "the greatness of the emergency supersedes all other ob- ligations, dissolves every other tie." Mr. Thomas O'Hagan moved thanks to Lord Abderdeen and Sir James Graham, and the other English and Scotch Members who so powerfully advocated the principles of religious liberty, and the rights of the Catholic people of the empire. The other fesolutions, of a supplementary character, were spoken to by Mr. Patrick Sweatman, Major Govan, and Mr. Lucas, of the Tablet.
The Tablet has published a letter of considerable interest, which it leads mysteriously, "Letter from the Earl of — to the Earl of —," and then explains to have been addressed by Lord Clarendon from Dub- lin to the Earl of Shrewsbury at Rome. Observing that the letter was evidently written "for use as a despatch," and has therefore been "liable to the incidents and accidents to which such documents are exposed," the rablet adds, that "it has passed through many hands, been more than once referred to in the press, and already obtained considerable notoriety " ;
it carne to us from England, from a layman." We shall best show its subject, and the kind of interest which it has raised, by quoting the com- mencement and a characteristic portion from the body of the letter.
"Dublin Dec. 2, 1850.
4‘ My dear Lord—I am sincerely obliged to you for your letters of No- vember the 12th and 15th, and I know not whether most to admire your -accurate knowledge of all the affairs of Ireland, or the eminent tact and judgment you have displayed in the conferences with the Holy Father and the Cardinals, of which you have the goodness to send me so complete and so 'nteresting a report. I take the liberty of making some observations on what was said in those conferences, and I hope that you will permit me to express them with all frankness, because I cannot write about the igno- rance, or something worse, which prevails in Rome regarding this country without candidly declaring ray judgment as to its causes, and the deplorable consequences which must attend it.
"The Pope has shown the extent of the deceit which has been practised 'upon him. All good men in Ireland, of whatever creed or politics, are -agreed in reverencing Dr. Murray as the beau ideal of a Christian pastor ; and yet your Lordship found his Holiness irritated against him alone. All agree in considering Dr. M'Ilale as an ill-disposed demagogue, who does nothing but afford an example of all that a bishop ought not to do; and yet, when your Lordship blamed him, you were told that you had a strange am- znosity against the Irish.
"Great complaints have been made to your Lordship about Mr. Freeborn, and you have been asked how you can have confidence in the British Go- Vernment when they allowed such a man at Rome. I do not pretend to know much of this matter, but I am certain that some of the things alleged against him in your letter are exaggerated, and in all such cases one should hear the other side. Mr. Freeborn has, I believe, proved clearly that in giving passports to certain persons, and sending them quickly away, he pro- moted the cause of order and the safety of the city. But I may be permitted to ask, on the other hand, what we ought to think of the Government of the Pope, who, in violation of the rules for the nomination of bishops, sent here a man like Dr. Cullen, whose only object has been to destroy the Colleges established by the Legislature and maintained by the State, and to extin- guish the National Schools, in which 500,000 of the poorest classes are edu- cated, without an attempt to provide for the deficiency of establishments of these two kinds, and thus leave the middle and poorest class in brutal ignorance, without troubling himself about the consequences that would fol- low? Dr. Cullen, moreover, putlished a synodical address, in which he did not stop at condemning the Colleges, but sought to set class against class, and to represent every poor man as a marty r and every rich man as a tyrant. There is More rank communism in that address than could be chemically distilled from M. de Vericour's whole book. It cannot be alleged at all this opposition arises from religious zeal; because at this moment Dr. M'Hale and others would induce the students to leave the Colleges where their faith and morals are protected, and to go to Trinity College in Dublin, a place eminently Protestant, where there are no guaran- tate for faith; and where there is every temptation to apostaey. Mr. LY1088, editor of the Tablet—one of the most virulent and most offen- sive newspapers in Europe—is in constant communication with Dr. Cul- len, and Is moreover the chief instigator, as his paper is the organ, of the Tenant League, the object of which is to abolish the rights of property, and to shake to its very foundation everything on which society depends. He is ably assisted in this work of regeneration by the priests, who, with this end in view, have fraternized with the Presbyterian clergy. But not a word of counsel or reprimand has been uttered by the Primate; on the contrary, his journal applauds, and the editor acts in the League with Mr. Duffy of the Nation, who would have been at this hour a deported felon if one of the jury had not perjured himself. It is very true that the Pope ordered the clergy not to meddle in politics. This he did in 1847, in the same resoript in which he condemned the Colleges. The second part was re- ceived with reverence, as hostile to the Government ; and the first was obeyed by the clergy rushing headlong into the revolutionary movement of 1848, when nothing saved them, except their belief in the impartiality of the Go- vernment: in which they were quite right, because, if the legal evidence of their guilt had been as strong as its moral certainty, several of them would have now been along with their friends in exile in Van Diemen's Land."
The cellar habitations of Dublin are about to he suppressed, and mea- sures are in progress for the opening of model lodging-houses.
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