The three abduction eases in Ireland are treated generally as
proofs of the reaction amongst the Roman Catholics in that island ; but to us all the circumstances have rather a different signification. No doubt they prove the activity of the Roman Catholics. In one case, Patrick and Alicia Murphy, the chil- dren of Widow Murphy, who had been placed in an orphan asylum, had disappeared, and their mother appeals to the Irish courts to find her children, whom she supposes to have been spirited away into America or into Popery ; she cannot discover which. In another ease, Mary Matthews, a child in a charitable school, has disappeared, and the lady principal of the school cannot be induced to give any explanation ; indeed, she speaks as if she were ignorant on the subject. In the third, the four children of Mrs. Sherwood, the widow of a sailor belonging to the Established Church, disappeared—gone off by train some- where. In all these cases, those persons who last had custody of the children profess their inability to give an account of their charges ; and there seems some reason to suppose that, in each instance, the persons ostensibly responsible are acting as the tools of others who keep behind—probably the clergy. The facts show the immense exertions made by the Ultramontane body in Ireland,—to obtain the conquest of even little children belonging to the, humbler classes, in an island where not long since the Roman clergy held undisputed sway over aix-sevenths of the people. The great ingenuity and caution observed by those who seem to be the principal agents also prove that the Ultramontane leaders stand in greater fear than they did, both of the law and of public opinion. On the whole, their proceed- hip prove, not advance in. their party, but conscious decline.
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