, and, strange to say,
the scholarly men, what you might call the gentlemanly party, are
against Home Rule. These, unhappily, are very few. The Maynooth men
are violently against England." This cleric called attention to the
opinion of Dr. Wylie, of Edinburgh, who has made a special study of
the matter. The learned professor says the more palpable decadence of
Ireland dates from the erection of Maynooth. Before the institution of
this school the Irish priests were educated in France, then the least
ultramontane country in popish Europe. They could not be there without
imbibing a certain portion of the spirit of "Gallican liberties." It
was argued that by educating them at home, we should have a class of
priests more national and more attached to British rule; at least we
would have gentlemen and scholars, who would humanise their flocks.
These have since been shown to be miserable sophisms. "Maynooth is a
thoroughly ultramontane school. We have exchanged the French-bred
priest, illread in Dens, with low notions of the supremacy, and
proportionally high notions of the British Crown, for a race of
crafty, Jesuitical, intriguing, thorough-trained priests of the
ultramontane school, who recognise but one power in the world--the
Pontifical--and who are incurably alienated from British interests and
rule. The loud and fearful curses fulminated from the altar, which
come rolling across the Channel, mingled with the wrathful howls of a
priest-ridden and maddened people, proclaim the result. These are your
Maynooth scholars and gentlemen! These are your pious flocks, tended
and fed by the lettered priests of Maynooth! Better had we flung our
money into the sea, than sent it across the Channel, to be a curse in
the first place to Ireland, and a curse in the second place to
ourselves, by the demoralising and anti-national sentiments it has
been employed to propagate. The better a priest, the worse a citizen.
And whom have Government found their bitterest enemies? Who are the
parties who have invariably withstood all their plans for civilising
Ireland? Why, those very priests whom they have clothed, and educated,
and fed."

Such, according to an expert, are the men who now manipulate the
voting powers of the Irish people. The priests do not deny that they
have this full control; they merely say they have a right to it.
Bishop Walsh, of Dublin, says that as priests, and independent of all
human organisations, they have an inalienab