re, is looked upon as a _lusus naturae_. He
said:--"I am a South of Ireland man, and was educated at Douai. I have
no sympathy with the great bulk of the Maynooth men, who are mostly
peasants and the sons of peasants. I do not think that the Maynooth
course is sufficient in one generation to lift the sons to any great
intellectual height above the besotted ignorance of the parents. I
believe in heredity, and I say that most of my colleagues are only
shaved labourers, stall-fed for three years. The low-bred men are now
the dominant power. Instead of tranquillising the people, which I hold
to be the duty of the clergy, they have done all they could to awaken
and keep alive their most dangerous passions. And to rouse the Irish,
especially the Southern Irish, is a matter of the greatest facility. I
hold that the clergy by degenerating into mere political agents are
strangely short-sighted. Their spiritual influence will in time be
dangerously undermined, and in the long run they will take nothing by
their motion. The Parnellite party will grow stronger and stronger,
and the extreme party, the party of Revolution, which now lacks a
leader, would on the passing of a Home Rule bill become the dominant
power. That is a great and salient factor of which up to the present
English politicians have taken no account. The party of Revolution is
the party which under an Irish Parliament would be master of the
situation. Leaders will not be lacking. But at present the party must
from the necessity of the case be amorphous, and therefore,
politically and as a power, practically non-existent. Pass the bill,
and then you will see something. A new party, the party of
Independence, or, as they will call it, of Freedom, will take shape
and formidably influence events. The temptation to take the lead will
be great. Independence and Separation will be a most popular cry. The
present men must either join the swim or be denounced as traitors, and
as Healy cannot now visit Dundalk without two hundred policemen to
protect him, while William O'Brien was nearly torn to pieces at
Cork--would, in fact, have been murdered but for the police--you may
conceive what would be the state of things when we have a
Revolutionary party and when the police were no longer under the fair
and judicial control of the British Government. Pass the bill and look
out for the Revolutionary party. They will have an immense backing in
point of numbers. And numbers rule in Ir