resentment for injuries they have never received, their
dislike engendered and sustained by lying priests and selfish
agitators, who are hastening to achieve their ends, alarmed at the
prospect of popular enlightenment, which would for ever hurl them from
power. The opinions of Cardinal Logue have been quoted by Lord
Randolph Churchill. The _Freeman's Journal_ is still more absolute.
Does this sound like the Union of Hearts? Does this give earnest of
final settlement, of unbroken peace and contentment, of eternal
fraternity and friendship? The _Freeman_ says, "We contend that the
good government of Ireland by England is _impossible_, not so much by
reason of natural obstacles, but because of the radical, essential
difference in the public order of the two countries. This, considered
in the abstract, makes a gulf profound, impassible--_an obstacle no
human ingenuity can remove or overcome_."

This promises well for the success of the Home Rule Bill; but why is
the thing "impossible"? Why is the gulf not only profound but also
"impassible"? Why is the good government of Ireland by England
prevented by an obstacle beyond human ability to remove, and which, as
Mr. Gladstone would say, "passes the wit of man." The _Freeman_ has no
objection to tell us. The writer assumes a high moral standpoint,
addressing the eminently respectable and religious Mr. Bull more in
sorrow than in anger, but notwithstanding this, in a style to which
that highly moral and Twenty-shillings-in-the-pound-paying person is
not at all accustomed. The _Freeman_ goes on--

"We find ourselves bound by reason and logic to deny to English
civilisation the glorious title of Christian."

This is distinctly surprising. John always believed himself a
Christian. The natural pain he may be expected to undergo after this
disagreeable discovery is luckily to some extent mitigated by the
information that although England is not Christian, Ireland is
extremely so. The one people (the Irish) "has not only accepted but
retained with inviolable constancy the Christian civilisation;" the
other (the English) "has not only rejected it, but has been for three
centuries the leader of the great apostacy, and is at this day _the
principal obstacle to the conversion of the world_."

Do the English Separatists see daylight now? Will they any longer deny
what all intelligent Irishmen of whatever creed readily admit, namely,
that religion is at the bottom of the Home Rule que