hink that sensible Britons
would decline to entrust such men with power. Did they not bring about
the rule of the Land League, with its stories of foul murder which
sound like a horrible dream of the tyranny of the Middle Ages? Are
these men not hand and glove with the clerical party, which hates
England as heretic and excommunicate? It is not proposed by Home Rule
to put in office men who are the mere tools of the Catholic church,
the most unyielding and intolerant system in the world!"

I remembered the leader in the _Irish Catholic_, which sings a paean of
triumph over alleged successes against the Freemasons of Italy.
British Masons may be interested to learn that this authority couples
them with Atheists, Fenians, and Ribbonmen, and holds up the craft to
contumely and scorn. The acceptance by Mr. Gladstone of the principle
of Home Rule seems to rejoice the Papist heart. "Never was it more
clear than it now is that the indestructible Papacy exercises an
authority over the hearts and minds of humanity which nothing, neither
fraud, nor oppression, nor misrepresentation, can weaken or destroy.
How near may be the day of its inevitable triumph no man can say,
while that its coming is as certain as the rising of the morning sun
... none will doubt or deny. That in the moment when the Vicar of
Christ is vindicated before the nations, and the reign of right and
truth and justice re-established throughout Christendom, Ireland can
claim to have been faithful when others were untrue, will be the
proudest trophy of an affection which no temptation and no tyranny was
ever able to weaken or destroy." The Freemasons are expressly stated
to lie under "the terrible penalty of excommunication," but they are
afterwards lightly dealt with. They are regarded with an amused
tolerance by Irish Catholics, who only laugh to see them "hung with a
number of trumpery glass and Brummagem metal trinkets about their
persons, and generally indulging in an amount of fantastic and
childish adornment which would turn the King of the Cannibal Islands
green with envy." Their profanation of God's holy name and their
sacrilegious oaths are regretted, but they will never do much harm in
Ireland, where the people laugh at their "fantastic tomfoolery." A
parallel column advises the public to join in the present pilgrimage
to Saint Patrick's Purgatory, where the saint saw, by special favour
of God, the purgatorial fires. Another column advertises prayers at