are a better class of men, and no doubt they are
loyal enough for practical purposes. And then they have neither
numbers nor influence. You look upon the Catholic laity of England
very much as we look upon the Plymouth Brethren of Ireland--that is,
as a well-meaning, well-conducted body of people with whom you don't
agree. The Catholic laity of Ireland would be all right if they were
left alone, if they were allowed to follow the dictates of their
natural humanity. My Catholic neighbours were very good, none better,
until this accursed agitation began. Left to themselves the Irish
people would agree better and better every year. But that would not
suit Rome. The Church, which is very astute, too much so for England,
sees in agrarian agitation a means of influence and the acquisition of
power; and once an Irish Parliament became dominant, intolerance would
make itself felt. Not as of old by the fires and tortures of the
Inquisition, for nineteenth-century public opinion would not stand
that; and not by manifestly illegal means either, but by boycotting,
by every species of rascality. How can you expect tolerance from a
church the very essence of whose doctrine is intolerance? When
everybody outside the pale of that Church is outside the pale of
salvation, condemned beforehand to eternal damnation, anything and
everything is permissible to compel them to come in. That is their
doctrine, and they, of course, call it benevolence.

"Mr. Gladstone has said,--'My firm belief is that the influence of
Great Britain in every Irish difficulty is not a domineering and
tyrannising, but a softening and mitigating influence, and that were
Ireland detached from her political connection with this country and
left to her own unaided agencies, it might be that the strife of
parties would then burst forth in a form calculated to strike horror
through the land.' There is the passage, in my scrap-book. The speech
was made in the House. The English Home Rulers believe that their
troubles will be over when once Irishmen rule from College Green, and
they trust the Irish Catholic members, who from childhood have been
taught that it is not necessary to keep faith with heretics. That is a
fundamental tenet of the Church of Rome. Still, England will have no
excuse for being so grossly deceived, for these men have at one time
or other been pretty candid. William O'Brien said that the country
would in the end 'own no flag but the Green Flag of an in