d organization for gaining its ends, rather than to ally
itself openly with the Irish Revolution. Even after Mr. Parnell had
secured the allegiance of the farmer class by his great largess in the
shape of 20 per cent. reduction of rent, not only did Cardinal McCabe
continue to oppose him, but Archbishop Croke evinced a desire to act on
the side of Government.

Such a line of action, however, was only possible on the supposition,
that government was to be maintained in Ireland; and the tenure of
Ireland by Lord Spencer gave no such assurance. We know the passionate
efforts which Mr. Gladstone made to exclude Archbishop Walsh from the
See of Dublin. Sir George Errington was sent to Rome to get the Pope to
do what Mr. Gladstone dare not do himself--bid defiance to the Irish
leader. That resolute politician had a policy; the English Minister had
none. A quarrel with the Nationalist party meant to the Roman Church
loss of income, loss of influence--influence which, in these
iconoclastic days, it might take them generations to recover; and, after
all their sacrifices, they might find that Mr. Gladstone had
capitulated, and had handed them and the rest of Ireland over to the
National League. Their only practical course, as discreet politicians,
was to throw in their lot with the great Nationalist leader, relying on
the old traditions of the Irish peasant to protect clerical interests
against the host of Revolutionists, who would, on Mr. Parnell's triumph,
flock into Ireland from all the ends of the earth. The priests do not
forget that the member for Cork denounced their co-religionists. They
have no enthusiasm for a revolutionary dictator, who, whatever his
opinions on religious matters, cannot be claimed as a son of the Church.
Mr. Gladstone, however, left the sacerdotal power no choice but to make
the best terms they could with the Irish leader, who was only too glad
to secure their co-operation. Archbishop Walsh has been accepted as a
sort of ecclesiastical assessor to Mr. Parnell's government, and at the
last election the priests went as one man for the National League.

It is an Ireland, thus abandoned for years to the evil spirits evoked by
the rhetorician of Southport--an Ireland, in which the natural springs
of Conservatism have been dried up by the fever of slumbering
revolution--that England is now called upon to deal with, and the remedy
of the Ministry is to call into power a public opinion schooled in
conspiracy