in Ireland was saved from
the degeneration and corruption which ever besets a wealthy and
prosperous church, and which never fails to engender hypocrisy, avarice
and ambition. In England, the followers of the Apostles exercise the
right to levy a second tax on the produce of all tilled lands, a second
burden imposed upon the conquered Saxons. As a result, the leaders of
the church live in palaces, while the people, the humbler part of their
congregation; have sunk into practical atheism. In France, the reaction
against a like state of things brought the church to the verge of
destruction, and led the masses to infidelity and materialism. The
result to the moral life of the people is too well known to need remark.
Not less evil consequences have flowed from the enriching of the church
in other lands. That wealth has always carried with it the curse, so
prophetically pronounced, against those who trust in riches. For the
ministers of religion, in a supreme degree, the love of money has been
the root of evil.

We may, therefore, see in the spirituality and unworldliness of the
native church in Ireland a result of all the evil and persecution the
church suffered during almost three hundred years. From this
purification by fire it comes that the people of Ireland are almost
singular throughout Christendom in believing sincerely in the religion
of gentleness and mercy--the kingdom which is not of this world.

In 1829 the Catholics were at last freed from the galling burdens which
had weighed on them since 1537, when they failed to recognize Henry VIII
as the representative of God on earth. They were still, however, under
the shadow of a grave injustice, which continued to rest on them for
many years. When their church lands were confiscated and their faith
proscribed by law under the Tudors, a new clergy was overlaid on the
country, a clergy which consented to recognize the Tudors and their
successors as their spiritual head. As a reward, these new ministers of
religion were allowed to levy a second tax on land, exactly as in
England; and this tax they continued to collect until their privilege
was finally taken away by Gladstone and the English Liberals. Needless
to say that through three centuries and more four-fifths of this tax was
levied on the indigenous Catholics, in support of what was to them an
alien, and for most of the time a persecuting church.

One heavy disability still lay on the whole land. With its partial