he Church of the majority of the
people was for the sake of peace established and has remained in this
privileged position ever since. In view of the use to which the "No
Popery" cry has been put in its bearings on the Irish question, it is
interesting to consider the relations of the English Government with the
Catholic Church throughout the last century and to see how far it throws
light on the justice and applicability of the taunt that Ireland is
priest-ridden.

In 1814 the Catholics of England, in spite of the opposition of the
Irish people, secured from Mgr. Quarantotti, the Vice-Prefect of the
Propaganda in Rome, who was acting in the absence of Pope Pius VII., at
that date still a prisoner in France, a letter declaring that in his
judgment the Royal veto should be exercised on ecclesiastical
appointments in Ireland. Under O'Connell's leadership, the bishops,
clergy, and people of Ireland refused to submit to the decree, and
there, in spite of the indignation of the English Catholics as a whole
and of the Catholic aristocracy of Ireland, the proposal was allowed to
drop, which would have virtually given a right of _conge d'elire_ to the
English ministry.

In 1782 Edmund Burke had written in his letter to a peer of Ireland on
the Penal Laws--"Never were the members of a religious sect fit to
appoint the pastors of another. It is a good deal to suppose that even
the present Castle would nominate bishops for the Irish Catholic Church
with a religious regard for its welfare." If this was the case under
Grattan's Parliament, its application thirty years later was very much
more cogent. Behind the scenes, however, the wires continued to be
pulled, as is seen by what Melbourne told Greville in 1835, after the
latter had expressed the opinion that the sound course in Irish affairs
was to open a negotiation with Rome.[11] "He then told me ... that an
application had been made to the Pope very lately (through Seymour)
expressive of the particular wish of the British Government that he
would not appoint MacHale to the vacant bishopric--anyone but him. But
on this occasion the Pope made a shrewd observation. His Holiness said
that he had remarked that no place of preferment of any value ever fell
vacant in Ireland that he did not get an application from the British
Government asking for the appointment. Lord Melbourne supposed that he
was determined to show that he had the power of refusal and of opposing
the wishes of the