and he asked the English Cardinal for his
assistance. To this Newman replied that the Pope was not supreme in
political matters, his action as to whether a political party is
censurable is not direct, and, moreover, it lay with the bishops to
censure the clergy for their language if they thought it intemperate,
and the interposition of the Holy See was not called for by the
circumstances of the case.

The policy, however, which had been applied before was employed once
more in another direction in the teeth of British sentiment if not of
British law. A mortgage had been foreclosed on Parnell's estate, and the
Irish newspapers having obtained knowledge of the fact raised a
collection which became known as the Parnell Tribute, and which was
headed by a subscription from the Archbishop of Cashel. If precedent
were needed for this form of recognition of national services it was to
be found in the grant of L50,000--which might, had he been willing, have
been double that amount--which was made to Grattan by the emancipated
Irish House of Commons, but more exact parallels perhaps are to be found
in "O'Connel's Rent," which Greville described as "nobly paid and nobly
earned," or in the great collection which marked the popular
appreciation in Great Britain of Cobden's services in securing the
repeal of the Corn Laws. In the autumn of 1881, when the Parnell
Tribute was initiated, the Land League agitation was in full swing in
Ireland, and about the same time Mr. George Errington, an English
Catholic Whig Member of Parliament, who was about to spend the winter in
Rome, called on Lord Granville, the Foreign Secretary, and was given by
him an introduction to the Cardinal Secretary of State. In this wise Mr.
Errington went, in the phrase of the day, "to keep the Vatican in good
humour," and if he was not the accredited representative of Her
Brittanic Majesty--for that would have been illegal--at any rate he went
with the sanction and under the aegis of the Foreign Office.

The upshot was a Papal rescript, signed by Cardinal Simeoni, the
Prefect, and Mgr. Jacobini, the Secretary of the Sacred Congregation De
Propagatione Fide, which condemned the Tribute owing to the Land League
agitation.

"The collection called 'The Parnell Testimonial Fund,'" so ran the
rescript, "cannot be approved, and consequently it cannot be tolerated
that any ecclesiastic, much less a bishop, should take any part whatever
in recommending or promoting it."