The bishops and clergy withdrew from any further action in connection
with the Tribute Fund, but the laity gave the lie to the suggestion that
they are under the thumb of their priests in matters which are not
within the sphere of faith or morals. The rescript was promulgated in
May, and at this time the subscription list amounted to less than
L8,000. Within a month it had doubled, and by the end of the year it
amounted to L37,000. The amount of the mortgage was L13,000. As Parnell,
in a characteristically laconic way, put it in his evidence before the
Commission, "The Irish people raised a collection for me to pay off the
amount of a mortgage. The amount of the collection considerably exceeded
the amount necessary." The retort of the country to the document
"_Qualecumque de Parnellio_," had been, in the phrase then current, to
"make Peter's pence into Parnell's pounds."

Two years after the Simeoni letter Mr. Errington was again in Rome,
attempting this time to secure the exclusion from the successorship to
Cardinal M'Cabe, of Dr. Walsh of Maynooth, as Archbishop of Dublin. A
letter on the subject fell into the hands of the editor of _United
Ireland_, who published it in his paper, and so in this way thwarted the
objects of the second Errington mission. "If we want to hold Ireland by
force," said Joseph Cowen, the Radical member for Newcastle, "let us do
it ourselves; let us not call in the Pope, whom we are always attacking,
to help us."

A further instance may be recounted of the manner in which the people of
what is, after Spain, the most Catholic country in Europe, while
submitting to the Pope implicitly in matters which are _de fide_,
refused to take their cue in purely political matters from Rome.

The rejection of the Home Rule Bill and of the Land Bill of 1886, and
the return of the Conservatives to power, led to a recrudescence of the
land war, to which the hope of ameliorative legislation had temporarily
put a truce. The Plan of Campaign, which was then launched--of which it
has been said that no agrarian movement was ever so unstained by
crime--was of the following nature:--The tenants of a locality were to
form themselves into an association, each member of which was to proffer
to the landlord or his agent a sum which was estimated by the general
body as a fair rent for his holding. These sums, if refused by the
landlord, were pooled and divided by the association for the maintenance
of those tenants