that city
signed a document denying the allegations about free contracts, fair
rent, the Land Commission, and the rest, declared that the conclusions
had been drawn from erroneous premises, and while asserting their
complete obedience to the Holy See in spiritual matters, no less
strongly repudiated the suggestion that Rome had any right to interfere
in matters of a political nature. Mass meetings were held in the Phoenix
Park in Dublin, and in Cork, which indorsed this position by popular
vote. The Orangemen were delighted at the imminence of a schism, and the
discomfiture of the Catholics under a decree, the result of internal
division, was hailed with pleasure only by the enemies of the Church. In
the event they were doomed to disappointment, for in the closing days of
the year the Holy Father wrote a letter to the Archbishop of Dublin
concerning his action, which had been "so sadly misunderstood," in which
he wrote that "as to the counsels that we have given to the people of
Ireland from time to time and our recent decree, we were moved in these
things, not only by the consideration of what is conformable to truth
and justice, but also by the desire of advancing your interests. For
such is our affection for you that it does not suffer us to allow the
cause in which Ireland is struggling to be weakened by the introduction
of anything that could justly be brought in reproach against it."

In this manner was closed an incident which was expected by its foes to
threaten the allegiance of Ireland, and with it that of more than half
the Catholics in England, to the Holy See.

The Nationalist members at the Mansion House had flatly declared that
the decree was an instrument of the unscrupulous enemies both of Ireland
and of the Holy See. The _Tablet_, which declared that it had been
promulgated with full and intimate knowledge of all the circumstances,
retorted--"As a matter of fact we believe that the English Government
has taken no steps, direct or indirect, to obtain the pronouncement,
which is based solely on the reports of Mgr. Persico and the documents
and evidence which accompanied them." And it went on to add that Persico
was expected to return to Ireland to watch the application of the
decree.

Beyond this, until recently, nothing more was known except that it was
remarked that negotiations between the Duke of Norfolk and the Vatican
were broken off, and that the former left Rome suddenly for England
without ha