ious objects thus described, would also have given him power
to transfer the funds of the Irish Established Church to the Roman
Catholic. He and most of his followers having loudly professed "the
voluntary principle," it may seem to readers, cognisant of that fact,
and unacquainted with the modes of procedure adopted by the Irish
popular party, as unlikely that those who composed it, or, at all
events, he who led it, would ever desire the establishment of the Roman
Catholic Church in Ireland. The truth is, that most of the men who
declaimed in favour of the voluntary principle were chiefly actuated,
like O'Connell himself, in their political agitation, by the desire and
hope of Roman Catholic ascendancy. The great repeal leader proved
at last that he was utterly insincere in these protestations of
voluntarism, for afterwards, during the English agitation concerning the
Maynooth grant, he turned "the voluntaries" and their principle into
open ridicule. He had served his turn of them, and then held them and
the principles he pretended in common with them to support, in derision.
Yet O'Connell was not a dishonest politician, apart from his religious
mission. He was a man to be trusted in political engagements; few public
men of the day would act with such truth and honour to party, and in any
purely political contest or interest. When the promotion of his Church
was concerned, his conduct proved that he believed a doctrine which he
often repudiated--that the end sanctified the means. He was educated
a Jesuit, was one in spirit, was allied with them in the purposes and
objects of his private life, and his public policy. If any considerable
amount of Romish influence could have been introduced to the British
cabinet, with the hope that it would become a permanent element in the
government of England, O'Connell would have been the deadliest enemy of
repeal: the Roman Catholic Church in Ireland would have put down repeal
as injurious to it. The Young Irelanders would have still agitated for
Irish independence; but they would have been mobbed, or assassinated, or
otherwise soon crushed as a party. The Protestants would then have been
the repealers. The argument of Mr. Lucas, that repeal would weaken
the Irish Roman Catholic body, through the influence of the English
government upon the colonies and foreign states, was that which
prevailed with so many Romanists of respectability in Ireland, and with
the English Roman Catholic par