The Stourbridge Observer, Cradley Heath, Halesowen & District Chronicle.
Stourbridge, West Midlands, England, 1886-07-10 00:00:00

CARDINAL NANNING AND THE
PARNELLITES.

In reply to an American gentleman who called his
attention to Mr. Arthur's declaration that he thought
it a moral mystery how any friend of religious liberty
could consent to ‘' hand over Ireland to Parnellite
rule," Cirdinal Manning has written as follows :
"You ask me whether I share the fears expressed
by Mr. Arthur as to the religious liberty of the Pro-
testants in Ireland from the handing over of Ireland
to the Parnellite rule. I have no such fear. First,
because Mr. Parnell is himself a Protestant, and the
other day declared his hope that he should live and
die a Protestant. He is not the man, either by his
American kindred, or his Cambridge education, or his
Irish sympathies, or his English antecedents, to per-
accute Protestantism anywhere, least of all in Ireland.
And, further, because the whole power wielded
by Mr. Parnell is the sympathy and trust of the
Catholic people of Ireland, in whose behalf I have
no hesitation in saying that they never have perse-
cuted their Protestant neighbours in the matter of
religion, and have always been the conspicuous ex-
amples of respecting the liberty of conscience which
has been so cruelly denied to them. The children of
martyrs are not persecutors. . . . Force may make
hypocrites. It can never generate faith. The pastors
and the psople of Catholic Ireland are too profoundly
conscious of these truths to debase the divine tra-
dition of their faith with the human cruelties of
retaliation. It would level Ireland down to the
massacres of Cornwall and the penal laws of Ormonde.
But that I may not be suspected of only giving my private
opinion, I will quote an authority before which even
Mr. Arthur will, I hope, be silent. Leo XIII., on
the Ist of November last year, promulgated these
words to the whole Catholic world: The Church,
it is true, deems it unlawful to place the various
forms of Divine worship on the same footing as
the true religion. Still, it does net on that account
condemn those rules who, for the sake of securing
some great good or of preventing some great evil,
allow by custom and usage each kind of religion to
have its place in the State. Indeed, the Church is
wont diligently to take care that no one shall be com-
pelled against his will to embrace the Catholic faith,
for, as St. Augustine wisely reminds us, Man cannot
believe otherwise than of his own free will.'" After
this it is hardly worth adding that Mr. G adstone
provided in his bill that the statutory Parliament
should not establish any religion. But I must
acknowledge that with the 12th of July near at hand
dan with Belfast and the conflicts of Canada and
Newfoundland before our eyes, and certain recent
speeches ringing in our ears, and Mr. Arthur's
letter in remembrance, I cannot but be afraid that
there may be an appeal to the animosities of flesh
and blood in the name of religious liberty, and that
the fiery cross may be sent round, not by a Catholic
majority in Ireland or in America, but by politi-
cians and by over-lords whose power is gone. Mr.
Arthur speaks of handing over Ireland to Parnellite
rule.' This does not seem to me to be the transfer
now proposed. If Mr. Pitt's policy of the Union had
been carried out the Irish people would have been
emanicipated, enfranchised, and admitted 80 yeara
ago to a share in making laws for Ireland. The
emancipation, with every circumstance of irritation
and bigotry, was defeated for eight and twenty years.
But the Union, baffled as it has been, has done for
Ireland more than we seem willing to acknowledge.
Ireland was never so united as it is now. The
Catholics of Ireland since their three confiscations
have never held so much land as they hold to-day.
There was never co much money in Ireland with all
its inequalities and vexatious restrictions. The
primary, falsely called the National, education, was
never so widespread. Ireland had never so powerful
a public opinion or
_so vigorous a Press, or so grfat
a hold on the chief centres of England, or upan
the public opinion of Great Britain, or upon the
Imperial Parliament, as it has at this hour. The
remnant of Connaught has become a great people,
still it does not govern itself as England and Scotland
do. Mr. Parnell has indeed done what no other man
attempted to do. He has filled the place he found
vacant. He has known the needitand interpreted the
desire of the Irish people. Therefore he leads. But
the transfer of self-government is not to Mr. Parnell,
nor the Parnellites, but to Ireland and to the Irish
people. In these years of terrible conflict much that
is unwise has been spoken, much that is wrong has
been done, much that is execrable has been perpe-
trated. If Ido not gratify those who will neither
zee nor speak of anything else by denouncing such
deplorable blemishes and such ignominious brands
upon a cause essentially just and sacred, it is not
that I deny them or condone them. But they are
used for a purpose, and they Oscura the truth. Mr.
Parnell and his followers are the forlorn hope
which has carried the stronghold. Forlorn hopes
do their work, and are for ever remembered with
gratitude and honour, but they return into the army
out of which they came, and the army holds the
field. What Mr. Parnell and his singularly able
lieutenants have accomplished will never be forgotten,
but it is Ireland that by self-culture will order and
unfold itself ln your majestic union (America)
there is a central power which binds all your liberties
and legislatures into one Commonwealth. England,
Ireland and Scotland must, in my belief, all alike
have Home Rule in affairs that are not imperial.
The growth of the Empire and the fulness of time
demand it. But there is an august sovereignty of a
thousand years, and the centre of a world wide Em-
pire, standing in the midst of us. England, Scotland
and Ireland can be handed over to no man and to no
movement; neither can they wrong one another, or
put fetters on the liberties of any member of our
great Imperial Commonwealth. The sovereignty per-
vades all its parts, and will ever restrain and promptly
redress all excesses of delegated powers."