The Press.
London, England, 1858-11-27 00:00:00

THE PRESS, NOVEMBER 27, 1858.

1148

substance. A certain individual of alleged Eng-
lish extraction, Iberian birth, and Romish
education, emitting from his headpiece and lower
extremities bright scarlet-coloured rays, was ob-
served moving in an abnormal path and with
somewhat irregular speed over the green soil of
the Emerald Isle, and attracting in his course
crowds of wondering spectators who had never
seen such a sight before, composed, mainly, of the
ignorant peasantry of the sister kingdom, with a
goodly sprinkling, everywhere, of Popish priests.
Nobody could tell exactly what it all meant.
Various guesses were made, some shrewd, others,
probably, wide of the mark. Some thought that
" llis Eminence," as the ecclesiastical luminary
in question delights to be called, having found
the atmosphere of England rather chilly of late
for his Italian constitution, had determined to
warm himself into something like comfort by the
sparkling fire of Irish enthusiasm for "the auld
Church" whose scarlet livery he wears. Others
were of opinion that he had undertaken the tour,
which was destined to be a nine days' wonder, at
the invitation of the Romish hierarchy in Ireland,
who in the altered circumstances of that country
found its soil less congenial to the growth of
Popery, and conceived that the sight of a Cardi-
nals hat, like a gleam of bright sunshine, or the
coruscations of a comet's tail, might give a fillip
to the flagging spiritual vegetation. Others,
again, pooh-poohing the notion of any deeper
design underlying the strange affair, looked upon
it as a mere holiday freak, and asked with much
point whether a Cardinal was the only man that
was not to be allowed to take a trip to Ireland
or anywhere else for his own recreation. Amidst
all these conflicting opinions one point was toler-
ably clear,—as " Archbishop of 'Westminster,"
Dr. WrsEmaN had no business, because no eccle-
siastical jurisdiction, in Ireland, and if he kad any
mission at all in going there, it must have been
some secret mission with which he was charged
as the Pope's Privy Councillor.
This is phenomenon the first. Now for phe-
nomenon the second; the existence or non-
existence, probability or improbability, of a
connection between the two, after the law of
cause and effect, being the social problem which
we propose for solution. No sooner had the
Cardinal returned from his Irish tour, than he
gathered a " fashionable " London audience, in
the " spacious " Hanover-square-rooms—a locality
whose very name is calculated by its " heretical "
associations to dissipate all suspicion of insidious
Popish designs—for the purpose of detailing to
those who flocked to hear hint the "impressions"
he had received during his recent progress through
the stronghold of "Catholicism" in the United
Kingdom—" impressions which," he observed,
" if he were to live for the longest period that
" was possible, would never be effaced." Scarcely,
however, had the sound of his voice died away in
the fashionable lecture-room at the west end of
London, than the startling intelligence arrived
from the west of Ireland that a general revival of
Ribbon societies was taking place, and that the
peasantry were being sworn in by hundreds as
members of that secret and illegal organization.
In illustration of the purpose of this movement,
and as an earnest of what might be expected from
it, the further and not less startling intelligence
came to hand that a Protestant clergyman had
been shot at, in broad daylight on a frequented
road within sight and call of a cluster of dwellings,
on his return from church in his own carriage, in
the company of his wife and daughter, by a party
of these assassins disguised in female attire, with
their shawls pinned down flat on their :heads,—a
variation of their usual costume which, it appears,
the female population of the district had very
generally adopted for the occasion. The object
of the assassins was evidently to scatter the brains
of the unfortunate victim of " Catholic " antipa-
thies ; as it was, they only succeeded in shattenng
his jaw, or, as the operation is facetiously de-
scribed by one of the organs of Irish " Catho-
licism," "drawing his teeth with a pistol." The
same mouthpiece of that "Catholic opinion "
whose devout homage Dr. Wiszus.s has engaged
to consecrate for everlasting in his memory,
accounts for the commission of this crime by

denouncing the Protestant clergyman as one a
the improvers " who, by their endeavours to
raise Ireland from the state of degradation to
which she has sunk under the nurturing care of
the Popish priesthood, "are converting all around

hem into touchpaper and gunpowder." Accord-
ng to this authority, the only thing to be
deplored is, not the attempted assassination of a
peaceable citizen in broad daylight, under cir-
cumstances which implicate the great body of
the population in the murderous intent, but the
state of the law which provides " no legal remedy
" against improvers for imperilling the public
" peace by their greedy avarice—trampling upon
" the feelings and maddening with unreasoning
" wrath the passions of a peace-loving yet ex-
" citable population." And as regards the par-
ticular victim selected for the vengeance of this
" peace-loving yet excitable population," the
" Catholic " journalist who constitutes himself
the apologist of murder, unhesitatingly affirms
that "he has no right to be let off less severely
" than he deserves from public opinion for his
" criminally incendiary conduct—to which "—that
is all—" attention is more particularly aroused by
" this event."

Is there—this is the important problem which
" social science " is called upon to solve in regard
to Ireland—is there, or can there be,:any connec-
tion between the revival of Ribbonism, with its
firstfruits, the attempted assassination of the Rev.
Mr. NIXON, and that highly interesting visit of
the " Cardinal Archbishop of Westminster," the
account of which sounded so charming in the ears
of the "fashionable audience" in the Hanover-
square-rooms ? " What a notion, to be sure ! "
we fancy we hear some of the easy dupes of Papal
policy exclaim, "to imagine that a Cardinal
" Archbishop, a Prince of the Holy Roman
" Church, would descend so low as to conspire
" with a band of Irish bogtrotters for the murder
" of a Protestant clergyman in a remote corner
"of the county of Donegal !" But softly ! who
ever said that the Cardinal passed the night in an
Irish cabin with the sham-females who danced
round the car of Mr. NIXON, and one of whom
fired what he believed, as he intended it, to be
the fatal shot ? We have not—we are not aware
that any one else has—suggested anything of' the
kind. It does not, however. by any means follow
that because Dr. WISEMAN has not, in a sense
which would be held good at the Old Bailey,
made himself an accessary before the fact to the
murder, or projected murder, of this Protestant
clergyman, there is no connection whatever
between the reorganization of Ribbonism, of
which that crime is the first tangible evidence,
and the Cardinal's Irish tour. There may be a
connection not less real because not personal and
direct. Nor has the Cardinal any right to com-
plain of the question being mooted among other
subjects of investigation, in the pursuit of " social
science." If an individual of suspicious appear-
ance were to be seen traversing a county, with no
ostensible object except his own diversion, and
were seen distributing lucifer-matches among
crowds of ill-conditioned boys following on his
heels wherever he went, and, presently after,
within a day or two of his disappearance, the
stackyards were found blazing in every direction,
who doubts that, although not a word might
have been uttered by him as to the use to be
made of his matches, nor a single private con-
ference held between him and the loons in his
train, the detectives would, nevertheless, think it
their duty to look pretty sharply after the strange
visitor and his lucifer-matches ? A wink, a nod,
a leer of the eye, while throwing about his
matches, might have sufficed. The "boys " un-
derstand it; their intelligence is attested by the
burning ricks.

Now, what we would venture to suggest is,
that, by parity of reasoning, looking at those two
almost simultaneous events, Cardinal WISEMAN'S
visit to Ireland, and the revival of Ribbonism,
there is sufficient prima facie ground of suspicion
to render it desirable to look after " His Emi-
nence," to inquire into his antecedents, into the
general character which he bears, and into the
nature and object of his somewhat eccentric
movements. To do this, however, we must travel
over a wider field than we have room for, at this
moment ; and we must, therefore, for the present,
adjourn the interesting investigation. On follow-
ing it up, as we intend to do, we think it more
than probable that we may stumble upon mate-
rials which may assist our readers towards the
solution of the problem proposed at the com-
mencement of our remarks, as to the existence or
non-existence of a connection between the red-
legged " English " Cardinal and the barelegged
Irish itibbonman.