The Sun.
London, England, 1851-05-06 00:00:00

VICE-REGAL REVELATIONS.

LETTER OF THE EARL OF

TO THE

EARL OF —.
(From the Tablet)
We give below the substance of the greater part of a
letter which has recently reached our hands under cir-
cumstances that leave us at full liberty to give it to the
world. It came to us from England, from a layman; it
has passed through many hands—has more than once
bee❑ referred to in the press—has already attained
considerable notoriety—and, though in form addressed
by a nobleman in office to a nobleman in private life, it
is, in substance an official dispatch, obviously written
for use as a dispatch, and liable, therefore, to the inci-
dents and accidents to which such documents are exposed.
We fancy we shall not err very widely if, on guess, we
fill up the blanks in the names of the noble correspon-
dents (we have them only in blank)—with the titles of
Clarendon and Shrewsbury. Lord Clarendon, we take
it, is the writer, Lord Shrewsbury the recipient; but
the persons for whom every lice of the latter was
written aro evidently the Pope and the Cardinals at
Rome:—

" Dublin, Dec. 2, 1850.
"My dear Lord,—l am sincerely obliged to you for
your letters of Nov. 12 and 15, and I know not whether
most to admire your accurate knowledge of all the
affairs of Ireland, or the eminent tact and judgment
you have displayed in the conferences with the Holy
Father and the Cardinals, of which you have had the
goodness to send me so complete and so interesting a
report. I take the liberty of making some observations
on what was said in those conferences, and I hope that
you will permit me to-express them with all frankness,
because I pannot write about the ignorance, or some-
thing vrosser, which prevails in Rome regarding this
country, without candidly declaring my judgment as to
its causes, and the deplorable consequences which must
attend it.
" The Pope has shown the extent of the deceit which
has been practised upon him. All good men in Ireland,
of whatever creed or politics, are agreed in reverencing
Dr. Murray as the beau ideal of a Christian pastor, and
yet your Lordship found his Holiness irritated against
him ulone. All agree in considering Dr. M.Hale as an
ill-disposed demagogue, who does nothing but afford an
example of all that a bishop ought not to do, and yet
when your Lordship blamed him, you were told that
you has a strange animosity against the Irish. This is
enough to prove that the state of things as to the Hier-
archy has been presented to the Pope in such a way as
to make him believe the very reverse of what is true.
So far as regards the colleges, the most complete, and
I must add the most deliberate, mistake has existed
from the first, and continues to exist at Rome. They
were founded with the purest motives by Sir Robert
Peel, in accordance with the united and expressed will of
the clergy and laity, and with a clear understanding
that they would be founded on the principle of mixed
education—the only system practicable in Ireland, and
which, after the experience of many years in the national
school, was seen to work with perfect security to the
faith and morals of the 500,000 children educated in them
by the bounty of the State. Objections were raised, and
new guarantees demanded by some of the bishops, and, in
every important point, Lord Heytesbury acceded to their
wishes. Other securities were demanded of me, and
were granted; and yet the opposition of Rome continues
to be as unqualified as it was at first; and although
these colleges guard the faith and morals of the students
in a manner not to be found in any other institutions in
Europe—and although they have been established a
whole year without any accusation of misconduct being
made to the authorities against any of the students
(an number about 400)—although they were very
attentive to their religious instructors, and had lived
chiefly with their parents and tutors, instead of
being exposed to temptations by living away from home,
and deprived of exact surveillance—the mad clamour of
infidelity still continues in Ireland, and comes back to
us re-echoed from Rome. I call it mad, because not one
syllable of proof has been brought forward to prove the
accusation, and when it was demanded, all our opponents
could say was, that there was not a duo proportion of
Catholic professors. Now, no person was more annoyed
than I was at there not being a due proportion of Ca-
tholic candidates for the chairs. But whose fault was it?
Was it any wonder, when long before the election the
fiercest denunciations were read every day in the writ-
ings of Dr. and in all that portion of the press
over which the priesthood exercise a despotic control?

I. . . . . .
" I feel indignant at the accusation of infideliV
brought against the professors generally, because, in tnl4
first place, it is a base attack on a number of men, than
whom there are not to be found, I believe, any more
moral or worthy in any similar institutions in Europe,
*klub
and it is, at the same time, ' n unfounded accusation
against the Government that a intecl them.
"If it be said that all those w o are not within the
pale of the Catholic Church are, ipso facto, unbelievers,
or that the English Government care little if the people
Are brought up in inditnrence to their religious duties,
how, not t) mention higher motives, could they be blind
to the political necessity that a nation should be educated
in the knowledge and fear of God? To one of these
odious absurdities must be ascribed the extraordinary
assertion which has just been made.

" Great complaints have been made to your Lordship
about Mr. Freeborn, and you have been asked how you
can have confidence in the British Government when
they allowed such a man at Rome. Ido not pretend to
know much of this matter, but I am terrain that some of
;he things alleged against him in your letter are exagge-
rated, and in all such cases one should hear the other
side. Mr. Freeborn has, I believe, proved clearly that
in giving passports to certain persons, and sending them
quickly away, he promoted the cause of order and
toe mite,' of the city. But I may be permitted to ask,
on the other hand, what we ought to think of the Go-
vernment of the Pope, who, in violation of the rules for
the nomination of bishops, sent here a man like Dr.
Cullen, whose only object has been to destroy the col-
leges established by the Legislature and maintained by
the State, and to extinguish the national schools, in
which half a million of the poorest classes are educated,
without an attempt to provide for the deficiency of
establishments of these two kinds, and thus 'cave the
middle and poorest class in brutal ignorance, without
troubling himself about the con: equences that would fol-
low? Dr. Cullen, moreover, published a synodical ad-
dress, in which he did not stop at condemning the col-
leges, but sought to set class against class, and to repre-
sent every poor man as a martyr, and every rich man
as a tyrant. There is more rank communism in that
address than could be chemically distilled from M. do
Vericour's le hole book. It cannot be alleged that all
this opposition arises from religious zeal, because at
this moment Dr. WHale and others would induce the
students to leave the colleges, where their faith and
morals are protected, and to go to Trinity College, in
Dublin, a place eminently Protestant, where there are
no guarantees for faith, and where there is every
temptation to apostacy. Mr. Lucas, editor of the Tablet
—one of the most virulent and most offensive newspapers
in Europe—is in constant communication with Dr. Cul-
len, and is, moreover, the chief instigator, as his paper
is the organ of the Tenant-League, the object of which is
to abolish the rights of property, and to shake to its very
foundation everything on which society depends. He is
ably assisted in this work of regeneration by the priests,
who, with this end in view, have fraternised with the
Presbyterian clergy. But not a word of counsel or
reprimand has been uttered by the Primate; on the con-
trary, his journal applauds, and the editor acts in the
League with Mr. Duffy, of the Nation, who would have
been at this hour a deported felon if one of the jury
had not perjured himself. It is very true that
the Pope ordered the clergy not to meddle in politics;
this he did in 1847, in the same rescript in which he
condemned- the colleges. The second part was re-
csived wiLIT reverence, as hostile to the Government,
and the first was obeyed by the clergy rushing headlong
into the revolutionary movement of '4B, when nothing
saved them except their belief in the impartiality of the
Government—in which they were quite right, because
if the legal evidence of their guilt bad been as strong as
its moral certainty, several of them would have now been
along with their frienls in exile in Van Diemen's Land.
" Not a word of reprimand came from the Pope to
Ireland against these unchristian and unclerical proceed-
ings—not a sign of disapproval of the disobedience of
his orders—not an attempt was made by the Primate
(although invested with special powers to have the com-
mands of the Pope executed) to keep the clergy within
the sphere of their duties. And now let me ask of you,
my dear Lord, what could I, or rather what could any
unprejudiced spectator of passing events think, or what
could one infer as to the consequences of all the things
which I have mentioned, and others which I need not
add? What could one think, except that spiritual juris-
diction was not the object they had in view, but rather
political hostility—that between Catholics and Protes-
tants goodwill should not exist—that confusion m
uch be
e
promoted a tout prix, and that for arms with wh
assault England, Rome uses Ireland as an inexhaustible
b
arsenal? Certainly, a state of things stich Ihlto vretbi e
part described is much more than a compeass."
theeth the
peccadilloes of a vice-consular agent, and givesn m.n
right to ask what confidence could England have
Papal Government?
e I believe that a great part of the
have arisen, and of which the end will
fnaottalbeesveilesn
in
nhoicuhr
aadmheanda more -
lifetime, might have beenhin.daenrdedniot e(s),l eh
3 ts
l
1
per representative in Rome;
sv aEngyi
ntaot
nh ot Clearoi co
bPt
in st
bo
en i
ns o.
tv
taanl Ia tql ou
et hs
tai
ot
nth;car sms
tnt te
do f
Lord many
sertion of his obnoxious clause in the Bill. My o
he wn
when desire
would have been to ahandaa the Bill altogether it
was necessary to take it
pwriinthee,aunparoNvvibsiioenb
binesuelotiunlgd
to the Pope as a sovereign
not, and ought not to have endured. But if we had
bad a discreet Minister accredited to his
Holiness,
would have told him the real truth about England, be
would never have thought of reconstructing the hier-
archy in the way he has done. If he had thought
only of the interests and wants of the Catholic Church
—if the bishops had been appointed without ostenta-
tion—if there had been assigned to them districts with-
out territorial titles, without a demarcation of the coun-
try, or assumption of the powers of government—no one
would have had a right to complain; and I am certain
that no remonstrance would have been heard; but the
Pope's bull and the cardinal's pastoral presented them-
sews suddenly to the (4kitt3461104 nution in terms which