The Sun.
London, England, 1858-08-27 00:00:00

CARDINAL 'WISEMAN AT BALLINASLOE.

The Freeman gives a long and highly-coloured account
of the Cardinal's reception at Ballinasloe. As a sample
of the extravagant language employed in describing. this
event the following extract may be introduced here :
" Cardinal Wiseman is hailed with an unbounded enthu-
siasm that proclaims the attachment of the Irish people to
the See of St. Peter, with which his eminence is so closely
connected ; all classes and both sexes, the rich and the poor,
the old and the young, unite, as if actuated by one impulse,
to do him honour and give him a welcome which only the
Irish heart can conceive. The demonstrations which sur-
prised and gratified him on his entering the town have
been since continued with increasing favour, till yesterday
the public joy and enthusiasm attained a magnitude
that almost exceeds description." After the cathedral
at Ballinasloe had beeu consecrated the Cardinal delivered a
long "sermon," the greater portion of which must have been
quite unintelligible to the mass of his hearers. To those,
however, he did not forget to address himself, as the follow-
ing skilful appeal to their religious prejudices will show:—
` The peculiarity cf the socit.l state in this country has
divided the population into two distinct classes. lam not
going fur a moment to dwell upon the political or social
chat acter, or upon the causes or consequences of this state.
I assume the fact as it is, and I ask you to put side by side
these two bodies acting, necessarily, the one upon the other
in this as in every other country. Throw upon one side
wealth, nobility, and worldly position, the influence of su-
periority, education of the highest class, literature, and what-
ever helongs to those who command according to this world.
Throw into the other scale poverty and misery, the ab-
sence almost for ages of the power of culture, the depend-
ence totally for all that is necessary in this world far daily
food itself upon those who belong to the other class.
See these two bodies acting for centuries reciprocally
upon one another. Suppose it to be matter of mere
human opinion, human principle or science, that knowledge
of every sent that divides them, and see if it is possible that
for hundreds of years that which is sn much greater, wore
powerful, or more wise in the eyes of the world, ought not
to have crumbled and crushed under itself that which was
absolutely subject to it, and lying at its feet, and reduced it
into a homogeneous mess, breaking down the barriers that
separated the two, and thus make them as or.e. I ask you
not merely to solve this problem in theory, but to solve it in
practice, and to do that go to the neighbouring island,
where God has cast my owe lot, and see what has been the
result of a similar condition of things. At the period when
first religious differences began in that country, we knew
that the mass of the people were attached most deeply
to the religion of their forefathers. They made pil-
grimages of grace, as they were called—they rose, again
and again, in insurrection, to prevent that change of
religion which was attempted to be introduced amongst
them, and they sere crushed. Their efforts were stopped,
and what was the result ? A few years of superiority in one
class, which monopolised all earthly advantages, wore away
the patient resistance of those w ho would not otherwise have
altered their faith, until at length divricts which once were
most fervent and most zea:ously Ca' belie hardly heard that
name amongst them, aed scarcely a vestige or trace was
left in the feelings and traditions of the people of the f firmer
existence of the Catholic Church amongst them. What,
then, makes the difference ? How is it that there it has been
easy to sweep away, and that without any great distinction
"f outward and visible securities, the whole fabric of the faith,
leaving nothing, not even the last vestige of a name, to mark
a traditionary remembrance of the old and holy thought of
the people. I cannot see the difference, except in this—that
there was a beaveuly power exercised here—that the whole of
this trial was permitted by God for a great and special pur-
pose—l cannot see but this difference, that it pleased God
by ol:e of those dispensations which we must not endeavour
to penetrate, to allow religion to take, perhaps, a nobler and
more magnificent hold upon the surface of the land, demon-
strating itself by more splendid edifices, by more noble en-
dowments of universities and colleges, and hospitals ; whilst
here he made its roots strike deep into the very soil, and so
take possession of the land, that it was impossible ever to
eradicate it. You know, and I need not tell you, how tre-
mendous were those series of acts whereby property was
either cmfiseatrd er des rayed, and the inhabitants of whole
;Le; jets macro swept away, with the view, if possible, to re-
move the Catholic population, and with them take away the
faith from the land. But, notwithstanding all this, the faith
still survives ; because, my dsar brethren, they could not tear
away the name of the saint from the cairn upon the
rock on the mountain to which he had immortally attached
it. They could not destroy that veneration for the holy
places to which pitgrirns went in their poverty or in their
sorrow, etor make them lose the remembrance of the saint
who had imparted holiness to their valleys. They could not
turn the hearts of the people from the rifled monuments of
the piety of their fathers, their venerable, roefless churches,
under the shade of whose walls lie buried the bones of their
Catholic ancestors; nor from those venerable seminaries
which, if they no longer shelter learning, at least preserve
in their his.ory all that were precious of those who have
been faithful to that game religion. No, they could not
take away from the land such monuments and such
traditions. They could not even, in altering the
language of the people, pluck from their., tongues the
sweet names which, associated not only V11.,11 venerable
monasteries, but with numerous fields ar,d valleys, signify
out land
not wasio
alone
sane._on
that same church or holy edifice had once aeod, or pious
servant of God had
and that
eter,
te
faith
esrpc(.,
eTli e
tified terougheur, a
the walls, but from the very rocks and valleys of the land,
apd no power of man, no influence of class could remove it
from the foundation which it had :n the my soil, as well as
in the hearts of the people of this country. I know what
those will say who smile at all this line of observation, and
think that we are spatting with prejudiced warmth and
enthusiasm about what by them is regarded as an evil. They
will say--' Yes, the Catholic reliciort has taken deep root in
Ireland, as a weed would do, which it is difficult hy any
cultivation to pluck un and eradicate.' Rut I, my brethren,
accept that simile, wad bless God that it is so."