The Sun.
London, England, 1868-01-02 00:00:00

THE SUN, LONDOiI, THUBSDAY EVENING, JANUARY 2, 18€8

DECLARATION OF 7HE ROMAN
CA7 HOLIC CLERGY.

DUBLIN, Wednesday.
The following is the text of the Roman Catholic
Manifesto :
"We, the undersigned Roman Catholic clergy-
men, believe that we have arrived at an epoch of great
trial and some danger, and that it is due to the
people, the Government, and our own position
frankly to expose some of the evils under which Ire-
land labours, and the remedy which, in the presence
of God, we believe to be the most efficacious, if not
the only one, to give peace, security, and progress
to the country.
" We belong to no party in the State within or
without the Constitution. We have no alliance
with Whig, Tory, or Radical. We have laboured,
many of us, and some of us incurred considerable
odium in our endeavours to preserve public order,
and thus we have given a pledge that we are de-
voted to the interests of peace. In reflecting upon
the present position of the nation, then, and offer-
ing our honest counsel, we have no impulse to
embarrass or to patronise any party, and no object
but to perform our duty to religion and the people,
with whom we are, and have ever been, perfectly
identified.
"It would be an error and a crime to say that
the disaffection of this country is not deep-seated
and extensive. Deplorable as such a fact may be,
no one who knows the country can truthfully deny
it. Generally a blank hopelessness pervades the
mind of the population, a dark brooding all the
worse because every day growing in intelligence.
This hopelessness operates in two or three direc-
tions, and in every one of them is equally danger-
ous. Taking the form of emigration, it becomes a
longing and a resolve to ' come back,' taking the
form of conspiracy, it is ever on the watch for its
opportunity ; and, taking the form of Fenianism,
it becomes reckless very often and regardless of
consequences, making danger at home and inviting
evil from abroad.
" We need not say that we know the people of
Ireland well. They are emphatically our own'
people. We have their confidence, and know their
great virtues, as well as what failings fall to their
share; and we solemnly declare that one of the
most imminent dangers of the movement of this
generation is the magnanimous spirit of self-sacri-
fice which has animated the mass of those who
think of risking their lives or spending them in even
a hopeless contest. That they cannot be worse,'
that there is no hope for the country,' and that
''tis as good to die' are the sentiments and ethics
which poverty and degradation have taught, and
which are frequently repeated by American success
and daring.
" In one word, as an eminent prelate, a man even
singularly distinguished for his devotion to English
institutions, has recently said—' If the Grand Turk
came to this country and proffered a fair chance of
expelling English power, every man, woman, and
child would follow him to the field.'
" We deprecate the continuance of this state of
things—equally injurious to the spiritual interests
of our flocks and the social and commercial inte-
rests of Ireland. We come before the country and
the Government believing that the difficulty is not
yet insoluble, though we think it may be rapidly
approaching that state of hopelessness. We appeal
to the common sense and highest interest of these
three kingdoms patiently to hear and judge ; and
should we fail in averting a dire catastrophe we
shall have the consolation of remembering that we
have done our duty.
" Without any affectation of confidence, we do
think that the English people—the great body of
that nation—would be inclined not only to justice,
but generosity, were they sufficiently well informed.
To these we most especially appeal ; and we shall
feel surprised if, having duly considered the condi-
tion and claims of this country, they will for ever
leave their owu at the command of foreign nations
Sooner than reverse the policy of ruin.
" What, then, are the roots of the wide-spread
and growing evil—an evil in whose deepening sha-
dow society is every day growing more uneasy, and
the foreign relations of England every day growing
less honourable ?

" Firstly, we answer, and we declare the root,
source, life, and strength of all misery to be in the
ignorance, poverty, and degradation of Ireland ;
and in the reversal of all three—every one—in the
establishment of intelligence, national wealth, and
national dignity, or in commencing to establish
them, is to be found the only security for peace,and
the only security against continual danger and final
catastrophe.
" Let us look back a little. From the year 1698
to the year 1782 learning was under the ban of law
in Ireland; no one could learn the alphabet without
violating the statute. That is, for three generations
all that time no one could acquire the elements of
wealth, dignity, or civilisation in Ireland. The po-
sitive effects in brutalising the population may be
easily estimated; the negative effects which left
them behind every other people are equally clear.
In the face of such facts—the facts of having driven
a whole people back upon the road of progress, and
of having made it impossible for them to come up
to the progressing intelligence of the peoples who
have centuries the start of them—what will jus-
tice do to repair the wrong? We think it suffi-
ciently evident that justice will, by every means,
commence to restore equality—equality in intelli-
gence.

" And when we speak of ' equality of intelli-
gence' we are not to be understood to mean solely
equality of facilities for obtaining primary and col-
legiate instruction—primary and collegiate instruc-
tion for those who carry the brand of the laws by
which Government for a hundred years degraded
them. We mean much more. We mean the intel-
ligence in scientific agriculture— intelligence in
skilled workmanship—intelligence in domestic eco-
nomy—intelligence in the employment of capital—
intelligence in those things which are auxiliaries to
public wealth and the accompaniments of civilisa-
tion. All these were taken away from the Irish
race, and as a race they are still deprived of them,
and by their loss are to a considerable extent the
people which the world beholds nearly the first in
capacity and the last in wretchedness that blots the
globe. All these must be restored, because all these
are necessary to raise up Ireland to the .equality
from which the laws have thrown her down, to re-
store to her the competence of which the lawn de-
prived her, and if they be not given back the misery
which recruits the ranks of disaffection must con-
tinue to the end.

" If it be said that the Irish race are already on
an equality with those who for 100 years were
made their masters, there is most evidently an
error, and a grave one. To assert that two men
are placed on an equality for rifle competition, one
of whom you have taught, and the other of whom
you have never permitted to handle a gun, would
be unwise, and tend to discredit the speaker's sense
of justice; yet the assertion would not be more
viclent than to say that the Irish race are on an
equality in the race for national wealth with the
English settlers here, or the English and Scotch be-
yond the Channel.

" Every one who has travelled in America and
Australia will recognise the truth of Irish ignorance
at home and Irish capacity abroad. Comparing
population with population and position with posi-
tion on landing, we know that the ascent in the
gradations of labour, from small to large commerce,
and from the lowest to the highest ranks of intellec-
tual and professional eminence, illustrates that once
the Irish race know their way, and are allowed to
travel, they are not behind any they meet on the
road. In Ireland there are many miserable who
would be miserable anywhere, but there are great
numbers who are miserable only because, through
one cause or another, the curse of the penal laws
hangs heavily around them.
" Secondly, the poverty of the Irish race has been
directly produced by the government of the country.
We do not speak of the confiscations of the lands
which took the means of living out of the hands of
the natives, and left them penniless in so many
cases, nor of the possesion of nine-tenths of Ireland
by absentees who spend its produce beyond the
seas, although we believe that drain upon this
country rises nearly to five millions annually ; nor

of the abstraction of all the savings of our farmers
to swell the means of English and Scotch enterprise
(occasioned by the ignorance before mentioned) ;
nor.of the singular arrangement by which Ireland
pays an interest on 600 millions of debt which she
never contracted ; we do not speak of all or any of
these inflictions which so severely deal with our
capital now—we speak of the laws which were
framed and put into operation with the direct aim
and object of pauperising, casting forth, and. re-
ducing to a state of nature' the whole native popu-
lation of this country.

" We pray it be remembered that, frightful as is
the picture of the Penal Laws, of which Burke says
that it was a system as well fitted for the oppres-
sion, impoverishment, and degradation of a people,
and the debasement in them of human nature itself,
as ever proceeded from the perverse ingenuity of
man'—yet was this terrible system only the sequel
of another system, bloody as it was unjust, and pro-
tracted as it was powerful. For 400 years and more
the Irish enemy' might be shot down as the raven-
ing wolf ; and even had he bound himself in alle-
giance to England, his murder was punishable only
by a small fine of one mark. The result of 430
years of such a system left the native population,
we may well infer, not abundantly supplied with
the wealth which helps and rewards progress, even
though the said population may have had fourscore
years to breathe. Yet it was in such "circumstances
that the elaboration of the organised process of ex-
termination, called the Penal Laws, began.
" Let it not be supposed that we dwell upon these
topics with pleasure or bate ; far from us be the
thought of triumph or vindictiveness. We recur to
them for reasons the importance of which statesmen
ought to understand and estimate. From those
springs of bitterness the waters which have destroyed
the social happiness of Ireland, and swept away her
national wealth, have flowed forth, and it is in
utterly stopping them up and sealing them for ever
that we are to look for the peaceful regeneration of
the land which is dear to us all.

" For three generations, then, every means of
acquisition was by the laws of the land snatched
from the native race.

"1. Confusion was sought to be introduced into
every family by law.

" 2. All the professions were closed to people o
the old faith by law.

" 3. The ownership of laud and the holding by
Lease forbidden by law.

" 4. All political power, position, and advantage;
even to the office of common bdllmau, were forbid.
den them by law.

" 5. All the handicrafts, even to the humble pur-
suit of the artificer, were impossible to them by

law.

"And thus for the long period to which we have
more than once directed attention the intellectual,
social, and moral conditio❑ of this country had been
so low, degrading, and debased—ignorance and in-
capacity had so paralysed the minds of the whole
people of Ireland—that we may well feel astonished
at the bound which in 80 years has brought them
from the rudeness of a barbarism inflicted by law
to the condition in which we find them, sad a con-
dition as that is, looking at the condition of Great
Britain, with which she legally forms one kingdom.
" And now we beg the most earnest attention to
what follows.
" The Irish people did, indeed, in the year 1772
commence to regain their position, not the position
they should have had, but the possibility of begin-
ning to aim at it. In rags and ignorance, it may be
said, they began the up-hill road to wealth and
intelligence in 1772 ; but before their faculties had
been unbound, before their eyes were allowed to see
or their hands to work, the employment of them
became useless. The facts are very instructive, and
shed light upon the duty of legislation.
" Unfortunately for Ireland, a party that could
not live without ascendancy sold the liberty and
wealth of their country for thepleasure of oppress-
ing their neighbours; and hence the resumption of
industrial right was not much advantage to the
long-oppressed population.
" The governing country had grown passionately
jealous of the activity an 1 success of the small
minority whom she permitted to aggrandise them-
selves. The export of cattle was not allowed, lest
it should lessen the value of English land. Then
the export of wool was forbidden, unless under
great restrictions and only to a few places. The
export of cloth was then prohibited, and almost
every kind of import, too, unless the cargo was first
discharged in England. A King promising from
his throne to discourage the woollen manufacture
in Ireland,' and essay after essay showing how to
utilise Ireland for English wealth, without seeming
to deem it worth a thought whether Ireland de-
cayed to ruin or not, are the singular phenomena
of English rule and Irish subjection, from the reign
of James I. till the year 1782. Thus it came to
pass that those we call the native population found
no country before them in 1772, when they were
allowed some of the privileges of Irishmen. A Par-
liament that, to retain the enjoyment of its preju-
dices, took every loyal message as law, sold their
best interests for the pride of ascendancy, and
brought Ireland to the verge of bankruptcy.
" The year of Free Trade' came with England's
necessity,' alas ! apparently always Ireland's op-
portunity.' In the history of mankind such na-
tional progress is not recorded as that which
brightens the annals of Ireland from 1782 to the
year of the Union. With the consciousness of
power there came an exhibition of independence
which was fatal—lreland lost her Parliament. It
can be no harm to say that England thought the
advantage of extinguishing our Legislature a great
one, for she paid £1,420,000 to the parties in the
country who gave her the key to Irish resources
and the control of Irish liberty.
"Thus, from the very beginning of English rule,
the Irish population may be said to have been im-
poverished by law.
" From the English invasion to the Reformation
the Irish enemy' was impoverished by law.
" From the Reformation to the reign of James I.
the Irish Catholics were impoverished by law.
"From the reign of James I. until the year 1782
the Irish Catholics were not only impoverished, but
the very possibility of acquiring either knowledge
or wealth was taken from them by law.
" And when the Irish Catholics were allowed to
raise their heads and look around they found every
species of commerce by which they might ever grow
into a knowledge of the very process of acquisition
—they found them all destroyed by law.
" Thus, under the reign of an ignorance hardly
shaken by a few years' freedom ; without the op-
portunity of seeing or knowing anything but the
rough work of the field, the coarser species of
artisanship, or the humbler classes of trade pur-
suits—thus at the Union the Catholics of Ireland
were thrown upon agriculture ;exclusively for sub-
sistence. No freedom availed them any longer.
They had little capital—very little, of course—
they had lost all the skilled workmanship ; they had
lost all the knowledge ; they had lost almost the
taste for anything beyond the wretched field which
they dug, or the beasts which they reared. Burke's
philosophy was illustrated in them, and if, per-
chance, a spasmodic effort from time to time pro-
duced any species of industry now monopolised by
English manufacturers, the poverty of the Irish-
man soon succumbed under the weight of the Eng-
lishman's power, who sold at less than the cost till
he had made the Irishman bankrupt.
" There is no use in saying to such a roan that
he is free to run the race of manly competition with
the Englishman, unless, indeed, such freedom be
understood in the sense that an invalid rising from
the bed of infirmity is ' free' to enter the lists with
the athlete. lie is free, but the use of his freedom
would be his destruction. Ireland is free to fight
her competitors with the antecedent condition of
being killed inevitably in the battle; on the land,
then, and on the land alone, the Irishman was
driven for subsistence. Without much capital,
without much knowledge, without any security for
what he might invest in the land, without sym-
pathy, as a rule, from those to whom far over the
sea he sent the produce of his sweat and anxiety,
the normal condition of Ireland, the condition re-
sultant from law, was a condition of necessary
poverty and debasement,
" So we were in 1846, when the famine turned

the island into a graveyard ; normal poverty—pro-
duced by law—was no match for the blight which
withered our fields and gave a whole kingdom no
choice but flight, mendicancy, or death.
" England could purchase in any or every market
in such a contingency. So could France. So could
almost any country ; because every country but our
own has something to live upon besides the price of
the produce of the soil. We had nothing, because
law had utterly swept everything that in our trial
could sustain us ; and thus it happened that we lost
two millions of our people by death and emigration,
and gained many lessons that nowadays produce
their fruits in thoughts and aspirations which bode
some trouble to the empire.
" For a long period the real causes of Irish
wretchedness were not known, and when they were
known the traditional debasement' of soul wrought
by slavery was inaccessible to the spirit of
self vin-
dication. •
"All this has been changed. The national schools
should have been a forbidden tree if Government
intended for ever to make the resources of the na-
tion inaccessible to the people, for it is difficult to
associate denationalisation and poverty with a know-
ledge of right and of history. Education has been
the tree of knowledge of good and evil,' and the
Irish have largely partaken of the kind which they
have been able to obtain.
" The normal causes of poverty are this year as
active as in years past. Nothing is done to develope
the resources which we have, or to introduce new-
ones to aid our insufficiency. On the contrary, the
people are flying away, and the land rapidly going
out of cultivation. The 'stock'—the beef, mutton,
and bacon which feed the English manufacturing
districts are more largely produced ; but the
eople are driven away, going with a vengeance.'
We do not assert that this state of things is the re-
sult of a designed policy at this moment ; but we
can well see that many are led to that conclusion ;
and the effect of all—whether we admit the convic-
tion of a hostile policy, or the conviction of the ad-
ministrative incapacity in the rulers of Great Britain,
or of a combination of them all—as the impulses of
the national mind of Ireland, we feel confident tkat
disaffection has never been so widespread and so de-
termined as it ie this year 1867.
"We need not say that this disaffection is home
and foreign ; abroad it is downright war, and at
home is partly sympathy and partly conspiracy
—but nearly universal.
" There is no doubt that the foreign element
must always depend upon the life derived from
home—hostility to Government. Take away the
appui that Irish American Fenianism finds in Irish
disaffection here in Ireland, and you at once and
for ever remove the plea and the danger of foreign
interference.
" Without a removal of the combustible matter
in this country, a spark at any moment may spread
a devouring conflagration.
"And what is mere, if the co-operating causes
be not removed from Ireland, there never more can
be peace or security in these kingdoms.
"Let it be remembered that the idea of coming
and seizing Ireland is now the idea of millions.
Remember that the young hear and receive it as
they grow up, and that their pride, interest, and
chivalry are all stirred actively by the thought.
Remember that the facilities of learning the use of
arms, and of gathering material means, make the
idea to them very much more than merely possible.
We behold in the movement the elements of per-
petuity, which, however inefficacious for accom-
plishing their object, will be always efficacious for
producing disquiet. A never-ending perturbation,
or a settlement of the Irish question, is the very
least that is inevitable.
" More than this, there is a state of things at
home which statesmanship should not tolerate for a
moment. This country always looking for a change,
thinking any change whatever a chance to be
prayed for and seize l upon, any enemy of Eng-
land becomes by the fact of such enmity a friend to
Ireland ; Ireland ever ready to condemn or mis-
understand or oppose the views of the Imperial
Government, on the principle of an antagonism,
whose mission is active resistance to a changeless
foe—all is injurious to Imperial influence every-
where, and, however long it mv have to wait, will
find its hour of retaliation at last. We think our-
selves no enemies of the commonwealth by seeking
to preserve it from such trials as are shadowed forth
in the state of affairs just described.
" All Europe knows those difficulties to which we
allude, and America is every day acting upon them.
How can any Government vindicate its honour or
guard its interests in such a state of things ? The
experience of the last two years proves that, were
England at war with any European Power to-mor-
row, that Power would be able to fling a brigade of
fifty or sixty thousand drilled and armed Irishmen
into the field ; perhaps into this country ; and then
what could restrain the Irish population, enraged,
poverty-stricken, and hopeless, as they are.
" Again, we declare that the only hope of peace,
order, progress, and at last real union, is in tran-
quillizing Ireland.
" And we solemnly declare that the only means
of effectually tranquillizing Ireland is by a restora-
tion of her Nationality.
" General legislation by the Parliament of Great
Britain will never be equal to the task of teaching,
cherishing, developing, and raising Ireland.
" Political economy will never do for a country
like Ireland any more than the ordinary food of
health would do for the weak and sickly. The most
exceptional legislation must be employed, the mi-
nutest knowledge must be obtained, the most per-
severing local inquiry must be instituted, and a full,
heart-whole, and we would say exclusive atten-
tion, province by province, must be directed to
discover and remedy Ireland's wants ; and these
things an English Parliament cannot perform.
"An English Parliament has already too much
to occupy it ; an English Parliament will always
proceed by fixed principles applicable only to orga-
nised communities, and they will not do for Ireland;
an English Parliament will have to command a com-
bination of parties who know little of Ireland, and
cannot understand the necessity of entirely excep-
tional legislation--a thing absolutely essential to
Ireland. And, above all, such a Parliament will
never satisfy the yearnings of a whole people, whose
intellects and whose hearts combine in the cry for
nationality.
" A land tenure will accomplish something ; re-
moval of the Protestant ascendancy, by placing the
Protestant Church in the same position before the
State as the Catholic Church, will accomplish much ;
equality in education and the removal of the ano-
maly of giving a freedom of education on the
condition of people giving up freedom, will do its
share, and we will hail any and all of them with

thankfulness ; but we feel bound to say that when
all of them have been granted, safety from foreign
danger, perfect development of home resources, and
we repeat, above all, the heart of this country will
require Nationality.

" Give Ireland her own Legislature, and the Go-
vernment of her own rmources—Nationality, and
her federal amity will 133, a tower of strength to the
empire. The country and the people will have no-
thing to complain of any more —they will be them-
selves responsible fur their own condiiion ; conspi
racies at home will have nothing to plot about, and
conspiracies abroad can promise nothing which Ire-
land would not be ready to reject and resist. Eng-
land will then be united to us by our best interests,
and will be the protector of our most valued privi-
leges, and the miserable conflicts of centuries shall
have an end.
" We conclude, then,
" Firstly—That Ireland is poor and helpless, not
by any fault of the Irish race, but by the force and
fault of English legislation.

" Secondly—That, the said English legislation
exercised its power not only in pauperising Ireland
for a season, but in destroying nearly all the sources
of Irish national wealth, and thus making poverty
a permanent condition of the country.
" Thirdly—That the danger to public order, both
at home and abroad, has been produced by said
poverty and degradation.
" Fourthly—That the very nature of the remedies
required to make Ireland rich and contented renders
it impossible for a British Parliament to adopt and
apply them ; and, besides that, home aspirations