The Sun.
London, England, 1868-03-24 00:00:00

A LETTER TO EARL GREY.

At a time when all eyes are turned upon
Ireland we welcome with a double welcome
this letter from the pen of the Archbishop of
Westminster. At the outset he asserts his
right as a citizen to write on political sub-
jects, for ecclesiastics do not cease to be citi-
zens. He tells us, too, that he speaks as an
Englishman, and with a bias, if there be any,
on the side of England :
Again, he says, the duties of many years, and
the work of every day, have brought me into sucn
direct and intimate contact with Ireland and the
I. ish people that I cannot be mistaken as to the
gravity of the preF.ent crisis. Ido not believe that
it can be overrated. It is the disposition to under-
rate it, and the readiness to relapse into an un-
timely reassurance at every momentary lull of
public anxiety, which fills me with most fear. It
is true that we have had times of greater violence,
and of more immediate dangers, than now threaten
us ; more fearful atrocities, both against the law
and by the law, have been perpetrated, of which
yogr lordship has full memory; but there never
yet was a moment in which such wide-spread and
irresistible powers of change were in action upon
the union of Great Britain and Ireland.

But, before entering in detail into the main
argument, he protests against the contemptu-
ous, satirical, disrespectful, defiant language
which so many Englishmen use when speak-
ing or writing on Ireland, and he gives a
specimen from the January number of the
Quarterly Review. This veracious writer main-
tains that because a large majority of the
representatives (Protestants) of Ireland are in
favour of retaining the Established Church,
therefore the people of Ireland are in its favour.
" Again," he maintains, " that Irishmen seize
greedily on every opportunity of parading their
undying, irreconcilable hostility to the English
connection, oppose and thwart us—not because
we are wrong, not because we are tyrannical,
not because we are unjust, but because we are
English." If, answers the Archbishop, you are
thought to be tyrannical and unjust, there must
be some grounds for the idea—remove those
grounds, and you remove the thought of tyranny
by removing tyranny itself.
The Quarterly denies that land reform and
Church destruction have nothing to do with
Fenianism—" but, " asks the Archbishop,
" what caused Fenianism but animosity
against England ; and what caused that
animosity but confiscations and an alien
Church "
Once more—" It has been the pleasure of Ire-
land to pass upon herself a sentence of perpetual
poverty." Did Ireland suicidally strip itself of all
its lands, reduce itself to mud cabins, potato-diet
and evictions, fever and famine ? Would this have
been the state of Ireland if it had been left to
mature its own social order and civilization as Eng-
land, Scotland, France, and Spain ? Who checked
its agriculture, its cattle trade, its fisheries, and its
munufactures, by Acts of Parliament ? If poverty
was ever inflicted by one nation on another, it has
been inflicted on Ireland by England.
One more example—" As for laws and adminis-
tration, Ireland is on the same footing with Eng-
land ; and where there is a difference, Ireland will
be found to be better cared for than England."
Let the endowments of the Church of England be
transferred to the English Catholic bishops and
clergy ; let the Anglican archbishops and bishops
be liable to fine for assuming their ecclesiastical
titles • let the land in England be held by absentee
Irish 'landlords by title of past confiscations, and
let their soil be tilled by tenants at will who may
at any hour be evicted, and I shall then think that
Ireland and England are on the same footing.
There is yet one thin°. wanting. Let some Irish
statesman reproach the English for their unreason-
ing and unrelenting animosity, their self-chosen
poverty, their insensibility of the dignity and
benefits of being thus treated by a superior race.
When the writer in the Quarterly sums up
all Ireland's grievances into this one—that
the people have to pay the Catholic priests
—he manifests more fully than ever his gross
stupidity and his utter ignorance of Ireland
and the Irish ; and we can only wonder his
Grace could have the patience to answer such
absurdities. But the answer discloses to us
the real motives of these enemies of Ireland.
" Pay the priests," says the Quarterly, " and
the people will have more money to spend
on themselves, and will be contented. They
give grudgingly, and their gifts impoverish
them." To say that the Irish give grudgingly
or any otherwise than lovingly to their priests,
is an unmitigated falsehood. Facts everywhere
stare us in the face.
Major O'Reilly, than whom few men better
know Ireland, estimates the outlay on churches,
schools, convents, and other charitable institutions
in Ireland since 1800 at £5,500,000. Mr. Maguire,
in his book on " The Irish in America," gives ex-
amples of the same Christian generosity in our
North American colonies, and throughout the
United States. '1 he cathedral in the city of St.
John's, Newfoundland, was built by them at a
cost of £120,000. The same profuse devotion
to their faith is to be found wheresoever they are.
'The grandest cathedrals of these days have been
raised by their alms.
But proofs are endless. Only let English states-
men once for all lay aside the illusion that the
people of Ireland give because they are coerced,
or that they would accept the relief of a State
payment for their clergy, or that their clergy would
acknowledge the account to which the counsel of
Achitophel has carried the money to ensnare them.
Both clergy and people would rather hunger and
thirst together than dissolve the bond of Christian
charity and Christian confidence which binds them
indissolubly to each other.
But even when he made this misstatement
the writer could not have believed it. He only
used it as a cloak to conceal his real meaning.
He does not wish to make the people con-
tented with England, but only dis-contented
with their priests. Having thus annihilated
the Quarterly Review, the Archbishop passes on
to consider the crisis which we have now en-
tered upon, the existence of which it would be
madness to deny. That there is disunion caused
by the tyranny of the past is evident to any
one who knows Ireland's history and Ireland's
present state.
thstAatrec.hbisßhuop But there
justa other causes
:_
of
So long as there exists upon the statute book any
penal enactment against the Catholic religion ; so
long as the Catholic people of Ireland are deprived
of a bond fide Catholic education; so long as a Pro-
testant Church Establishment is maintained by law
over the face of Catholic Ireland ; and so long as
the people of Ireland fail to derive from the land
such a subsistence as the labourers and farmers of
England and Scotland derive from the soil, there
must be a just discontent, which will be the misery
of Ireland and the danger of England.
Of these four causes of discontent two can
at once be removed by Parliament ; two of
them are more complex and difficult, and may
require time for eradication. But even these
can be removed, and, if the peace and welfare
of these kingdoms are to be preserved, they
must be removed, and that as speedily as

can be.
The two remedies which can at once be ap-
plied are these : The first, an Act of Parlia-
ment, summed up in one clause, which would
recite and repeal all penal enactments against
the Catholic Church and religion still linger-
ing in the statutes of these realms. The
second is such a modification of the National
Education Board as shall make the existing
schools bond fide denominational schools of
Catholics and Protestants respectively. What
is now called the national system is really not
a mixed system, and statistics prove the as-

sertion.
1. There are 2,454 schools, containing 373,756
Catholic children, with not a Protestant child.
2. There are 2,483 school, having 321,641
Catholic children, with only 24,381 Protestant
children.
That is, in 4,937—nearly s,ooo—schools, with
695,397 Catholic children, there are no more than
24,381 Protestants.
Nevertheless, in these 4,937 schools, containing
965,397 Catholic children, it is not permitted to
teach publicly the Catholic religion, to 11,,e Catholic
books, or to put up a crucifix. This is no "sen-
timental grievance," but a real and grave interfer-
ence, which paralyses the Catholic education of the
Irish people.
It is shown by a Parliamentary return, obtained
by Major O'Reilly, that in national schools of
which rresbyterians have control thousands of
Catholic children are obliged to attend. In these
schools they received religious instruction from
Protestant masters, learned Protestant Catechisms,
and read the Protestant version of the Bible.
Can we be surprised that the Irish people resent