, 1875-11-27
BAVARIA AND IRELAND.
From the Spectator.

If Irish Home-Rulers can be taught by
experience, they may Learn much from the con-
fiot now raging in Bavaria. The difficulty
there is precisely the one which would imme.
diately occur if Ireland were to obtain any
substantial measure of Home-Rule, and
which would assume proportions almost,
if not quite, impossible in Bavaria. 1t is
noteworthy, too, that the difficulty is one
produced, not so much by direct collision be-
tween two sets of ideas in one country, as by
the fear that such a collision may be expected
to occur. The rulers of the German Empire,
backed by the representative body, have un-
doubtedIy committed themselves to a policy of
war with the Catholic Church, but they have
not as yet openly demanded aid in that war
from the Catholic Federated States. Germa-
ny has cenSured Rome and menaced Rome and
broken of intercourse with Rome, but she has
not yet directly prosecuted Rome. She has
abolished her Mission, and decreed the autheri-
sation of Civil Marriage, aud prohibited the
publication of Bulls, cut she has not yet done
anything of which Rome has not frequently had
experience without Suffering much visible in
convenience. Prussia, however, the prepOn-
derating State in the Empire, has gone very
much further,-has in a perfectly legal and
constitutional way, after much debate, and
after an election IN which this was one Of the
understood issues, accepted a policy which all
Liberals deem unwise and wrong, -unwiSe as
.poStpOning true reform, and wrong, as tending
10 the persecution of mems consciences. So
deep is the anger and suspicion exoited'b by this
policy, as seen in visible action in Prussia, that
the majority of BavarianS who are not suffer
Jag directly from it have begun, in consequence
of it, to dislike their connection with an Empire
in which such things are possible, and have
sent up a Parliament which, as its first step,
has complained Of the undue surrender of pre-
negatives by the State to the Empire. The
majority of the Chamber at Munich have voted,
by q majority of three, an address to the King,
in which this specific charge is brought against
the Ministry, obviously with an intention of
Overthrowing them, and the King therefore has
been placed in this position Either he must
agree with the majority of the representatives.
and by calling their leaders to office, place
Bavaria in a positiJ IN of indirect antAgUnism to
the Empire and direct antag9nism to Prussia,
or he must, by retaining his present Ministry
in the teeth of a majority, bring representative
government, as understood among free nations,
temporarily to an end. That is his dilemma,
and in Ireland it would be an infinitely more
serious one.
Up to this point, we think no thoughtful
Home Ruler would question that matters, were
Ireland " free" in their sense, might easily be
brought. Nothing is easier than to conceive
that the British Empire might, say, under
Mr.. Gladstoie's guidance, adopt a line of
policy. say, about the Temporal Power,
strongly resented by all Ultramontanes
and that the local Government might, in
England or Great Britain, if England and
Scotland were still one State, adopt strong
measures against som distinctive features of
the Catholic ecclesiastical system. There
would not be one Catholic Member in the
English, or Scotch, or British Parliament,
and physical resistance would be as hopeless
as in Prussia, so that a law prohibiting all
conventual associations, or demanding evidence
in Court of facts learned in confession, or de-
olaring a sentence of accommodation a crimi'
nal libel, would NOT be out of political ~calcula-
ton. An Empire SO led, and in which the
prepsnderating State passed such laws. would
undoubtedly excite great aEimosity 10 Ireland,
and would provoke the Irish majority to
measures of retaliation. Either the Dublin
Parliament would try to punish Protestants
and Voltaireans, say, by imposing q test for
office or it would turn out any Ministry which
did not try, by threats of reprisals, to menace
Mr.. Gladstone into an alteration of his policy.
and zhes English Ministry into a modification
of their laws. IF it failed, it would, we may
be sure, threaten secession, and the Queen