The New York herald. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1840-1920, 1875-08-02
Daniel O'Conncn and the Roman
Catholic Policy.

London, the celebration OF the Centennial an
niversary Of the greatest of Irish statesmen
is to become the greatest blunder which
Ireland has made in the last hundred years
of her history She is about to transform an
act Of national gratitude and JOY into an act
of religious aggression, and to make an I'M
| paralleled opportunity for fraternal union the
occasion OF religious feud. The character
and the purpose of the man she desires sin-
cerely to honor are forgotten when it is pro-
posed TO make the very day OF his birth
the pretext for an ultramontane demonstra-
tion and we can imagine the great shade OF
the Iiberator with mute eloquence appealing
| to the people he served to forbear and with
sterner gesture rebuking the Church which he
| freed.
His policy, his acts and his character all
rebuke the service to which the Roman Catho-
| lie Church in Ireland would yoke the splen-
dor of his name. OConnell was not only de-
voted as an Irish patriot, but he was shrewd,
far-seeing, and, beyond all others of his party,
successful leader. As young man he
looked back upon the utter failure OF the
Irish rebellons, and resolved TO secure by the
power of eloquence and wisdom redress for
those centuries of wrong which the sword
could never right. The Emmets Fitzgeralds
and other brave men had given their lives for
their country, but O'Connell resolved to make
his life one labor in that holy cause.
In the methods which he adopted
to compel England to yield justice to Ireland
he resembled such American statesmen as
Seward and Sumner in their opposition to
slavery, just as the attitude of the Fitzgeralds
and Emmets may be said to have resembled
that of Wendell Phillips, Garrison and other
uncompromising aboltionists. To these men
respectively, the constitution of the United
States and the connection with England were
a league with death and a covenant with hell.
They abjured all allegiance to the enemy.
But as Seward organized and Sum-
ner championed the irrepressibe con-
flct on the floor of Congress, and
within the limits of the constitution,
so O'Connell fought for Irish union and
Catholic emancipation in the English Parlia-
ment The resemblance goes no further, but
it illustrates the important fact in this mans
patriot He believed in means as well as in
ends; his genius was sagacious and practical,
and it seems to us an outrage instead of an
honor, to make the name which was once the
orifamme of his whole country now the sig
nal of its division and strife. Better to have
no celebration of his birth whatever than one
which separates the Irish people into religious
E Al, T-,e ao1I
its friends who do not believe in the tenn
poral power Of the Pope.
No man of his time in Ireland ever served
the Catholic Church more faithfully than
O'Connell, and none did as much for
its freedom 1t was his genius that
conceived the first plan of action, and
it was his mastery strategy that forced
the British leaders to abandon their
defiant attitude to reform. He not only
championed the Irish, but he convinced the
English. The Roman Catholic Emancipation
act was his work, and is an immortal monu-
ment to his memory. In this assertion
of religious rights he revolutionized
the policy which had almost I'M
interruptedly continued for centuries,
and achieved q moral conquest over
England of which the value is beyond esti-
mate. The purpose was sufficient in itself
thus to emancipate prosecuted religion was
glory enough. But 'OConnell, we believe,
dearly as he loved his Church, loved his coun-
try better Emancipation of the Church to
him was giants step toward the political
freedom of the nation. What the indepen-
dence of the American colonies was to be to
the American Republic the breaking of the
shackles of religion should have been to
the liberation Of Ireland. OConnell tri-
umphed in one of his herculean labors, but he
failed in the other. 1t was not possible that
one man should accomplish two tasks so ire
mendous. Yet he did not altogether fail
in the struggle for the political indie
pendence of Ireland. He prepared the
way for a union of his countrymen,
the moral force of which should be
irresistible. He bequeathed his great work to
this generation, and it is this very work which
the Roman Catholic priests and dignitaries
in Ireland and the ultramontanists IN all
countries threaten to ruin by the gigantic
blunder they intend to commit in Dublin.
This blunder, if We may call by that title
something worse, is clearly set forth in our
London dispatches. The Lord Mayor of
Dublin and Cardinal Cullen propose to make
this celebration purely Roman Catholic
demonstration, by making it impossible for
other than those who are ultramon-
tanists to participate. The invitations,
we are informed, have been principally ad.
dressed to Catholics particular attentions
have been paid to those German Catholic
clergymen who are at war with the German
/ government the Irish Protestants have been
debarred from active part in tho man
agement of the great festival; the