The Catholic bulletin. [volume] (St. Paul, Minn.) 1911-1995, 1921-09-24
CARDINAL MANNING ON IRELAND
ENGLISH PRELATE MADE CON-
PARlsoN BETWEEN IRELAND
AND RHINE PROvINcEs-sEv-
ERAL POINTS THROW LIGHT ON
CHURCHMAN'S STAND.
Concluded

(Concluded)
If the Cardinals logic was wrong on
the national problem, his hopes for re-
suits in the system of doles seem now
pathetic. He wrote in 1867:
For nearly twenty years peace and
a better order had been coming, slow
ly but surely. God avert that Ameri.
ca should sacrifice Ireland for third
time. Press on as in the last twenty
years and Ireland will be like the Prov
inces of the Rhine or like Belgium,
fertile and peaceful, with their thou
sand towns and villages, their ten thou
sand industries and busy ploughs,
mountains covered with cattle and
fields rich with harvests. i.
Two things are certain: the one that
these three kingdoms are indissoluble;
the other that they must be equal"
BulIocks, Not Irishmen.
Here again, one asks in despair, can
even the most sympathetic English
man ever understand Englands crime
in Ireland? The famine came just
twenty years before these words were
written. A million and a half of the
Irish people persisted of starvation.
Another million and half, driven from
their homes at the point of the bay
onet, fled to the emigrant ships and.
in the words of DR.. Cahill, cleft white
line across the bottom of the broad
Atlantic" formed of their bleached
bones. Famine, fever, eviction, clear
ance-until the London Times cried
out that "the Celt has gone and gone
with vengeance" and "a Celt will
soon be as rare in Connemara as a red
Indian on the shores of Manhattan"
The Lord Lieutenant of the day went
up and down the country, preaching
the gospel at meetings of the Ascen-
dancy that ireland was destined (by
Providence, of course), to be the pro-
life mother of flocks and herds to feed
the Empires armies and the teeming
industrial centers of Great Britain"
Bullocks and sheep, not Irishmen, was
what she needed.
Erin and Palestine.
And after twenty years of this, with
the population reduced by two and
half million and still going down, the
great Cardinal Manning wrote the
above! He sent copy of the pastoral
to Disraeli and another to Gladstone,
and one to Cardinal Cullen. Cardinal
Cullen answered Ueslie, page 1879:
"Will your Grace allow me to take
the liberty of making an observation
on a passage of your beautiful Pastor
al where you state that if Ireland con-
tinue to progress for twenty years to
come as she has in the last twenty, she
will be like a province of the Rhine
or like Belgium? Unfortunately, the
last twenty years pressed very heavily
on Ireland. We have lost about three
millions Of our population, about a
million acres of land have been with
drawn from cultivation, our principal
towns have been decaying, hundreds of
villages have disappeared, more than
three hundred thousand cottages of the
poor have been leveled to the ground.
Now, if things be as think they are,
and were they to continue their down
ward course for another quarter of a
century, I fear the country would be
more like Algiers or Palestine"
And like Algiers and Palestine, it
would have been in the allotted twen-
ty years (1887) if the Land League
and Davitt and Parnell and agitation
and sacrifice had not providentially in
tervened. Even as it happened, the
population has fallen by another two
millions in 1900!
What Would Manning Say Now?
What would be Cardinal Manning's
attitude on the Irish question if he were
today among the living? 1t is prob
lematical. But certain things can be
noted:
First: He changed his views rad
ically on the Temporal Power of the
Holy See and not only in regard to
policy but to the principles upon
which he had defended it's necessity
and inviolability Yet there were no
such grave reasons for change here
as there would be, in his case, on the
Irish question.
Secondly: In all matters pertaining
to ireland, he deferred to the opinion
of the Irish Bishops, and rightly, on
the Catholic principle that they and
not outsiders were responsible for
their own Ifocks. Hence, after the
Irish Bishops had declared as they did
una nimoIls1v in Octohar 1920 and
again in June, 1921, that the Irish
question must be settled "by the rec
ognition of the indefeasible right of
Ireland, as of every other nation, to
choose the form of government under
which it's people are to live he could