The Potteries Examiner : — 1874-06-20 (Stoke-on-Trent, Staffordshire, England)

IRELAND : HER HISTORY AND HER HOPES. INTRoDucrios.—(Continued )  This was the way England sought to make the Reformation attractive. The Reformation indeed,to despoil a people by means of religion of such few rights as their invaders had not seized by the sword, to trample on every feeling which characterises man, to put in bondage, deep and black as hell, every faculty of the maid, to nickname heaven's creatures, and to call that of heaven of which devils would have been ashamed, to heel up a black stineking ecclesiastical carcass and call it the Reformation. Surely this was to "bier the grace ' and Mush of modesty, to call virtu, hypocrite, to take off the rose from the fair forehead of en innocent love and set a blister there. and to make sweet religion a rhapently of words." ''nt. .t what could these people know of the Reorma :on, ... them it was a word without meaning, save such meaning as afterwards became associated with it. To 000000„,,,r•woss" the Irish it was simply inflame of evil omen, portending every species of barbarity. From what has been already said it will be gathered that in the breaking up of dark clouds of ignorance , which during the middle ages had hung so thickly over Europe that few gleams of light found their way to Ireland. Of the labours of Wicliff, Haas, Luther, and , Calvin this country knew nothing, nay, had scarcely 80 mach as heard their names. The creed men, of which this reforming century was so prolific, shed but little light over this benightal country: even the printing press, so mighty for good, whose birth was the advent of liberty, made known its presence in Ireland mostly by brutal proclamations and the facility by which such enactments migh be spread. \ The only reason that was put before them why they should change their national faith was because the king as willed it, the king with whom they at the very time were struggling to keep their lands out of the hands of strangers and adventurers. A very persuasive reason truly. Of the character of the men who were sent from England to put tlo king's will before the people we have already shown, and the means ' thee adopted, too, to indoctrinate them has also been maae plain. If then such orations as these were used to convert a nation, if the sword in one hand and the Bible in the other, as was advocated in the House of Commons Was the best way kuown to convert a nation from the faith of its fathers, there need be no surprise that the Reformation made no progress in Ireland. It boa been common, it is common even now, to ascribe the none progression of Ireland to her rejection of this Reformation. Would the li.formation have ploughed her waste lands ? Would it have removed the fetters from her commerce ? Would it have mitigated the rapacious montexily of her fertile acres ? Unless these questions can he fully answered there is little to show that it would have been much to the benefit of Ireland to have adopted the principles of the Reformation. The mere name by which an hierarchy is called is not much to the matter. The difference between a Bishopa's hat and a Cardinal's mitre is not great. ! But then it is said again that the religion of Ireland is one of tyranny and priesteraft. Let this reproach be earefully wed, it is appliceble to all our churches. It is not only unsupported, but unsupportable nonsense, to talk of the missive disposition of the Catholics to persecute. The Protestants have murdered, and tortured, and laid waste as much as the Cathol,es. Each party as it gained the upper hand, tried death as a remedy for heresy, and both parties have tried in vain. Thousands were pnt to death under the rule of Henry