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tract of country bordering upon the Atlantic, and comprising the districts of Achill, Erris, and Connemara, extending for 100 miles in length and 20 or 30 in breadth. Some thirty years ago this whole district contained but thirteen Protestant congregations, seven churches, and eleven clergymen. In 1861 there were fifty-seven congregations, twenty-seven churches, and thirty-five clergymen. In the reign of Queen Anne Sir Arthur Shaen introduced a Protestant colony in the northern part of West Connaught. There were also Protestant colonists settled southward, near Galway. Some remnants of them could be traced about sixty years ago; but as no minister of their own ever went near them, they were obliged to go to mass. The Rev. Dr. Hulme, of Liverpool, points attention to a curious ethnological fact bearing upon the social condition of Ireland. He says: 'It is peculiarly difficult to recover either those who have been perverted, or their descendants; yet the missionary fruits are twofold, embracing the Roman Catholic population and the descendants of lapsed Protestants. The former are pure Celts, mild, docile, and gentle in their dispositions; far different from the Romanised Normans imported from England, who make up the dangerous classes of the worst counties, and constituting England's great difficulty. No doubt the Connaught Celts-or the remnant of an older race which the Celts conquered and held in bondage, all mixed up and crushed by subsequent conquests in one degraded mass-have been remarkably gentle, tame, even abjectly submissive and servile to the gentry, in comparison with Tipperary and other counties planted by English settlers. But recent events, and above all the last Galway election, demonstrate that even in Connaught the Celtic nature has not lost its capacity of being roused by certain stimulants into wild turbulence and reckless ferocity, in which case the strongest bonds of ecclesiastical discipline have no more force to restrain its impetuosity than the withs that Samson broke as a thread of tow is broken when it toucheth the fire.'

The aggressive nature of the mission lamented, but which were inevitable. pointed out by an Irish Peer.' He says:

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produced results to be These have been well

The priests on their

side have not been idle during the attacks upon their religion;

and by enlisting the antipathies of race and creed and tradition against the Protestants, they have more than repulsed the assault. Where there was indifference before they have aroused hatred, which would in itself suffice to baffle the well-meant efforts of proselytism; and they have endeared Romanism to their flocks, not less as antagonistic to the Saxon creed than as connected with the history of the Celt. This policy, if not quite in the spirit of the Gospel, was still as natural as it was skilful.'

It is true that, so far as the Church was concerned, that part of Ireland was a spiritual wilderness until Archbishop Trench attempted to reclaim it. But his exertions provoked a powerful reaction; and on review of the whole, an Irish Peer' remarked: There are still a few worthy persons who after years of disappointment maintain their hopes and reiterate assurances which the experience of nearly forty years has contradicted. The man must be blind indeed to the signs of the times, blind to the external objects visible to all who have eyes, blind to what passes in our streets and fields, and equally blind to the lessons of a Press entirely devoted to the priests, who thinks that their influence is waning. If Roman Catholic chapels and cathedrals, emulating those of the Continent in costly architecture; if convents, monasteries, colleges, all built within the last twenty years; be any evidence of declining zeal, then Romanism may be declining. Nor need we confine ourselves to these indirect but significant proofs of zeal in a poor country; for no one resident in Ireland can be ignorant of the greatly increased sway of the Roman Catholic priesthood over their flocks. The chapels are everywhere better attended upon holidays, and the lower orders, at all events, are far more strict in their confessions, fasts, and other religious observances, than they used to be. Would that our poor Protestants in their own creed had emulated them!'

CHAPTER XIX.

PROGRESS OF ROMANISM.

ARCHBISHOP MCHALE has been for nearly fifty years the leader of the Catholics of Connaught, with more power over the masses around him, for evil or for good, than any leader ever enjoyed in that province. The last Galway election is a good stand-point from which to review his long career.

According to the arrangement of the Roman Catholic Church, which strictly preserves the old ecclesiastical land-marks, the province of Tuam consists of seven sees-Tuam, Clonfert, Achonry, Elphin, Kilmacduagh and Kilfenora, Killala, and Galway. Archbishop McHale, whose name has been almost constantly before the Irish public for half a century, is the Metropolitan, having his cathedral at Tuam. Born in 1791 at Tubbernaveen, county Mayo, he is a Connaught man and a Celt. Being a clever lad with a religious turn, he was destined for the priesthood, and entered Maynooth College at an early age. There having soon distinguished himself by his learning and abilities, he was appointed Professor of Dogmatic Theology when he was only about twenty-three years old. In 1825 he became Coadjutor Bishop of Killala, with right of succession, and was consecrated with the title of Maronia.' He was then widely known as the author of a series of letters on the Established Church and Catholic grievances, under the signature of Hieropholis.' A second series of the same kind was published later, under his own name. He is also author of a work on The Evidences and Doctrines of the Catholic Church; and not many years ago he translated Moore's Melodies into the Irish language. In 1834 he became Archbishop of Tuam; and in that position he has continued ever since to be a tower of strength to the Irish Catholic cause, being by far the ablest champion of that cause

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in the hierarchy since the death of Dr. Doyle. He has always been intensely national in his sentiments, and indefatigable in his exertions to check the advance of Protestantism. During the whole period when questions connected with the Church Establishment were agitated, he wrote letters very frequently in the newspapers, which were generally addressed to the Primet Minister of the day, or some other prominent statesman. Unlike Bishop Doyle, his style was pompous and inflated. He always affected a lofty scorn of the prelates of the Established Church as mere State-functionaries, thrust into the province to trouble his repose and steal stray members of the flock of which he had the lawful charge. His magniloquent epistles on political and ecclesiastical matters were eagerly read by the Roman Catholics, who admired them as the grandest displays of eloquence. O'Connell flattered him to the top of his bent, calling him 'The great Archbishop of the West,' The Apostolic Prelate of St. Jarlath's,' The Lion of Tuam,' and 'The Lion of Judah.' The Lion,' therefore, felt himself bound to roar as loudly as possible in support of the Libérator,' not only while he had been labouring for Catholic emancipation, but also when subsequently engaged in the agitation for the Repeal of the Union. When emancipation had been conceded, O'Connell's most gifted colleague, the late Richard Lalor Shiel, a man of genius and a brilliant orator, believed with that concession agitation should end; and when he went to a meeting of the Catholic Association to propose its dissolution, he stated that he was authorised to cast twenty-two mitres into the scale on the side of peace and social harmony. But some of the mitres were soon taken out of the scale; and Dr. McHale seems to have fancied that his own was a helmet, while grasping his crosier as if it had been a sword. There is something wonderful in the hierarchial system of Rome, which can thus raise the son of a peasant to such a status, and can thus animate him by a spirit that enables and emboldens him to maintain a bearing of superiority towards prelatic rivals of aristocratic blood, of princely revenues, and the highest social prestige, being himself dependent for his support upon the voluntary contributions of a poor and degraded people! Archbishop McHale lived for many years in the same town with Archbishop Trench, who

was at one time, as we have seen, exceedingly popular with Roman Catholics because they were often fed by his bounty. His successor, Bishop Plunket, carried on the controversial war most vigorously; and it raged so fiercely that a number of outrages were, from time to time, perpetrated. Two of Dr. McHale's priests were very prominent in those conflicts-Father Conway and Father Lavelle. Lord Plunket resorted to evictions in some cases, in order to get rid of turbulent neighbours, and there was a great deal of bad blood. The agitation had ceased, however, for some years before that nobleman's death. He and his powerful rival, the Archbishop, dwelt together in their poor old town as peaceful neighbours, though without much social intercourse.1

It is in Protestant Ulster,' however, that the progress of Romanism, during the period under review, has been most surprising. This progress has been very much identified with the Primacy of Archbishop CROLLY, who was appointed coadjutor of the Bishop of Down in 1825. Soon after he was examined by an Education Commission, when he gave decided testimony in favour of the united system of education, as tending to extinguish party animosities, and as generating kindly feelings.' Previously the four Catholic Archbishops-Curtis, Murray, Laffan, and Kelly-advocated a system of united education, declaring that there could be no possible objection to Catholics receiving a scientific education from Protestants. In fact, in 1841, Gregory XVI. declared that Catholics might attend schools the masters of which were not Catholics, 'provided every exertion

A curious story is told to account for this fact, and I have reason to believe it true. Three elderly gentlemen, on a certain day, dropped in, one after another, at the Turkish Baths, Lincoln Place, in Dublin. Sitting or reclining in the hot room, without anything in the way of costume to indicate their rank or station, they got into conversation. One of these was Lord Plunket, Bishop of Tuam; in the second he very soon recognised his old enemy Archbishop McHale, and in the third, his brother prelate, the Archbishop of Dublin. When Dr. Whately found in what companionship he was he laughed heartily, and stretching his gigantic limbs upon the couch, he began to give vent to his wit and humour so rapidly that the others forgot their quarrels, as well as gravity, and enjoyed the fun exceedingly. He chaffed them about their past contentions, turned their polemical battles into ridicule, reminded them of apostolic precepts about charity, brotherly love, good Samaritanism, and so forth; and it is stated that the two Tuam prelates parted as friends, and never quarrelled again.

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