protest. I know that if the Papal doctrines of the Syllabus are taught to the educated youth of Ireland, high treason, under a covert form, will be the daily food of the Irish mind.

The issue is serious, and far more important than the continuance of any Cabinet. The laws of Henry VIII. and of William III. must be maintained, or the kingdom of Ireland transferred to the Pope.

The Roman Catholic parish priest of Callan, in Ireland, had made known his intention of prosecuting for slander the coadjutor Bishop of Ossory. It appears to be a rule of the Roman Church that no ecclesiastic of that Church shall bring any ecclesiastic of the same Church into a court of law. The coadjutor bishop was supported by Cardinal Cullen, Archbishop of Dublin; the cardinal was supported by the Pope; the parish priest of Callan was displaced, and was also dismissed from the office of manager of the parish schools of Callan in a majority of one of the National Board of Education, led by the Lord Chancellor of Ireland against Chief Justice Monahan, both being Roman Catholics. It is obvious that a grievous wrong has been done. The Pope, as the head of the Roman Church, had the right to appoint and to displace the parish priest of Callan, but he had no right to appoint or displace the manager of the parish schools of Callan, nor had the Lord Chancellor of Ireland any right to interfere in any way to influence, directly or indirectly, the decision of a court of justice. The Sovereign of this country has declared by Magna Charta-To no one will we

sell, to no one will we deny, to no one will we delay right or justice.'

Thus the Board of Education in Ireland disobeyed the precept of Christ, and violated the spirit of Magna Charta. In 1215, a Roman Catholic Archbishop of Canterbury vindicated the laws, the liberties, and the independence of England. In 1872, upwards of six hundred years afterwards, an Irish Archbishop of Dublin was allowed to proclaim the jurisdiction of the Pope, a foreign prince, over the Queen's kingdom of Ireland.

It is clear that, in some way or other, this flagrant violation of Divine and human law must be reviewed, reconsidered, and reversed.

Y

322

ESSAY XIX.

THE ROMAN CATHOLIC CHURCH AND THE CONSTITUTION OF THE UNITED KINGDOM.

It is important to consider in what manner a country like England, which accepted the Bible as its rule of faith, made terms of amity with one of the three parts of the United Kingdom, which professed, by the voice of a great majority of its people, attachment to the Roman Catholic Church, and obedience to its spiritual authority. In 1829 Roman Catholics were admitted, when duly elected, to seats in the House of Commons, Irish peers, duly elected, were included in the roll of the House of Lords, and Roman Catholics were made capable of holding offices under the Crown, not excepting those of Secretary of State, First Lord of the Treasury, and other Cabinet offices. But in the bill introduced by Mr. Peel, it was enacted, that from and after the commencement of this Act, it shall and may be lawful for any person professing the Roman Catholic religion, being a peer, or who shall after the commencement of this Act be returned as a member of the House of Commons, to sit and vote in either House of Parliament respectively, being in all other respects duly qualified to sit and vote therein, upon taking and subscribing an oath, instead of the oaths of

6

allegiance, abjuration, and supremacy, and instead of making and subscribing the declaration against transubstantiation and the invocation of saints, and the sacrifice of the mass as practised in the Church of Rome.'

In the oath prescribed in the Roman Catholic Relief Bill, introduced by Mr. Peel, there are contained, besides the disavowal of many obsolete or imaginary tenets, the following words: 'And I do declare, that I do not believe that the Pope of Rome, or any other foreign prince, prelate, person, state, or potentate, hath or ought to have any temporal or civil jurisdiction, power, superiority, or pre-eminence, directly or indirectly, within this realm.'

The question hereupon arises, what is temporal or civil jurisdiction, and what subjects properly belong to spiritual jurisdiction? The laws relating to marriage and education are asserted by the Pope to be subjects pertaining to spiritual jurisdiction. In France and Italy the laws relating to marriage and education are declared by the laws of those countries to belong to the civil law. In France and Italy the civil marriage is the only form of marriage binding upon those nations. In England the form of marriage enacted by the canon law of Rome is, with certain conditions of registration, allowed to be valid. But on the question of education a contest is evidently impending. Will England assume for herself, as she has hitherto done, the power of laying down, by her own Parliamentary authority, the conditions according to which the education of the young must be carried on, or will Pope Pius IX. be allowed to assume, by himself and his legates,

by Cardinal Cullen and the Irish Roman Catholic bishops, the supreme direction of education?

This question is one of those which our French neighbours, by an expressive phrase, call burning.' In 1830 or 1831, the late Lord Derby, then Lord Stanley, Archbishop Whately, and Earl Grey, established a new system of national education for Ireland; and on the faith of the equity and efficiency of that system, the Government, for many years, proposed and carried the grant of large sums of money by the House of Commons. I have often had to defend that system in company with Mr. Chichester Fortescue.

The principle of that system of national education was, that secular instruction should be in common, but that religious instruction should be separate. Accordingly a placard is exhibited in the schools, with the words secular instruction or religious instruction printed in large letters, according to the hours of local regulation. This is no theoretical distinction. The Roman Church has declared in effect that faith and morals will be endangered, if a Roman Catholic child is found learning the multiplication table side by side with a Protestant boy, or if the two are found playing at trap-ball together in the playground. Father O'Keeffe, a Roman Catholic priest, has been caught in one of the many snares which the Jesuits of Rome have prepared, and he has lost upwards of 300l. a year, by being deprived of the management of the schools of Callan. No doubt upon each of the coins which he has lost, the image and superscription of Victoria, that is the image and superscription of Cæsar,