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 ROMAN CATHOLIC PRIESTS 
 
 AND 
 
 NATIONAL SCHOOLS. 
 
 GERALD FITZCtIBBON, ESQ.. 
 
 MASTER IN CHANCERY. 
 
 AUTHOR OF “IRELAND IN 1868 AND “THE LAND DIFFICULTY, 
 WITH AN EFFORT TO SOLVE IT.” 
 
 SMonb ^biticrn, 
 
 WITH AS APPENDIX. 
 
 DUBLIN : 
 
 HODGES, FOSTER, AND CO. 
 
 LONDON: LONGMANS, GREEN, AND CO,, PATERNOSTER- ROW. 
 
 1872. 
 
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ROMAN CATHOLIC PRIESTS 
 
 AND 
 
 NATIONAL SCHOOLS. 
 
 That the people of one country, who owe allegi- 
 ance to one sovereign power, constituted for the 
 government of all, as one community, having na- 
 tional interests, which it is equally necessary, and 
 e(|ually beneficial to them all to promote, and to 
 defend, should be divided into ditferent religious 
 sects, hostile to, and intolerant of each other, is so 
 self-evidently a social evil, that it may be assumed 
 as a truth which no reasonable man of any class or 
 party will deny or doubt. That Ireland has been 
 for centuries, and still continues to be afflicted with 
 this evil, is a fact equally patent, and equally indis- 
 putable. The leaders, and organs of all sects, and all 
 parties, whether in or out of power, concur in one 
 common profession of a desire to reconcile these 
 wrangling fellow-subjects, and to remove every just 
 cause of envy or hatred towards each other. But a 
 party in power, honest enough to resist the tempta- 
 tion of an alliance, for its own support, with such of 
 the wrangling septs as, for the time being, appears 
 able to render good service on the field of party 
 strife, is a desideratum to the present hour. This 
 corrupt, and corrupting association has ever adopted, 
 and to the end of time will still adopt, the spurious, 
 
 A 2 
 
4 
 
 and aggravating policy of legislating, at the dicta- 
 tion of the addicted ally, against the sept or sej)ts to 
 which that ally is opposed. Convenient names are 
 invented for legislation of this kind — such as jus- 
 tice for Ireland ’’ — messages of peace to Ireland ” — 
 redress of grievances” — ^‘religious equality” — and 
 other such j^lausible designations, to disguise the 
 iniquity of helping some predominant faction to 
 trample upon the rights, and spoliate the property 
 of its opponents. That Hibernia,” periodically 
 pacified ” after this fashion, is not well affected to 
 its peacemakers, no thinking man can be surprised. 
 That its condition is no worse than it is, after cen- 
 turies of treatment such as this, and that it should 
 have so large a measure, as, in fact, it has, of na- 
 tional wealth, and social happiness, is not to be 
 ascribed to its rulers, and can be accounted for only 
 by the energy and intelligence of some large portion 
 of the people, who steadily labour for good, and keep 
 out of the vortex of factious agitation and strife. 
 
 This part of the nation does nothing by combined 
 action, panders to no party, and, therefore, it has no 
 political influence. The good produced by it is the 
 result of individual exertion and thrift. It compre- 
 hends persons of all creeds; but in numbers not 
 proportionate to the entire masses of the different 
 sects which make up the whole population. Of 
 Protestants, whether Episcopalians, Presbyterians, 
 or Methodists, and of Quakers, a large proportion 
 belongs to it. Whatever the country can boast of 
 material wealth, and social prosperity, is due to the 
 efforts and energies, mental and bodily, of those who 
 
comj)Ose this industrial and utilitarian class. No- 
 thing is so congenial to them as peace and tranquillity 
 — nothing so essential to the success of their opera- 
 tions as friendly intercourse, mutual confidence, uni- 
 versal toleration, and consequent liberty of thought, 
 and useful action. The foremost rank in this great 
 class devise works of improvement and manuhictures, 
 on which to employ all who are willing to work, on 
 such terms as a common interest and existing cir- 
 cumstances may adjust. Good feeling and reciprocal 
 respect between these employers and the masses 
 dependent upon them for the wages of labour, in all 
 its variety, is obviously essential to the peace, the 
 prosperity, and the happiness of the whole commu- 
 nity, and sectarian bigotry is never so mischievous, 
 as when it counteracts these kindly feelings, and 
 creates hatred and enmity towards those who do not 
 otherwise offend than by repudiating dogmas whicli 
 they were not, in childhood, persuaded to believe. 
 
 In the curriculum of special legislation for Ireland, 
 two important subjects still remain; and they appear 
 to stand as prominent topics for discussion in the 
 approaching session — viz., the voting by ballot — 
 and the education of youth, in schools, and in 
 colleges supported by the State. 
 
 Those who take an interest in the subject of edu- 
 cation are divided into two great parties — one claim- 
 ing the establishment of sectarian schools, in which 
 the clergy of each denomination will have the un- 
 fettered liberty of teaching the doctrines which they 
 allege to be essential to the faith and morals of the 
 cliildren committed to them for religious instruction 
 
Tlie other party strongly deprecate the segregation 
 of the children, to which this denominational system 
 inevitably leads ; and see nothing in it but the re- 
 vival, and the perpetuation of sectarian animosity, 
 and unreasoning prejudice, destructive alike of 
 public tranquillity and of Christian charity. 
 
 Although the denominational system may have, 
 and, I believe, has advocates amongst the laity of 
 the several creeds, yet these are not very numerous, 
 and still less enthusiastic in support of the side 
 Avhich they espouse. The demand for separate pri- 
 mary schools, and colleges comes chiefly, and most 
 vehemently, from the Koinan Catholic clergy, and 
 much of wTiat is expressed in its favour by E.oman 
 Catholic laymen may be fairly ascribed to the in- 
 fluence which their clergy exercise upon them. It 
 is certain that many, if not a majority, of the higher 
 classes in the Roman Catholic laity dread the pros- 
 pect of being compelled to place their children in 
 exclusive schools, and colleges, under the uncontrolled 
 government of the Roman Catholic priesthood. 
 That they do not express this feeling is, for obvious 
 reasons, no proof that it does not exist. It is per- 
 fectly clear and manifest, that the demand for 
 separate schools, and colleges has no strong support 
 except from the Roman Catholic clergy. If they 
 were indifferent to it, no one can believe that the 
 w^ant of it wmuld be felt by the laity of any creed, or 
 that any agitation w^ould be raised on the assertion 
 of this want as an Irish grievance. 
 
 When the legislature of Great Britain and Ireland 
 is called upon to tax the people of- both countries 
 
for the sujjport of schools in which the doctrines 
 approved by the Roman Catholic hierarchy are alone 
 to be taught, it is only just and reasonable, that 
 those who dissent from these doctrines, and whose 
 number, in both islands, is five times greater than of 
 those who accept them, and whose contributions to 
 the treasury are one hundred times as great as those 
 of the Roman Catholics, should make inquiry into 
 the details, and social effects of the teaching which 
 they are called upon, not merely to tolerate, but 
 expensively to pay for, and encourage. 
 
 The Roman Catholic clergy are already the patrons, 
 i.e. the immediate superintendents and managers of 
 more than 4,000 schools in Ireland, sujDported at the 
 national expense, being two-thirds of all the schools 
 which are so supported. As such patrons, however, 
 they are not entirely uncontrolled, being subject to 
 such regulations as the National Board may enact. 
 On this Board both laity and clergy of the Roman 
 Catholic creed are fully represented ; and no regu- 
 lations are sanctioned, unless approved of by a 
 majority of this mixed body, composed of j)ersons 
 selected for the purpose of securing the wise and im- 
 partial government of this National system. The 
 patrons of the other schools are under the same 
 amount of control, and they do not complain of it. 
 The Roman Catholic clergy alone assert, that their 
 flocks are aggrieved, by the abridgment of what 
 they call Roman Catholic teaching. What those 
 doctrines are which they are not allowed to teach in 
 the National schools, to the children of their own 
 persuasion, they have never, as far as I know, 
 
8 
 
 attempted to define. I believe that no rational 
 candid man of any party or sect Avill think, and still 
 less will he assert, that it is unjust or improper ; 
 nay, that it is not essentially right and necessary, to 
 inquire what those doctrines are, the prohibition of 
 which, in the National schools, constitutes a grievous 
 restraint upon Catholic teaching. 
 
 After the publication of my book on Ireland 
 in 1868, my attention was called to some school 
 histories, written by Jesuits, for the use of children 
 in Roman Catholic schools, and I added a chapter 
 to the second edition of my book, in which I com- 
 mented on the perversion and falsification of history 
 in those books; on one of which. Archbishop Whately’s 
 comment was, that, Nothing could exceed the un- 
 blushing audacity of its falsehoods, except the atrocity 
 of its pi'inciples ” — and lhat the pervei'sion of its 
 
 morals is still worse than its perversion of facts d 
 After the publication of my second edition, in 
 December, 1868, I read Mr. Leckie’s History of 
 European Morals,” published in 1869. 
 
 In the 2nd Vob, at pp. 236-237, is the followii)g 
 passage : — 
 
 “ It was tlie custom then [i.e. in the twelfth and following 
 centuries) as it is the custom now, for the Catholic priests to stain 
 the imaginations of young children, by ghastly pictures of future 
 misery ; to imprint upon the virgin mind atrocious images, which 
 they hoped, not unreasonably, might prove indelible. In the 
 hours of weakness, and of sickness, their overwrought fancy 
 seemed to see hideous beings hovering around, and hell itself 
 yawning to receive its victim.” 
 
 On this passage the following note is at foot of 
 page 237 ; — 
 
 “ Few Englishmen, I imagine, are aware of the infamous pub- 
 lications, written with this object, that are circulated by the 
 
9 
 
 ('atliolic priests among the poor. I have before me a tract ‘ for 
 eiiildren and young persons,’ called The Sight of Hell, by the Ke^\ 
 J. Furniss, C.S.S.R., published ^ permissu sup)eriorum,' by Duffy 
 (Dublin and London.) It is a detailed description of the dungeons 
 of hell, and a few sentences may serve as a sample — ‘ See on the 
 middle of that red-hot floor stands a girl ; she looks about sixteen 
 years old. Her feet are bare. She has neither shoes nor stockings. 
 
 . . . Listen ! she speaks. She says — I have been standing on 
 
 this red-hot floor for years. Day and night, my only standing- 
 place has been this red-hot floor. . . . Look at my burnt and 
 
 l)leeding feet. Let me off this red-hot floor for one moment — 
 only for one single short moment. . . . The fourth dungeon 
 
 is the boiling kettle. . . . In the middle of it there is a boy. 
 
 His eyes are burning like two burning coals. Two long 
 flames come out of his ears. . . . Sometimes he opens his 
 
 mouth, and blazing fire rolls out. But listen ! there is a sound 
 like a boiling kettle. . . . The blood is boiling in the scalded 
 
 veins of that boy. The brain is boiling and bubbling in his head. 
 The marrow is boiling in his bones. . . . The fifth dungeon is 
 
 the red hot oven. Hear ! . . . The little child is in this red 
 
 hot oven. Hear how it screams to come out. See how it turns, 
 and twists itself about in the fire. It beats its head against the 
 roof of the oven. It stamjis its little feet on the floor. 
 
 God was very good to this child. Yery likely, God saw it would 
 get worse and worse, and would never repent, and so it would 
 have to be punished mucji more in hell. So God, in his mercy, 
 called it out of the world in its early childhood.’ If the reader 
 desires to follow this subject further, he may glance o^'er a com- 
 panion tract l^y the same reverend gentleman, called ‘ A Terrible 
 Judgment on a Little Child ;’ and also a book on Hell, translated 
 from the Italian of Pinamonti, and with illustrations depicting 
 the various tortures.” 
 
 This book, translated from Italian, and entitled 
 
 Hell Opened to Christians,” contains forty-eight 
 closely printed pages, setting forth, in horrifying 
 detail, the tortures inflicted upon the victims, seven 
 of which are the subject of pictures, which must be 
 as frightful to children, as they are offensive and 
 disgusting to common sense and reason. I procured 
 the book from which Mr. Leckie’s quotations were 
 made, and the two others referred to in the note. 
 
 On the covers of these, I found a catalogue, of 
 which the following is a copy, with the dates of 
 
]0 
 
 publication added, from the title pages — excluding 
 the notion that these doctrines and lessons for young 
 children belong to the dark ages which have passed 
 away ; and that they should not, therefore, be raked 
 up, for the attention of our pretentious century of 
 liofht and science. 
 
 o 
 
 NEW SERIES. 
 
 WORKS BY FATHER FURNISS, GS.S.R. 
 
 BOOKS FOR CHILDREN. 
 
 I. ALMIGHTY GOD, 
 
 TI. GOD LOVES LITTLE CHILDREN, 
 
 III. THE GREAT QUESTION, . 
 
 IV. THE GREAT EVIL, . 
 
 V. STUMBLING BLOCKS, &c., 
 
 VI. THE BOOK OF YOUNG PERSONS, 
 
 VII. THE HOUSE OF DEATH, . 
 
 VIII. THE BOOK OF THE DYING, . 
 
 IX. THE TERRIBLE JUDGMI:NT, &c. 
 
 X. THE SIGHT OF HELL, 
 
 WHAT EVERY CHRISTIAN MUST 
 ai.tekations, One Halfpenny 
 
 Price One Penny — 1860 — 32 pages, 
 ,, One Penny — 1867 — 32 
 
 „ One Penny— 1862— 32 „ 
 
 ,, One Penny — 1869 — 32 
 
 „ One Penny — 1869 — 32 ,, 
 
 ., One Penny— 1868— 32 „ 
 
 „ One Penny— 1861— 32 „ 
 
 „ One Penny — 1869 — 32 ,, 
 
 „ One Penny^ — 1867 — 30 „ 
 
 „ One Penny — 1868 — 32 ,, 
 
 KNOW, WITH REVISIONS AND 
 ' — 1866 — 32 pages. 
 
 DUBLIN : 
 
 JA^^IES DUFFY, 7, WELLINGTON -QUAY ; 
 
 AND 
 
 22, PATERNOSTER-ROW, LONDON. 
 
 HELL OPENED TO CHRISTIANS, 
 
 TO CAUTION THEM FROM ENTERING INTO IT. 
 
 FK03I THE ITALIAN OF 
 
 THE REV. F. PINAMONTI, S.J. 
 
 Price Twopence — 48 pages. 
 
 DUBLIN: 
 
 JAMES DUFFY, WELLINGTON-QUAY ; 
 
 AND 
 
 22, PATERNOSTER-ROW, LONDON. 
 
 These are books of our own time — issuing from the 
 press of the present hour. That they contain a part, 
 and an important part, of what the Homan Catholic 
 
Church teaches, no one can deny or doubt. In one 
 of them, No. 8, at page 29, what are there called 
 The Four Great Truths” are stated. The first of 
 these concludes with the words “ I believe all that 
 the Catholic Church teaches.” The 4tli is — thus 
 stated : — 
 
 IV. Acts — Faith . — My God, I believe in thee — 
 and all the Catholic Church teaches — because thou 
 hast said it — and thy word is true.” 
 
 Here is a solemn declaration of the disciple, that 
 lie believes all that is stated in these books, beino’ 
 written by a learned divine of the Church, for his in- 
 struction, and being approved of, and printed for his 
 use, by permission of the superiors in the Church, and 
 being, accordingly, strongly recommended upon this 
 high authority to be read by parents to their child- 
 ren, and by teachers in Sunday schools, where, each 
 Sunday, the children are to hear one or two stories 
 from them on what are called the great truths of 
 religion. The children, therefore, hear these stories 
 as a paid of what the Catholic Church teaches, and 
 they believe them, because the Church teaches them, 
 and God has said them, and His word is true. 
 
 Can there be any stronger asseveration than this, 
 on the part of the Church, that all these stories are 
 true — true, because they are the word of God, whose 
 word is, and, we all admit, must be true ? 
 
 Thus the subject is reduced to the single and 
 simple (question — ai*e these stories the word of God ? 
 
 I leave every person to answer this question for 
 himself, at the conclusion of each story, when he 
 reads it. I shall accurately copy a few of them, and 
 
12 
 
 oUer some observations on the moral and social 
 effects of believing i\\Qm to be true —confining my 
 commentary to those effects Avhich they must pro- 
 duce, whether they are true or not. 
 
 These books are not used, and, I believe, they 
 Avould not be allowed in the National schools. They 
 are evidently intended for extensive use in Roman 
 Catholic Sunday schools, and in such Monastery and 
 Convent schools as are not under the control of the 
 National Board. They appear also to be intended 
 for circulation amongst the parents of Roman Ca- 
 tholic children. They all profess to be published 
 permissu super ioruni '' — that is, with the approba- 
 tion and sanction of the Roman Catholic hierarchy, 
 the Sovereign Pontiff included, whose judgment is, 
 by the orthodox Church, assumed to be infallible, 
 and whose spiritual dominion is asserted to-be, by 
 right divine, universal over all mankind. Sucii is 
 the coercive authority upon Avliich is printed on the 
 insides of the covers the following words : — 
 
 I. Parents are recommended to read these 
 
 BOOKS TO THEIR CHILDREN.” 
 
 “II. The subjects in these books are arranged 
 according to the order followed in Missions and 
 Retreats.” 
 
 III. These books are recommended for reading 
 in Sunday schools. Learning by heart is a laborious 
 task for children. Moreover, it is of essential im- 
 portance that, each Sunday, the children should hear 
 a story on the great truths of religion. This book 
 is divided in xxxv. sections, or short readings, one 
 or two of which might be read aloud in Sunday 
 
13 
 
 scliools, eacli Sunday.” — (Copied from tlie cover of 
 No. 8.) 
 
 Mr. Leckie’s book is a learned history, not written 
 for, or likely to be read by the vulgar multitude of 
 unlearned readers. His short censure of, and scanty 
 (juotations from this priestly literature, which pro- 
 fesses to be metlioclically arranged, and is cheaply 
 printed, for the edilicatiou of the tender minds, and 
 susceptible imaginations of children, have not been 
 noticed, that I am aware of, by any of the published 
 commentaries on Mr. Leckie’s very learned work. 
 Of this terrifying theology I knew nothing, until I 
 read Mr. Leckie’s note. But I am not so indifferent 
 to the condition of my fellow-creatures, both present 
 and prospective, as to be satisfied with reading the 
 small portion set out in his note of what he designates 
 as the infamous publications,” to which he refers. I 
 have, therefore, read all that are mentioned in the 
 catalogue before copied from the cover of one of 
 them. The ten which are numbered (and to which 
 I shall refer by these numbers) contain each above 
 30 pages of small and crowded type, equal, each 
 page, to two pages of this panqohlet. 
 
 The Sight of Hell ” (from which Mr. Leckie 
 quotes) is No. 10 in the catalogue. The red-hot 
 floor is at page 19 — the boiling kettle at page 20; 
 and the red-hot oven at page 21. 
 
 At page 5, it is related, as true history, that 
 
 “ St. Frances of Rome lived a very holy life. Many times, she 
 saw with her eyes her Angel Guardian at her side. It pleased 
 the Almighty God to let her see many other wonderful things. 
 Brev. Mom. One afternoon, the Angel Gabriel came, to take her 
 to see hell. She went with him, and saw that terrible place. Let 
 us follow ill her footsteps, that we may see, in the spirit,. the won- 
 derful things which she saw.” 
 
14 
 
 Thus the scenes in the dungeons of hell are nar 
 rated and described upon the alleged testimony of 
 an eye-witness, led to see them by the Angel Ga- 
 briel, and that eye-witness being herself a holy saint, 
 whom it would be blasphemous to suppose capable 
 of uttering anything false, or fabricated. Then fol- 
 lows, in separate paragraphs, a terrifying description 
 of The Fire ” — The Darkness ” — The Smoke ” — 
 '‘The terrific Noise” — “A River.” This river is 
 thus explained — 
 
 Is. xxii. — ‘ It is the day of shiughter, and of treading down, 
 and of weeping to the Lord, the God. of hosts' There is in hell a 
 sound like that of many waters. It is as if all the rivers and 
 oceans of the world were pouring themselves, with a great splash, 
 down upon the floor of Hell. Is it then really the sound of waters ] 
 It is. Are the rivers and oceans of the earth pouring themselves 
 into Hell No. What is it then ] It is the sound of oceans of 
 tears, running down from countless millions of eyes. They cry 
 night and day ; they cry for ever and ever. They cry, because 
 the sulphurous smoke torments their eyes. They cry, because they 
 are in darkness. They cry, because they have lost the beautiful 
 heaven. They cry, because the sharp fire burns them. 
 
 “ Little child, it is better to cry one tear of repentance now than 
 to cry millions of tears in Hell. But what is that dreadful 
 sickening smell % The smell of death. ” 
 
 “ St. Bonaventure says, that if one single body was taken out 
 of Hell, and laid on the earth, in that same moment, every living 
 creature on earth would sicken and die. Such is the smell of 
 death from one body in Hell. What then would be the smell of 
 death from countless millions, and millions of bodies, laid in Hell, 
 like sheep?” (No. 10, p. 0). 
 
 This tract is a kind of supplement to Pinamonti’s 
 book, and contains thirty-two pages, filled with 
 horrors of this kind, and with descriptions of the 
 Devil and his fiends, engaged in administering these 
 tortures. 
 
 Mr. Leckie omits the concluding part of the girl’s 
 lamentation, on the red-hot floor, viz. : — 
 
 “ ‘ Oh that in this endless eternity of years, I might forget the 
 pain only for one single moment.’ The Devil answers her ques- 
 
15 
 
 tion. ‘ Do you ask,’ he says, ‘ for a moment, for one moment, to 
 forget your j)ain 1 No, not for one single moment, during the 
 never-ending eternity of years, shall you ever leave this red-hot 
 floor !’ ‘ Is it so f the girl says, with a sigh tliat seems to break 
 
 her heart. ‘ Then, at least, let somebody go to my little brothers 
 and sisters, who are alive, and tell them not to do the bad things 
 which I did ; so they will never have to come and stand on the 
 red-hot floor.’ The Devil answers her again, ‘ Your little brothers 
 and sisters have the priests to tell them those things. If they 
 will not listen to the priests, neither would they, listen even if 
 somebody should go to them from the dead.’ ” 
 
 Thus substituting the priests for Moses and tlie 
 prophets. It is the main object, and purpose of 
 these books, plainly discoverable from the whole 
 tenor of them, to exalt the j^riests ; and to im- 
 press upon the infant mind a deep and indelible 
 conviction, that they, and they alone, have the power 
 to save the soul from the tortures and eternal per- 
 dition described in this hideous detail. 
 
 At page 17 of No. 10 is described the 
 
 First Dungeon — a Dress of Fire. 
 
 “Job xxxviii. — A7’e not thy gm'ments hot ? Come into this 
 room. You see it is very small. But see, in the midst of it, 
 there is a girl, perhaps about eighteen years old. What a terrible 
 dress she has on — her dress is made of fire. On her head she 
 wears a bonnet of fire. It is pressed down close all over her 
 head ; it burns her head ; it burns into the skin ; it scorches the 
 bone of the skull, and makes it smoke. The red-hot fiery heat 
 goes into the brain, and melts it. Ezech. xxii. — ‘ I will burn you 
 in the fire of my wrath — you shall be melted in the midst thereof, 
 as silver is melted in the fire.’ You do not, perhaps, like a head- 
 ache. Think what a headache that girl must have. But see 
 more. She is wrapped up in flames, for her dress is fire. If she 
 were on earth, she would be burnt to a cinder in a moment. But 
 she is in Hell, where fire burns everything, but burns nothing 
 away. There she stands burning and scorched. There she will 
 stand for ever burning and scorched. She counts on her fingers 
 the moments as they pass away slowly, for each moment seems to 
 her like a hundred years. As she counts the moments, she re- 
 members that she will have to count them for ever and ever. 
 
 “ When that girl was alive, she never thought about God, or her 
 soul. She cared only for one thing, and that was dress ! Instead 
 of going to Mass on Sundays, she went about the town and the 
 parks to show off her dress. She disobeyed her father and mother, 
 
IG 
 
 by going to dancing-liouses, and all kinds of bad places, to show 
 off her dress, and now her dress is her punishment. jF'or dy what 
 things a man sinneth, hy the same also he is tormented . — 
 Wisd. xi.” 
 
 In those dismal centuries, when the Roman Catholic 
 hierarchy had the temporal power of kings and 
 rulers at their command, to execute, by fire and 
 torture, their judgments upon so-called heretics, and 
 infidels, as ‘‘ an Act of Faith f it was not uncommon, 
 to extort a recantation by the prospect of the stake 
 and the fagot, or by the torture of the rack, and 
 then, to burn the repentant sinner in pretended 
 mercy, and in priestly solicitude for his immortal 
 soul ; for they said, as they now say in this book, 
 it might be very likely, that this sinner would re- 
 lapse, and would never after repent ; and so he 
 would have to be punished much more in Hell. So 
 the priests, in their mercy, sent him out of the 
 world, in the moment of his repentance, and con- 
 siderately made him sufier the momentary torment 
 of death by fire on earth, to save his soul from the 
 everlasting torture of raging fire in hell. 
 
 In our time of toleration and religious equality for 
 all sects, and all creeds; when the Roman Catholic hier- 
 archy, in this country, has passedthrough a long period 
 of persecution; which was gradually relaxed, first into 
 disabilities and precautionary restraints, and which 
 finally terminated in emancipation from every relic of 
 the penal laws which the cruelty of their predecessors 
 had provoked, we are used to deride the notion, 
 that the Catholic priests of modern times would ever 
 think it right, or just, or even innocent, to act on 
 such an atrocious principle of wicked treachery, as 
 that by Avhich the priests of the dark ages insulted 
 
17 
 
 the prostrate reason of mankind, by this Jesuitical 
 apology for sanguinary murder. Now, when the 
 temporal power in these countries is yet in the hands 
 of what they call an heretical sovereign, and an here- 
 tical majority of the people, when it is no longer 
 allied with and subservient to the infallible and un- 
 changeable Church, the possibility of relapsing into 
 the clerical cruelties of former times would, I have 
 no doubt, be indignantly denied by the organized 
 priesthood of the present day, who have been so 
 long kept on their good behaviour. Yet, with the 
 sanction and approval of this modern priesthood, the 
 faithful are called upon to believe, and to teach their 
 children, that the seizure of an infant, so young as 
 not to be, as yet, entitled to be designated as a per- 
 son, i.e. a rational and accountable agent, and to im- 
 prison IT in a red-hot oven — to endow IT with im- 
 mortality, for the purpose of perpetuating the torture 
 for ever and ever — that to listen eternally to ITS 
 screams — to behold how IT turns and twists ITSELF 
 about in the fire — how IT beats ITS head against 
 the roof of the oven — how IT stamps ITS little feet 
 on the floor of the oven — that to behold unmoved, 
 and for never-ending duration, on the face of THIS 
 LITTLE CHILD, what may be seen on the faces of 
 all in Hell — despair — desperate and horrible — that all 
 this is the act of Almighty God, and the mercy which 
 he shows to his own creature — those who can, in 
 the end of the nineteenth century, assert, and com- 
 mand their disciples to believe, that God, in so deal- 
 ing with his infant creature, was very good to that 
 creature — who can justify this torture by asserting 
 
 B 
 
18 
 
 that it is very likely, that God saw, that this child 
 would get worse and worse, and would never repent, 
 and that so it would have to be punished much more 
 in Hell ; and that God, in his mercy, called it out of 
 the world in its early childhood— the teachers of 
 this doctrine must surely find it easy to justify, and, 
 by divine and human example to adopt, if occasion 
 should arise, the argument which proved it just, and 
 right, merciful and humane, according to their logic, 
 to burn the re23entant heretic, in the moment of con- 
 trition, and thus to save him from the danger of re- 
 lapse. The divine rule of justice, upon which this 
 infliction upon the little child is supported, is thus 
 gravely laid down in this book, viz., that 
 
 “ The same law which is for others is also for children. That 
 if children knowingly and willingly break God’s commandments, 
 they also must be punished like others. Tliis child committed 
 very bad mortal sins, knowing well the harm of what IT was 
 doing, and knowing that Hell would be the punishment.” 
 
 It would be instructive to know what those mortal 
 sins were which this little child had committed, with its 
 , little hands and feet ; and how, with its infant mind, 
 it knew well the harm of what it was doing ; and 
 how it knew that Hell would be the punishment ; 
 and by what means its infant capacity was enlarged 
 to the comprehension of eternal existence, of never- 
 ending sensibility, and of the moral obligation to 
 obey certain commands, and the justice of torment, 
 for ever, in a red-hot oven, as a consequence of dis- 
 obedience ! 
 
 What would be thought of the father who would 
 torture, in the way described, his young daughter of 
 eighteen for one day, or for one hour, or one moment, 
 
19 
 
 to punish the love of dress, and the childish vanity 
 to display it ? 
 
 But to refute the imputation of diabolical cruelty, 
 made by these books against the merciful and bene- 
 volent Buler of the Universe, is not my purpose. I 
 am not addressing the children for whose subjuga- 
 tion this terrifying theology was invented. I am 
 addressing those to many of whom, I doubt not, 
 this representation of the Almighty will appear not 
 only self-evidenthj but hideously blasphemous. 
 The question, and the only question which I propose 
 to discuss is this — whether the legislators for the 
 people of Great Britain and Ireland, of which people 
 five-sixths, and of which legislators nineteen twen- 
 tieths dissent from this doctrine, are to be taxed 
 for the support of schools, in which this terrifying 
 theology is to be indelibly impressed upon the 
 tender minds of children, before the faculty of reason 
 begins to dawn upon them ! ! 
 
 Believing that those five-sixths of the people who 
 inhabit, and the nineteen-twentieths of those autho- 
 rized to legislate for these countries, have widely 
 different notions of the Creator from those pro- 
 pounded in these books (the study and knowledge 
 of which are confined, as yet, to the schools in 
 monasteries and convents, and to Boman Catholic 
 Sunday schools), I proceed to state something more 
 of what these books contain. 
 
 It would not be possible, by any extracts, to give 
 an adequate description of the tract No. 9, entitled 
 '' The Terrible Judgment, and the Bad Child.” After 
 appropriate preliminary pages, it gives a detailed 
 
 B 2 
 
20 
 
 report of the trial, alter death, of this bad child, 
 before Jesus Christ, stating that ^‘the first thing 
 after death is judgment” (No. 9, p. 10). The devil 
 is the prosecutor, at this trial, and enumerates the 
 sins committed by the child. At page 13, it is 
 stated — 
 
 “ If tlie cliild, tliroiigli fear, concealed a sin in confession, now 
 that sin will be dragged out of the child, and it will not be for- 
 given.” 
 
 “ There is a deep silence ; not the least sound can be heard 
 among the millions who are present. All listen attentively — every 
 word will be heard by all. The devil opens the book in which 
 the child’s sins are written down. He reads up all the sins the 
 child committed, in thoughts, words, and actions, during all its 
 life.” 
 
 The first and most prominent in this category of 
 offences are stated to be 
 
 ‘‘ Morning prayers, and night prayers, how often not said ? 
 Curses, little and great — Mass not heard on Sundays — behaving 
 bad in chapel.” 
 
 When the devil has finished, and his book is shut, 
 the good works of the child are enumerated by the 
 angel guardian, who opens his book, and reads 
 aloud : — 
 
 “ Every prayer the child said in its life — how often, on awaken- 
 ing in the morning, it made the sign of the cross, and said, Jesus, 
 Mary, and Joseph, I give you my heart and my soul. How often 
 it said its morning prayers ; how often it made the sign of the 
 cross before and after meals ; how often it said, my Jesus, I do all 
 for you ; how often it said its night prayers, and examined its 
 conscience ; how often it heard holy Mass ; how often it went to 
 confession and holy communion ; how often it made a visit to the 
 blessed sacrament, and to the image of Mary.” 
 
 Such are the first and most conspicuous in the list 
 and record of the good works for which the child is 
 to get credit. But still the question to be tried re- 
 
21 
 
 mains unaffected, and that question is, whether there 
 is in the soul of the child a mortal sin ? 
 
 The trial fills fourteen pages, and the result is, that, 
 at last, Christ himself discovers this lurking mortal 
 sin, the nature of which is not disclosed. And tlien 
 comes the terrible judgment ” and sentence which 
 condemns the child’s soul to Hell ; and the story ends 
 with a horrifying description of the seizure of the 
 child by the devils, of which 
 
 “ It sees thousands and millions on every side coming round it. 
 It cannot get away from them. On they come more swiftly than 
 the wind — like hungry dogs would come to a hone. It is of no 
 use to the child to pray to its angel guardian to help it. The 
 time for help is passed. Neither is it of any use to cry Jesus 
 and Mary help me ! There was a time when this prayer would 
 have saved it from the devils, but that time will never come back 
 again. Now the foremost ranks of the devils are near at hand, 
 close to the child. They are hissing at it — spitting fire and venom 
 upon it. They stretch out their great claws of red-hot fire to get 
 hold of the child.” 
 
 Two pages (23 & 24) are filled with this terrifying 
 detail, which leads to the conclusion, called — 
 
 The end of the child.” 
 
 This fills two pages more of horrors, describing 
 with harrowing particularity the committal of the 
 child to the raging flames of hell, there to suffer for 
 ever and ever. 
 
 Then comes a story of four brothers, who, at the 
 time of the Reformation, three hundred years ago, 
 came with implements of destruction to tear down 
 the church of the convent of St. Cecily. How, by 
 the music of the divine organist, they were diverted 
 from their wicked purpose, and were miraculously 
 forced to sit in silent repentance and prayer for six 
 years round a table, with a crucifix upon it — only 
 
22 
 
 two or three times opening their lips, saying that 
 
 if the people knew what they knew, they would 
 leave all things, and come and kneel down before 
 the cross, and spend all their lives in praying — 
 That 
 
 “So it is true, that if any child only knew -whdit judgment after 
 death is, it would do nothing, all its life, but pray, and try to get 
 itself ready for that terrible judgment.” (No. 9, p. 29). 
 
 To enforce this precept of endless prayer, by holy 
 example, it is related in Book No. 2, at p. 15, 
 
 “ How many prayers some children said.” 
 
 “ Blessed Bonaventura, from the time she was seven years old, 
 said every day a hundred Our Fathers, and a hundred Hail Marys, 
 in honour of the Blessed Trinity ; a hundi’ed Our Fathers and 
 Hail Marys, in honour of the Angels ; a hundred in honour of the 
 Patriarchs ; a hundred in honour of the Martyrs ; a hundred in 
 honour of the Confessors ; a hundred in honour of the holy Virgins.” 
 “ Every day also she said a thousand Hail Marys in honour of the 
 Blessed Virgin. She fasted three days in every week. When she 
 was twelve years old she put on sackcloth, and wore it for six 
 years and a half.” 
 
 The children for whose edification these books 
 were written are thus exhorted, by the example of 
 this pattern saint, who, every day, said 600 Our 
 Fathers,” and 1,600 “ Hail Marys,” ^.e., 2,200 
 prayers, in 1,440 minutes, which are found in the 
 whole twenty-four hours ! ! ! affording only forty 
 seconds for every prayer, and no time for anything 
 else ! 
 
 Such are the merits, and such are the means by 
 which that terrible judgment,” described in Book 
 No. 9, as pronounced and executed upon the child, 
 is to be avoided. 
 
 Having, from books 9 and 10, extracted the terms 
 in which, upon the testimony of St. Frances, the tor- 
 
23 
 
 tures are described which are inflicted in that abyss 
 of woe from which there is no redemption, I would 
 call attention to Book No. 3, entitled The Great 
 Question,” by the same author, and published under 
 the same sanction and authority. The first pages of 
 this book are filled with a prefatory dissertation on 
 the structure of the bodily senses, and the nerves by 
 which they operate — followed by a history of the 
 miracle wrought by St. Peter on the poor cripple — 
 an explanation of the human soul — the miracle of 
 raising to life the daughter of Jairus — an explanation 
 of freewill, and of the likeness which the soul bears 
 to God. It then relates how 
 
 St. Catlierine was praying for a poor sinner, Bridget, when, 
 behold, she heard a voice come out of the Tabernacle, where Jesus 
 was in the Blessed Sacrament, That voice was the voice of Jesus 
 Christ, and thus Jesus spoke to St. Catherine : — ‘ My dear Cather- 
 ine,’ Jesus said, ‘ I have heard your prayer. I am glad — I thank 
 you for praying for the poor Bridget, because it is my providence, 
 that when anybody prays for sinners, I have pity on them, and 
 convert them.’ ” 
 
 Then follows a plenary account of the repentance 
 and miraculous conversion of Bridget, wrought in 
 compliance with Catherine’s prayers — her acts of con- 
 trition — how 
 
 “ She went to confession, and told all her sins to the priest, and 
 asked absolution, which he gave, in these words — ‘ By the authority 
 of Jesus Christ, I absolve thee from thy sins, in the name of the 
 Bather, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost.’ How, ‘ In that 
 moment, the virtue and the power of the blood of Jesus came into 
 her soul, and her sins went away, as darkness goes away when the 
 light comes — ‘ Whose sins ye shall forgive they are forgiven them ’ 
 — John XX. She carefully remembered the penance given to her 
 by the priest, and performed it. Soon afterwards Bridget died. 
 St. Catherine was again in the chapel, and again she heard the 
 voice of Jesus Christ from the Tabernacle, ‘ My dear Catherine,’ 
 Jesus said, ‘the poor Bridget for whom you prayed is dead. She 
 
24 
 
 made a good confession ; her sins were forgiven, and now her soul 
 is in Purgatoiy. You shall go doAvn, Avith your angel guardian, 
 to Purgatory, and see her soul.’ 
 
 “ VIII. ‘ A visit to Purgatory.’ 
 
 “ When the doors of Purgatory were opened to St. Catherine 
 and the angel, the first thing she saw was fire. Never before had 
 she seen such a di’eadful, raging, piercing, tormenting fire — a fire 
 which penetrated and burnt the inmost soul. It seemed as if the 
 flames of Hell could not burn more fiercely than the flames of Pur- 
 gatory.” 
 
 After describing the condition of the souls, and 
 their joyful hopes of redemption, and stating that 
 there are very few who go to Heaven, without first 
 going to Purgatory,” comes the next section — 
 
 “ IX. ‘ How the Souls in Purgatory are helped.’ 
 
 “ It seemed that many souls went to Heaven before the time 
 fixed for their punishment was ended, ‘ God delivered them out 
 of their destruction ’ — Ps. cv. Of these she found that some had 
 themselves, when alive, prayed much for the souls in Purgatory. 
 
 ‘ Blessed are the merciful for they shall obtain mercy ’ — Mat. v. 
 She saw that the time of punishment for these souls was very much 
 shortened by the prayers ofiered for them on earth . She perceived that 
 they rejoiced especially when the Holy Mass was said for them, and 
 the precious blood of Jesus Christ offered for them on the altar. 
 When they saw, day by day, souls taken from the midst of them, 
 out of this terrible prison, and going to Heaven, on account of 
 that Holy Sacrifice, they knew well the force of those words of the 
 Prophet— ‘ Thou also, O Christ, hast sent forth the prisoners out 
 of the pit in which there was no water ’ — Zach. ix. She saw that 
 the prayers, for which the Church has given Indulgences for the 
 souls in Purgatory, did wonderful things. ‘ Whatsoever thou 
 shalt loose upon earth shall be loosed in Heaven ’ — Mat. xviii. 
 For example — ‘ Jesus, 2Iary, and JosejJi, I give you my heart and 
 my sold,' for which there are 100 days of indulgence for the souls 
 in Purgatory. 
 
 “ Sometimes a prayer which had been said, or a good work, which 
 had been donefor some one particular soul, was not given to that soul. 
 Perhaps that soul was already gone out of Purgatory, or for some 
 other reason kno%vn to God. But still that prayer was not lost ; 
 for it was given to some other soul, according as it pleased God. 
 
 “ X. ‘ Souls in Purgatory forgotten.’ — (No. 3, p. 11.) 
 
 “ Sometimes, in Purgatory there was heard a lamentation — a 
 
sorrowful cry. It was not a cry of impatience, but a gentle com- 
 plaint. What could be the reason 1 Why did these souls com- 
 plain ? Was it because they could no longer bear the fierce burn- 
 ing of that terrible fire ? No : that was not the reason ; for still 
 these souls looked patient, and even glad, that the fire burned 
 fiercely, and purified them from their sins. What then could it 
 be? St. Catherine listened to their complaints, and she heard 
 them complaining, that people in the world had forgotten to 
 pray for them. Some had given orders for masses to be said for 
 them, and those masses had not been said. 
 
 “ XT. ‘A soul going out of Purgatory.’ — (No. 3, p. 12.) 
 
 ‘‘ It was most beautiful to see how these souls left Purgatory, and 
 went to Heaven. Suddenly an angel from Heaven, enlightened 
 with the glory of God, would come into Purgatory ; and he would 
 say, that there was a soul whose sufferings were ended, and God 
 wished it to come to Heaven. Then each soul would hope that, 
 perhaps, itself might be that happy soul. Now the angel makes 
 known which is the soul to be delivered out of Purgatory. ‘ Blessed 
 soul,’ he says, ‘ many years more of torments waited for you, but 
 some one on earth prayed for you, and now, by the command of 
 our mercifid God, you are free.’ ” 
 
 “ XII. ‘ The soul of Bridget in Purgatory.’ 
 
 “And now St. Catherine saw another wonderful sight in 
 Purgatory. Suddenly the angel lifted up his hand, and pointed to 
 one of the souls in the flames. Look, he said, Catherine, ‘ look, 
 there is the soul of Bridget, who led a wicked life, but made a 
 good confession, and died.’ ” 
 
 After tills detailed account of Purgatory, which 
 the disciple is to receive upon the asserted testimony 
 of a sainted witness, taken to see it by an angel 
 from Heaven (which he is by the Church commanded 
 to believe as part of his creed), and after several 
 pages of reasoning to enforce these doctrines, as 
 essential to salvation, The Great Question ” which 
 gives its title to the tract, is, at last, propounded at 
 page 17, viz. : — 
 
 “ ir^y did God create you f 
 
26 
 
 After describing how the monks are continually 
 each asking this question of himself, follows — 
 XVIII. ‘ History of the Rich ManJ 
 His house” — ^^how he dressed and feasted” — 
 
 how he gets sick,” sends for the doctor — takes 
 medicine, and dies — how the body lay on a fine 
 bed : — 
 
 “ But the soul ! What became of his soul ? The very instant 
 in which the rich man breathed out his last breath, his soul was 
 buried for ever in Hell, buried in the fire of Hell — even as you 
 bury a body in earth, so the rich man’s soul was buried in 
 fire.” (No. 3, p. 19 & 20.) 
 
 After describing the mourning ” for the rich man 
 by his kindred on earth, comes section XIX. — The 
 coffin made of rich cedar,” &c., it adds — 
 
 “ But down in Hell the soul of the rich man is lying in a cojfn 
 of fire ! Around the coffin, in that room, stood the people of the 
 world, the friends of the rich man. They talked together — they 
 spoke of the coffin. How beautiful it was — they said, what a 
 fine coffin ! But, in hell, the devils were standing round the 
 coffin of fire, and they talked also, and said — What a hot cofiin — 
 what a burning coffin this is ! How terrible to be shut up in this 
 coffin of fire for ever and ever, and never to come out of it again. 
 Such was the end of the rich man. He lived in riches, and he 
 died, and he was buried in the fire of Hell ! But why did that 
 rich man go to Hell ? What was the reason h The reason was, 
 because the rich man did not know the great thing he had to do 
 while he lived. He made a great mistake. He thought the 
 great thing of all was to be rich ; and he was rich, and he went 
 to Hell.” 
 
 ‘ The death-bed answer !’ 
 
 “ Perhaps some little boy who reads this book, when he grows 
 up to be a man, may work hard, and become rich ; now I ask 
 that boy a question. My dear boy, when you shall come to lie 
 on your death-bed, will you say to yourself, ‘ I have laboured hard 
 in my lifetime, and worked much, and now I am rich 1 I am 
 going to die ; and, because I am rich, I die contented and happy f 
 My boy, I will answer the question for you. — ‘ The rich man died, 
 and M^as buried in Hell.’ ” 
 
 Rich men of England, Scotland, and Ireland, who 
 out of your riches replenish the treasury of this 
 
27 . 
 
 realm, are you prepared to draw upon that treasury 
 for the support of State schools in which this view 
 of your predicament — this statement of your des- 
 tiny — this wholesale damnation of your class, is to 
 be taught, and indelibly impressed upon the infant 
 minds of the poor children in Ireland, who are com- 
 manded to believe as a Gospel truth, that the tor- 
 tures prepared for you were visibly demonstrated 
 to St. Frances by the angel Gabriel, sent from 
 heaven for the purpose ? 
 
 The tract No. 3 is, for the fiscal purposes of the 
 clergy, the most important of these books for 
 children and young persons.” In it, the doctrine 
 of Purgatory is elaborately explained, and strenu- 
 ously enforced. By this doctrine, a scriptural diffi- 
 culty is solved, and a method pointed out by which 
 the rich believer and liberal contributor may go to 
 Heaven, although the camel cannot go through the 
 eye of a needle, as is carefully demonstrated to the 
 child, at page 22. A rich believer in the efficacy 
 of masses and prayers to liberate his- soul from 
 Purgatory, and to shorten the appointed time of 
 torment there, has the power in his own hands of 
 securing a speedy release. If one hundred days of 
 indulgence are given for the single prayer of Jesus, 
 Mary, and Josejph, 1 give you my heart and my soul,^^ 
 when said by a layman or a child for a sufierer in 
 Purgatory, as categorically stated at page 10 of this 
 book No. 3, what must be the extent of the indul- 
 gence conceded to the Holy Mass, the efficacy of 
 which is especially mentioned in the same page ? 
 If one short prayer gives 100 days respite, what 
 
28 
 
 will 5,000 masses give ? The omission of these 
 masses was the subject of complaint (as stated at 
 page 11), by the suffering souls of such as had 
 ordered them, while Catherine saw the souls for 
 whom that holy sacrifice was offered - especially 
 rejoicing. 
 
 Nearly one-third of the Irish people, and about 
 five-sixths of the people of both islands, wholly 
 disbelieve and repudiate this doctrine of Purgatory, 
 and condemn the practice of praying for the dead. 
 Having thus dried up the most abundant fountain 
 of revenue, and taken away the most irresistible 
 engine of power from the clergy, after it had been, 
 for centuries, abused, the Reformers saw the neces- 
 sity of allocating property for the independent sup- 
 port of an organized Church. 
 
 On the assumed justice of reducing the clergy of 
 the Reformed religion, and the Roman Catholic 
 clergy to religious equality, this property of the 
 Irish Church, by which it had been supported for 
 three hundred years, has been confiscated, and the 
 organization of that Church has been destroyed, by 
 a process analogous to the sudden explosion of a 
 mine, reducing this long established fabric to a 
 chaotic ruin. ' 
 
 While those whose venerated establishment has 
 been so dealt with are endeavouring to reconstruct 
 a more humble edifice out of the ruins of their 
 Temple, a cry is raised for a further step towards 
 this ignis fatuus, called religious equality ! This cry 
 is raised by an organization of priests, which assumes 
 to be divinely constituted for the religious and moral 
 
29 
 
 instruction of the human race. The power which 
 these men exercise over those of the Queen s sub- 
 jects who acknowledge their authority, and who 
 believe in the terrifying doctrines which they teach, 
 is independent, and defiant of the temporal sovereign 
 and legislature of this Empire. The literature for 
 young persons, upon which I am commenting,, dis- 
 closes the true source and foundation of that power, 
 and plainly enough accounts for its existence, its 
 extent, and its irresistible force, without, at all, 
 ascribing it to divine authority, or assuming for it 
 any supernatural support. That future eternity 
 which lies before us, in darkness visible, is to human 
 reason impenetrable, beyond what the r.evelation 
 discloses which it has pleased God to make of it. 
 Further than this revelation aids it, the intellectual 
 vision of man cannot penetrate this boundless gloom. 
 The mind can see, and does see, and is forced, by 
 instinct and by reason, to believe, that our destination 
 lies, and for never-ending duration lies, in this un- 
 known and boundless region beyond the grave, from 
 which no traveller has ever returned. Those who, 
 from this globe of Earth, to which, during our tem- 
 poral existence, we are straightly confined, endeavour, 
 by the use of reason and help of the revelation 
 vouchsafed to us, to discover our relations with 
 Heaven, and our duties upon Earth, act within the 
 scope and power of human faculties ; and they use 
 the revelation, as a light, and as a guide to the 
 truthful discoveries attainable, by logical deductions, 
 from revealed, and discoverable facts. 
 
 To determine what is, and what is not a revelation 
 
30 
 
 from God — to decide what is, and what is not an 
 existing fact, and to reason logically from true pre- 
 mises, when carefully ascertained to he true, is a great 
 part of the theological science of those who sincerely 
 seek the truth, and feel morally, and religiously 
 bound to eschew falsehood. The science cultivated 
 by professors so restricted, and the system of worship 
 organized by them, deserves the name, and agrees 
 with the rational notion of a true religion ; and those 
 who, faithfully and sedulously, devote their lives, 
 and exert their energies in the cultivation of that 
 science, and give to their devotional congregations a 
 reason for the faith that is in them, are justly en- 
 titled to -the reverence and support of their fellow- 
 men. The functions which they discharge may well 
 exercise the highest order of human intellect. The 
 discoveries which they make, and the tidings which 
 they report, are such as to raise our hopes, by de- 
 fining, and clearly demonstrating our duties, and 
 giving courage and heart to perform them, by proving 
 those duties to be proportioned to the faculties given 
 to the imperfect creatures upon wdiom they are im- 
 posed, and to be also consistent with that enjoyment 
 to which nature so strongly prompts us, of all the 
 good, and all the happiness which it has pleased 
 Providence to make attainable in this life. While 
 they inculcate the duty of prayer and thanksgiving, 
 both public and private, they do not ignore the obli- 
 p^ation to exert the faculties bestowed for the attain- 
 
 o 
 
 ment of what we pray for, and rationally desire. 
 They recognise man’s privilege to enjoy the temporal 
 blessings bestowed upon liim; but they annex to 
 
31 
 
 the privilege the duty of grateful and reverend ac- 
 knowledgment to the bountiful ofiver of all 2food. 
 The comforts, and even the luxuries of civilized life, 
 they look upon as incentives to industry, and to the 
 use and exertion of faculties which would not have 
 been given if it was our duty to neglect and leave 
 them inactive. They regard these objects of man’s 
 desire as stimulants to virtue, and not as baits to 
 allure us to everlasting torment and perdition in the 
 world to come. Riches, rationally, and benevolently 
 applied, they consider as a power to do good, and as 
 a just title to respect in this life ; and yet, no barrier 
 to exclude the possessor from salvation in the next. 
 
 Confiding and steadfast faith in the justice, tem- 
 pered with mercy, of an omnipotent and infinitely 
 benevolent Creator, is the religious sentiment which 
 the reasoning clergy of this class labour to cultivate, 
 and maintain in those who submit to their guidance, 
 and pastoral care. The love, rather than the fear of 
 God is the feeling which they cultivate, and en- 
 deavour to excite. They make sparing and rare 
 allusions to that hangman’s whip” — the fear of 
 Hell. They do not presume to depict the torments 
 reserved for the wicked. They pretend not that any 
 human being ever had the privilege of seeing the 
 dungeons of Hell, and of returning to describe the 
 torments there inflicted. They presume not to pro- 
 nounce against any man, or class of men, the dread- 
 ful judgment of never-ending torture; and they 
 caution all others to beware of committing such an 
 offence — telling the proud in spirit not to judge 
 lest they be judged.” 
 
32 
 
 The influence, and temporal power which such 
 clergy have must ever be in the direct and compound 
 ratio of the logical force of their reasoning, and of the 
 intelligence of the congregations whom they address. 
 Dark ignorance, the fruitful parent of superstitious 
 fears, gives them no aid in their aspirations for power, 
 wealth, and influence. The narrative of a visit to 
 Hell, and a safe return, under the guardian care of the 
 angel Gabriel, with a description of the horrors there 
 exhibited to the sainted visitor, would be heard with 
 utter incredulity and disgust by a Protestant congre- 
 gation, and no Protestant parent would suffer such a 
 story to be seriously told to his child, or imposed upon 
 his infant credulity, as a true narrative of tortures 
 inflicted upon human souls, and exhibited to the eyes 
 of a living saint. 
 
 The visit of Saint Frances to Hell, and of Saint 
 Catherine to Purgatory are but two of the many 
 stories printed in the ten tracts of which the cata- 
 logue is hereinbefore copied. The composition of 
 these tracts by a Poman Catholic priest, the free 
 publication of them, in the cheapest form of printed 
 books, with the sanction and permission of his supe- 
 riors in that Church, the recommendation of them, 
 under that coercive authority, to poor and ignorant 
 parents, as books to be read to their young and cre- 
 dulous children, and the direction to teachers, at 
 Sunday schools, to impress them, by piecemeal read- 
 ings, on the tender minds of the children, is already 
 tolerated, and no one is suggesting any restriction 
 of this existing liberty. 
 
 But when the Protestant sovereign of this realm. 
 
33 
 
 who would not, I presume, to save her tlirone, suffer 
 these stories to be imposed upon her own children, as 
 Gospel truths, is imperiously called upon to consent to 
 the institution of State schools, to be supported at the 
 expense of her Protestant subjects, and other sub- 
 jects equally incredulous of these stories — when 
 the institution of these schools is demanded from 
 her ministry and her parliament, it is surely their 
 duty to read, at least, some specimens of these narra- 
 tions, before they thus expensively sanction the impo- 
 sition of them upon the passive minds of children as 
 religious doctrine which a government, professimj to 
 he paternal, thinks it a duty to teach. 
 
 To make the consideration of these stories easy, I 
 have extracted what I aver to be fair samples of them 
 (multitudinous as they are), which samples I now 
 proceed to give, in the precise words in which they 
 ^ are printed in these books, to which I shall refer by 
 the numbers prefixed to them in the catalogue before 
 copied at page 10. 
 
 In Book No. 8, at page 12, are the following stories, 
 headed with an exhortation to wear the emblem 
 whose miraculous virtues they relate : — 
 
 “ XII. Wear the Holy Scapular of Mount Carmel, the Brown 
 
 Scapular. 
 
 “In the year 1216, on the 16th July, the Blessed Virgin ap- 
 peared to St. Simon Stock, a Carmelite monk, living in the county 
 of Kent, in England. She brought with her a brown scapular, 
 and invested him with it. She then spoke these words : — ‘ He 
 who dies in this scapular will not go to the flames of hell. This 
 scapular is a sign of salvation, and of safety in dangers. 
 
 “ You should wear this holy scapular in honour of the Blessed 
 Virgin Mary. So you honour her because she is the mother of 
 Jesus Christ, who is God over all, blessed for ever.” 
 
 n 
 
34 
 
 ‘‘ The Man who was drowned. 
 
 A little child would like to know what is meant by these 
 words — ‘ He who dies wearing this scagyular will not go into the 
 flames of hell.’’ You will understand what is meant, when you 
 hear about the man who was drowned. This man must have 
 either been very wicked, or lost his senses. One day he was 
 walking along close to the river, his foot slipped, and he fell into 
 the water. Some one who was near him stretched out his hand 
 and pulled him out, of the water. The moment the man was out 
 of the water, he turned round, and jumped back into the water. 
 He was drowned ! How you may understand about the scapular. 
 The Blessed Virgin is most kind and good to those who wear it. 
 She gets from God many helps and graces for them, to save them 
 from hell. If they go to hell, when they could easily keep out of 
 it, they must be as stupid and wicked as the man who was drowned 
 in the water, when he might easily have saved himself.” 
 
 “ XIII. The dying man who took off his Scapular. 
 
 “ Some years since, there was a very wicked man Ihdng in 
 Belgium, Still he wore the scapular. He was taken ill. He 
 got worse. His last agony came on him. The doctor expected 
 him to die every moment. Still he did not die. He remained 
 alive for two or three days; although it was thought that every 
 moment would be his last. The doctor, who was by his bedside, 
 told him that he wondered to see him remain alive so long. The 
 man said : ‘ I understand it. I can tell you how it is. I wear 
 the scapular. I feel that as long as I have it on, the Blessed 
 Virgin, by her prayers, keeps me alive, that I may repent. If I 
 were to take it off, she would no longer pray for me, and I should 
 die. But I do not want to repent. I will die as I have lived. 
 What I have said is true. You will see it. The moment I take 
 off the scapular, I shall die.’ He then lifted up his hand, and 
 took the scapular off his neck, and at that moment he died.” 
 
 “ XV. The boy in danger. 
 
 “A little boy in Ireland had been invested with the Holy 
 Scapular. One day he was in a small boat on the sea, along with 
 two other boys bigger than himself. These two boys began to 
 shake the boat. They wanted to frighten the little boy, and make 
 him think that he would fall into the sea. The little boy did not 
 seem frightened, for he remembered that he was wearing the 
 scapular — ‘a sign of safety in danger.’ It happened that the 
 little boy did fall out of the boat. He fell into the deep sea ! 
 He was soon out of sight of the other boys — he sank. The poor 
 little boy went down, down to the very bottom of the sea. He 
 was choked with the water which he swallowed. Another minute 
 or two and he would have been drowned. At this moment, he 
 felt something pulling at his neck. It was the scapular ! He 
 felt himself drawn upwards. He was soon out of the water on 
 
35 
 
 the dry land. All this became known very soon. A great many 
 people came to examine the little boy. They took off his scapnlar 
 and looked at it. They found that the strings were wet through and 
 through with the salt water. But not a droj) of water had touched 
 the cloth. It is the cloth which receives the blessing. The cloth 
 was quite dry. The scapular is still kept by one of the mission- 
 aries.” (No. 8, p. 15.) 
 
 No. 8.— PABT IT. 
 
 How to help the dying. 
 
 XVII. To help the dying is a great work of charity. A 
 dying person wants help more than anyone else. Will the dying 
 }>erson go to Heaven or to Hell ? This depends very much on 
 those who help him. If you want to do a good work hel]) the 
 (lying. What you do to the sick you do to Jesus Christ himself. 
 Mathew xxv. — ‘ I was sick and you did visit me.’ ” 
 
 “ XVIII. How the Devil hates this good work. 
 
 Two priests of the order of St. Camillus went to hel^) a man 
 who was dying in Rome. As soon as they came into the room of 
 the dying person, they saw three devils. The devils looked most 
 frightfully at them. Flashes of fire came out of the eyes of the 
 devils. They wanted to frighten the two priests, and make them 
 go away. One of the priests made the sign of the cross. Then 
 he sprinkled the holy water on the place where he saw the devils 
 standing. As soon as the holy water had been sprinkled, the 
 devils went away. They left behind a most frightful smell of 
 brimstone out of Hell. Two. other priests also went to help a 
 person who was dying. They did all they could for the dying 
 person. Then they set off on their way home again. As they 
 were going along the road, they saw a most frightful creature. It 
 looked like a terrible cow. This cow seemed as if it was just 
 going to jump on the and kill them. They were so 
 
 frightened at what they saw, that they fell down on the ground. 
 They called on Jesus and Mary to help them. As soon as they 
 had said this piuyer, they saw the terrible beast no more. It had 
 gone back to Hell.” (Xo. 8, p. 19.) 
 
 XXII. Holy Water. 
 
 St. Alphonsus says, ‘ that when anyone is dying the house is 
 filled with devils. They come and try and ruin the soul of him 
 who is dying by fearful temptations. Holy water, blessed by the 
 Church, can send away the devils. Jesus Christ gave to his 
 Church the power to cast out devils.’ Mark xvi. ‘ In my name 
 they will cast out devils.' The Church blesses the holy water, that 
 it may cast out the devils, when they trouble us.” 
 
 ‘‘ The Devil’s Fright. 
 
 ‘‘ St. Thomas says, ^ I was once in a little chapel. I saw the 
 Devil on my left hand. He looked most abominable and frightful. 
 Especially when he spoke, his mouth was most horrible to behold, 
 
 c 2 
 
36 
 
 a great blazing flame of fire came out of it. His words frightened 
 me very much. He told me that I had got out of his hands, but 
 that he would try to get hold of me again. I felt very gveat fear. 
 
 I made the sign of the cross. The devil went away. But I soon 
 saw him coming back again. I made the sign of the cross again, 
 and he went away again ; he came back the third time. The holy 
 water was near me. I took some of it. I threw it where he was 
 standing, he then went away, and did not come hack any more. I 
 have often found that there is nothing the devils fear so much as 
 holy water. They fly away, if you make the sign of the cross. 
 But they come back again. AYluin I have taken holy water, I 
 always feel great delight and comfort. In taking holy water, I 
 feel like a person who, being very hot and thirsty, drinks a glass 
 of cold water. I rejoice that the words used by the Church, in 
 blessing holy water, have such great power, over the de^ils.’ ” 
 
 In No. 7 at page 21 is the following : — 
 
 “ XX. The burial of the Wicked, or the Vision of St. Teresa. 
 
 “ ‘ One time,’ says. St. Teresa, ‘ there happened something which 
 made me wonder very much. I was in a place where a certain 
 jjerson died, who had lived badly for many years. For the last 
 two years he had been sick, and seemed, in some things, to lead a 
 better life. This man died, without confession, but still I did not 
 think that he would lose his soul. While, however, his friends 
 were getting the dead body ready for burial, I saw some devils 
 take the body, and make sport with it. They were very cruel to 
 it, tearing it with hooks, and tossing it from one to another. I 
 considered how good God is, in not letting people see what the 
 devils were doing with it. The dead body was taken into the 
 church. While the priest was reading the prayers, the de^^dls went 
 away from the body. Afterwards, when the dead body was carried 
 out to the grave, I saw great numbers of devils down in the grave 
 waiting for the body ! I thought how cruel the devils would be 
 to the soul in hell, when they were so cruel to the body on earth. 
 If those who commit mortal sin had seen what I saw, I do not 
 think they would commit mortal sin any more. I am always 
 frightened, even now, when I remember what I saw .!’ ” 
 
 If Protestants, and dissenters from the doctrines 
 thus enforced, who are incredulous of such stories as 
 these, would not, for worlds, have such scenes as they 
 describe indelibly impressed upon the infant minds 
 of their own children, those of them who are in- 
 trusted with the power of legislating for this country 
 should find some ethical principle upon which to 
 justify the institution of separate schools, to be sup- 
 
37 
 
 ported out of tlie imperial treasury, in which these 
 stories are to be read to Eomaii Catholic children, 
 and emphatically enforced as great truths of reli- 
 gion,” without even the restraint Avhich the j^resence 
 of a Protestant child might impose. 
 
 Upon the numerous stories of this class contained 
 in these ten books for children and young persons ” 
 I make no further commentary ; but I will call the 
 attention of Protestants, who contribute to the im- 
 perial treasury, to the light in which they are placed 
 by some others of the stories in these books. 
 
 In No. 6, pages 19-21, a long story is told of the 
 marriage of a Poman Catholic girl to a Protestant 
 who met her at a dancing house. At page 20 the 
 story thus concludes — 
 
 “ It was a bright morning — the morning of the marriage — but 
 there were dark clouds not very far off. The Protestant young 
 man behaved ju'etty well to his wife for a few months. It is true 
 he quarrelled with lier sometimes ; he forgot Ids promises, and beat 
 her, because she wanted to go to the Catholic chapel on Sundays. 
 He sometimes threw her i:>rayer-book into the fire, and spoke against 
 the doctrines of the Catholic Church. She was silent and patient. 
 She knew that it was a just punishment from God, for marrying 
 a Protestant. Wisd. xi. — ^ For hy what things a man sinneth hy 
 the same also he is imnished ' That marriage had been made, and 
 it was too late to unmake it. At last the dark cloiid came. The 
 Protestant young man came home one day to Ids dinner. He sat 
 down to the table, and began to eat. The meat was not to his 
 liking. There was sulky anger in his face. He was silent for a 
 few moments. At length he stood upon his feet, holding the knife 
 clenched in his hand, fury and rage flashing from his eyes. He 
 cursed his wife, and said — ‘ You Popish beast, I will stick you 
 with this knife, and take every drop of Popish blood out of you ! ’ 
 The wife turned deadly pale ; she fell off the chair ; her senses 
 were gone with the fright. She got back her senses again, but it 
 was only to live for a day or two. She died of the shock which 
 the fright had given her ! ‘ And now, your reverence,’ said the 
 
 sexton, ‘ she lies buried here, under this wall, where the ivy grows, 
 and it is just a year since she was buried.’ So ended the dancing- 
 house marriage — so ended the marriage of a Catholic with a Pro- 
 testant.” 
 
38 
 
 At page 8 of the same book, No. 6, is the follow- 
 ing story - 
 
 “ X. Cliildren in the Factory. — Foi’ty-iiine Girls converted. 
 
 “ Every one knows that the mills and factories of these countries 
 are full of dangerous occasions of sin, nevertheless, by a sort of 
 miracle of Dhune Providence, there are many young persons em- 
 ployed in the factories who keep themselves from sin, and lead a 
 good Christian life, as Lot was kept from sin in the middle of 
 Sodom. There were about fifty girls who worked together in one 
 room, in a large factory in the North of England. One of them 
 only was a Catholic, and she led a good life, and attended to her 
 religious duties. The rest were Protestants. These Protestant 
 gilds, durmg theii’ work, were always talking most vdckedly — say- 
 ing words which ought not to be named amongst Christians. The 
 girl who was a Catholic never joined them in this wicked conver- 
 sation. When she had occasion to speak to the others, she spoke 
 kindly and charitably to them, but she never spoke a bad word. 
 The others took notice of it. They were offended at it ; they 
 thought it strange (2 Peter, iv.) that she did not speak the same 
 bad language as themselves. The}^ asked her why she was not as 
 the others. She answered that she was a Catholic, and that the 
 Catholic religion forbids people to speak bad words. They began 
 now to persecute her. ‘ They who live godly in Christ Jesus must 
 suffer persecution.’ They teased her, and mocked her, and were 
 always speaking in her hearing the most abominable words they 
 could thmk of. What did this girl then do 1 She answered them 
 by silence and patience. When she was reviled she did not re\’lle. 
 2 Peter, ii. Still she spoke kindly to them, never allowing herself 
 to be provoked, or losing her temper, and so she went steadily and 
 quietly through her work. INIaiiy and many a time, unknown to 
 them, she w^as saying, in her heart, ‘Jesus and Mary help me.’ 
 A year had passed, and a wonderful change had come. Every one 
 of those Protestant girls was become a Catholic. How was it ? 
 Those girls had talked among themselves. They said to one an- 
 other, what a wonderful religion the Catholic religion must be, 
 how good it makes people ! How patient this Catholic girl is 
 when we do her an injury. If we say bad words to her, her only 
 answer is, to cast her eyes doAvn on the ground. Matt. vii. ‘ By 
 their fruits you shall know them.^ The Catholic religion must be 
 the true religion. So they all became Catholics ! Go, my child 
 of the factory, and do you in like manner. Some of the factories, 
 without doubt, are much worse than others. Therefore avoid 
 working in those factories which have a bad name, yb?- evil commu- 
 nications corrupt good manners. 1 Cor. xv. But, in almost every 
 factory, there are bad words spoken, and bad actions, and bad 
 example.” 
 
 In my book on Ireland in 1868, pages 69-70 of 
 
39 
 
 the first, and pages 72-73 of the second edition, I 
 showed how, by their Catechism, Roman Catholic 
 children were dogmatically taught, that all Protes 
 tants, as heretics, are doomed to eternal perdition ; 
 what that means is explained to the children by the 
 visit to hell of St. Frances, as detailed in book No. 10. 
 
 Protestants and dissenters from the doctrines pro- 
 pounded in these books, and by the highest autho- 
 rity of the Roman Catholic Church, directed to be 
 impressed upon the tender minds of young children ! 
 are you of opinion, nineteen or twenty millions, as 
 you are, in England, Scotland, and Ireland, that your 
 representative legislators will be faithfully acting in 
 accordance with your sentiments, and your principles 
 — will be wisely, justly, and prudently taxing your 
 pockets, for the support of schools in which you are to 
 be maligned in this world, and represented as damned 
 in the next ! ! I have quoted but a small fractional 
 part of the stories, and the dogmas contained in this 
 library for young persons and children. Believing 
 that both you and your representatives in parliament 
 were ignorant of the kind of lessons prepared for the 
 schools now imperatively, not to say insolently, de- 
 manded at your expense, I felt it as a duty, to com- 
 municate to you the knowledge of these books to 
 which my own attention was but recently, and acci- 
 dentally called. 
 
 Hear the terms in which, and the unlimited extent to 
 which, the right and power to maintain these schools, 
 at your expense, is demanded from the Queen, lords, 
 and commons of the British Empire, by the nominees 
 and miuisters of a foreign potentate, the sound of 
 
40 
 
 whose commanding trumpet reaches us from beyond 
 the Alps, as boastingly preached hy ms archbishop 
 of London to his congregation there. 
 
 A cardinal, three Eonian Catholic archbishops, and 
 twenty-one Boinan Catholic bishops, have printed 
 and published to the world what they have resolved 
 to do, in exercise of an authority which, they assert, 
 has been given to them by heaven itself ; which as- 
 sertion you do not believe — which assertion nobody 
 believes, who has not been, from his early childhood, 
 trained in their schools, and made credulous of the 
 stories narrated in their books. 
 
 In what they call their pastoral, j ust fallen from 
 the press, and circulated first among their clergy, 
 and now sold by the booksellers, the first of their 
 resolutions is expressed in these words : — 
 
 “We demand, lirst, for all scliools whicli are exclusively Ca- 
 tholic, the removal of all obstructions upon religious instruction, 
 so that the fulness of distinctive religious teaching may enter into 
 the course of daily secular education, vuth full libei’ty for the use 
 of Catholic books, and religious emblems, and for the performance 
 of religious exercises, and that the right be recognised of the law- 
 ful pastors of the children, in such schools, to have access to tliein, 
 to regulate the whole business of religious instruction in them, 
 and to remove all objectionable books, if any, in such schools, 
 the teachers, the books, and y he inspectors should all be Catholic. 
 Fourthly. — That the existing model schools should be abolished. 
 Fifthly. — That Catholic training schools, male and female, should 
 be established, in which teachers should be educated morally and 
 religiously, as well as intellectually, and in accordance with Irish 
 traditions and feelings for the holy office of teaching the Catholic 
 children of Ireland.” 
 
 When, in the history of these islands, did a French 
 or a German ambassador, or the ambassador of any 
 foreign nation in the world, demand from the Sove- 
 reign and the legislature of England any thing in 
 terms like these ! ! At what time, in Enoflish his- 
 
41 
 
 tory, could amj Ministry hold office for one hour after 
 listening to any demand made in such terms as these, 
 without instantly administering a stern and a defiant 
 rebuke ! ! 
 
 Mode l schools were instituted in Ireland under the 
 provisions of a solemn act of the legislature, upon a 
 system anxiously and deliberately considered and 
 adopted. The nominees and volunteer subjects of a 
 foreign potentate, whose temporal power has been 
 prostrated at home, imperiously demand the abolition 
 of these schools, and the substitution of such as they 
 shall devise, in which to impress more deeply on the 
 minds of the rising generation that fear of Hell which 
 has enabled them to command the return of sixty or 
 seventy supporters of their cause to the British House 
 of Commons. Are the Ministry, who, upon pain of 
 ignominious dismissal, should set at defiance the fleets 
 and the armies of the leagued sovereigns of Europe, 
 to entertain, with quailing submission, the extor- 
 tionary demands of those who command this disci- 
 plined contingent on the battle-field of party strife ! ! 
 Not only schools in which to teach children that all 
 Protestants, and all others who dissent from the 
 Boman Catholic creed and doctrine, are heretics, and, 
 as such, doomed to the torments described in these 
 books — that Protestant girls working in English 
 factories are monsters, whose conversations are filthy 
 and obscene — that Protestant husbands frighten their 
 Catholic wives to death by threats of assassination 
 and murder ; but another class of schools is also de- 
 manded for the instruction of teachers^ in which 
 Irish traditions and Irish feelings are to be sedu- 
 
42 
 
 lously collected, and carefully studied, for the HOLY 
 office of teaching them to the children in Roman 
 Catholic schools. This, I presume, if granted, will 
 be acknowledged as a part j)erformance of the 
 promise to ^^govern Ireland according to Irish ideas.” 
 What conciliating traditions will be raked up from 
 the pages of Pacata Hibernia, and from still more 
 modern republications, of English savagery, inflicted 
 upon those who will be called the forefathers of the 
 children lectured in these Catholic schools!!! What 
 Christian charity and national union will be propa- 
 gated by studying, cultivating, stimulating, and pan- 
 dering to the Irish feelings produced by these Irish 
 traditions ! ! What a soothing effect this HOLY 
 teaching of masters educated, and deeply learned in 
 these Irish traditions, and Irish feelings, will have 
 upon the temper and disposition of tenants assumed 
 to be the posterity of aboriginal owners, towards 
 landlords known to be the descendants of invading 
 Saxons ! ! ! 
 
 It needs no second sight to discover the future 
 events to which the present policy towards Ireland 
 inevitably leads. The demand now made is one of 
 its fruits. Every concession will encourage further 
 claims, and increase the difficulty of resisting them. 
 Nothing but the extirpation of what they call heresy 
 will satisfy those who assert authority from heaven, 
 to regulate the faith and morals of the human race, 
 according to the theology disclosed by this library 
 for children and young persons. 
 
 After Christianity was universally established 
 throughout the Roman provinces, the N orthern savages 
 
43 
 
 broke in upon them; and, for three or four centuries, in- 
 flicted cruelties upon their helpless victims unequalled 
 at any other time of which we have authentic history. 
 The effeminacy of the Koman subjects laid them 
 prostrate at the feet of their ruthless invaders, and 
 exposed them to wanton outrages, and brutal insults, 
 without limit or control. The dark ignorance, and 
 superstitious fears of the pagan victors exposed them, 
 in turn, to spiritual weapons, against which they had 
 no defence ; and the Christian priesthood succeeded 
 in imposing fetters of conscience upon them, by which 
 their violence was restrained, and their savage pas- 
 sions mitigated. This salutary effect has been fre- 
 quently adduced, as an apology for the crude fictions, 
 and fraudulent miracles by which it was produced. 
 The falsehood and the fraud were excused, or justi- 
 fied by the invention of a plausible maxim, saying, 
 '' evil may be done, that good may come of it.” 
 
 I know not whether a similar apology for the 
 gross and palpable fictions, with which these Books 
 for Children” are filled, will be deduced from their 
 assumed effect, in sanctifying the life, curbing the 
 passions, and improving the habits and manners of 
 those for whose juvenile instruction they have been 
 composed. That they produce this effect is asserted, 
 and illustrated by the story of the factory girl, 
 whose saintly meekness, and pious endurance, con- 
 verted the forty-nine obscene Protestants, by whom 
 she had been persecuted. 
 
 Passing over the fiction of the factory girls, I shall 
 seek some better evidence of the practical effect 
 actually produced by the Eoman Catholic doctrines 
 inculcated by these books. 
 
44 
 
 The consequence of committing a mortal siiq and 
 dying before it is confessed and absolved, is re- 
 peatedly and positively stated to be eternal torment 
 in the flames of hell. Even when committed by a 
 child, this is the inexorable doom of the sinner, as 
 illustrated by the terrible judgment” executed 
 upon the Bad Child. This is also dogmatically 
 stated in No. 4, at page 22, in the following words : — 
 
 “ When a child commits a mortal sin, ITS sonl is not thrown 
 into a den of lions, but it is thrown into a den of devils. These 
 devils are a million times more cruel and frightful than lions, and 
 tigers, and serpents, and adders, and scor})ions, and toads, and 
 spiders, and all kinds of venomous and stinging creatures.” 
 
 No deoTees of mortal sin are mentioned, and the 
 only allusion I can find to any difference in the pun- 
 ishment is in that statement about the boy in the 
 red-hot oven, viz. : — That God was very good to this 
 child, and very likely saw it would get worse and 
 worse, and would never repent, and so it would 
 have to be punished much more in helld 
 
 It is worthy of notice, that, in these teu books, 
 from beginning to end, there is not, that I can find, 
 any mention, nor even a remote allusion to that sin 
 of assassination, the frequent commission of which 
 has branded Ireland Avith infamy amongst nations. 
 
 There is, at page 29 of No. 10, the folio Aving de- 
 scription of the murderer’s punishment in hell. 
 
 “ THE KNIFE. 
 
 “ See that great strong man. He rushes furiously through Hell. 
 As he goes along, he splashes the fire and sulphur about him with 
 his feet. Those who are in his road fly away in terror. He bel- 
 lows out like a mad bull ; he says : ‘ Bring me the knife — bring 
 me the knife.’ He was a murderer. He killed somebody with a 
 knife. Now he wants to get the knife, and kill himself with it. 
 Sometimes he thrusts out his liquid as if to catch at the knife ; but 
 
45 
 
 he is deceived. The knife is not there ; he looks for death and it 
 coineth not.^’ 
 
 This rather applies to such murders as frequently 
 occur in Entrland than to the agrarian assassinations 
 which disgrace Ireland, and which would, therefore, 
 be a pressing tojDic of animadversion in a book in- 
 tended for the instruction of that class of the Irish 
 people most addicted to this atrocity. 
 
 Having failed to find any other condemnation, or 
 even censure, of this foul crime and mortal sin, in 
 the ten books for children, I looked through the tract 
 entitled WHAT EVERY CHRISTIAN MUST 
 KNOW AND DO.” 
 
 In this tract, there is a comment on each of the 
 ten commandments, and I expected to find some 
 strong condemnation of murder in the comment upon 
 the commandment — Thou shalt not kill,” which is 
 the 5th in the Roman Catholic Decalogue. The 
 comment is at page 23 in these words : — 
 
 Murder, or unjustly taking away anotlier’s life, is a giievous 
 mortal sin.” 
 
 There is reference to a note on this, at foot of the 
 page, of which note the following is a copy : — 
 
 “ * It is a mortal sin to do any thing for the purpose of destroy- 
 ing, or grievously injuring a child before, or after birth. 
 
 “It is not a sin to defend your own life, or another’s life, chas- 
 tity, or property of great value, when unjustly attacked, even 
 though it cannot be defended without taking away the life of him 
 who attacks it. It is not a sin to desire some temporal misfortune 
 to another, that it may make him cease to give scandal, or be con- 
 verted, or not persecute the good.” 
 
 What countenance a tenant may deduce from this 
 note, for the act of shooting the landlord, who brings 
 an ejectment, to evict him from what the tenant re- 
 gards as his own property, or shooting the agent, or 
 
46 
 
 the bailih* wlio assists in attacking, as the tenant 
 will say, and probably think, unjustly, the property 
 which is of great value to him — viz., the possession 
 of his land. What justification the hireling assassin 
 may reason out for himself from this assurance of the 
 Church that it is not a sin to defend the property of 
 ANOTHER when it cannot be defended without 
 taking away the life of the landlord who unjustly 
 assails it, or of the rival who outbids the tenant in 
 possession — All this, I leave to be considered. But I 
 have here stated all that I can find, in this library 
 for young children, condemnatory of assassination 
 and murder. 
 
 The mortal sin most frequently mentioned, and 
 most solemnly condemned, in these books, is that of 
 wilfully omitting, or, as it is called, losing mass on 
 Sunday. In book No. 4, at page 6, a story is pa- 
 thetically told of a missionary priest, who was giving 
 a mission to children, in a small court in London, 
 and who was suddenly interrupted by a wife who 
 came, in breathless haste, saying Oh father, make 
 haste, and come quick, my husband has fallen down 
 on the floor, and he is dying.” The missioner goes 
 and finds the poor man on the floor, in the agonies 
 of death. 
 
 “ It was a fearful sight to see that man in the agony of death 
 while his soul was passing out of this world to the judgment seat 
 of God. But there was another sight still more sorrowful. Aroimd 
 the dying father knelt his five little children, and well they knew 
 what the matter was. They knew that their father was dying. 
 Oh the sorrow, the grief of those poor children. They were cry- 
 ing and wailing, and sobbing over their poor father in the agony 
 of death. Little child, it may be that death has been in your 
 house, as well as in the house of which I speak. Perhaps, in your 
 house, it was a more frightful death — the death of the soul by 
 
47 
 
 mortal sin. How was it tliat death came into your liouse ? Per- 
 haps, it was Sunday, and your brother lost mass, by his own 
 fault ; then he came home to you with a dead soul in him, killed 
 by mortal sin. When then he opened the door, and brought a. 
 dead soul into the midst of you, did you all, brothers and sisters, 
 come round and cry, and sob, and wail, and scream for his ])Oor 
 dead soul ? Did you say, Oh brother, your poor soul is dead 1 
 Poor soul ! we cry for you, brother, and the tears run down from 
 our eyes, because your soul is dead !” 
 
 Here is what must be to the child a very touch- 
 ing sermon on the enormity of losing mass upon a 
 Sunday. 
 
 But the sinner is not left without a remedy to 
 purify him from this, 07^ cmy other mortal sin, how- 
 ever hemous , — an easy remedy — always at hand, and 
 within his own reach — perfect and effectual, enabling 
 him, hy his own act, to become ^ THE CHILD OF 
 GOD AGAIN ! ! ’ " 
 
 At page 28 of this same book. No. 4, is the fol- 
 lowing clear prescription of this remedy, which no 
 peasant in Ireland can have any difficulty in under- 
 standing : — 
 
 “ XXXII. What you must do if you have the misfortune to fall 
 into Mortal Sin. 
 
 ‘‘ Jer. viii. : Shall not he that falleth rise again ? If you catch 
 a fever, you get rid of it as soon as you can. If you break your 
 arm, you get it mended as soon as you are able. Do at least as 
 much for your soul as for your body. If you commit a mortal 
 sin, and you die with that mortal sin in your soul, you go to hell 
 for all eternity ! Therefore, do not keep that horrible monster, 
 mortal sin, in your soul for one moment. But you say, ‘ What 
 must I do 1 which is the way ? how am I to get the sin forgiven f 
 Listen, and you shall hear what you must do : Make an act of con- 
 trition directly, and go to confession as soon as you can. Bemem- 
 ber these two things. 
 
 ‘‘1. After mc/rtal sin make an act of contrition directly. Do not 
 delay for a day, an hour, a minute, a moment. Say any act of 
 contrition ; for example, the act of contrition of blessed Leonard : 
 
 ‘ O my God, I am very sorry that I have sinned against thee 
 because thou art so good, and I will not sin again.’ But you say, 
 
48 
 
 is tlie use of making an act of contrition directly after a 
 mortal sin ? I know I can get my sin forgiven by going to con- 
 fession, but wbat is tlie use of making an act of contrition until 
 the time comes when I can go to confession ? I will tell you the 
 use of it. It may be some days, it may be a week, before you 
 can get to coufession. Do you think God vushes you to remain 
 in mortal sin for a week, or until the time comes when you can 
 go to confession? Certaiidy he does not. But can you get 
 your sin forgiven before you go to confession ? Certainly, you 
 can. But how ? Through the great mercy of God, at any 
 moment of the day or night, whenever you will, if you make a 
 sincere act of true contrition, with the intention of confessing it, 
 at that moment God forgives the sin, and you become the child of 
 God again. How good God is, that a sinner should not be obliged 
 to remain in mortal sin, and a state of damnation, one moment 
 longer than he wishes it himself ! St. Thomas says : ‘ However 
 little the sorrow may be, if it is only true contrition, it takes 
 away the sin.’ Q. 1, 3, 4. But you ask, what does St. Thomas 
 mean when he says, ‘that this sorrow must be true contrition ?’ 
 He means just this, that you must be sorry for offending God 
 because he is so good^ and resolve not to offend him again. St. 
 Alphonsus says the same. Be Pcenit Peril, iv. 
 
 “2. Go to confession as soon as you can. Besides making an 
 act of contrition directly after mortal sin, you should go to confes- 
 sion, and confess the sin as soon as you can. First, because you 
 are obliged to confess every mortal sin. Jesus Christ has insti- 
 tuted the sacrament of Penance, to forgive all mortal sins to those 
 who are contrite of heart, and confess them sincerely. John xx. : 
 
 ‘ Whose sins you shall forgive, they are forgiven them.’ Secondly, 
 although you may hope that the mortal sin has been forgiven, if 
 you made a sincere act of contrition, still you feel more secure 
 about the forgiveness of it, after you have received absolution in 
 the sacrament of Penance.” 
 
 After the announcement of this doctrine, as 
 evangelical truth, on the authority of the Infallible 
 Church, with a dogmatical denunciation that it is a 
 mortal sin to disbelieve or even to doubt it, no one 
 should be surprised that all the obscene factory girls 
 in England, if any such there are, and their still 
 more profligate sisters in the stews of London, and 
 elsewhere, should become Homan Catholics. After 
 this comforting evangel has been taught, I know 
 not how long, and believed, in the cabins of the 
 
49 
 
 poor and the ignorant Irish peasantry, who are com- 
 manded on this high authority, to read, or have it 
 read to their children, and after the piecemeal read- 
 ing of it, as commanded, in Sunday, and other 
 Roman Catholic schools, we cannot be surprised that 
 all the assassins and murderers by whom Ireland is 
 afflicted, should be Roman Catholics, or that Roman 
 Catholics who learn and believe this doctrine, should, 
 when goaded by thirst of vengeance, or by a desire 
 to defend their possession of land, become assassins 
 and murderers. 
 
 Notwithstanding the comfortable assurance of ab- 
 solution from the sin of murder, there still remained 
 the danger of capital punishment for the crime. 
 In recent times, this temporal consequence became 
 less frequent, and the returns to the judges on 
 circuit of undetected assassins became at last appal- 
 ling. No one could account for the change, until the 
 mystery was cleared up by a reverend instructor ot 
 youtli in the doctrine of salvation by act of contri- 
 tion and resolution to confess. 
 
 On Monday,November 22nd, 1869, the Rev. J. Ryan, 
 P.P., in proposing a candidate at the election for the 
 county of Tipperary, which terminated in the return 
 of O’ Donovan Rossa by a majority of 101, is re- 
 ported to have spoken as follows. (See the Clonmel 
 Chronicle of Wednesday evening, November 24, 
 1869.) 
 
 “ The truth is, the landlords are frightened out of their jackets ; 
 and I will tell you why — the old system of attack is entirely given 
 up, and the people are acting upon a new and most successful 
 principle. Mind, I am not praising it. God forbid that I should 
 do so, as I am a clergyman and minister of peace. But now — 
 
 n 
 
50 
 
 , brother will not reveal a secret to brother, nor father to son, but 
 \ a man takes out his revolver, and he tumbles his landlord (great 
 I cheering). This is the real truth, the real secret of the present 
 \ movement.” 
 
 Having thus revealed the secret, and expounded 
 THE NEW AND MOST SUCCESSFUL PEIN- 
 CIPLE ” of recent assassinations, and undetected 
 assassins, and having concisely explained the appli- 
 cation of it, in practice, his speech suggests a singu- 
 lar analogy between the lesson in the book and the 
 lecture at the hustings. 
 
 / If any one of the listening crowd, desirous to be 
 instructed in the art of shooting landlords and 
 evading justice, had asked, in the terms of the book. 
 What must I do ? Which is the way ? How am 
 I to escape the gallows ? ” the priest might have 
 replied, in the words of the book, Listen, and you 
 shall hear what you must do. Keep your bloody 
 purpose a profound secret, even from your brother 
 or your son ; and when you have tumbled the land- 
 ' lord, say nothing about it, except, in confession, to 
 k the priest. Eemember these two things, and you 
 wnay attend and laugh at the coroner s inquest. ” 
 
 His reverence certainly did not praise this newly- 
 discovered, and MOST SUCCESSFUL PEINCI- 
 PLE. He would not damn with faint 'praise‘s such 
 a patriotic invention — of course he would not ! ! 
 
 In the tract before referred to, entitled 
 
 ^^WHAT EVEEY CHEISTIAN MUST KNOW 
 AND DO.” 
 
 at page 17 , there is an enumeration of what the 
 disciple must know and do, which ends by declaring 
 
51 
 
 that he must know, as the fourth great truth, the 
 
 Commandments of God, and of the Church'' This 
 is followed by an enumeration of what he must 
 eschew, in these words : — 
 
 “ It is a mortal sin wilfully to doubt, or disbelieve, or deny the 
 Catholic faith — it is bad to go to prayers, or sermons in Protestant 
 places of worship, and much worse to go where it is stiictly for- 
 bidden, as in many parts of Ireland, or where you give scandal by 
 it, or your faith is likely to be weakened, or if you join with them 
 in worship. You must not read Protestant books or tracts — say 
 your morning and night prayers.” 
 
 All Protestants not only doubt, but disbelieve, 
 and strenuously deny much of what is called the 
 Catholic faith. According to this teaching the 
 children, therefore, are to believe, without any douht 
 (for doubt is pronounced to be a mortal sin), that all 
 Protestants are constantly in a state of mortal sin ; 
 and the disciples are, in many places, and in different 
 forms of words, assured, throughout these books, 
 that one who dies, with any one mortal sin in his 
 soul, is instantaneously buried, for ever, in the flames 
 of hell. 
 
 The portion of the Irish people, for whose edifi- 
 cation these books were fabricated, are assumed to 
 be of Celtic race. Dissenters from Roman Catholic 
 doctrines are all confounded together, and spoken of 
 as the Saxon invaders, and oppressors of the Celtic 
 Irish. Those who have a sinister interest in pro- 
 voking and maintaining hostility and war between 
 these two great sections, arrogate, for one of them, 
 the name of THE IRISH PEOPLE, and designate 
 the other by such appellations as the Saxons,” or the 
 Protestant garrison, stationed here for the subju- 
 gation of the Irish people.” Whatever foundation 
 
 D 2 
 
there was, three himdrecl years ago, for this division, 
 when the Irish had but one word to signify Saxon 
 and Protestant, it is a wicked fallacy to apply such 
 a principle in modern times. Celt and Saxon, 
 Catholic and Protestant, in a practical sense, have 
 come to signify poor and rich. 
 
 In the reports that I have read of agitators’ 
 speeches (but I confess I have not read very many 
 of them) — and in the quotations which I have read 
 from their organs of the press (of which, however, I 
 never read any except these quotations), I find that 
 by applying the rule of construction according to 
 context, ''Irish People” means the poor and dis- 
 contented — the noisy and the turbulent — the dis- 
 affected and seditious, and all who will assemble, in 
 multitudes, at the summons of any leader who pro- 
 mises to minister to their appetite for sedition and 
 anarchy. The more desperate the circumstances of 
 the leader himself are — the less of reputation he has 
 to lose — the better he is qualified for exciting loud 
 and enthusiastic applause from the crowds assembled 
 to hear him. 
 
 These crowds, at the command of the Poman Ca- 
 tholic priests and their tools, roll forward to the 
 place of meeting, as the waves of the sea roll before 
 the wind. To extend this power over those who 
 have hitherto been defiant of it — to perpetuate and 
 confirm it — the Poman Cardinal, and his subordinate 
 archbishops and bishops, demand the endowment of 
 schools at the expense of their opponents. 
 
 Having now in power a ministry, whose leader, 
 shortly after they came into office, boasted that they 
 
53 
 
 were banded together ” for destroying, root and 
 branch, what he called the Upas tree, (meaning the 
 tree under whose salutary shade the Episcopalian 
 Protestants of Ireland had taken shelter from the 
 doctrines inculcated by the books on which I am 
 now commenting,) the priests think the time is opjDor- 
 tune for a further demand. 
 
 The Irish Church was disestablished — tlie future 
 clergy of it were disendowed, and turned over for 
 support upon the voluntary contributions of their 
 congregations, without scapulars wherewith to invest, 
 without plenary indulgences wherewith to entice ; 
 without the confessional wherewith to probe, or ab- 
 solution wherewith to pacify the conscience ; with- 
 out purgatory to torment, and masses to relieve the 
 souls of the departed, and to enforce contributions 
 from the surviving kindred ; without any of the 
 multitudinous instruments of persuasion, and of co- 
 ercion described in these books, the future clergy of 
 the Irish Church must discover some honest means 
 of subsistence. 
 
 Now, when those members of the Irish Church, 
 who understand and foresee what is before them, are 
 endeavouring, by the help of sober reason alone, to 
 rouse their brethren to a sense of the approaching 
 danger, and soliciting them to make a timely provi- 
 sion for the evil day which is coming, as certainly as 
 death is coming on their still surviving clergy, the 
 Poman Catholic hierarchy, whose organization, and 
 whose revenues have bt^en left untouched, profit by 
 their victory, and, seizing the opportunity, demand a 
 further enactment by which to tax and crush their 
 
54 
 
 opponents^ and to endow themselves with the means 
 of establishing State schools, in which to impress in- 
 delibly on the minds of young children the belief, 
 and the undoubting conviction^ that the Protestants 
 thus compelled to support these schools are, imme- 
 diately after death, destined to be mingled in hell 
 with the countless millions of foetid carcasses there 
 laid like sheep,'' as hideously described at page 9 of 
 tract No. 10, and hereinbefore copied at page 14. 
 
 But supposing that this ministry is not Too 
 fond of the right to pursue the expedient” ; and sup- 
 posing that they will deem it expedient to gratify 
 their priestly allies, by inflicting this atrocious insult 
 upon the Protestants of Great Britain and Ireland 
 (a supposition difficult to entertain !), still I do not 
 think it possible that they can ignore the obligation 
 of protecting the lives of Irish subjects, both Pro- 
 testant and Homan Catholic, from the assassins 
 whose daily crimes constitute the Irish difficulty of 
 the present hour. If they feel that this is their duty, - 
 as paternal governors of Ireland, which they assume 
 to be, and have boasted that they are, I pray of 
 them (if I may not, as a right, demand it) to read, 
 and impartially and calmly consider, at least, what 
 next follows, in the concluding pages of this pam- 
 phlet. 
 
 On Sunday evening, the 22nd of October last, at the 
 approach of night-fall, an humble farmer, of twenty- 
 five acres, near Moynalty, in the county of Meath, 
 about thirty miles from Dublin, was sitting at his 
 fireside, with his back to a screen, built three feet from 
 the door, to obstruct the current of cold air. In this 
 
55 
 
 screen there was an aperture for the admission of 
 light ; and the entrance door stood open. A little 
 girl, the poor man’s niece, was sitting beside him 
 reading, when a shot was fired through the aperture, 
 by which he was instantaneously killed. He had, 
 that day, refused to continue his nephew as tenant 
 of a cabin on the farm, and this nephew was arrested 
 on suspicion. They were Roman Catholics, and in 
 that rank for whose religious instruction the ten books 
 for children were written. Assuming that the as- 
 sassin, whoever he was, had been piously taught, and 
 had obediently learned the doctrine in these books, it 
 is obviously fair and reasonable to consider the effect 
 of that teaching upon the mind and morals of that 
 assassin. He had been goaded by some fiendish en- 
 mity to take the life of his fellow creature, and he 
 did it. Assuming that he had ordinary memory — 
 that he recollected the story of the man that was 
 drowned ” (hereinbefore copied at page 34 ), because 
 he would not do the simplest thing to save himself, 
 and that he did not forget the lucid detail of what 
 he himself should do, having had the MISFOR- 
 TUNE to fall into mortal sin.” (See ante, page 34 .) 
 He had been directed not to keep the mortal sin 
 which he had committed in his soul for a moment. 
 He was to remember two things, and, no doubt he 
 did : First — without the delay of a day, an hour, a 
 minute, a moment ” — he was to say any act of con- 
 trition, and he could have little difficulty in remem- 
 bering the concise one of Blessed Leonard quoted for 
 him in the book. 
 
 His hands reeking with the blood of his victim. 
 
56 
 
 the murderer is to extend them towards Heaven and 
 say, Oh, my God, I am very sorry that I have sinned 
 against thee, because thou art so good, and I will not 
 sin again.” As it may be some days or a w^eek before 
 he can go to confession, which is the second part, 
 and the final completion of the remedy for mortal 
 sin, he must, instantly, after saying the act of con- 
 trition, intend or resolve in his mind, to go, as soon 
 as he can, to confession ; upon forming which resolu- 
 tion, he is, on pain of committing another mortal sin, 
 to believe, and not even to doubt, that, by the act of 
 contrition and the intention to confess, he has be- 
 come the child of God ao'ain ” ! ! 
 
 O 
 
 There being, at that time, no other enemy for 
 wdiose blood he thirsts, he can have no trouble in 
 persuading himself, that his promise not to sin again 
 is sincere. There are very few, if any, wdio commit 
 murder, who do not feel a momentary sorrow^ and 
 remorse for so doing, and, therefore, the act of con- 
 trition can always be said wdth the comfortable con- 
 viction that the repentance is sincere and contrite. 
 Thus assuming that the man who shot Edward 
 Bryan is a well-instructed Boman Catholic, and that 
 he duly followed the lessons read to him in his child- 
 hood, he now lives under the soothing conviction 
 that he is again the child of God,” and destined 
 for everlasting bliss in the life to come, having 
 nothing to fear, except that he may be sent to it by 
 the gallows. 
 
 If he was present at the Bev. J. Byan’s explanation 
 of the new and most successful method of evading 
 temporal justice, or if he read the report of the speech, 
 
57 
 
 which was published and republished and commented 
 on in all the newspapers in Ireland and in many if 
 not all in England, there is very little doubt that his 
 fear of the rope is appeased as much as his fear of 
 hell. 
 
 Leaving the assassin, to enjoy the expurgated con- 
 science which he has fabricated for himself, let us 
 apply the same doctrine to the dej^arted victim of 
 his rage. It was Sunday evening. Perhaps Edward 
 Bryan had that day, by his own fault, lost Mass, and 
 had therefore brought home a dead soul in his body. 
 If he was guilty of that mortal sin, it is quite certain 
 that he had not confessed it, or got absolution, and 
 there is but little reason to think that he had gone 
 through the same process of purging it, which the 
 crime of murder suggested to his assassin. The con- 
 clusion inevitably follows, if the doctrine in these 
 hooks he true, that* this hapless victim is now one of 
 the countless millions of pestilential carcasses which 
 are laid in hell like sheep ! ! 
 
 His little niece, who survives 'i She is young — 
 the lessons and stories in these books are, therefore, 
 fresh in her memory — she may have heard, that very 
 morning, at the Sunday school, the pathetic story of 
 the missionary priest, and the young man who, having 
 lost Mass, brought home a dead soul amongst his 
 brothers and his sisters, to be bewailed by them. 
 It may be, that she was reading that very story 
 while the assassin was taking aim at her uncle’s 
 head. When she saw him fall, did she say Oh 
 uncle — your poor soul is dead, and is gone to hell ! 
 Poor soul ! I cry for you, uncle, and the tears run 
 
58 
 
 down from my eyes, because your soul is gone to 
 hell !” This she is hound to believe, and to believe 
 without a doubt, in order to save her oivn soul alive ! 
 However incredulous we may be of the uncle’s doom, 
 we must believe, that the objects of his affection, who 
 survive, and who loved him in return, must, believing 
 this doctrine, most painfully reflect that he was 
 suddenly sent to his long account, with all his sins 
 upon his head. 
 
 Thus these books teach, that the ruthless mur- 
 derer, whenever he dies, whether by disease or by 
 the rope, is destined to have a place in heaven, as a 
 repentant child of God, and to enjoy for ever the 
 approving countenance of his Heavenly Father, re- 
 joicing in the recovery of the prodigal son that was 
 lost, and happily restored by that wonder-working 
 act of contrition, and fervent resolution to confess 
 the foul sin of murder which he had committed. 
 
 The doctrine which thus reassures and comforts 
 the assassin, while he yet escapes the gallows and 
 lingers upon earth, teaches the surviving children 
 and kindred of the murdered victim, that if their 
 hapless father and kinsman had in his soul any 
 mortal sin unconfessed and unabsolved when the 
 unexpected shot sent him to answer for that sin, he 
 must now be suffering the hell-fire torments Avhich 
 are never to end. 
 
 The mysterious doctrine which teaches that God’s 
 anger is thus speedily changed into love and bene- 
 volence by an act of contrition so easily done, and a 
 resolution to confess so easily formed by the mis- 
 creant assassin, before the blood has ceased lo flow 
 
59 
 
 from the wound which he has inflicted, represents 
 that same God as rigidly and sternly inexorable to 
 the agonizing screams of the child in the red-hot 
 oven, to the heart-rending su]o plications for one 
 moment’s respite of the girl upon the red-hot floor, 
 to the sufferings of the boy whose brains, and blood, 
 and marrow are bubbling like a boiling kettle, and 
 to the agonies of the girl clad in the bonnet and 
 dress of fire, so contrived by that mercif ul God, as 
 for ever to burn, and for ever to scorch, but never to 
 consume the unhappy victim. That God uses his 
 power, not alone in ijcrpetuating the torture, but in 
 sharpening the sensibility of the sufferer, and taking 
 away all power of oblivion, even for a moment, 
 asserting that he ivill give such an edge to the mind 
 of the damned to lively comprehend their loss, as not 
 to he able, as much as one moment, to turn their 
 thoughts from it'' (Pinamonti. Hell Opened, p. 23.) 
 
 The tendency and undisguised purpose and object 
 of every dogma, every prayer, and every story in 
 these books, is to impress the tender minds of 
 children with the undoubting conviction, that the 
 Pope and the Pornan Catholic clergy are the vice- 
 gerents upon earth of the Almighty, whose wrath, 
 and whose vengeance are thus described in these 
 appalling scenes. On coercive authority the children 
 are forced to believe, that countless millions of devils 
 continually surround them, as active and malignant 
 tempters to sin and perdition ; that the priests, and 
 they alone, have the power of protecting the dis- 
 ciple from the machinations of this diabolical host, 
 and that they can impart this power to a variety 
 of religious emblems. 
 
60 
 
 In the examination before the Education Commis- 
 sioners of J ohn Augustine Grace, a Christian Brother, 
 and head of the Bichmond-street establishment, his 
 attention was called to a doctrinal question and answer 
 in one of the books used in their schools, viz. — 
 
 “ What goes to the saving of the soul ?” 
 
 The book answers — 
 
 “ All sorts of things — water — oil — candles — ashes — beads — 
 medals — scapulars — have to be filled with a strange undefineable 
 power by ecclesiastical benedictions in its behalf. The body, soul, 
 divinity of the Incarnate Word have to be communicated to it 
 over and over again, till it becomes quite a common occurrence, 
 though each time it is in reality a more stupendous action than 
 the creation of the world. It can speak up to heaven, and be 
 heard and obeyed there. It can s]3end the satisfactions of Jesus, 
 as if they were its own, and can undo bolts, and bars in purgatory, 
 and choose, by its determinate will whom it will liberate and 
 whom it will pass over.” 
 
 This dogmatical statement, in a school-book, of the 
 power and virtue imparted by ecclesiastical bene- ’ 
 dictions to emblems, was justified by Mr. Grace, on 
 the authority of the Bev. Doctor Faber, who, he 
 said, was 
 
 “ One of the purest and best that has ever come from the Uni- 
 versity of Oxford. That the lesson is a brief descrij^tion of the 
 various means of grace in the Church, authorized by the example 
 of our divine Lord himself, in his use of clay and spittle, as re- 
 corded in the Gospel — (Evidence, Vol. 3., p. 378, question 9,499.” 
 
 To question 9,568, viz. — 
 
 “ Could you in reference to the use of emblems, and keejnng in 
 view the objects of your society, make such change or modification 
 in the system, by which, according to rules similar to those of the 
 National Board, aid might be extended to you out of the Govern- 
 ment grant ?” 
 
 The answer was 
 
 “ I don’t think we could. The use of religious emblems is 
 an essential characteristic of our school system, for which we have 
 
C)1 
 
 contended from the beginning ; and no i)ecuiiiary advantage of 
 State aid, would, in my opinion, justity any change which would 
 involve a departure from a practice so long established. Besides, 
 I am fully persuaded that compromises in matters of religion are 
 wrong in principle, and must, sooner or later, exercise an injurious 
 effect on the people, but especially on the young.” 
 
 In tract No. 8, at page 20, is the folloAving chap- 
 ter : — 
 
 ROSARY BEADS A BLESSED MEDAL A CROSS WITH A PLENARY 
 
 INDULGENCE A CROSS BLESSED FOR THE STATIONS. 
 
 The rosary heads bring on the dying the protection of the Blessed 
 Virgin INIary. She alone obtains from Jesus Christ, her son, the 
 grace of a happy death. It is very good for the sick to say the 
 rosary or a part of it. When tlie Venerable Berchmans died, his 
 rosary beads were twisted round his arm. 
 
 A medal with the image of tlie Blessed Vu’gin or of any othei’ 
 saint on it, can have a plenary indulgence for the time of death. 
 It might be tied round the neck of the sick person. In the Crimean 
 war a soldier was wearing a medal of the Blessed Virgin. A gun- 
 shot came and struck him where the medal was. The shot fell 
 down at his feet. His life was saved ; he was not at all hurt. 
 You will have a great war with the devil when you are dying. 
 Many are the fiery darts which the devil throws at us in our last 
 agony. Ey)h. vi. The medal of Mary will be for the breast-plate 
 of justice, by which you will be able to extinguish these fiery 
 darts of the most wicked one. 
 
 A crucifix may also have a plenary indulgence for death. He 
 who gains fully a plenary indulgence, goes straight to heaven when 
 he dies, without suffering in purgatory. 
 
 A crucifix blessed for the stations. Those who go round the 
 stations, or way of the cross in the chapel, gain many plenary in- 
 dulgences, even without confession and communion. When you 
 are sick, you cannot go to the chapel. But you may have a crucifix 
 blessed and gain the same indulgences by it. All you have to do 
 is, to hold the cross in your hand, and say fourteen times the Our 
 Father, and Hail Mary. Then you say five times Our Father, Hail 
 Mary, Glory be to the Father, &c. Then you say one Our Father, 
 Hail Mary, and Glory be to the Father for the Pope’s Intention. 
 
 The first resolution of the cardinal and bishops 
 demands — 
 
 “ For all schools which are exclusively Catholic the removal of 
 all restrictions upon religious instruction, so that the fulness of 
 distinctive religious teaching may enter into the course of daily 
 secular education, with full liberty for the use of Catholic books 
 and religious emblems, and for the performance of religious exei- 
 cises,” (fee. 
 
No one can doubt that the tracts from which I 
 have taken extracts are amongst the hooks, and 
 contain much of the distinctive religious teaching 
 referred to in this resolution. 
 
 The Irish are proverbially fond of wild justice,” 
 which, by an euphemism, invented by those who 
 flatter them, is the name given to their thirst of 
 vengeance — the foulest blot upon their character. It 
 requires no argument to prove that the doctrine in- 
 culcated by these books is marvellously adapted to 
 promote and encourage the gratification of this dia- 
 bolical appetite, and that their minds are open to 
 receive it upon the known principle Quod volumus 
 facile credimusf as a comforting doctrine to save 
 them from the fear of eternal punishment due to the 
 sin of murder, to which their love of wild justice ” 
 so frequently, and so easily prompts them. As cer- 
 tainly as cause produces its natural effect, this teach- 
 ing will produce, as it has produced, and is produc- 
 ing, assassins in Ireland. 
 
 Edward Bryan was scarcely cold in his grave 
 when, on the very next Sunday (Oct. 29th) Keeran 
 Connor, of Corr Hill, in the King’s County, was on 
 his way to mass, when he was met by three men 
 armed with revolvers, and shot.'"" 
 
 If state schools be established for the propagation of 
 
 * The first account of this crime stated that Connor was shot 
 dead : a subsequent account stated that he was taken up alive and 
 sent to Tullamore Infirmary. I have ascertained that he -is still in 
 the Infirmary, and that his recovery is expected ; that his head 
 and face are covered over with wounds from slugs — perhaps thirty 
 or forty — that one eye is gone — that under the other an abscess 
 has been formed, the consequence of the wounds, which prevents 
 his opening it except slightly — and that he was still in bed on the 
 2nd December. 
 
G3 
 
 this doctrine of emblems to save from present danger, 
 and absolution to purify from mortal sin the miscreant 
 polluted by the blood of his hapless victim, they will 
 be taken as a proof, and as an admission, even by the 
 heretics, that these doctrines are orthodox and true, 
 and we shall hear the triumph chanted in the proverb 
 Magna est veritas et prevalehit” 
 the Te Deum” too often sung by rampant falsehood. 
 The efficacy of emblems, as signs of safety from 
 danger in this life, and the sufficiency of absolution 
 to secure felicity in the next, will, thenceforth, be 
 inculcated as doctrines which, by the force of truth, 
 the legislature was compelled to recognise, by giving 
 the clergy uncontrolled liberty to teach them in the 
 State schools. 
 
 If this Ministry, who say that they are banded 
 together for the extirpation of the Upas tree, cannot 
 do anything to eradicate this national canker, or stop 
 the progress of this desolatin g plag ue (and I believe 
 they would stop it if they could), let them at least 
 desist from a policy by which it is fostered — by 
 which its growth has been encouraged, and its acti- 
 vity grievously stimulated, and let them with firm- 
 ness, if they cannot with indignation, refuse to com- 
 ply with the demand so insolently made upon them, 
 by their clericM allies. 
 
 The complaint made of the National schools, as 
 they now exist, by Cardinal Cullen, in his evidence 
 before the Commissioners, 24th February, 1869, vol. 
 4, p. 1,225, is thus stated : — 
 
 “ There are 2,365 schools, with 360,000 Catholic children attend 
 ing them, and with no Protestant. So far as these schools are 
 concerned, I liave no particular objection against them, except that 
 
04 
 
 rliey are under undue restraint, Tliey cannot use Catliolic 
 emblems ; the children in these are obliged to jmss their whole 
 time without learning anything about their own religion, or about 
 the history of their own Church, or without paying any act of 
 worship to God, without being able to venerate the holy Mother 
 of God, or to do anything for their owm sanctification during 
 school hours.” 
 
 The removal of this restraint on the use of emblems 
 and of books, such as those upon which I have com- 
 mented, is demanded by the first resolution of the 
 archbishops and bisliops. The liberty so claimed is 
 inconsistent with the maintenance of mixed schools; 
 for I do not think it possible that it could be ex- 
 ercised in the presence of incredulous Protestant 
 children. 
 
 I know not to what extent these emblems are a 
 source of revenue to the Churcli, but that the use of 
 them is held to be of paramount importance may be 
 inferred from the evidence of Mr. Grace as well as 
 from that of the Cardinal. A power in the clergy to 
 impart the virtues ascribed to these emblems, and 
 the power to refuse, imports an extent of despotic 
 authority, derived from God, from which no believer 
 can possibly escape. When the view of death pre- 
 sents itself to the prostrate invalid, and a crucifix is 
 offered to him, to which ^Ghe strange undefinable 
 power of ecclesiastical benediction, in his behalf, has 
 communicated the body, soul, divinity, of the Incar- 
 nate Word, by an action more stupendous than the 
 creation of the world, whereby the departing soul 
 can speak up to heaven, and be heard and obeyed 
 there, vdiereby it can spend the satisfactions of 
 Jesus, as if they were its own, and can undo bolts 
 and bars in purgatory, and choose by its determinate 
 
G5 
 
 will whom it will liberate^ and whom it will pass 
 over.” What price, in worthless worldly wealth, can 
 possibly be adequate to the value of such an em- 
 blem, especially when offered to him on his death- 
 bed ! ! ! 
 
 This is taught for gospel in the Christian Brothers’ 
 schools, and forms a part of one of their class-books, 
 as appears by the testimony of Mr. Grace. In the 
 chapter before quoted from Tract No. 8, it is more 
 modestly stated that a crucifix may have a plenary 
 indulgence for death,” and that he who gains f itlly 
 a plenary indulgence goes straight to heaven when 
 he dies, without suffering in purgatory.” The doc- 
 trine of the Bev. Doctor Faber, adopted and taught 
 in the schools of the Christian Brothers, goes farther, 
 and ascribes to all manner of emblems — water, oil, 
 &c., ALL SOFTS OF THINGS,” the stupendous 
 power of commanding in heaven, of redeeming from 
 purgatory other souls at the arbitrary will and dis- 
 cretion of the possessor of this stupendous emblem ! ! 
 
 This mysterious doctrine is set forth at large in 
 the lesson in the Fourth Series of Select Beading 
 Lessons ” for the schools of the Christian Brothers 
 at pages 318 to 321, taken from Bev. Doctor Faber, 
 and headed with the question, What goes to the 
 SAVING OF THE SOUL?” The quotation to which the 
 Commissioners called Mr. Grace’s attention is only 
 eleven lines of the lesson ; and the whole lesson 
 must be read attentively before any conception can 
 be formed of the incomprehensible and miraculous 
 process there described of saving a single soul. 
 
 There are in Ireland, according to the Cardinal’s 
 
 E 
 
GG 
 
 testimony, 2,365 schools attended by 360,000 Roman 
 Catholics, and relieved from the presence of any 
 Protestant child. There are about 1,700 other 
 schools of which the patrons and managers are 
 Roman Catholic priests, but which are attended by 
 Protestant as well as Roman Catholic children ; and 
 there are over 2,000 other mixed schools the patrons 
 of which are not Roman Catholic priests. In all 
 these six thousand schools, the teaching of this doc- 
 trine of emblems, and any exercise exhibiting or en- 
 forcing the use of the emblems is prohibited. This 
 prohibition, no doubt, is a great stumbling block in 
 the way of propagating this stupendous doctrine ; 
 and this stumbling block may account for the fact, 
 that so many wealthy Roman Catholics allow their 
 property to descend to their children, their widows, 
 and their kindred. To remove this stumbling block 
 is the published resolution of the Cardinal and his 
 subordinate archbishops and bishops, and to giv(3 
 effect to this resolution is the purpose and object of 
 commanding the pastoral to be read in all chapels 
 upon two successive Sundays, in order to stimulate 
 the reluctant laity to sign the requisition for a mon- 
 ster meeting, and to join in an universal cry for this 
 measure of justice for their children. Because these 
 High Priests know, as announced to them by Pope 
 Pius the Seventh in 1800, and as they state at page 
 8 of their pastoral — 
 
 “ That the mind and heart of young persons, like soft wax, to 
 which one may give what form he pleases, are very susceptible of 
 every sort of impression 
 
 And, therefore, susceptible of the belief in this 
 
67 
 
 stupendous miracle, so utterly incredible to any one 
 in whose mind the light of reason shines. 
 
 There is also another stumblingblock in the way 
 of propagating this stupendous doctrine, and that is 
 the existence of nearly two millions of Protestants, and 
 other disbelievers of it in Ireland, and eighteen mil- 
 lions of incredulous English and Scotch, within four 
 hours sail of Ireland, who are in constant communica- 
 tion with their brethren here. These G,000 protected 
 schools — the mixture of Protestant and Poman 
 Catholic children in more than half of them — and the 
 daily intercourse of Poman Catholic witli Protestant 
 parents, may naturally account for the limited demand 
 for emblems and for masses ; and it also accounts 
 for the vehemence of the clerical demand for the 
 removal of these impediments from what they assert 
 ought to be a perfectly uncontrolled liberty to teach 
 their own doctrines in their own way. 
 
 It will be recollected that tract No. 3, from which 
 I have copied several passages, ante page 23 to page 
 26, is entitled THE GPEAT QUESTION.” This 
 great question is thus stated at page 17 of No. 3. 
 
 “ XVI. — The great question. 
 
 “ There is a great thought — a great question. It is the greatest 
 of all questions — the question of questions. Listen to the great 
 (juestion. This, then, is the great question ; Almighty God has 
 created you. He has given you a body, and an immortal soul, 
 redeemed with the blood of Jesus Christ. You live in this world 
 for a few short years, then you pass away, and nobody sees you 
 any more. Why, then, did God create you ? Why did he put 
 you in this world % What are you for?” (Xo. 3, page 17.) 
 
 In the preliminary discourse with which Cardinal 
 Cullen edified the Commissioners on the 22nd 
 
 E 2 
 
68 
 
 February, 1869, on the importance of early religious 
 education, he thus adverted to this great question : — 
 
 “ The importance of religious training is a necessary consequence 
 of the fall of man. Cliildren come into the world without any 
 knowledge, and quite helpless, and they remain so for many years, 
 and unless they be properly instructed they ^\t. 11 not understand 
 for what end they have been created, nor will they know what 
 course they ought to pursue in this world, in order to attain that 
 end.” (Evidence, Vol. 4, p. 1,177, question 2,687.) 
 
 This is another statement of the GREAT QUES- 
 TION, differino' in words, but agfreeinof in substance 
 with that in tract No. 3. 
 
 After perusing the ten tracts, and the pastoral of 
 the Cardinal and archbishops and bishops, I can see 
 no other answer to this great question, if the doc- 
 trine contained in the tracts be true, and if the 
 demands expressed in the pastoral be just and reason- 
 able, except this, viz., that the children and their 
 parents were created for the priests ! This, it appears 
 to me, is the answer which the Pope and the priests 
 have worked out for themselves, and direct all their 
 energies to impress on their disciples, which cannot 
 be effectually done if not commenced in early infancy. 
 
 In the encyclical letter of Pius VII., quoted in the 
 pastoral at page 8, his Holiness thus instructs the 
 clergy 
 
 “ Suffer not, tlien, venerable brethren, the children of this world 
 to be more prudent, in this respect, than the chilch’en of light. 
 Examine, therefore, with the greatest attention, to what m anner 
 o f persons i s confided the education of children, and of young men in 
 the c ollege s and seminaries; of what* sort are the instructions given 
 them, what sort of schools exist among you, of what sort are the 
 teachers in lyceums ? Examine into all this with the greatest care, 
 sound everything, let nothing escape your vigilant eye ; keep off, 
 repulse the ravening w^olves that seek to devour these innocent 
 lambs ; drive out of the sheepfold those w’hich have gotten in, re- 
 move them as soon as can be, for such is the power which has been 
 given to you by the Lord for the edification of YOUR sheep.” 
 
69 
 
 Accordingly the. pastoral now deiiiands tliese lambs 
 as the property of the priests, hy riylit divine, being 
 the progeny of their own sheep; and their first resolu- 
 tion demands power to remove what they may think 
 objectionable books, and al] teachers and ins 2 )ectors 
 except Roman Catholics; no human authority having 
 any right (as they audaciously assert,) to interfere 
 with them in the treatment and management of 
 their own flock. 
 
 They know well that unless the doctrines pro- 
 pounded in these books be forcibly impressed upon 
 the infant mind while it is, like soft wax, capable of 
 receiving any impression, it would be hoj^eless to 
 attempt the propagation of them in rational intellects 
 of natural and unfettered growth. 
 
 In 1811, the ‘^Children of this world'' formed a 
 voluntary association for promoting the education of 
 the poor in Ireland, and were succeeding beyond 
 their most sanguine hopes, when the Government, 
 in 1814, became ambitious of sharing the credit of 
 so humane, and so truly patriotic a design, and inter- 
 vened with a donation of £6,980. How this resulted 
 in the establishment of the National schools in 1832, 
 is historically traced in the third chapter of my book 
 
 Ireland in 1868;” and the conclusion is there arrived 
 at, that if some system, wdiolly confined to secular 
 instruction, - cannot be made acceptable to Irish 
 parents of all creeds, if a combination of religious 
 instruction is held to be indispensable, then State 
 schools are doomed, in Ireland; to be a national 
 calamity, an enduring subject of angry and bitter 
 controversy, and a perennial source of agitation and 
 
70 
 
 animosity, much more obstructive of progress, and 
 moral, and material improvement, than any probable 
 amount of ignorance, consequent on the absence of 
 State schools, could possibly be.” 
 
 The agitation thus anticipated has culminated in 
 the battle now about to be foimht between the 
 
 O 
 
 Children of Light ” (viz., the Roman Catholic 
 priests) and the “ Children of this world,” and this 
 means all who loill not passivehj accept ivhat the 
 Roman Catholic Church teaches, as set forth in the 
 ten tracts and in the programme of the Christian 
 Brothers’ schools. 
 
 Three objects now float on the agitated surface 
 of the Irisli political sea — Denomixatioxal Schools 
 — Home Rule — and Vote by Ballot. The priests 
 are navigating the school question, unaided by the 
 laity ; the laity conduct home rule, unaided by the 
 priests ; and vote by ballot is allowed, by both these 
 parties, to drift on to its destined port, upon the 
 current of ministerial influence and power. In vain 
 the priests are goading their congregations to help 
 them in their agitation for the schools ; while they, 
 themselves, turn a deaf ear to the solicitations and 
 reproaches of the Fenians and agitators for home rule. 
 
 The policy of the priests is easily explained — they 
 have the Ministry half pledged to comply with their 
 demand of the schools ; and they see, with character- 
 istic sagacity, that home rule is embarrassing to their 
 friends in power ; and is not yet ripe. They say to 
 it, what the first Napoleon said to the Empire, when 
 he was urged to assume it prematurely, viz., ^^That 
 pear is not ripe ijetC They, therefore, discountenance 
 
71 
 
 the pressure of that most embarrassing question on 
 the Ministry, ivJiile they are engaged in overcoming the 
 obstacles ivhich must he encountered on the school 
 question. 
 
 The leader of the priests is not a desperado, but a 
 cool, far-seeing, and hitherto successful ecclesiastic of 
 the medieval type. His policy is to bide his time ; 
 to concentrate his own forces on vulnerable points, 
 and to crush his opponents in detail. 
 
 While he and his subordinates have cautiously 
 abstained from giving help, or countenance to the 
 home rule sedition, they have equally refrained from 
 every expression which may hereafter bring upon 
 them the reproach of inconsistency, when {the school 
 question being happily settled) the home rule pear will 
 be ripe.''*' 
 
 In the meantime, they look upon the ballot as 
 an accomplished fact, and although they regard it as 
 a powerful arm for the battles yet to come, some of 
 them, whether ignorantly, or craftily, express appre- 
 hension of the effects of that measure on the influence 
 which they have, and which they prize, over the 
 minds of the voters. There is no foundation for their 
 fears, if any such fears exist. The ballot will enable 
 every voter to support whatever candidate he pleases ; 
 and adopting that “ most successful principle,” of 
 keeping his secret from brother and from son, so 
 clearly explained by the lleverend J. Hyan, he may 
 amuse his landlord, or his creditor, or his friend, 
 with promises before the election, and with signifi- 
 cant assurances after it ; and thus escape the resent- 
 ^ See Appendix at the end. 
 
72 
 
 ineiit of all, except the priest. The priest he cannot 
 escape — if he commits the mortal sin of voting 
 against the right man, he knows that at confession, 
 that sin will be clrao'o’ed out of him,” as the sin 
 was dragged out of the bad child, when on trial for 
 heaven or for hell, and ivill not he forgiven. 
 
 The ballot, therefore, is a desideratum for the 
 priests. If, with the proper use of the ballot, after 
 the schools shall have been conceded, the Irish con- 
 tingent on the field of party strife can be substan- 
 tially augmented, then will be the time to aid the 
 agitators of that question, and get home the Parlia- 
 ment to the Island of Saints. 
 
 The expulsion of obstinate Protestants from Ire- 
 land, and the conversion of Protestants in England, 
 are triumphs which no J esuit would hope for, or at- 
 tempt to accomplish in a year, or even in a genera- 
 tion. Such results must be attained in due time, 
 and by slow, insidious, and ostensibly constitutional 
 means. The Irish House of Commons, when they 
 obtain it, must be first well packed with subservient 
 members, who will easily become an overwhelming 
 majority, when free from the voices and the votes of 
 five hundred English and Scotch members. 
 
 The United Parliament has, by the Church Act, 
 and the Land Act, made two clear precedents for the 
 breach of national compacts, and the invasion of pri- 
 vate property. The case will be much clearer, and 
 the arguments much more cogent, for restoring Ire- 
 land to the Irish, than they were for confiscating the 
 Church property, and charging, hy an ex-post facto 
 laWy the property of Irish landlords with incum. 
 
73 
 
 brances for the benefit of tenants, which have been 
 variously estimated at a value of from fifteen millions 
 upwards. To come at the property of Irish Protest- 
 ants in this legal, g)eaceable, and constitutional 
 method, will require time and patience — two things 
 which the everlasting Church, and the far-seeing 
 Jesuits are always ready to bestow. 
 
 The conversion of the English Protestants is a work 
 to be accomplished by a different, and a still more 
 dilatory process. It must (as all changes of religion 
 have done), commence at the lowest stej) of the social 
 scale. The poor, whose ears will ever be open to 
 the doctrine of retribution in the world to come, are 
 the first to be persuaded. The young females, who 
 are destined to be the mothers of the next genera- 
 tion, are the most essential converts. Multitudes of 
 these are conveniently collected, sparingly fed, and 
 painfully worked, in the factories. Their probation- 
 ary sufferings and trials in this life, and the luxury, 
 wanton extravagance, and demonstrated insolence of 
 the rich, will make the evangel of sendiog them- 
 selves to heaven, and burying their rich oppressors 
 in hell — -both probable and palatable — which destiny 
 of the rich is graphically described in the extract from 
 No. 3, before copied at page 26. 
 
 It will not be difficult, although it may be tedious, 
 to introduce missionary and well-instructed fellow- 
 workers, to carry into practice the moral lesson 
 given in the story of the Poman Catholic girl who 
 converted the forty-nine Protestants. If, by the 
 concessions now expected, the demand for masses 
 and for emblems shall be indefinitely increased (as 
 
74 
 
 to a moral certainty it will be in a very few years), 
 there will be no difficulty in furnishing the young 
 missionary with arguments more persuasive and 
 effectual than w’ords, wdien dismissing her on the 
 holy mission, with the exhortation, Go, thou, my 
 pious child of the factory, and do likewise.” Great 
 and effectual will be the power of such missionaries 
 to persuade their fellow-workers that the Catholic 
 religion imist be the right one ! ! 
 
 I need not pursue this further — the course is an 
 obvious and a plain one, and the ministerial policy of 
 the present hour is directed to clear this course from 
 all impediments. The race is betv^een the teachers 
 of the doctrines in the ten tracts on which I have 
 commented (who call themselves the children of 
 light), and those children of this world who abhor 
 those doctrines, and also many of the higher orders 
 of Roman Catholics ivho have not adopted them, or 
 to whom they may never have been presented, in the 
 gross and hideous forms given to them for terrifying 
 the poor and the ignorant. 
 
 I find it difficult, if not impossible, to believe that 
 a large class of Roman Catholics, long and deservedly 
 respected, and justly claiming credit for a full mea- 
 sure of learning and intelligence, have accepted the 
 horrifying theology depicted in the tracts. 1 cannot 
 reconcile with my own knowledge and observation 
 of the Roman Catholic judges on the Irish bench, 
 the notion that any one of them was ever persuaded 
 to regard as Divine justice, tempered with mercy, 
 the infliction of never-ending torment on the child 
 in the redliot oven, and on the other victims de- 
 
scribed in these tracts. Any one who could believe 
 that the child was mercifidly removed from this 
 world, and justly shut up for ever and ever in a red 
 hot oven, would be disqualified for the seat of justice, 
 unless where a savage tool was required to execute 
 the sentence of a priestly inquisition. 
 
 I, therefore, must believe, that many, very many 
 Koman Catholics, stand amongst the children of this 
 world, in the battle now to be fousfht with the chil- 
 dren of light. They may shrink from taking an 
 active part in it ; but where the battle is to decide 
 whether the soft and passive minds of their children 
 are to be subjected, icitliout jyrotection or control, to 
 such impressions as the priests are prepared to make 
 upon them, I can have no doubt, that the respected 
 Eoman Catholics of whom I speak, desire, in their 
 hearts, that the priests may be defeated, and that 
 the rising and the future generations, in these islands, 
 may be protected from the debasing impressions, and 
 demoralizing despotism with which they are now 
 menaced. 
 
 The battle of which I speak is not, like the battle 
 of Dorking, an imaginary event, it is approaching, it 
 is inevitable, it involves the preservation or the loss 
 of everything worth living for in this world. Let 
 the priests have schools in which to teach, and by 
 oral lesso7is, to supplement the doctrines which they 
 have been bold enough to print — give to these schools 
 the prestige attached to an institution of the State — 
 separate their pupils from dissenting companions, 
 segregate these dissenters, and expose them in groups, 
 some of which will be despicably small, to be pointed 
 
7G 
 
 at, as the destined prey of the countless millions of 
 devils which are represented as waiting impatiently 
 with claws of fire, to seize them when they die. The 
 moment the act, which is to accomplish all this shall 
 receive the royal assent, the battle will not be far 
 distant, in which the children of this life, thus de- 
 feated in the approaching contest, will have to fight — 
 not with the tongue or the pen, but with the cannon 
 and the sword — not for their property, their firesides, 
 and their liberty, but for their lives ! ! !'“ 
 
 I therefore say to all, whether Protestants, Pres- 
 byterians, or Poman Catholics, who would not send 
 their children to the priests’ schools, to learn the 
 terrifying theology which they claim a right to teach, 
 that the time has come, and the battle is at hand, 
 in which it must be decided whether your children, 
 and your childrens’ children, are to be the religious 
 and rationally adoring worshippers of an Almighty, 
 whose attributes are infinite wisdom — inexhaustible 
 goodness and mercy — boundless benevolence — and 
 forbearing grace and indulgence to the frailties of 
 his fallen creatures — or whether they are to be the 
 benighted, quailing, terrified, and conscience-stricken 
 slaves of a crafty and mendacious priesthood. These 
 are the issues to be decided in this battle of the 'priests, 
 which must now be fought, and which must decide 
 tremendous issues — tremendous even when com- 
 pared with those involved in the imaginary battle 
 of Dorking, which probably never will come, but the 
 possibility of which fully justified the writer of that 
 
 * See the Speech of the Hev. Mr. Troy, at the end of the 
 Appendix, post page 91. 
 
77 
 
 interesting fiction in raising a warning voice to rouse 
 Iris countrymen from too heedless a security. 
 
 The Commissioners appointed in 1824 having 
 failed in their eftbrts to compile a manual of extracts 
 from the Bible, which the clergy of the different sects 
 would accept as a proper book for the use of chddren 
 professing any form of Christianity, and, having made 
 their final report in 1827, the Government took four 
 years to consider what was to be done to overcome 
 this difficulty in combining religious with temporal 
 instruction in mixed schools, and the National school 
 system was the result of their deliberations. 
 
 The great majority of the then established clergy 
 condemned this system, because it did not compel 
 the children to read the Bible ; and many of them, 
 in an evil hour, resolved to reject it, and to take no 
 part in carrying it into effect. The Boman Catholic 
 clergy took better counsel under the guidance of the 
 Ptoman Catholic Archbishop of Dublin of that time, 
 whose memory is, and will for generations, be justly 
 respected by the friends of toleration and of Christian 
 charity, and they accepted the part assigned to them 
 in the governing body of this new institution. How 
 this has ended in making the Boman Catholic clergy 
 dominant, and letting all power and influence slip 
 from the hands of the Protestant Episcopal clergy is 
 painfully known to all the friends of combined reli- 
 gious and temporal instruction in mixed schools ; 
 and this short-sighted policy has produced the pre- 
 sent mischievous demand for denominational schools, 
 as the inevitable consequence of clerical discord. 
 
 In his voluminous quotations to the Commissioners, 
 on the 22nd February, 1869, in condemnation of 
 
78 
 
 mixed schools, and in favour of denominational 
 schools, Cardinal Cullen read a letter of the Bishop 
 of Liege written in September, 1868, in which is the 
 following passage, commenting on the programme of 
 a mixed school, which had been proposed by some 
 benevolent ladies, and which they were about to es- 
 tablish in Liege ; as the Cardinal said, Pretty much 
 on the principles of our National system — 
 
 “ Examine more closely (wites the bishop) what your pro- 
 gramme sets forth. You undertake to teach in your school, or to 
 cause to be taught there, at your expense, the true faith, heresy, 
 and even infidelity ; you bind yourselves to place truth and error 
 on a perfect equality ; you promise to welcome in your schools, 
 with equal favour, all that God, the Sovereign Tinth, has revealed, 
 and commanded us to believe, and all that the Spirit of Lies has 
 substituted in place of the word and institutions of God ; you 
 wish, as the Scripture says, to serve two masters, between whom 
 there is an irreconcilable opposition ; and, in your schools, to glorify 
 at once Christ and Belial !” 
 
 In the Tract No. 9, entitled the Terrible Judg- 
 ment and the Bad Child,” from which I made some 
 extracts, ante pages 20 and 21, the sentence pro- 
 nounced upon the CHILD is at page 22-23, in the 
 following words : — 
 
 “ Depart from me, wicked child. Go away from me. You 
 shall never see my face any more. You have chosen, during your 
 lifetime, to obey the devil, rather than obey me. Therefore, with 
 the devil you shall be tormented in Hell. The smoke of your 
 torments shall rise up before me night and day. Y our painful cries 
 shall come up to me for ever and ever. But I will never listen to 
 them. And now you shall have, not a blessing, but a curse from 
 God, who created you, wicked child ! The curse of God, the 
 Father Almighty, who made you, is upon you. I am God the 
 Son, my curse is upon you. The curse of the Holy Ghost, who 
 sanctified you, is upon you. The curse of every creature is upon 
 you, because you have disobeyed God your Creator. — Gen. xxvii. — 
 When Esau heard his fathers ivords he roared out with a great cry^ 
 and. great indignation^ 
 
 . Then follows Sec. XXVI — The Stricken Child,” 
 which is shattered by this sentence, and compared 
 to a tree shattered in a moment by lightning. Then 
 
79 
 
 it sees the devils, thousands and millions of them, 
 &c., as copied ante page 21, ^'stretching out their 
 great claws of fire to get hold of it,” &c. 
 
 I should wish to ask the Bishop of Liege, after 
 reading to him this trial of the child (if he has not 
 read it before) and the sentence above copied, and 
 the still more horrifying execution of that sentence 
 (which fills three pages and a half of this tract from 
 page 22 to 26), and, had I been one of the Commis- 
 sioners, I most certainly would have asked Cardinal 
 Cullen (who, I presume, is familiar with this juvenile 
 library, being one of the superiors by whose permis- 
 sion it is to be read to children in Sunday and other 
 schools, and at the firesides of their humble homes, 
 by their poor and deluded parents), whether this 
 trial and the sentence and the execution, if read, 
 suppose to one of our judges here on earth — sup- 
 pose to Lord Hale, if he were alive (although he, in 
 his love of JUSTICE, pronounced a sentence of death 
 by fire upon poor old women, calling them witches), 
 yet even to him if the question were put (without 
 informing him who that powerful spiritual Judge 
 was who presided at that trial, and pronounced that 
 sentence), and he was requested to answer and to 
 say who and what that spiritual judge was — whether 
 Belial, the last and filthiest of Satan’s chiefs, or 
 Moloch, the first of them, 
 
 “ Horrid King besmeared with blood 
 
 Of human sacrifice, and parents’ tears.” 
 
 OB CHRIST!!! the patient, the gentle, the all-per- 
 fect, suffering Lamb — who even when subject to the 
 frailty of our nature was never angry — who, in the 
 agony which he came to suffer for us, healed the 
 
80 
 
 wound which an angry disciple had inflicted on his 
 enemy — who in his love for children, and his benevo- 
 lent recognition of the innocence which belonsfs 
 to, and is necessarily incidental to their tender years, 
 rebuked his disciples for obstructing the approach 
 of a child to the lovino’ embrace and outstretched 
 
 O 
 
 arms of Him, the infinitely benevolent Kedeemer ! ! 
 
 I should also ask the Cardinal, to refer me to any 
 passage, in any one of the four Gospels (which place 
 before us, as in a picture, the acts and the words of 
 that Eedeemer, while he sojourned on earth and 
 participated in the weakness of our nature, having 
 voluntarily subjected his will to the temptation of 
 the passions, and the frailties of poor fallen Man), from 
 which passage of the Gospels he draws the conclusion 
 that the narration in this tract of that trial — that 
 sentence — and that execution is a part of what God, 
 the Sovereign Truth,” has revealed, and commanded 
 us to believe ; or whether the whole story of that 
 trial, and the savage sentence, and diabolical execu- 
 tion which followed, wmre not an invention of the 
 Spirit of Lies, substituted in place of the word and 
 institutions of God ! ! And I should ask whether it 
 was not to prevent the children from making this 
 discovery that they and their parents were forbidden 
 to read these Gospels. 
 
 I should have further asked the Cardinal to point 
 out to me in these ten penny volumes, printed, cir- 
 culated, and, with coercive authority, and jyermissu 
 superiorum, pre ssed as Gospel t ruth upon the atten- 
 tion of the ignorant and credulous poor, and upon 
 the waxen minds of their infant children, so much 
 as one of the multitudinous stories which they con- 
 
81 
 
 tain, that does not, seJf-evidenthjj come from the 
 
 I should probably have read to the Cardinal the 
 curses which the earthly Roman Catholic priests are 
 supposed to pronounce upon those whom they ex- 
 communicate in this life, viz., May the Father who 
 created man, curse you ! May the Son who suffered 
 for us, curse you ! May the Holy Ghost who was 
 given to us in baptism, curse you ! ” All the other 
 curses in the excommunication are compendiously 
 expressed on the child by the words, '' The curse of 
 evevjj creature is upon you.” And I should ask the 
 Cardinal if he did not believe that Christ was made 
 to address the child in the language of the priests ? 
 And I should also ask his Eminence for any good 
 reason why I shou ld not believe that the Spirit of 
 Lies, with whom the Bishop of Liege appears to be 
 so fam iliar, has become incarnate in the fabricators 
 of such books as these — in the high priests who give 
 permission to print and circulate them amongst the 
 poor and t he ignorant, and by them to ^ch poor 
 defenceless childr en how murder may be committed 
 and eternal punishment avoided — and in the low 
 priests who teach them how to evade temporal pun- 
 ishment for the same crime ? 
 
 And I should ask a reason why a paternal govern- 
 ment (suppose we had one) should not rescue the 
 children who are now attending the 4000 schools of 
 which the priests are the patrons and the managers? 
 
 Touching his own belief of the stories and the 
 doctrine in these books, I should have asked : Pray, 
 Cardinal, do you believe that St. Catherine was 
 
 F 
 
82 
 
 taken to purgatory, and there saw the soul of Brid- 
 get in the flames, as related in this book ? I pre- 
 sume he would answer yes, el^e the book must 
 be given up as a fabrication of the Spirit of Lies, 
 which, permissu sup eriorum of the only true Church, 
 has been substituted in place of the word and insti- 
 tutions of God. Then I would ask how it hap- 
 pened, having confessed, and got a bsolution , and 
 the virtue and the poivev of the blood of Jesus at 
 that moment having come into her soul, and her sins 
 having gone aivay as darkness goes away ivhen the light 
 comes,'' as related at page 8 of the same book. No. 3, 
 that her soul did not go straight to heaven when she 
 died, without suffering in pu rgatory ? I cannot con- 
 ceive any answer to this question, unless what may be 
 derived from page 20 of No. 8, before copied at page 
 59, viz. : Bridget should have got one of the emblems, 
 with a plenary indulgence, which alone has that virtue 
 of sending a soul straight to heaven ; and she did 
 attempt to get it, viz., a crucifix blessed for the 
 stations," but she made a mistake — for in holding the 
 cross in her hand, as directed in No. 8, she mis- 
 counted on her beads, and she said the Our Father 
 and Hail Mary only thirteen times, whereas, to gain 
 fully the plenary indulgence, she should have said 
 them fourteen times !” That she had not, therefore, 
 gained, fidly, the plenary indulgence, and had to 
 suffer in purgatory. He might have added, that the 
 danger of such mistakes is one of the reasons why 
 the clergy insist on the emblems as a part (like the 
 books) of school essentials, in order that children 
 may b e taught, and made to practice, and become 
 
83 
 
 ex'^ert in using them, and obtaining the plenary 
 indulgence which they give, when thus sldl fully 
 handled, but not otherwise. By such orthodox 
 manipulation of the emblems they will also he doing 
 much during school hours to sanctify themselves.” 
 
 Had I asked the question, and got this plainly 
 orthodox answer, according to the theology in these 
 boohs, the Cardinal might have administered a re- 
 buke, and advised me to turn Catholic, and learn the 
 MYSTERIES of the only true religion, before I 
 presume to ask such questions. Standing corrected, 
 and admitting that a conclusive answer had been 
 given to my question ; and grateful for the advice, 
 I could only bow, and say, 
 
 DU te, sanctissime, Demqiie 
 Verum ob consilium, donentf_ &c. 
 
 And I should withdraw the question, to which the 
 book furnishes such a triumphant answer!! 
 
 To question 26 , 609 , vol. 3 , page 1,183 of the evi- 
 dence, Cardinal Cullen categorically declared that 
 nothing now will satisfy the Catholic body but de- 
 nominational model and training schools. To ques- 
 tion 26,612 he objected even to mixed agricultural 
 schools, because they cost a great deal of money, 
 and still more because they are accompanied with all 
 the evils of Quixed schools. That they (the clergy) 
 objected to them on religious grounds, as well as 
 economical grounds.” The ground of this religious 
 objection appears in his answers to questions 26,602 
 and 26 , 610 , and it deserves peculiar attention. His 
 answer to question 26,602 is : — 
 
 Taking the question abstractedly, it is possilde that a master 
 might teach the children of a religion different from his own witli- 
 
84 
 
 out interfering with their tenets ; but, in ] >ractice, this interference 
 generally takes place, even where it is not intended. If the Pro- 
 testant teacher be a respectable man, if he be looked up to and 
 esteemed by the children, they will persuade themselves that every- 
 thing he holds is right. Seeing that he does not go to mass on 
 Sunday, a child will say, ‘ Why shoidd I go to mass, when the 
 master does not go V Hearing that he does not go to confession, 
 or fast, another will say, ‘ Why should I be compelled to go to 
 confession, why should I fast when the master, who is so good a 
 man, disregards such things V The same will happen to Protest- 
 ant children in regard to a Catholic master. Hence, I think it 
 practically impossible that a teacher of one religion can instruct 
 the children of another religion without producing an effect upon 
 them.” 
 
 He was asked, by question 26,610, what his view 
 was of the scheme that was sketched out by Mr. C. 
 Fortescue’s letter two years ago. After stating what 
 he remembered of that scheme, viz., that Protestants 
 and Catholics should be boarded and lodged in sepa- 
 rate houses, and meet only at lectures, he said : — 
 
 ‘‘ That part of the project would not be satisfactory ; it retains 
 all the evils of the mixed system ; everything would tend to make 
 the pupils believe that one religion is as good as another, and thus 
 religious indefferentism would be encoui-aged.” 
 
 From these answers, and from many other parts of 
 his evidence, it clearly appears that nothing will 
 satisfy him and the Poman Catholic clergy short of 
 barring out all social intercourse, /o?" any 
 between Protestants and Catholics, and he bases the 
 evil of such intercourse upon the opportunity which 
 it gives to them of seeing and hnowing that Protest- 
 ants may be, and actually are, respectable men who 
 may be looked up to,” and ^'esteemed” by Poman 
 Catholics, notwithstanding any prejudices that may 
 have been created against them by the teachers of 
 the Poman Catholic religion. 
 
 It is impossible, with any colour of truth, to deny 
 
85 
 
 that, for all the purposes of social life, this, is a sen- 
 tence of excommunication against all who will not 
 accept the Roman Catholic doctrines. The same 
 j^rinciple which forbids the children to mix and have 
 social intercourse in schools — even agricultural 
 schools — will forbid their parents, and their kindred, 
 and all others of dissenting creeds, from mixing or ^ 
 associating, or having intercourse or dealings of ang | 
 kind with each other, for fear of letting Roman Catho- 
 lics see, and by actual dealings hioiv, that people of . 
 other creeds may be, because they see and experience 
 that such dissenters are, in fact, respectable and I 
 estimable men ! ! ! 
 
 Establish State schools in which this principle is to 
 be inculcated and indelibly impressed upon the minds 
 of children, before reason and experience can enable 
 them to see or understand the fiendish atrocity of it, 
 and in a very few years, barely sufficient for the 
 growth to maturity of the first classes who will 
 attend these schools, it will be inevitably neces- 
 sary that one or other of these irreconcilable sects 
 of fellow-creatures must expel the other from the 
 country, or be itself expelled. 
 
 While children mix in the schools, the instinct of 
 their social nature will irresistibly prompt them to 
 form affectionate alliances, and they will do so with- 
 out thinking or remembering or caring for differences 
 in creed. It will be in vain to malign their associates 
 by such inventions as the Catholic wife who was 
 frightened to death by her Protestant husband, or by 
 such a monstrous fabrication as the story of the 
 factory girls. But keep the children of one creed 
 
86 
 
 from all intercourse with those of a different creed, 
 and the Spirit of Lies will go actively to his diabolical 
 work, and we shall soon see the Roman Catholic 
 children, as they come and go to school, observing how 
 the wind blows, that they may take the weather- 
 gage of the thousands and millions of devils, which 
 the books already in print, and other more heinous 
 fabrications, rising in atrocity to the new occasion, 
 will teach them, and even make them imagine, that 
 they see and hear surrounding the excommunicated 
 Protestant children. 
 
 Have we passed the middle of the nineteenth cen- 
 tury ! or have we relapsed to the thirteenth ! 
 when we see seventy-two pages of what is called 
 evidence taken from the lips of this Cardinal witness, 
 and printed at the expense of the people, by grave 
 men, acting under a Royal Commission, wdien not 
 one borne question was put to this High Priest, calcu- 
 lated to unmask the dark conspiracy for the extinc- 
 tion of human reason, the suppression of the milk of 
 human kindness, and the propagation of hatred, 
 wicked bigotry, and social disruption, by the process 
 of education in State schools ! ! schools to be sup- 
 ported at the expense of Protestants, from which 
 Protestant children and Protestant teachers must be 
 excluded, to prevent the Roman Catholic children 
 from being corrupted by seeing and observing the 
 good conduct and virtuous life of their fellow- 
 subjects ! ! ! 
 
 Assuredly these medieval ecclesiastics, who have 
 suddenly risen upon us from the thirteenth century, 
 must have inexpressible contempt for their Protest- 
 
87 
 
 ant accomplices in the conspiracy to promote this 
 disruption of society, whether these accomplices be 
 right honourable, or honourable, or not honourable at 
 all ! ! whom these insolent priests — high and low — are 
 using as a cat’s paw, tirer les marrons du feu.'^ 
 I have now pointed out the veritable Upas tree, 
 by whose baleful influence every wholesome plant is 
 blasted or stunted in its growth. 
 
 It happened, in Ireland, that a poor man was tor- 
 mented by a raging tooth, and he went to his neigh- 
 bour, the blacksmith, who was also a professing 
 dentist, to have the hollow tooth extracted. Nothing 
 loath, the blacksmith went to work, and he pulled out 
 a tooth. The agonized patient exclaimed, Ara, Bill, 
 you have pulled out the wrong tooth, and, in troth, 
 it was one of the best I had !” Bill, at once, sum- 
 moned to the rescue his native wit, and calmly said, 
 Well ! and shure ar’nt we clearing the way to the 
 right one V I hope our Solicitor-General for Ireland 
 will prompt his English leader — the professino- 
 extirpator of the Upas tree — to give an equally 
 consoling answer to the agonized patient which is 
 now enduring the operations he is rashly perform- 
 ing upon her. 
 
 Having raised my voice, without a motive, other 
 than a goading sense of duty — a duty which it is 
 impossible to think a pleasing duty, and which, 
 in the present state of Ireland, no one can be 
 so stolid as not to perceive the danger of perform- 
 ing, it may happen, and probably will happen, that 
 what I have written in this pamphlet will provoke 
 ^ See Appendix. 
 
88 
 
 calumny. Certain it is that I shall never read the 
 commentaries upon it, unless my special attention 
 be called to some of them by a kind and officious 
 friend. I must, therefore, for protection rely upon 
 the reputation, such as it is, which thirty years of 
 forensic life, and over ten years in the public dis- 
 charge of official duties, have earned for me. 
 
 Against attacks of another sort I have no defence, 
 nor has any man in Ireland, who becomes obnoxious 
 to the disturbers of the public peace. It is but a 
 few days since a dragoon — armed cap-a-'pie^ mounted 
 on a charger — preceded and followed by his troop, 
 and by 200 policemen, all mounted and armed, and 
 having a brazen helmet on his heady was struck with a 
 boulder stone, which fractured his skull, while escort- 
 ing through one of the leading streets a prisoner on 
 trial for the crime of shooting a police detective officer 
 in another of our leading streets, and in open day ! I 
 
 Is it not time for every man who is yet alive, and 
 who has anything to lose, to get off the night-mare 
 which paralyzes him, and to speak out — to get upon 
 his feet — and to strike in defence of his liberty, his 
 projDerty, and his life ! ! 
 
89 
 
 APPENDIX. 
 
 [Seepage 71-7G, and pp. 8G and 87.] 
 
 The first edition of this pamphlet (1,000 copies) was 
 delivered by the printer to the publishers on Saturday, 80th 
 December, and was not advertised otherwise than by a hand- 
 bill on publishers’ counter. The address of Dr. Moriarty, 
 R. C. Bishop of Kerry, to the people of that county, was 
 noticed in the Dublin newspapers, on Thursday, the 11th 
 J anuary. My analysis of the policy of the R. C. priests was, 
 therefore, printed before the address was published, and the 
 address must have been written before the Bishop could have 
 seen the pamphlet. This address has been lauded by the 
 London Times as a spirited clerical condemnation of Home 
 Rule agitation. I am not aware that any other member of 
 the R. C. hierarchy has so strongly expressed his disapproba- 
 tion of that movement as the R. C. Bishop of Kerry has done 
 in this address, which, therefore, may be taken as the most 
 explicit pledge yet given of their opposition to this demand 
 of Home Rule. The following are the only propositions 
 which express the condemnation of it, in Dr. Moriarty ’s 
 address : — 
 
 “ Using then that liberty, which we concede to you and others, 
 of judging for yourselves, and feeling that our silence may be con- 
 strued into an agreement with those whose opinions have been 
 made known through the public press, we give you, as our most 
 assured conviction, that the agitation for what is called Home Rule 
 is, in the present circumstances of the country, one of the most 
 mischievous movements to which you have been ever urged or 
 excited.” 
 
 After animadverting on the so-called popular press, and 
 the men by whom he believes the people are deluded, he 
 writes : — 
 
 “ Do not trust them. A few of the leaders are favouring this 
 agitation, in order to embarrass the present government. They 
 wish to take revenge for the disestablishment of the Protestant 
 Church, for the equality to which Mr. Gladstone’s government has 
 raised you. As soon as a Tory government comes in, there will be 
 an end of Home Rule for them. As to those who promise to 
 support the measure in Parliament, the redemption of their pledge 
 
 G 
 
90 
 
 will cost them little. A motion will be made by some honourable 
 member. They will vote, if there happen to be a division, and there 
 will be an end of it. We believe that this agitation must tie the 
 hands and paralyse the power of those who have laboured so 
 effectually to serve you ; who have torn down an old and offensive 
 ascendency ; who have given to the tenant-farmers rights beyond 
 what O’Connell used to claim for them ; who are anxious to retain 
 power, only that they may complete the work of beneficial legisla- 
 tion We would humbly pray you to wait a little. 
 
 Let us have a few more good measures from the Imperial Parlia- 
 ment before we part with it ; before Ave try this future Parliament 
 of yours, of which we know neither the constitution nor the spirit. 
 Let us have the education question settled. If your members go 
 to Westminster pledged to a policy of disruption, may not the 
 Minister consider himself released from his pledges ? May he not 
 fairly abandon an attempt which, in the face of a Secularist opposi- < 
 tion, you will have rendered fruitless.” 
 
 “ The time may come Avhen the old feud between Catholic and 
 Protestant shall haA^e been forgotten in religious equality ; when a 
 common interest, well understood, shall have obliterated the antag- 
 onism betAveen landlord and tenant ; when Ireland shall have a 
 united people, north and south ; but in her present state of dis- 
 union self-government could only be a war of faction and of class.” 
 
 Had I this address before me Avhen I was writing my 
 analysis of the priestly policy of the present hour, it is obvious 
 that it would not have suggested one iota of alteration in my 
 Anew of it, being, in express terms, a corroboration of Avhat I 
 have stated to be the policy of the priests. Had the Bishop 
 read my statement of their policy before he wrote his address 
 would he have published this corroboration of it ? Had he 
 read vdiat I had Avritten, he could not fail to see that his 
 address was open to this construction, Avhich no candid man 
 can deny is the true meaning of it, xiz. — The Home Buie agi- 
 tation is mischievous, Li the present circumstances of the- 
 country, although it may be, and probably will be our legi- 
 timate game Avhen we get these present circumstances 
 changed, as we, the priests, are labouring to do, Avith the 
 help of the present Ministry. Some of those Avho are noAv 
 urging you to grasp at this pear, Avhich is not yet ripe, only 
 want to put out our allies, and to get in the Tories, and 
 then your Home Rule is at an end. To press for it now 
 Avdll tie the hands and paralyse the power of our friends, 
 Avho haA^e done so much for us. Let them finish our tvork, 
 before you embarrass them. I pray you wait a little 
 — let us have a feiu more of the chestnuts out of the fire, 
 before voe release the cat's paw. Do not press for this Par- 
 liament of yours, lintil we get ourselves properly levelled up. 
 
91 
 
 and the owners ofj)ropevty and the Protestants duly levelled, 
 down, and thus forced into unanimity ivith us, to save 
 themselves from f urther spoliation hy the Imperial Parlia- 
 ment, which we can then join you in abusing. Let us get 
 this education question settled, hy which priestly power, 
 which has already done so much for you, will he largely 
 increased, before you release the Minister from the pledge 
 which he has given to us. Then the time not only may, hut 
 certainly will come, ivhen we can join in your agitation 
 with an assurance of success. 
 
 In the Express of the 9th of January a report by telegram 
 appeared of a meeting at Skibbereen, at wliich the Roman 
 Catholic Bishop of Ross presided, and resolutions were carried 
 approving of the educational programme adopted by the 
 Roman Catholic bishops, and demanding a redistribution of 
 the public moneys expended on educational establishments 
 in Ireland. The Bishop is reported to have stated — 
 
 “ That if the demands of the Roman Catholics of Ireland were 
 refused, they would prove to the British Parliament, that had so 
 often deceived them, that there was in the country the matei'ial of 
 an Irish Parliament.” 
 
 Here is an express threat that if the schools were not 
 conceded the Home Rule agitation would be carried on to a 
 decisive issue ; and not a word was said by the Bishop, 
 promising that it would be dropped, if the schools were con- 
 ceded. The report states that the other speakers generally 
 expressed approval of Home Rule, and it does not appear 
 that the Bishop, as Chairman, dissented from them. It states 
 that — 
 
 “ A Rev. Mr. Troy attacked the Land Act, which he said was 
 effectual only in mulcting the tenants. Referring to the declara- 
 tion of the Marquis of Hartington on Irish education, he said the 
 Marquis was the descendant of the man that had hanged the pious 
 Bishoj) of Ross, near Macroom. If the descendant of that man 
 tried to hang a Bishop of Ross to-day, he would be hanged himself. 
 The present landlords of Ireland, who had obtained their lands by 
 murder, would yet, the speaker declared, be labourers on the lands, 
 and the latter would return to their former owners.” 
 
 This priest thus plainly threatens such a battle for pro- 
 perty and life as that alluded to at page 76, and his bishop 
 in the chair did not call him to order ! His insolent language, 
 applied to the Marquis of Hartington (disgusting as it is to 
 every friend of law and order), corroborates my assertion at 
 page 86, that “these ecclesiastics must have inexpressible con- 
 tempt for their Protestant accomplices.” The gross and vul- 
 gar impudence with which he insinuated that the ancestor of 
 
92 
 
 the Marquis obtained his lands by murdering a pious bishop, 
 and talked of hanging the Marquis himself, was not rebuked 
 by his bishop in the chair, but heard as if quite in order, 
 and probably applauded by the crowd. A member of par- 
 liament was present, and addressed the meeting, after this 
 language was spoken, and no disapprobation of it is re- 
 ported. Is the statement too strong at page 87, that “ these 
 insolent priests, high and low, are using their Protestant ac- 
 complices as a cat’s paw”? The assurance that the Govern- 
 ment would firmly refuse to concede what the priests had 
 demanded, by which the lovers of peace and order had been, 
 in some degree, re-assured, was evidently regarded by this 
 priest as a struggle of the cat to extricate his paw, which 
 provoked a plainly implied threat that the effort to save the 
 paw might endanger the neck. 
 
 That a member of parliament who has supported the 
 Government should hear this insolent language, and let it 
 pass without rebuke, is the strongest illustration of the 
 bondage in which those are held, whose seats depend on the 
 will of the priests. This language, with many other speeches 
 as bad, has gone forth on the wings of the press, and has not 
 drawn down any reproof from the Cardinal, and may, there- 
 fore, be fairly presumed to have been uttered permissic 
 superiorum, like the books on which I have commented. 
 
 In the face of this daring prophecy of revolution by (I 
 hope I may call him), this KASH priest, expressed to a 
 deluded crowd of the labourers, to whom he promises the 
 lands of present owners, with the flattering prospect of 
 having these owners for slaves to cultivate them, and 
 regarding the fact that this prophecy is addressed to an 
 assenting R. C. bishop' in the chair, and heard by one of the 
 priestly contingent in the House of Commons, announcing 
 what is expected as a part of the work cut out for them, the 
 owners of property and lovers of peace most assuredly have 
 something in the future to fear, and much, in the present, 
 to suffer from that worst of political evils — an imperiuon in 
 imperio, aggravated by the truckling of legitimate power to 
 an usurpation which it is its first duty to resist and to 
 punish. 
 
 In the face of modern Europe, the English Nation must 
 surely be proud of the alliance between the Queen’s Minis- 
 ters and the Roman Cardinal and his subordinate priests in 
 Ireland, who can, in this fashion, use, and, in these terms, 
 speak of the Government of the country ! ! 
 

 
 
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