Various
Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 64, No. 397, November 1848
One of the arguments most commonly urged by those who advocate this system of endowment, is, we think, both erroneous in its assumption and weak in its application. They maintain that the Catholic clergy, if in the pay of the state, would have less power over the peasantry of Ireland than at present. Is that altogether a state of matters which it would be desirable to bring about? Would it be well to sap the influence of this moral police? There is not a Roman Catholic priest in Ireland at this moment who does not know, that were he to give open countenance to rebellion, he would not only be amenable to the laws of his country, but, under a firm executive government, would be selected as the earliest example. The situation of Ireland is such, that we can never calculate upon the loyalty of a large portion of its population. Centuries have rolled by, and still the Celtic race persist in being aliens from our own. We cannot tame them, cannot cultivate them, cannot win their hearts by any imaginable sacrifice. They persist in their cry of Ireland for the Irish, and will not see that the thing is as impossible as the re-establishment of the Saxon heptarchy, and, were it possible, would be tantamount to delivering them over to the horrors of a barbarian war. It is no use disguising the fact – we must deal with men as they are; and who can doubt that there does exist a great amount of rooted disaffection among the peasantry of Ireland? And now it is seriously proposed to cure that disaffection, by taking means calculated to weaken the influence of the priesthood over the peasantry! In other words, to give up the only hostages we hold, and leave the most turbulent and uneducated population of Europe, freed even from religious control, to be worked up to frenzy by the first lay demagogue who has the art to make them believe that treason is a synonymous term with patriotism. Even worldly wisdom would repudiate such a surrender, and the argument is so weak, that it bears with it its own refutation.
We have gained nothing whatever by tampering with Roman Catholicism in Ireland. Neither the moral nor the social condition of the people has been improved thereby; on the contrary, each successive step towards conciliation has been met by augmented turbulence. We cannot afford to push the experiment farther; and surely it would be a strange thing, if, while the Romish clergy themselves distinctly repudiate such an arrangement, and refuse to become the stipendiaries of the British government, any body of men who may be called to the responsible situation of her Majesty's advisers, should persist in tendering the obnoxious and repugnant boon: least of all do we expect that any such proposal can emanate from the Conservatives. We know that upon this point various opinions have been expressed, and that Lord George Bentinck was at one time supposed to be not unfavourable to such a scheme. No man, we firmly believe, ever had the good of Ireland more thoroughly at heart; and, had his plan for ameliorating the Irish distress been adopted last year, and the money which was uselessly squandered, been applied to the construction of permanent works eminently calculated to open up and develop the resources of the country, we might ere this time have seen the foundation laid of a new era of social and industrial prosperity. But the Whig Cabinet, perverse to the last, could not bring themselves to acknowledge that the political sagacity of an opponent was greater than their own; and, therefore the money which we gave with so lavish a hand, has disappeared without leaving the smallest trace of its employment. But, in ecclesiastical matters, Lord George Bentinck professed a latitudinarianism which was not responded to by the great bulk of his party. They were not disposed to unchristianise the high assembly of Britain by the introduction of men who openly avowed their denial of the faith of the Saviour; nor would they consent to put forth their hands against the ark of the national churches. And therefore it was that, upon more than one occasion, the Protestant party, while cheerfully acknowledging the great public services of the late departed nobleman, did not attempt to conceal that, upon points so serious as these, there could be no sympathy of opinion between him and them.
The single arrow may be easily splintered, but, to use the memorable words of Genghis-Khan, "So long as the sheaf is bound together in three places – in love, honesty, and good accord – no man can have power to grieve us; but, if we be divided from these three places, that one of us help not the other, we shall be destroyed and brought to nothing." We recommend the moral contained in the apologue of the old Asiatic chief to the serious consideration of all men belonging to the Conservative party; for this they may rely upon, that, not only is prolonged discord an act of egregious folly, but that any one who refuses, in the present troublous times, to lend a hand to the reknitting of the severed tie, cannot, in the estimation of good men, be considered a friend to his country. And if this be so, what faith can we repose in him who cut the cords asunder?