CARDINAL MANNING AND IRELAND.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume III, Issue 117, 23 July 1875, Page 9

CARDINAL MANNING AND IRELAND.

The following remarks of his Eminence in reply to the address will be read with interest by Irishmen, and with some surpise. Although he disclaims the quality of optimist, he. paints the state of Ireland in such brilliant colors, that Irishmen would scarcely recognise it : — Cardinal Manning, after thanking the members for the address, said that from his youth, ever since he understood the history of Ireland, he had the strongest sympathy with that country, a sympathy which had been greatly increased since he had had a flock of Irish blood and of Irish faith. They would, he hoped, not suppose that he was insensible of the great duties which England still owed to Ireland, nor of the many inequalities of a lesser order which still remained to be redressed. He believed he might say with truth the material prosperity of Ireland was never greater than now. There was never, he believed, a time when Ireland, as a people, was zo united as now. The people of Ireland never possessed so wido an extent of its soil since the day in which they possessed it all. They never yet possessed such abundant commercial wealth. The towns of Ireland were never more numerous or flourishing, its villages never bo thriving, its agriculture, and its pasturage never more fertile. Its public intelligence was never so much developed, its public opinion never so articulately expressed by its public journals and its literature, and that public opinion never so powerful on the mind of England. Finally, he might say that the inflnence of Ireland in the mind of the Legislature was never so weighty, never so highly intelligent and so thoroughly appreciated as at this moment. They might think he was an optimist, yet sometimesjthose who looked on at a game of chess were able to see what was going on better than the players. Such was hia firm conviction, and it seemed to him that the future of Ireland might be incalculably great.