ARRIVAL OF ARCHBISHOP WALSH

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XIII, Issue 29, 13 November 1885, Page 19

ARRIVAL OF ARCHBISHOP WALSH

(The Nation, September 12.)

His Grace the Most Key. Dr. Walsh, Archbishop of Dublin, arrived at Kingstown from Holyhead at five o'clock on the evening of Friday week. An immense crowd of people lined the pier, and, as the steamer came to her moorings, a long-sustained and deafening out burst of cheering gave the initial welcome home to his Grace. There was a fearful pressure from priests and people as the gangway was lowered, and amongst the first to get aboard were the Very Rev. Monsignor Lee, Mr. T. Harrington, M.P., Mr. Michael Davitt, and Mr. J. E. Kedmond, M.P. Two addresses were presented to the archbishop on board the steamer— one from the Town Commissioners, the otherfrom the Catholic and national inhabitants of Kingstown. His Gra»<€ then proceeded to Westland-row by special train, and here ihe was met by the Lord Mayor in state and the members of the r Corporation in their robes. The address of welcome was read by Mr. Beveridge, the Town Cleik. To this address his Grace replied as follows :— " It is with no ordinary feeling of gratification that I endeavour to discharge the duty of thanking you for this address, the warmth and heartiness of which you have so specially emphasised by surrounding its presentation with the splendour of your civic state. Gratefully indeed I accept your address and thank you for it, presented to me as it is with every feeling, f am snre, of personal kindness, bnt also, and much moie so, as a tribute of your respect shown an my person to the sacred dign.ty with which I have b-en invested. Your official communication has assured me that the civic welcome thus accorded to me is the unanimous act of our municipal body. Need I say to you that my action in reference to it would be very different if it had come to me in any other way — if, for instance, it could be regarded as a party triumph, or as the act of an inconsiderate majority of the council, tiempling on the feelings and outraging the susceptibilities of the non-Catholic members who form the minority of your body ? J do not co the length of saying that even if your act had been such as I have thus described you could not have pleaded in justification, or at all events in extenuation of it, much that is to be found in the past history of the Corporation of Dublin. You have found it, inieed, in the records of those very proceedings when, for the assertion of sime dominant political creed, the Lord Mayor and ciuc officers of the day went forth in solemn state, even as you have come upon the kindly mission of this evening. But it is not for us to copy the bad example so rreely set for us in days that every citizen ot Dublin, I trust, would now wish had Lever found a place in the annals of our city. A people claiming the name and dignity of a nation must prove, not merely by words, but still more by the acts of its public men, that it has the self-restraint which, especially in matters where religious feeling comes into play, will guard with the most delicate care against all that could savour of disregard of the sincere conviction of even the smallest minorities amongst its citizens. And so. if I may contemplate the case of this address being tendered to me in any other spirit than that which I feel assured has guided you in reference to it from first to last, I should feel constrained, i,ot m-rely on religious grounds and from a sense of what I ow? my sacred office, but also as a citizen of Dublin (loud cheers), placed by virtue of that office in a position of high civic as well as religious responsibility, to decline its acceptance. But I feel that on mauy grounds I may safdy take a very different view indeed of the proceedings of to-day. Among those who took part even ia the preparation of the address were some members of your body whose religious convictions d-bar them from recognising any duty of spiritual allegiance to a Catholic bibhop (hear, hear). And I have no reason to believe that those other non-Catholic

members of your body who were absent on the occasion were influenced by any other feeling than that of an unwillingness to mar by the presence of any element of discord the unanimity of a proceeding to which they were in no way opposed, but in which they did not feel themselves in a p sition to tike an assenting part. I feel, then, my Lord Mayor, that to this extent at least I am justified in including in my expression of ih^uks every member of your municipal body (cheers,). You assure me that to you, as representatives of the municipality of Dublin and guardians of its interests, ie is a source of pride and gratification that a native of the city of Dublin has been elected to fill the see of Saint Laurence (loud and prolongei cheers). I accept this assurance all the mo^e gratefully that it comiis to me from a b >dy which in the conferring of its owa highest honours has never allowed itself to be swayed by any narrow consideration of the accident of birth. To say notoiog of the many former acts of the kind to which I could refer, I am reminded by the presence here to-day, my lord, of the worthy gentlemaa who has been chos-n to succeed you in your high office, that, even in its latest nomination to the civic chair, the members of the Council of

Dublin have with graceful unanim ty selected for that place of giignity one to whom Dublin unfortunately can lay no claim (loui tjhaers). And now, my Lord Mayor, without needlessly trespissing on your time to disclaim the language of eulogy with which your address kas indeed embarrassed me. I hasten to assure you of my full and ardent sympathy with the wishes expressed in its closing words. With me it is no new theory of to-day or yesterday, but a settled and deeply-rooted conviction, that for the many grievances for the removal of which the people of this isl md have so long laboured with but partial success there is but one effectual remedy — the restoration to Ireland of that right of which we were deprive i, n >w nigh a century ago. by means as shameful as any that the records of national infamy can disclos » (loud and prolonged cheers). I rejoice, then, with you that the flag which fell from the dying hands of O'Connell has once more been boldly uplifted, and I pray that it maj never again be uofar'ed until the right of Ireland is recognised to have her own laws made here upon lrisn soil, and by the legally and constitutionally chosen representatives of the Irish people (loud and prolonged cheers) I have thojght it right, my Lord Mayor, tnus freely to avail myself of the opportunity which your address afforded me of. expressing plainly and without reserve

nay personal opinion on this question of vital importance, as I regard it, for the future welfare of our country. For it has been, if I mistake not, the usage of the venerated prelates who preceded me ia this Bee of Dublin — as it is, indeed, the usage of our Irish bishops, I may say, without exception— to express with the utmost freedom their opinions on the great political questions of the day (cheers). But as I have done so on this occasion I must, in conclusion, add one other word. Among the Catholics of Dublin there are, and will be, as there b.3ve ever been ia the past, as strongly marked differences of opinion in political matters as there are amongst the citizens generally in their religious creeds. I wish, then, to proclaim, once for all, at the very outset of my episcopal labours— and nowhere, Burely could I find a more fitting opportunity of proclaiming it than here where I am being formally welcomed on my entrance to nay episcopal see— that in every relation of my pastoral office— in the bouse which is henceforth to be my home, in the cathedral which will be the chief centre of my episcopal labours— in a word, in every scene and sphere of my duties — I shall, with G >i's help, know do difference between those whose views on public affairs are most thoroughly in sympathy with mine, and those from whose honest opinions my own are most widely divergent (cheers) — ever bearing in mind that I have been placed here by the Sovereign Pontiff as Archbishop of Dublin, and thus as the pastor and spiritual father, not of any section or class, no matter how numerous or how powerful, but of all our Catholic people (loud and prolonged cheers)."