THE STORY OF IRELAND

New Zealand Tablet, 18 September 1919, Page 9

THE STORY OF IRELAND

(By A. M. Sullivan.)

CHAPTER .—(Continued.) Yes; the history of the world, has nothing to parallel the disgusting baseness, the mean, sordid cowardice of the English and’ Anglo-Irish lords and legislators. 'Theirs was not a change of religious convictions, right or wrong, but a greedy venality, a facile readiness to change any way or every way for worldly advantage. Their model of policy was Judas Iscariot, who sold Our Lord for thirty pieces of silver. J That Ireland also was not carried over into the new system was owing to the circumstance that the English authority had," so far, been able to secure for itself but a partial hold on the Irish nation. It must have been a curious reflection with the Supreme Pontiffs, that Ireland might in a certain sense be said to have been saved to the Catholic Church by its obstinate disregard of exhortations addressed to it repeatedly, if not by the Popes, under cover or ostensible sanction of papal authority, in support of the English crown ; for had the Irish, yielded all that the English king demanded with papal bull in hand, and become part and parcel of the English realm, Ireland, too was lost to the old faith. At this point one is tempted to indulge in bitter reflections on the course of the Roman Pontiffs towards Ireland. “Hitherto” (so one might put it) “that hapless nation in its fearful struggle against ruthless invaders found Rome on the side of its foes. It was surely a hard and a cruel thing for the Irish, so devotedly attached to the Holy See, to behold the rapacious and blood-thirsty Normans, Plantagenets, and Tudors, able to flourish against them papal bulls and rescripts, until now when Henry quarrelled with Rome. Now—henceforth, too late—all that is to be altered henceforth the bulls and the rescripts are all to exhort the broken and ruined Irish nation to fight valiantly against that power to which, for four hundred years, the Roman court had been exhorting or commanding it to submit. Surely Ireland has been the sport of Roman policy, if not its victim These bitter reflections would be not only natural but just, if the facts of the case really supported them. But the facts do not quite support this view, which, it is singular to note, the Irish themselves never entertained. At all times they seem to have most justly and accurately appreciated the real attitude of the Holy See towards them, and fixed the value and force of the bulls and rescripts obtained by the English sovereign at their true figure. The conduct of the Popes was not free from reproach in a particular subsequently to be noted; but the one thing they had really urged, rightly or wrongly, on the Irish from the first was the acceptance of the sovereignty of the English king, by no means implying an incorporation with the English nation, or an abandonment of their nationality. In this sense the Popes’ exhortations were always read by the native Irish ; and it will be noted that in this sense from the very beginning the Irish princes very generally were ready „to acquiesce in them. The idea, rightly or wrongly, appears to have been that this strong sovereignty would be capable of reducing the chaotic elements in Ireland (given up to such hopeless disorder previously) to compactness and order a good to Ireland and to Christendom. This was the guise in which the Irish question had always been presented by plausible English envoys,, civil or ecclesiastical, at Rome. The Irish themselves did not , greatly quarrel with it so far; but there was all i the difference in the world between this the theory and the bloody and barbarous fact and practice as revealed in Ireland. What may be said with truth is, that the Popes inquired too little about the fact and practice, and were always too ready to write and exhort upon such a question at the instance of the English. The Irish chiefs were sensible of this wrong done them ;, but in their every act and word they evidenced a perfect consciousness that the rectitude of the motives animating the

SteRHWK " fil !=v . \ Hopes _ was ; not to"be questioned. Even when the authority : of s the Holy See was • most painfully misused against them, they received it with reverence and respect. The time had at length arrived, however, when Rome was to mourn over whatever of error or wrong had marked its past policy towards Ireland, and for ever after nobly and unchangeably to stand by her side. But alas! too late—all too late now for succeeding ! All the harm had been done, and was now beyond re--pairing. The grasp of England had" been too firmly tightened in the past. At the very moment when the Pope desired, hoped, urged, and expected Ireland to arise triumphant and " glorious, a free Catholic nation, a recompense for lost England, she sank broken, helpless, and despairing under the feet of the sacrilegious Tudor. ‘ (To be continued.) «• - .. _