more comfortable circumstances than the English. There are hard cases in Ireland, and there are a few priests in England who are well supported by their flocks; but nevertheless the English clergy find it much harder to live than do their Irish brethren, for this special reason, that Catholics being scattered, the cost of the maintenance of their clergy presses more severely upon them than where Catholics are many.

That the Catholic people of either England or Ireland would be gainers in a pecuniary way by the simple destruction of the Establishment, is simply fiction, except so far as English church-rates go. If tithes were utterly from this hour abolished, the mass of the people would not be one sixpence the richer. The sweeping away of the tithe (whether commuted or not) is simply the transferring of its amount from the present possessors to the owners of the land. The occupiers and the people in general would neither gain nor lose one farthing. If the tithes were transferred to the Catholic clergy, that would be quite another thing; but as we have said, may the day be far distant when we thus sow the seeds of corruption in our own body, and prepare Ireland, and England too, for a second "reformation."

All this, however, touches only the money part of the question. The real evil of the Establishment is of a far different nature, and requires to be met by measures of which the upsetting the Establishment itself is but a part. As an antagonist to our religion, and not simply as a rifler of our pockets, the Establishment injures us by fostering in the minds of the British and Irish people an idea that Catholicism is low, ungentlemanly, un-English, unintellectual, lax in morals, and a foe to civilisation and freedom. It is one of the main props of that vast system of misrepresentation by which the true claims of the Church are completely kept out of the sight of nine-tenths of the best members of the social state. It is by means of the Establishment, and through the stimulus supplied by the Establishment, that our books are put upon an index expurgatorius, the good deeds of our nuns are unremembered, our clergy are viewed as the hired minions of a foreign and anti-English potentate. It is the Establishment which ever strives to mark us with the ignominious name of "Dissenters," which perpetually whispers doubts of our honour and candour, which makes the respectable and aristocratic consider themselves disgraced when a member of their family, "becomes a Romanist," as they phrase it. It is the Establishment that keeps up that "reign of terror" which holds so many timid souls in bondage, and terrifies those who are sensitive to ridicule, and gives a cur

rency to those cant expressions which serve to make the conscientious imagine that they are serving God by stifling the voice of conscience itself. It is the Establishment which pays and feeds ten thousand popes throughout the land, whose very existence depends on the keeping alive the ridiculous. old traditions of their immediate ancestors, and who can no more be expected to tell the whole truth than a doctor can be expected to decry drugs, or a butcher to advocate vegetarianism. The Establishment is the correlative of that quasivirtue so dear to the heart of the Englishman and Englishwoman; we mean, respectability. With such an Establishment, so venerable, so well-conducted, so free from vulgar fanaticism, so well-dressed, with such a liturgy, such anthems, such organs, such choristers, such cathedrals, such parsonages, such a literature, such universities, such college chapels and gardens, such libraries, such degrees, how is it possible that the genuine English mind can conceive it possible that, after all, the whole thing is a spiritual sham, a delusion of the past, a folly and crime of other days, to be swept away in order to make room for the true successors of the Apostles?

It is, then, in its influence on the popular mind of Great Britain and Ireland that we recognise the grand injury that the Establishment does to the Catholic faith; we see in it the clever possessor of stolen goods, who, to make sure of his ill-gotten wealth, contrives to blacken the character of its rightful owner, so that when he comes into court for redress he is forthwith turned out as a contemptible lying scoundrel. Of course we do not say that all the Anglican clergy and their adherents know what they are doing, when they do all this; far from it. The old original thieves knew it well enough, and pretty shameless they were; but their successors, who have inherited their gains, have not, we gladly admit, inherited their consciousness of the crimes they committed. But still, their acts are those of men who utterly misrepresent and malign us Catholics and our creed, and whose undeniable interest it is to prevent the British nation from opening its eyes.

Again, it is the interest of every one who is in any way connected with the Establishment to keep down Popery, as the rival of the Establishment, by branding it with the worst of characters. We never shall estimate rightly the strength of the Establishment if we view it simply or chiefly as a clerical or religious institution; it is essentially a part of the income of the middle and upper classes of the community; its welfare is bound up with their welfare in a totally different

way from that in which church-revenues are associated with the general stability of property in Catholic countries. The Catholic clergy and religious bodies, by the simple fact of their celibacy, never can form a large and integral portion of the middle and upper classes like the Anglican clergy. Even in the wealthiest times of the Church, when mitres and abbeys were too often regarded as prizes by a sort of fitness belonging to the clerical members of great families,—even then there was a very large proportion of the clergy who had no ties of blood with the rich and powerful sections of the community. When, therefore, the nobility of the time united with the sovereign to plunder the Church of its possessions, they did not feel that while they took from the Church with one hand, they were robbing themselves with the other. But here in England there is hardly a family of respectability that does not look upon the Establishment as a means for supplying a respectable income, a gentlemanly position, for one or more of its kinsfolk. Whatever damages the Establishment, therefore, is a positive loss to all this immensely numerous class; whatever lowers its respectability, or detracts from is ancient reputation, or robs it of its revenues, is just so much personal injury to nearly the whole body of the English and Irish aristocracy and gentry, and to many of the mercantile and trading classes besides.

It is the overlooking these vast ramifications of the roots of the Establishment in English society which often leads Catholics into erroneous calculations as to its probable stability. We see the cry for church-reform, the coolness with which Parliament rearranges the ecclesiastical revenues, the meekness with which the clergy submit to the doctrinal dictations of temporal courts, and the ridicule cast on their pretensions to be successors of the Apostles by newspaperwriters; and from this we argue that the Establishment is losing its hold on the nation as an institution. Never was there a more illogical deduction. The British aristocracy, gentry, and commercial classes no more uphold the Established bishops as successors of the Apostles than we do. When a man like Henry of Exeter tries the game, with ever such cautiousness, he is forthwith laughed at for his impudence. And as for any pretensions made by the great body of the clergy to teach the educated classes of the community what is the undoubted word of God, with the authority of divinely-appointed ministers of the gospel,—such things may pass muster with a few female coteries here and there about the country, but they would be the mere jest of ninety-nine out of a hundred men of every respectable class.

When the laity cry out for, and carry forward "churchreform," they take the best possible care to preserve the church-possessions to the Establishment itself; they are perfectly aware that they are merely rearranging their own property, and making their own servants do their work more properly and decently, so as to neutralise the efforts of Papists and Nonconformists by showing what a practical common-sense affair the Church of England is, after all. Logic and theology have nothing to do with the matter. The governing classes in this country want a good, useful, working institution, thoroughly respectable, knowing its own place, and keeping to its own business, and supplying them with some fifteen thousand good places, to be filled by members of their own families, as interest and luck may settle the prizes. We are sometimes simple enough to imagine that if the Maynooth grant were withdrawn, the English Parliament would upset the Irish Establishment, for the sake of consistency. Who ever heard of men giving up an immense number of good places, varying in value from one hundred to eight or ten thousand a-year, for the sake of logical consistency? What on earth do the upper and middle classes of this kingdom care for logical consistency? You might as reasonably expect a national revolution in favour of Mr. Jelinger Symons' crotchets about the moon. With logical consistency on one side, and an annual million sterling on the other, is it in man's nature to hesitate for the infinitesimally smallest fraction of a second? We may rest assured that if the Maynooth grant does go, there will be a year or two's grand hubbub on our part, in which we shall be backed up by the Parliamentary opposition for the time being, whichever political party it may be, and then all will subside again, and we shall be called impudent dogs if we continue to grumble.

We entreat our fellow-Catholics, then, in arranging their plans for upsetting church-establishments, not to suffer themselves to be misled by any superficial view of the facts of the case. Unless we comprehend, not only the theological weaknesses of Protestantism, but also the sources of its political strength, we shall do ourselves more harm than good by miscalculating the means necessary for reducing it to its proper level. It cannot be too urgently repeated, that the strength of Anglicanism, as established in England and Ireland, is not a theological and doctrinal strength; and moreover that it is because it is thus not theological and dogmatic, that it is so difficult to overthrow. The Establishment is strong, because it embodies just enough of the dogmatic and religious principle, and just enough of the Catholic system generally, to

appear an essentially religious institution, and to answer the purposes of the governing classes; and at the same time furnishes good worldly positions to an overwhelming majority of these same ruling castes.

To suppose, therefore, that the Establishment is to be overthrown by mere force of reasoning on logical, or theological, or moral grounds, is clearly absurd. The mass of mankind, rich and poor, English, Irish, and Continental, invariably act on grounds of personal and temporal interest. No man ever yet impoverished himself, except for motives to which nine persons out of ten are utterly insensible. Nothing will ever disendow Anglicanism in England or Ireland, but a sheer Parliamentary out-voting of its supporters. And this can never be looked for until in the House of Commons there is a large majority of men who have no personal or family interest in the loaves and fishes of the Establishment. A small majority would not suffice; for the Lords would never yield to any thing less than a majority so great and so determined as to terrify them into acquiescence. Such a popular commotion as that which carried Catholic emancipation would, of course, have its practical weight in this case; but such an agitation as that which carried emancipation would not really disendow Protestantism, because the Lords and Commons are personally far more deeply interested in the Establishment than they were in keeping a few Catholics out of Parliament. Many of the most determined of Protestants laughed at the fanaticism and bigotry of their fellow-religionists, and voted on our side. But a man does not laugh at fanaticism and bigotry when fanaticism and bigotry bring him in five hundred a-year. A family-living is an argument in favour of things as they are as cogent as the mathematical proof that there are two right angles in every triangle.

Practically, then, our conclusion is this: first, that there is no chance whatever of upsetting either the Irish or English Establishment at present; and as a corollary, that we must not waste our strength by expending it on agitations, which can only be desirable on the ground that they will soon succeed in their aim. And secondly, that the best thing that Catholics can do with a view to the future is, personally to take that place in the community which will enable them to come in and join the agitation, when the right hour is come, with efficient, nay, with overwhelming force.

To treat, however, these two conclusions a little more in detail. And first, as to the expediency of present political agitation. It may be taken as an undoubted axiom, that