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lic, were the subject of another petition. A third was on behalf of the children of Catholic soldiers, and the soldiers themselves, asking that they might not be compelled, under the army orders of 1844, to attend Protestant schools or Protestant worship, or read the Protestant version of the Scriptures; that the Douay Bible should be given them instead, and liberty to attend at the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, on Sundays and holidays of obligation. The Vicars Apostolic of England and Scotland subsequently signed this memorial, but though its prayer has since been frequently renewed, it has not yet been granted. An address to Pius IX., to be signed by all the clergy of Ireland, was also ordered, and committed to the hands of a committee in Dublin, but we find Dr. Maginn complaining in a letter to Dr. MacHale, the following September, that these parties had "altogether neglected” it, thereby causing the proposers, "to cut but a poor figure at Rome." He was naturally impatient at this dis heartening delay.

"It would have been much better had your Grace, who could have done these matters so well, not allowed a task of such high moment to pass into other hands, either incapable or unwilling to act, when your own ever ready resources could be largely drawn upon to meet this or any other emergency. I have had letters lately from Rome, stating that there is much surprise there at our silence, or rather at the silence of the Irish nation, including both clergy and people. The general expression of our gratitude for favors received at His Holiness' hands, the strong attestation of our sympathy in his present sufferings, the testimony of our marked indignation against the sacrilegious aggressors of his rights, are the very least gifts we could offer him, beset as he is

by enemies, foreign and domestic It would be well (I say it with all due deference) were your grace, without further waiting for the Dublin concoction, to come out with a form of address for Catholic Ireland. breathing your wonted fire and eloquence-with your very soul in every word, to be subscribed to by us all and sent off in all haste, to console him in his difficulties and to encourage him to present a bold front to the encroachments of the Austrian infidel. I think you may offer him, in the names of the Irish Catholic clergy and people, their hearts, their hands, their all. If to die for our country be a beautiful duty, it cannot be less delightful, were it necessary, to risk life and all to preserve the chair of Peter intact, and Rome, endeared to us by a thousand recollections, the anchorage of Christian hope, the sacred centre of Christian unity-inviolate. Whatever is to be done should be done speedily, and by none other will it be done if your grace omit to do it. We live in truly awful times, and charity must indeed be cold upon the earth when Catholic Christendom can stand with folded arms and look on tamely and unresistingly whilst the Redeemer of the world is outraged in the person of his Vicar, and attempts are being made by a hoary diplomatic Judas to strip the chair of the fisherman, of rights hallowed by centuries and consecrated by the dearest interests of piety and religion. The day was when a St. Bernard or a Peter the Hermit would, with words of fire, have convulsed Europe and gathered around the guilty heads of the ruthless invaders the accumulated vengeance of every follower of the cross, from the Danube to the Shannon."

We shall see in the next chapter, how thorough he felt that veneration and love for Rome, which he thus endeavored to demonstrate on a national scale, and which he did so much during his short episcopate, to feed and foster in the hearts of his people.

CHAPTER VI

PONTIFICATE CF PIUS IX.-ENGLISH

INTRIGUES IN ITALY-LORD MINTO'S MISSION-LORD SHREWSBURY'S VISIT TO ROME-LORD CLARENDON'S PROPOSITION TO ARCHBISHOP MURRAY-THE IRISH BISHOPS OPPOSED TO THE GOVERNMENT SCHEME OF ACADEMICAL EDUCATION, SEND TWO OF THEIR NUMBER TO ROME-THE AGENTS AND INFLUENCES EMPLOYED AGAINST THEM-SUCCESS OF THE MISSION OF DRS. MACHALE AND O'HIGGINS-DR. MAGINN'S PART IN IT-INSURRECTION IN ROME-THE POPE IN EXILE-ELOQUENT PASTORAL OF DR. MAGINN ON THAT EVENT-ITS RECEPTION AT ROME, AND BY THE HOLY FATHER.

WE have now to take a glance at the diplomacy of the Irish Church, as opposed to the Protestant state, and the part our subject was called upon to bear in it.

The accession of Pius IX. to the Pontificate and the first political acts of his reign were received with loud acclamations by the British press and people. One of his first acts was an amnesty to political offenders, granted on the sole condition that they should not "abuse this act of sovereign clemency" by undertaking thereafter anything against the State. This amnesty seems to have been accepted by the majority if not all of those

who availed themselves of it in anything but good faith. They made their very professions of attachment to the Holy Father occasions for marshalling and drilling their demagogic forces. They began by mingling cries of reform with their "vivas," and proceeded to threaten the ministers, the cardinals, and especially the Jesuits. Secret societies, those nurseries of every anti-social vice, undermined the Eternal City, and had their spies and tools about the very person of the Pontiff. Brunetti, Sterbini, and other chiefs of these sons of darkness, were the real rulers of Rome, and merely tolerated Pius IX., until their conspiracy was complete. The rising of Sicily against Neapolitan oppression, the insurrections of the Lombard cities against their Austrian garrisons, the propagandism of Gioberti and Mazzini-causes good, bad, and diabolical-were all at work to throw the peninsula into ferment and confusion.

This state of affairs presented to Lord John Russell and Lord Palmerston too tempting a field for intrigue to be left unoccupied. The panegyrics of their press and their parliamentary orators on the Pope as a reformer, were preliminary to their experiments on the Pope as Head of the Church. The embassy at Florence was the cover for the first approaches, and as the dangers of the Papal government began to excite the hopes and fears of friends and enemies, Lord Minto, father-in-law to the British Prime Minister, was sent on a special secret mission,

Towards

nominally to all the Italian States, but principally to Rome. The alarm as to this mission was communicated to the Irish Hierarchy by an English Prelate-Dr. Briggs, the venerable Bishop of Beverly. Of all the hierarchy of the imperial island, he was the most constant in his friendship for the sister nation. the close of the year '47, the visits of Lord Minto to Rome became known, and on the 16th of December, Lord Lansdowne, in reply to a question in the House of Lords, indicated very significantly the objects of that mission. "My Lords," he said, "I believe there is no court in Europe in which it would be more useful for the British Government to explain the nature of our transactions, or to induce that court to use its peculiar sources of influence in certain parts of Her Majesty's dominions." Immediately on the appearance of this declaration, Dr. Briggs addressed a circular letter to the Bishops of Ireland, proposing that they should join the Prelates of England and Scotland in a memorial to His Holiness, setting forth the true relations and intentions of the civil government to the Church, and preventing false impressions from being produced or ex parte suggestions adopted at Rome. At the same time the English Bishops appointed the Rev. Dr. Grant (since Bishop of Southwark) their agent at Rome, while the Rev. Dr. Cullen, the present Archbishop of Dublin, discharged similar duties for the Irish Hierarchy. The joint memorial proposed by Dr.

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