This pastoral conveyed and read to the Holy Father at Gaeta drew forth his warmest approbation. A previous letter of the Bishop's received before His Holiness' flight, had the honor of a direct acknowledgment from the illustrious object of it.* It is hardly too much to say that in those eventful days no Irish Prelate stood higher at Rome than Dr. Maginn, and that the personal influence thus honorably obtained promised the best results for the future relations of the Irish Church with the Holy See,

* See Dr. Cullen's letter of September 5, 1848. Appendix.

CHAPTER VII.

INFLUENCE OF THE FAMINE ON PUBLIC SPIRIT-DR. MAGINN'S LETTERS ON "TENANT-RIGHT"-HIS LETTERS TO LORD STANLEY-HIS POPU LARITY-EFFECT OF THE FRENCH REVOLUTION ON IRELAND-PATRIOTIC ATTEMPTS TO RE-UNITE THE NATIONAL PARTIES-THE PROTESTANT REPEALERS AND MR. SHARMAN CRAWFORD, M. P.-EX TRAORDINARY CIRCULAR OF THE EARL OF SHREWSBURY-THI YOUNG IRELAND CATASTROPHE-DR. MAGINN'S CORRESPONDENCE WITH THE CASTLE IN RELATION THERETO-HIS SYMPATHY WITH THE DEFEATED PARTY AND THE STATE PRISONERS.

NOR was Dr. Maginn's attention wholly or even principally directed to Roman affairs and English intrigues, in those eventful years '47 and '48. The condition of the poor, the distribution of the charities of many countries, the niggardliness and maladministration of the government grants, the stealthy ravages of proselytism following famine like its shadow-all claimed his attention. It was in this year, the second of his episcopacy, that by a succession of public services to the country and religion, his talents became familiarly known and widely influential. Of these we shall speak in the order of time.

After O'Connell's death, and the second general failure

of the potato harvest, social questions were forced upon the Irish mind with an emphasis, which in less calamitous times, would have been quite thrown away on that imaginative and immaterialist nation. The question of the land, superceded "repeal" in the hearts of most men not wholly broken down by the pressure of the times and taxes. An "Irish Council" to promote reproductive employment on the soil, taking the government loan as the capital and improved modes of cultivation as the method, sat regularly in Dublin. It contained many patriotic men; Lord Cloncurry, Sir Colman O'Loghlen, Mr. Butt, Mr. Duffy, Mr. O'Brien, Mr. Chetwode, Mr. Monsell, the poet Ferguson, and many more. Its first meeting had been attended by O'Connell, who soon after made a last mournful plea for the poor in Parliament, and went abroad to die. The Young Ireland party endeavored to become practical, and began to study in statistics and political economy. The decaying association contributed its slower impulse to the general current of men's minds. Tenant-right meetings were held in Ulster; throughout the North generally, a fierce agitation sprung up in opposition to the imposition of an average poor-rate all over the island. Sir Robert Peel's dictum that "the property of Ireland should be made to support the poverty of Ireland," was looked upon by the industrious tenant of the North with as much dislike as by the mortgage-ridden squire of the South. They both held that

the calamity being imperial, the relief ought to be imperial; that the taxation of each union should be rated according to its internal condition; that employment for labor, and legal security for improvements on land, was what the country wanted, not alms and an army of fresh officials. These discussions certainly turned the Irish mind into new channels, and although there was a digression to revolutionary experiments in '48, that mind has ever since, it seems to me, kept the direction the famine gave it.

Dr. Maginn, gifted with the intuitive eye of a wise patriot, was one of the first in the new field of discussion. His letters to the Cork Tenant league, to Dr. McKnight of Derry, and to James Caufield, Esq., were among the earliest and the best writings on the land question. Taken in connection with his evidence before the Devon Commission, they form a monument of information and observation on the social state of Ireland.*

At the close of '47, Dr. Maginn considered himself called upon to rebut and refute in a series of letters to Lord Stanley, an intolerable statement made by that nobleman in his place in Parliament against the priesthood of Ireland. The words spoken on the 23rd of November, in the House of Lords, were these:

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"In the main," said Lord Stanley, "I think the Roman Catholic priesthood to be untiring in the discharge of their religious duties, de

* See Appendix.

voting themselves to their faith, and sparing neither pains nor time in the due performance of the functions of their holy office. But I must not conceal the fact, that the Roman Catholie priesthood of Ireland do not lend themselves to the support of the law. There is a fatal breach between the Roman Catholic clergy and the law; the confessional is conducted with a degree of secretness, and carried to an extent dangerous alike to the civil government and the peace of the country. The priest conceals the secrets of the guilty penitent, and is ever ready to denounce the informer. Among recent instances there are many startling proofs of the knowledge or connivance of the priesthood in the sanguinary crimes of the peasantry."

On this text, Dr. Maginn wrote those three right, manly, and eloquent letters, which will be found in our Appendix, under the title "Letters to Lord Stanley."* Coming out immediately after his brilliant letters on Tenant-right, they crowned his reputation with a religious triumph, and made him almost immediately, after Dr. MacHale, the most popular Bishop in the Kingdom. The name of Derry became familiar where it had long sounded strange; it was gratefully recognized as one of the popular strongholds of the Tenants' cause; everything that bore its date was carefully read and pondered, and men blessed God that he had raised up in those dark, perplexing days, its gifted and courageous Bishop.

Among the new correspondents attracted to him by the letters to Lord Stanley, was the faithful and eccentric Tom Steele, "O'Connell's Head Pacificator of Ireland," as he proudly styled himself. A couple of very curious and characteristic letters of poor Steele's, will be