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Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.
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We are sure that in a week , sick as Sancho Panza of tlie vexations of Barataria , the Pontiff , worried by turbulent priests ^ mischievous demagogues , afraid of being seized for rebellion against England , would hurry from Erin to bury himself in preference among the deadliest fevers of the Pontine marshes . The Pope ' s position at the present time reminds us of an old Arab legend . A desert poet tells us that Solomon , that lord of genii and men , when he died , was embalmed and placed in a standing position , as if alive , in the great temple that he had built , and that the body remained thus , looking as if still alive , till some ants ate through the staff upon which the body of the great king leant , when it instantly fell to dust . So stands papal dominion in Rome , propped up by a French bayonet ; remove the bayonet that hurts the old man , even though it supports him , and he falls confessed t—the Guy stuffed with straw , the palpable lay figure and mummy and dummy that every one but an Irish priest knows he really is . Any one who has once seen an Irish priest hi the country . parts of Ireland will not have been surprised by the late inflammatory speeches of the Pope ' s Celtic advocates , Wolsey , in his fullblown pride on his road to Hampton , with his red hat and maces , and gold crucifixes strutting before him , could not present a more noxious specimen of priestly arrogance , pretension , and intolerance , than the Rev . Father Grogagai * . The type we will present . In his sleek black , in his trim Hessian boots , he ambles by on his stout cob , past the mud huts , with crops of weeds upon the roof ; rides past the bog , sliced like chocolate here and there ; rides" past the fetid potato fields , black and loathsome with disease ; rides past the savage , half naked children , grovelling ( the pig their fit playmate ) in some mud pool , and takes no thought of the Unimprovable misery such sights suggest ; for the Itev . Father Grogagain is on his way to an agitation meeting at Moretalk > and is arranging his speech in which he will denounce England as the eternal enemy of ould Ireland ; aM'thervery reverend the Bean , sworn friend of the Bishop , will be there , from whom he looks for preferment ; so he is trotting out all his old classical metaphors , and " Julius Caesar and Nebuchadnezzar " will duly appear , no doubt , at certain stages of his frothy cataract of stale rhetoric and ecclesiastical abuse : Far be it from us in sketching the priestly agitator Gkogagain as he stamps ivpon the hollow platform , and spreads out before his seething excitable audience , " up" like bottled beer on the subject of papal wrongs , the old Tom Moore properties pf " King O'Toole , " " the sunburst banner , " and Brian Boru , to deny that worthy priests exist in Ireland ; seeing that many ~ a good Vicar of Wakefield , detesting Ribbon murders and distrusting agitation , lurks in an Irish village ;—to be found not at Cardinals' houses , or behind silver mountains of epergnes , but at dying men's beds ; not at the elbows of platform speakers , rubbing salt into old national wounds , but kneeling by the wasted beggar , and whispering comfort to the afflicted . It is sad to sse a friend > Vhose faults seem unchangeable , in whom bad temper has grown chronic , or envy has bepome acute . It is still more sad to see a nation , nearly allied to us , and that we love— -a nation with such a generous flame in its blood , such ; a chivalrous fire in its eye , become more peevish , fretful , and grumbling as it grows older . When Ireland had wrongs , it scolded and scratched ; now it has none , or few , it scratches mid scolds as bad ns ever . Erin was always a fractious boy , who knocked down his nurse when he was scarcely as high as the table . ISow a father of many , children , it colonizes the world with grumblers , malcontents , and , incipient rebels . It fills all the corners of the earth with " naughty boys , " who at the very antipodes sulk and pout , and ram their fingers in their eyes , and will not be comforted even with the very largest gilt cuke , good fortune can offer them . They cried and scolded one ? because the bogs were not drained ; because they coxild not get a breed of pigs with five legs ; because the quartern-loaf-tree would not grow in Ireland . They have filled America and Australia with races of grumblers , who torment us now abroad as they used to do at homo . They have worked themselves up to thufc pitch , that were the Pope once . among them mid made King of Dublin , some of them would declare war to-morrow with England , because of that insulting anti-Celtip advertisement , that some " dirty Saxon , '' sworn enemy of liJrin , inserted in the Times of last Monday ^—iN " , B , — " TSTo iiu&n need apply , " And now , potatoes being nearly convalescent , priests well to do , and MoynootU sopped off , these volcanic , illogical people are All in a seeth again , because their favourite plaything , that special , and time-honoured © rnainent . of their priests' playground during the long 1 " winter of their discontent , " the snow man ¦ with the three crowns , is fast melting ; in the growing warmth of the rising sun of Italian freedom . They want to move him to another apot , and try if
Dublin would not delay the thaw of this snow Pope , the mcubus of the Seven Hills . . ' m ¦¦'¦¦' ¦ When we read speeches like those the Irish . priests , are daily flo ° -ging into the impressible and impulsive people who follow theni like sheep do the butcher , we are really sometimes inclined to think that the Irish are Roman Catholics from mere spite to us , and that if we were to-morrow to all go to St . George ' s-in-the-East , and turnCrazyites , that the Irish , with a howl of indignation and the twinkle of a hundred thousand shillalehs , would instantly turn on the wing , like a flock of starlings * and cry out , " Luther for ever ! " If we are not quite sure of this , we are certainly quite sure of the fact ,-that if England were Catholic the Pope would never have met with such fervent advocates m Ireland , nor would the Rev . Father Grogagain have proposed to collect the thousand eligible striplings of his two parishes of Knockmadownand Ballybrag , and march to the relief of his Holiness . What a day , indeed , for agitators and turbulent priests , and landlord-killers , and ambitious prelates ,, and the enemies of England , generally , would be the day that the holy toe touched the ° greensod of ' the faithful country ! Ship loads of historical painters would be there to see Cardinal Wiseman , iu his red hat and crimson gloves , present the Holy Father -with an allegorical tiara of shamrocks . Miles of poets avould bo there to versify the occasion , and with howls of delight would almost awake the Liberator himself to rise and recommence his mischief . The papers would say nothing like it was ever seen since Saint . . Patrick ' landed on the verdant shore , and mounting .- a steeple preached a sermon -which purged Ireland for ever of srmkes and . toads , but left her still full to the brim with agitators more venomous and sedition-mongers more full of poison . Perhaps . even ; in . rivalry of the holy coat of Treves , the virgin who appeared to the French shepherd boys , and other modern wonders , a series of telling miracles would be arranged , by ¦ which Betty Magrath would-be enabled to chop up her crutches for . fire-wood , and O'Dostoghue of—— -, the well-known attorney , b . r ¦ enabled after thirty years' incapacity to speak the truth , . Seriously , the Pope in , Ireland is an hypothesis most worthy of consideration The Armada off Devonshire , the ; Inquisition sitting , « permanence ill St . James's Hall , the Cardinals giving soireesin Willis ' s Booms , wouldiiot be half such oniiuous sights . to Protestant England . The " imperium . in imjK < rio" would then be indeed realized . The mental conflict of pi-elates avIio serve two contradictory and jarring masters would then bo indeed visible as the works of bees are who live in glass hives . Then wo should see the thumbscrew of the confessional daily in exercise , every burst of , Celtic spleen passing itself off as a roar of the old Papal bull , and every vulgar vituperator trying to get the fisherman ' s seal on his book * , to pass it current as an oul-pDuring of the real old religion .. To many violent men , much given to emphasizing their apocalyptic denunciations by thumps of their umbrellas . ' on other people ' s toes and feelings ' , the present condition of the Pope , and the necessity of resorting to the body guard of young men from Knockmadovm and Ballybrag , gives the most unfeigned and unchristian delight . Crafty fanatics , who ar . e getting large incomes from a foolish public , by flaming the Last Pay in frightened people ' s eyes , now compare the distressed old . gentleman of the Vatican to the bedrid giant in Pilgrim's Progress , who lay , in his old age , harmless at the door of his cavern , making menacing faces at the Protestant travellers he coxild no longer clutch ; to us his condition is one to excite a thoughtful mnn ' s pity , and even a generous enemy ' s compassion . We English want no Inquisition racks , no Smilhlu'ld fires , no Peter ' s pence , no treasonable bulls , no plotting Jesuits , no demoralizing confessional , no non-natural monks , no impossible celibacy , no murder breeding absolutions , no sham miracles , no dominating priesthood , no sophistical dogmas , no spiritual despotism . ( rod knows , wo arc as ready to shocL blood to prevent such claims binding us again in the old sore places , us wa were when we led Charges through the Whitehall window ,, when we drove Jaries the bigot to his French ship , or when we smote down the Highlanders at Qulloden . Wo would not have the priests , -and we will not have the priests—we ore of the same mind now , the honest bulk of us , as when all London-heaved . and roared ns our Bishops passed out once more free under tiro spiked portcullis of the Tower . But still wo can pity the fate of a good weak man , who , led into pitfalls by dangerous and bad advisers , hurries to his fate , willing to throw off crown aftor crown to stay his pursuers , , yet loath to sacrifioo one shred pf the temporal power that ho falsely ,, yet conscientiously , no doubt , believes delegated to hint by God ,, whose Vicar lie is called j after Htm > bbwands and Jctmubus , poisoners and tyrarfts the retribution cotnes on an infirm old many weak enough , falsa enough to his misgoverned subjects , lloavon knows , but in himself pure and stainless . Bat so it must bo ;
Untitled Article
62 Wfieliea ( l& ^^ drS&lm'd ^ Ana ^^ ' L - 21 » 3 86 Q -
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Citation
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Leader (1850-1860), Jan. 21, 1860, page 62, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse2.kdl.kcl.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2330/page/10/
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