IN her contest with the State, the Church of Rome has of late days, and indeed for years past, conducted herself wisely. It has been said of her by one who knew her well, that she sustained adversity well, but was usually found wanting when tried by prosperity. It has not seemed so of late. Since the day when the royal visit of George IV. gave token of a vacillating policy in the British councils, the Church of Rome in Ireland has been, in her political enterprises, not less prudent than she has been successful. Her aggressions, her submissions, her explanations, her demands, her con cessions, have been all well-timed and judicious. She has known the seasons when she could be threatening, up to the very verge of treason, and, at the precise moment when it was absolutely necessary, has qualified her menaces, and averted their consequences by professions of ardent loyalty. She has had her various agents always ready for the device which the emergency demanded; and those who were to be leaders when she assaulted, and those who should cover her retreats, have been alike adequate to their duty, and alike honoured for the services they were competent to render. Is it, then, untrue, that the Church of Rome in Ireland is unable to abide the test of prosperity?

Perhaps she has not been duly subjected to such a test. Her successes may have been partial. She may have lost with her own people more ground than she has gained in her trial of strength with the government; and the intoxication, which the prosperous issue of her political efforts might have inflamed, may have been sobered by a salutary fear that her power over the masses was departing. The votaries she has lost make a strong set-off against her many acquisitions. has succeeded in obtaining large instalments of a national endowment-a system of education contrived for her especial necessities-a college endowed very largely for her ecclesiasticschaplaincies in public institutions—a poor-law, so fashioned and so wrought as to impoverish Protestant proprietors, and to ensure a permanent pro

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vision of Roman Catholic paupersthese are great gains; but Achill and Dingle, and Ventry, Kingscourt, and Doon, and Cong, Castelkerke, and Connemara, and many another dreaded locality, have had stories to tell, by which the enthusiasm of success has been marvellously abated, and which give reason to surmise, that whatever there has been of moderation or temperance in her conduct is ascribable, not less to the difficulties by which she feels herself beset, than to her progress in wisdom or discretion.

In these remarks, it is to be understood, we have confined ourselves to the schemes and activities of Irish Romanism, which may be judged of by their issue. They have been suggested to us by an enterprise of greater apparent magnitude, and likely to be of more momentous consequences, than any which it has heretofore hazarded. We have asked ourselves, was the Synod of Roman Catholic Ecclesiastics recently assembled at Thurles wise? and the question caused many preceding displays of an ambitious purpose to pass before us-all vindicated in their results. If the latest display prove equally successful, a revolution will be accomplished in Ireland, of which " Repeal" will be but an incident. We are not relieved from the apprehension which such a display has naturally awakened by the efforts of organs of the public press to make light of it. Since that day when the Papal Nuncio Rinuccini descended on our shores, to infuse new virulence into religious rancour-to inflame national pride into frenzy-to frown peace from the land, and to give, as it were, the casting voice for conducting a monarch to the scaffold-we do not think the Church of Rome has shown itself in a more menacing aspect than when her ecclesiastics assembled in Synod at Thurles, under the presidency of the Most Rev. Paul Cullen, Deputy Legate for his adventurous Holiness, Pius IX.

There may be some who will say, that our reference to the convulsive period of the great rebellion is altogether unsuited to the occasion. The time when Rinuccini came down on

the land, was a time when civil war was raging. It was war which called him hither, and he came armed and equipped for the field of literal, vulgar battle, as well as for the spiritual conflict in which he was to do a leader's duty. The Pope's Archbishop Cullen is not justly termed the successor of such a man. Our days are days of Great Britain is powerfulpeace. insurrection has proved a mockery and an abortion. The Church of Rome in Ireland has no such causes of complaint as exasperated her in the time of Charles I. On the contrary, Roman Catholics in Ireland have at this day, far more abundantly, causes of thankfulness to the Government, than their predecessors had grounds of complaint; and they have far better reason to expect good from a peaceable and loyal demeanour, than their coreligionists ever had to hope that they could profit by rebellion. How can such a state of things recall the remembrance of those evil and very dissimilar days, when a Papal Nuncio came commissioned to aggravate the miseries of a troubled time, and to impart to the horrors of civil dissension their most disastrous aspect?

It is only persons to whom (because they are thoughtless of the changes which time is continually making) "history is an old almanack," who can indulge in such cavils or objections as these. Romanism is not infected by the vice of heedlessness. She has ever been a shrewd observer of the times. She understands the signs of the times well, and although, when the emergency demands, she will "brace on harness of battle," she courts more willingly the success which may be achieved by what appear to be processes of peace, and reckons on the permanence of such success more confidently. Here in Ireland she has been taught to know that, hitherto, in the open war of rebellion, her portion has been disaster, and that if some incidental advantages have accrued to her from such trials of strength, she has paid a most calamitous price for them. But here she has also learned that it is practicable to turn against the laws and institutions of the country agencies which the constitution leaves unfettered, and to make war by processes and instrumentalities which the freedom of the constitution accredits. She knows that great results are attainable in the legislature or the cabinet which

it would be madness to hope for in the field; and she knows, therefore, that he who would act the part of Rinuccini now, must seek his ends by measures widely different from those which that brilliant and unwise adventurer was daring enough to adopt, and by which he brought ruin on the cause and the party in whose service he professed to employ them.

So far as may be collected from public report, one main object of the Synod assembled at Thurles is to create estrangement between Roman Catholics and their Protestant brethren in Ireland. At least there should be, with the consent of Roman Catholic Priests and Bishops, no such agency to overcome principles of estrangement as that of united education. Rinuccini came to interdict and anathematise the peace which wise and good men had negociated between the rival churches in Ireland. Much progress had been made in or towards this benevolent enterprise when the Nuncio arrived. Protestants and Roman Catholics were becoming thoroughly convinced that in their conflicts and jealousy there was evil, only, to the Crown, the country, and themselves; and the fairest prospect seemed opening of the good which was sure to follow when feuds were discontinued, and principles of mutual forbearance generally diffused throughout a reconciled people. The presence of Rinuccini was fatal to the cause of order and good-will. His purpose was to consolidate Romanists of every grade, and class, and shade of opinion, into one people, and eventually to constitute them the nation, with the clergy as their rulers. If the estrangement between professors of the different religions were complete, and the resources of the ecclesiastics adequate, he felt assured that the whole kingdom could be soon cleansed of heresy. Is it rash to surmise an identity of purpose and of hope between the Nuncios of 1645 and of 1850? Can there be any doubt, that in defeating the government, and disconcerting their cherished scheme of national education, the president of the Synod recently dissolved anticipates the triumph of his Church, and the subjugation, if not conversion, of Protestants, English, perhaps, as well as Irish?

The spirit by which the Synod was animated, and the purpose it was designed to serve, can scarcely be misunderstood. They have been disclosed

in an authorised publication. It is entitled "The Synodical Address of the Fathers of the National Council of Thurles to their beloved flock, the Catholics of Ireland," and it announces the decision of the Council on the great question of education:

"It is by the sternest sense of duty-by a painful but irresistible feeling of necessitythat we are compelled, dearly beloved, to an nounce to you, that a system of Education fraught with grievous and intrinsic dangers, has, within the last twelve months, been brought to your own doors. It is presented to you, we deplore to say, in those Collegiate Institutions which have been established in this country, and associated with the name of our august, most gracious, and beloved Sovereign. Far be it from us to impugn for a moment the motives of its originators. The system may have been devised in a spirit of generous and impartial policy; but the statesmen who framed it were not acquainted with the inflexible nature of our doctrines, and with the jealousy with which we are obliged to avoid everything opposed to the purity and integrity of our faith. Hence, those Institutions, which would have called for our profound and lasting gratitude, had they been framed in accordance with our religious tenets and principles, must now be considered as an evil of a formidable kind, against which it is our imperative duty to warn you with all the energy of our zeal and all the weight of our authority.

"In pointing out the dangers of such a system, we only repeat the instructions that have been given to us by the Vicar of Jesus Christ.

He, to whom were given 'the keys of the kingdom' (Matth. c. xvi., v. 19); to whom was committed the charge not only of the lambs, but of the sheep, that is, of the entire flock, pastors as well as people (John, c. xxi., v. 17); he, for whose faith the prayer of Christ was offered (Luke, c. xxiii., v. 31, 32); whom St. Chrysostom so appropriately designates as the Teacher of the whole world (Hom. 88 in Joan);-he, Peter, has spoken to us by Pius as he spoke to the Fathers of Chalcedon by Leo, and pronounced this system of Education to be fraught with 'griev ous and intrinsic dangers' to Faith and Morals has declared that 'Religion can expect nothing but loss from it;' and that your Bishops should take no part in carrying it into effect.'

"Following the invariable practice of our own Church, as well as that of every Church connected with the centre of unity, and, in particular, the instructions given in one of those Synods convoked and presided over by St. Patrick-'If any questions arise in this Island (Ireland), they are to be referred to the Apostolic See,' (si quæ quæstiones in hac Insula oriantur, ad Sedem Apostolicam referantur. Can. S. Patritic, apud Wilkin. Concil. t. 1, p. 6)-we laid at the feet of

our present venerable and beloved Pontiff the plan of instruction that had been proposed to us, with a statement of the diversity of opinion that prevailed on the subject; because we knew, to use the language of St. Columbanus, addressing one of the great Pontiffs of antiquity, that it was ours 'to call upon, to put questions, to beseech him : and his not to withhold what had been freely bestowed, but to put out his talent to interest; to give, at Christ's behest, the bread of doctrine to those who sought for it from him.'-(St. Columb. Epist, 1, ad Greg. Pap. apud Galland. Bibl. Vet. Pat. t. 12, p. 346.) After a most searching and protracted examination of the statements and facts that were urged on either side, availing himself of every resource of counsel and information which he could procure, demanding and receiving from every member of the Irish Episcopacy his individual opinion on the subject, making it the object of his long and anxious deliberation, and pouring forth his soul in prayer to Him who promised to abide with his Church even to the consummation of time, the successor of Peter pronounced his final judgment on the subject. All controversy is now at an end-the judge has spoken-THE QUESTION IS DECIDED.

Recognising, with reverential awe, in that decision the voice of Him who hath said, 'He who hears you, hears me; he who despises you, despises me;' this Synod has received, not only with profound respect but with unanimous acclamation, the decisions and instructions which were asked for in the name of the Irish Church. This Synod now solemnly communicates to you the Rescripts of the Holy See, which we have received on this important matter, that they may serve to guide and regulate your conduct; we do not add anything to the instructions that have been given; neither will we suffer anything to be detracted from their importance."

Apart from what may be termed the substantive portion of this passage, there is an incidental expression contained in it of no ordinary moment and significance:

"The system may have been devised in a spirit of generous and impartial policy, but the statesmen who framed it were not acquainted with the inflexible nature of our doctrines."

This is an important truth. Ignorance of the spirit and character of the Church of Rome appears to have pervaded the legislation of British statesmen for many years past, and, culpable as it was and is, offers the best exculpation that the case admits, of the unwise concessions by which it was ignorantly hoped to conciliate an aspiring and an inexorable Church. There are cases in