RATIONALISM IN EUROPE.

but habitually, by theological considerations, where the most momentous secular interests are continually subordinated to the conflicts of rival clergy, and where there is scarcely a chord of purely patriotic feeling that vibrates in the national breast. The causes of this deplorable condition I have not now to investigate.¹ It is sufficient to say that it exists in spite of the abrogation of the persecuting laws. If there was one secular question which the Irish Catholics pursued with an intense and genuine ardor, it was the struggle for the repeal of the Union. For a long series of years they maintained that struggle with a combination of enthusiasm, of perseverance, and of self-sacrifice, such as has been seldom shown in a political contest, and they invariably based their claim on the broad principle that the form of government in any country should be determined by the majority of its inhabitants. But no sooner had that principle come into collision with the Church, no sooner had its triumph menaced the security of the Vatican, and wrestled two provinces from the Pope, than all this was changed. The teaching of Davis Thomas Davis, a leader of the Young Ireland movement. and of O’Connell Daniel O'Connell, Irish political leader who campaigned for Catholic Emancipation and repeal of the Union. was at once forgotten. The bond that had so long connected the Irish Catholics with liberalism was broken, and the whole party pressed forward, with an alacrity that would be ludicrous if it were not pitiable, to unite themselves with the most retrogressive politicians in Europe, and to discard and

¹ I have endeavored to trace them in a book called The Leaders of Public Opinion in Ireland.