2. _Home Rule would gravely imperil our civil and religious liberties._ Ireland is pre-eminently a clerically controlled country, the number of Roman Catholic priests being per head greater than that of any country in Europe. Her staff of members of religious orders, male and female, is also enormous, their numbers having increased during the last fifty years 150 per cent., while the population has decreased 30 per cent. It is undeniable, therefore, that in a Dublin Parliament, the overwhelming majority of whose members would be adherents of the Roman Catholic faith, the Roman ecclesiastical authority, which claims the right to decide as to what questions come within the region of faith and morals would be supreme. Great stress has lately been laid in Nationalist speeches from British platforms on the tolerant spirit towards Protestants which animates Irish Roman Catholics. We gladly acknowledge that in most parts of Ireland Protestants and Roman Catholics, as regards the ordinary affairs of life, live side by side on friendly neighbourly terms. Indeed, that spirit, as a consequence of the growing prosperity of Ireland, had been steadily increasing, till the recent revival of the Home Rule proposal, with its attendant fears of hierarchical ascendency, as illustrated by the promulgation of the _Ne Temere_ decree, suddenly interrupted it. But the fundamental fact of the case is, that in the last resort, it is not with their Roman Catholic neighbours, or even with their hierarchy, that Irish Protestants have to reckon; it is rather with the Vatican, the inexorable power behind them all, whose decrees necessarily over-ride all the good-will which neighbourly feeling might inspire in the Roman Catholic mind. The _Ne Temere_ decree affords a significant premonition of the spirit which would direct Home Rule legislation. It is noteworthy that no Nationalist member has protested against the cruelties of that decree as shown in the M'Cann case, and Mr. Devlin, M.P., even defended what was done from his place in Parliament. This action is all the more significant in view of the fact that during the Committee stage of the 1893 Home Rule Bill Mr. Gladstone, Mr. Redmond, and his Irish Nationalist colleagues voted against, and defeated, an Ulster amendment which proposed to exempt marriage and other religious ceremonies from the legislative powers of the Dublin Parliament. It would be intolerable that such litigation as in the Hubert case at present in progress in Montreal, arising out of the Marriage Law of the Province of Quebec, should be made possible in Ireland. No paper safeguards in a Home Rule Bill could prevent it.