So much for the Irish clergy. But what of Rome itself? Looked at from the distance of the Seven Hills, and viewed from the standpoint of a Church that contemplates all forms of human government with equal indifference, always regarding only the good of their Church, is it not possible that the acute diplomatists of the Eternal City may think that they stand to gain more by prolonging than by satisfying the present hunger of Ireland? At present Rome holds Ireland in fee. As long as Ireland possesses no strong secular central power she must always lean on the authority of her bishops and archbishops. But Rome thinks probably more of the 40,000,000 people of Britain than of the 4,000,000 of Ireland. As long as England persists in holding Ireland in bondage she must pay to Rome some compensation. The eighty votes at Westminster are still doing the work which Cardinal Manning required of them. Is it likely that Rome is so beset with anxiety to drive them across the Channel? Is it altogether unlikely that some of the more shrewd Italian or Spanish diplomatists at the Vatican--advised, perhaps, by their English bishops and dukes--may hope to affect the issue rather in the Unionist than in the Home Rule direction? Such suspicions may be entirely baseless, but it will be impossible to disregard them entirely during the events of the next few years. It would not be the first time, nor the latest since Castlereagh, when the extreme Protestant Unionists of this country conspired with the Tory Ultramontanes of the Vatican to traffic away the liberties of Ireland.[55] Amid all these doubts and perplexities we shall be wise to stick fast to the central doctrine that civil liberty and religious liberty stand together. This is the one truth that emerges from the history of Europe during the last three centuries. Wherever we look--whether in Germany, France, Holland, Scotland, or England--we see that these two rights have always gone hand in hand. Is there, indeed, a single instance in human history when the grant of civil liberty has led to the forging of religious chains? Look to the West, and note how, in the freest countries of the world--in the United States and Canada, where there is not even a shadow of an establishment for any form of religion--every kind of human faith lives together in simple human brotherhood, and draws from that brotherhood new food for the refreshment of mankind. In Ireland the one reason why the religious quarrel has been maintained is to be found in the absence of civil liberty. At every crisis of Ireland's fate the passion of religious hatred has been worked--then as now--in order to prolong civil and political despotism. May we not be sure that Home Rule, instead of strengthening this evil tendency, will weaken it? May we not be equally sure that it will take no blood or muscle from the cause of true religion, certain to flourish with greater richness and power where Christian love prevails?