It is time I went back to Turlough's Tower and my phoenix priest who was riled to hear his Bishop speak of the Dublin explosion as a "Castle job." He claimed that "the clergy are unwilling instruments in the hands of the Irish people, who are unconquerable even after seven hundred years of English rule. The Irish priesthood is so powerful an element of Irish life, not because it leads, but because it follows. Powerful popular movements coerce the clergy, who are bound to join the stream, or be for ever left behind. No doubt at all that, being once in, they endeavour to direct the current of opinion in the course most favourable to the Catholic religion. To do otherwise would be to deny their profession, to be traitors to the Church. They did not commence the agitation. The Church instinctively sticks to what is established, and opposes violent revolutionary action. History will bear me out. The clergy stamped out the Smith-O'Brien insurrection. The Catholic clergy of the present day, mostly the sons of farmers, are perhaps more ardently political than the clergy of a former day, a little less broad in view, a little more hot-headed; yet in the main are subject to the invariable law I laid down at first--that is, they only follow and direct, they do not lead, or at any rate they only place themselves in the front when the safety of the Church demands it. The bulk of the clergy believe that the time to lead has now come. My own opinion, in which I am supported by a very few,--but I am happy to say a very distinguished few,--is this: The Roman Catholic Church is making immense progress in England; a closer and closer connection with England will ultimately do far more for the Church than can be hoped from revolutionary and republican Ireland. We should by a Home Rule Bill gain much ground at first, but we should as rapidly lose it, while our hold on England would be altogether gone. Many of the so-called Catholic Nationalists are atheists at heart, and the tendency of modern education is decidedly materialistic. So that instead of progressive conquest the Church would experience progressive decline, which would be all the more striking after the great but momentary accession of prestige conferred by the Home Rule Bill. My theory is--Let well alone. The popular idea is to achieve commanding and lasting success at a blow."