Ireland Under Coercion: The Diary of an American (2 of 2): (2nd ed.) (1888)Hurlbert, William Henry
History
Ireland Under Coercion: The Diary of an American (2 of 2): (2nd ed.) (1888)
Hurlbert, William Henry
Ireland -- Description and travel; Ireland -- Politics and government -- 1837-1901
functionary. When so much is known of the methods and the men, why is it
that so many crimes are committed with virtual impunity? For two
sufficient reasons. Witnesses cannot be got to testify, or trusted, if
they do testify, to speak the truth; and it is idle to expect juries of
the vicinage in nine cases out of ten will do their duty. Political
cowardice having made it impossible to transfer the venue in cases of
Irish crime, as to which all the authorities were agreed about these
points, from Ireland into Great Britain, it is found that even to
transfer the trial of "Moonlighters" from Clare or Kerry into Wicklow,
for example, has a most instructive effect, opening the eyes of the
people of Wicklow to a state of things in their own island, of which
happily for themselves they were previously as ignorant as the people of
Surrey or of Middlesex. This explains the indignant wish expressed to me
some time ago in a letter from a priest in another part of Ireland, that
"martial law" might be proclaimed in Clare and Kerry to "stamp out the
Moonlighters, those pests of society." That in Clare and Kerry priests
should be found not only disposed to wink at and condone the proceedings
of these "pests of society," but openly to co-operate with them under
the pretext of a "national" movement, is surely a thing equally
intolerable by the Church and dangerous to the cause of Irish autonomy.
This I am glad to say is strongly felt, and has been on more than one
occasion very vigorously stated by one of the most eminent and estimable
of Irish ecclesiastics, the Bishop-Coadjutor of Clonfert, upon whom I
called this morning. Dr. Healy, who is a senator of the Royal University
of Ireland, and a member of the Royal Irish Academy, presides over that
part of the diocese of Clonfort which includes Portumna and Woodford. He
lives in a handsome and commodious, but simple and unpretentious house,
set in ample grounds well-planted, and commanding a wide view of a most
agreeable country. We were ushered into a well-furnished study, and the
bishop came in at once to greet us with the most cordial courtesy. He is
a frank, dignified, unaffected man, and in his becoming episcopal
purple, with the gold chain and cross, looked every inch a bishop. I was
particularly anxious to see Dr. Healy, as a type of the high-minded and
courageous ecclesiastics who, in Ireland, have resolutely refused to
subordinate their duties and their authority as ecclesiastics to the
convenience and the policy of an organisation absolutely controlled by
Mr. Parnell, who not only is not a Catholic, but who is an open ally and
associate of the bitterest enemies of the Catholic Church in France and
in England. Protestant historians affirm that Pope Innocent was one of
the financial backers of William of Orange when he set sail from Holland
to crush the Catholic faith in Great Britain and Ireland, and drive the
Catholic house of Stuart into exile. But it was reserved for the
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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