One remarkable fact, however, in connection with the National League deserves special consideration, for it illustrates the singularly disastrous character of Mr. Gladstone's interposition in Irish affairs. The society, which we have endeavoured to describe, and which Mr. Morley recommends to our attention as the _locum tenens_ of dynamite and the dagger, is now officered in nearly every village by the priests of the Roman Church. At the beginning of his career, Mr. Parnell personally was regarded by the Roman Catholic hierarchy with suspicion, if not with hostility. Mr. Butt had never succeeded in securing their hearty co-operation in his Home Rule scheme. Mr. Parnell was not only a Protestant, but expressed his contempt very freely for the adherents of the Roman Church, whilst he avowed his sympathy with Revolutionists, whom the Irish Catholic had been taught to regard as enemies of the Holy Father. We can always trace in the history of this Church two forces at work; the principle of order and authority, worldly and calculating, in sympathy with the powers that be, trusting by skill and caution to manipulate them for its own ends; and on the other hand, the wilder spirit of sacerdotal ambition ready to ride the storm and dare catastrophe. Before Mr. Gladstone's second Administration, the former influence was gaining much strength in Ireland. Even if we make allowance for the social origin of the Irish priests, filled from their infancy with the rebel sentiment of the peasantry, there are many sins that the disposition of their Church was until very recently to rely upon intrigue and organization for gaining its ends, rather than to ally itself openly with the Irish Revolution. Even after Mr. Parnell had secured the allegiance of the farmer class by his great largess in the shape of 20 per cent. reduction of rent, not only did Cardinal McCabe continue to oppose him, but Archbishop Croke evinced a desire to act on the side of Government.