PRIESTLY INTERFERENCE AT ELECTIONS.

Evening Star, Issue 2953, 6 August 1872, Page 4

PRIESTLY INTERFERENCE AT ELECTIONS.

Judged by the light of recent events in these Colonics—Bishop Goold’s pastoral in Victoria, and Bishop Moran's action at the Wakatip election—the Galway election and the judgment of Judge Keogh therein, to which reference was made in the Suez telegrams, present some features of interest. The Galway election was a contest between Captains Nolan and French, and the former, who is a strong Home Rule man, was returned. Although the legal proceedings which were afterwards taken were maiuly directed to the questions of bribery and treating, which proved successful, there was raised “the great constitutional question,” whether spiritual intimidation, such as what undoubtedly carried the election, di; qualified the candidate who profited by it from sitting in Parliament. The Times, in an excellent review of the judgment of Mr Justice Keogh, which was most elaborate in its character, and took nine hours in its delivery, says it is probable that never, even in Ireland, was this issue so distinctly raised before The Judge protested that, having carefully reviewed the whole mass of evidence, voluminous almost beyond precedent, he found “ that it presented the most astonishing attempt at ecclesiastical tyranny which the whole history of priestly intolerance afforded.” Captain Nolan was put forward by the revolutionary Home Pule party—a party which, in Galway, is not easily distinguished from the Fenians, and to which the priests only lent their influence from motives of political expediency. Instead of the people being rallied by the priests against Protestant landlords to demand justice for Catholics, the priests were here induced to follow the Bemocratic initiative, though no religious interest was at stake, and to identify themselves with a movement opposed by the great body of Catholic gentry. Having once done so, they resorted with unscrupulous and relentless energy to a kind of terrorism which none but priestly demagogues can employ, and nothing but the execrable casuistry of Jesuitism can excuse or palliate. Not content with prostituting their sacred office by placing the anathemas of the Church at the disposal of a revolutionary faction, and threatening men who might conscientiously vote against Nolan with retribution beyond the grave, they did not shrink from working upon the evil passions of thei hearers, and inciting ruffianly crowds to deeds of violence, under pretence of warning their intended victims against the probable consequences of apostasy from the popular cause. “On the ICth of November,’| said Mr Justice Keogh, “ the ecclesiastical circumvallation was complete, and the Loughrea meeting of landlords, at which Captain Trench was chosen, was not decided on until every avenue of the Constitution had been held by ecclesiastical dictation.’ 1 One priest having declared that Sir Thomas Burke had sounded his own death-knell, explained that he meant to speak of a political death-knell, upon which the Judge shrewdly observed that he would like to see a Tipperary man, armed with a blunderbuss, who would understand this nice distinction. Accordingly shots were fired into houses, persons were called out of their beds and cautioned significantly against voting for Trench, and the pollingday was one scene of undisguised wholesale and triumphant violence. Even during the sitting of the Court respectable witnesses were subjected to insult and personal assault, nor was there room for the slightest doubt that all this had been directly ens couraged and instigated by the Roman Cas tholic hierarchy. Judge Keogh, announced that he should report Archbishop Macllale, the Bishop of Galway, the Bishop of Clonfcrt, and a large number of priests as “guilty of an organised attempt to defeat the free franchise of the electois,” and as accomplices of Captain Nolan and his brother in the legal offence of corrupt practices.

So outspoken a denunciation of priestly coercion has not been delivered for many a year from the Irish Bench, and we need hardly remark that it comes with all the greater weight from the lips of a h'oman Catholic Judge. If the judgment contains a few passages which strike the car of an English reader as more forensic than judicial, we are not sure that such passages will not rather enhance the impression which it is calculated to produce on the Irish mind. To us it may appear scarcely relevant to cite the general testimony of the witnesses in favor of the Galway landlords as “ the best in the world,” though it is certainly both true and relevant to state that Galway had always been distinguished by the absence of sectarian animosities, Ko English Election Judge would have considered it part of his duty to defend the memory of Oliver Cromwell against “the vile tongue of that audacious and mendacious priest, Father Conway,” or to speak of gentlemen having been hunted through the fields by ‘' that obscene mon£« ter Fat Barrett,” though he might possibly agree with Jadge Keogh, that an avowal of Father Cohen that Irish priests would, “if necessary,” use the Confessional to penetrate the secrecy of the Ballot deserves the attention of the Legislature. But we may safely assume that Judge Keogh knows his own countrymen, and has not adopted the racy phraseology of O’Connell in a judicial sentence without due consideration and fore* sight. There is a place as well as a time for all things, and there is perhaps no place so appropriate for stigmatizing a nefarious conspiracy against electoral freedom in terms of manly indignation as the Court-house of that County town in which its temporary success was applauded. At ail events, we are much toe grateful to Judge Keogh for his courage in dragging the arch-conspirators to light without respect of persons to criticise with any severity the language he may have selected to characterise their conduct.