IS IT A RELIGIOUS QUARREL?

New Zealand Tablet, Volume IV, Issue 193, 8 December 1876, Page 8

IS IT A RELIGIOUS QUARREL?

" The Irish quarrel with England is, and ought to be, exclusively religious," says the • New York Tablet.' This, with a good deal of misrepresentation of Irish politics, is the burden of an article which has lately received from the 'Dublin Nation' a severe answer. The editor of the ' New York Tablet/ who, we believe is an Englishman, and who certainly is a thoughtful and cultivated man, last week renewed hia statement, saymsf : " There is nothing at all fanatical in asserting, as we most confidently do, that whatever antipathy there is to Ireland on the part of England is exclusively religious, and not in the least a nationalistic, one." This is somewhat different from the original statement, but the meaning is evidently the same. "4. man," he says, " who can gravely assert thub Ireland's quarrel with England is not exclusively religious, must wilfully close his eyes to facts and his ears to historic evidence." Let the matter, then, be settled by " historic evidence." The religious difference between England and Ireland can only bo 300 years old ; but the actual hostility of the countries is fully 700. For 400 years before Protestantism existed, the deadly feud raged between the islands, generating the bad blood of to-day. The religious element has been, since the Reformation, a bitter addition to the ancient animosity; but even this partook of race hatred. The dominant religionists in England hated their own countiymen who were Papists or Dissenters ; but their dislike was tempered by nationality In Ireland, where the Catholic was also a Celt, the Episcopalian let his prejudice run to the end of its tope. But, on the other hand, the part played by the Protestants in Ire land is the best proof of the error of the ' New York Tablet/ In all Irish national movements for a century past — that is, since Protestantism took root in the soil, and was more than an importation — the leading patriots have been Protestant Irishmen. Wolfe, Tone, Eobert Emmet, Lord Edward Fitzgerald, the brothers Shearesj and, indeed, seven-eighths of the leading United Irishmen, in '98, were Protestants ; John Mitchel, John Martin, and a other Protestant gentlemen, were the leaders of the '48 movement; Thomas Clarke Luby, a Protestant, was at the very head of the movement in '65 : and Isaac Butt, Professor Galbraith, Mitohel, Henry, and a majority of the Protestants of Ireland are heartily in accord with the present Home Eule movement. The editor of the 'New York Tablet' has made an absurd mistake, and had better drop the subject. The ' Nation' was quite right — historically right — in saying that the quarrel of Ireland with England is not, and never was, " exclusively religious." The cause of the quarrel began when there was no religious difference between the two countries. England's ravages and robberies and massacres went on in Ireland for hundreds of years while England was herself a champion of the Church ; and there is no reason to believe that if England were to return to Catholicity to-morrow, Ireland would derive any political advantage from the change. — ' Pilot.'