Page:A letter to the Right Hon. Chichester Fortescue, M.P. on the state of Ireland.djvu/75

 still prosper in Ireland. The Protestant clergy are more generally resident arid more fully instructed than they ever were before; let us wait and see the effects of their labours in the vineyard before we pluck up by the roots our budding plants. Sanguine persons indeed! The Roman Catholic Church has withstood in Europe and in Ireland the fiercest storms. In France it has survived Voltaire and Lepaux, the French Revolution and the Goddess of Reason; in England, Queen Elizabeth, William the Third, and the Penal Laws. In Ireland it still confronts us with four times as many adherents as all the Protestant churches. If we look to the fate of sovereigns, we find that James the Second forfeited the crown of England, and that Charles the Tenth sacrificed the crown of France, rather from devotion to the Church of Rome than from the failure of their political ambition. If we enquire among the learned, we find in England Dr. Manning and Mr. Newman quitting the Protestant for the Catholic Church; in France, Montalembert giving his thrilling eloquence in behalf of the infallible Pope. If we look for examples of domestic purity, and the devotion of every faculty to religion, we find examples in the highest Catholic families of France.

But has the Reformation no chance in Ireland?

A fair chance, I should say, but not by means of the mitres and privileged seats in the House of Lords. As in large towns the first Christian apostles and teachers converted the Gentiles, in spite of Nero, of