Page:A letter to the Right Hon. Chichester Fortescue, M.P. on the state of Ireland.djvu/78

 claim therefore would still remain, and when the voluntary principle had been fully established in Ireland, would be put forward as the perpetual everlasting grievance of the Irish priests and people.

Let us remark also upon this subject, that the nineteenth century has seen a strange and unexpected, but very powerful, effort of the clerical body in France, in Belgium, and in the United Kingdom, to place the ecclesiastical element above the civil.

In Scotland we have seen an attempt made by the ablest members of the Scotch Church to set aside the authority of an Act of Parliament, an attempt which enlisted many liberal men in its favour, and which it required all the ability of Sir William Follett, and the weight of a majority in Parliament, to resist. In England we are now witnesses of an endeavour on the part of certain ecclesiastics, very highly placed, to establish sacerdotal rule in place of that supremacy of the civil power which three centuries ago Henry the Eighth induced Parliament to substitute for the appeal to Rome. And can we expect that an ecclesiastical sovereign, strong in the traditions of emperors holding the Pope's stirrup and humbly acknowledging their transgressions at Rome and at Venice; strong in records of a Queen of England deposed, and a King of France excommunicated, and whose maxim is Vestigia nulla retrorsum, should not cling to old pretensions, and endeavour to make all the Queen's subjects acknowledge the right of the Pope to exercise jurisdiction and authority in these kingdoms?