It is a strange hallucination to find that there are
politicians to-day who think that Rome will change her principles at the
bidding of Mr. Redmond, or to please hard-driven politicians, or to make
Rome attractive to a Protestant Empire. Rome claims supremacy, and she
tells us quite candidly what she will do when she gets it.
Here is our difficulty under Home Rule. Irish Protestants see that they
must either refuse to go into an Irish Parliament, or else go into it as
a hopeless minority, and turn it into an arena for the maintenance of
their most elementary rights; in which case the Irish Parliament would
be simply a cockpit of religio-political strife. But it would be a great
mistake to suppose that the religious difficulty is confined to Irish
Protestants. It is a difficulty which would become in time a crushing
burden to Roman Catholics themselves. The yoke of Rome was found too
heavy for Italy, and in a generation or two it would be found too heavy
for Ireland. But for the creation of the Papal ascendency in Ireland,
the responsibility must rest, in the long run, on Great Britain herself.
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