In the Channel Islands the successors of the Druids are the judges who administer justice, and even the women are allowed to vote for the men whom the British Parliament permits to make their domestic laws and manage their domestic affairs. The Hindus and Buddhists, who have such a stolid adherence to their religion that there is small hope of ever making Christians of them; the fanatic and aggressive Mahometans, who are not content to be allowed to practice their religious rites in peace and quiet, but want to make proselytes of the world, have their own religion. The laws under which they lived before their conquest was effected are still carefully guarded and protected, courts are specially constituted to keep alive their old laws, and the real property of the country is held and inherited under them. Toleration and favor are shown to every phase of belief, or non-belief,-to the Pagan, the Heathen, all Protestant sects, by whatever name designated; in brief, to all the world and all the peoples, except the Catholics of Ireland. Even Borneo, savage and ignorant Borneo, has two sets of courts; one to administer the laws made by the present government, and another the old Mahometan laws. And while the persecution was in progress on the alleged pretext that the Irish were not loyal to the Imperial Government, Catholic Irish soldiers were helping Wellington, an Irish general, to win the battle of Waterloo against a nation of Catholics.

These examples make the conclusion inevitable that, as selfgovernment exists with the consent and by the establishment of the British Parliament in almost all parts of the Empire, and is, in fact, a settled and fixed rule, enforced at once whenever new territory is acquired by arms or treaty, nobody can object to selfgovernment in Ireland on constitutional grounds. So far as the Constitution, so-called, regulates and provides for the matter, in any way, it is just the reverse, and demands and requires and makes it obligatory on the authorities to grant, in some form, to Ireland the same rights at home and on her own soil that Canada, Australasia, Borneo, Bechuanaland, the Isle of Man, and other places enjoy on their soil.

The Constitution, therefore, is not the obstacle. The reason for the prolonged, never ending denial to Ireland of equality with other British subjects must be looked for somewhere else-perhaps, in the Articles of Union between Great Britain and Ireland. We have recently examined that document, in view of its possible bearing on the questions now so important to the people of those countries and which are agitating them so profoundly, and found nothing in it to prohibit, in an even remote degree, any plan for home rule or self-government that Parliament may choose to adopt. But even if there was, is that compact to stand forever, let what will happen,

to be always sacred and inviolable, never to be touched, altered, or modified in the slightest degree, no matter what the emergency and how great the interests that demand the modification? Such a claim is neither law nor reason. As all such things are supposed to be done for the benefit of the parties concerned, and that is the principle that underlies all government, it would be nothing but stupid and criminal folly that should permit this law to stand unchanged when a change becomes necessary in order to accomplish the very results it was intended to bring about, but has failed to effect. Neither is it law, for in a matter of government merely no legislative body can bind its successors irrevocably or do any act that it or its successors cannot undo.

But we are not without precedent on this point. Parliament has already shown, in a most conspicuous and important way, one which touched the people of both islands on a matter always cherished by them, that the Articles of Union have no such sanctity as to interfere, in the least, with whatever measures it is thought good to pass.

Article V. of the Articles of Union provides: "That the church of that part of Great Britain called England and that of Ireland should be united into one church, and the Archbishops, Bishops, deans and clergy of the churches of England and Ireland shall, from time to time, be summoned to, and entitled to sit in, convocation of the United Church, in like manner and subject to the same regulations as are at present by law established with respect to like orders of the Church of England, and the doctrine, worship, discipline, and government of the United Church shall be preserved, as by law now established for the Church of England."

"And that the continuance and preservation forever of the said United Church as the Established Church of that part of the United Kingdom called England and Ireland shall be deemed and taken to be an essential and fundamental condition of the Treaty of Union." This article to continue forever, to be preserved forever and taken as an essential and fundamental condition of the Treaty of Union!

This was the very gist of the Union, its kernel-the feature that recommended it most to Protestant England-that gave the dignataries and convocations control over the rebellious Catholics, that would furnish the means to keep them under foot, and ultimately stamp out their faith, while forcing its adherents, meanwhile, to support another. Surely it cannot be touched; whatever else falls, it must remain; it is an essential and fundamental condition of the Union; and if it has been repealed or abrogated, then the Union is already gone; it cannot exist after a fundamental and essential feature is destroyed. Yet that is exactly what has been done;

this article has been absolutely set aside and annulled, there is no longer any union of the Churches of England and Ireland. The Church has been disestablished in Ireland, and if the Articles of Union did not stand in the way of this, how is it that they can be claimed to be an obstacle now?

Neither the Constitution nor the Articles of Union, then, are incompatible with the measure for the self-government of Ireland. The real reason for opposition to it is the old one of hostility to the Catholics. It is said that the Orangemen of Ulster are arming to resist, and it has been reported, though denied, that Lord Wolseley says he is ready to lead them. Ulster is the province in Ireland where the Catholics are in a minority. Out of a total population in Ireland of 5,412,377, Ulster has 1,743,075, a bare majority of whom are Protestants. And Mr. Chamberlain, the leader of the Radical party in England, carries his home rule views so far that he actually wants to have a separate government for Ulster. He does not wish the Catholics and Protestants of Ireland to unite in one government for the whole, which shall consult the good of the entire island, but he proposes that while the Catholics in the other provinces may govern themselves, the Protestants in Ulster shall govern the Catholics of that province. He desires to accumulate government on Ireland, and let it still have the Imperial Parliament: one home government for Ulster and another for the remaining provinces combined. This scheme is, of course, foolish, and can never be adopted; and we only advert to it at all to furnish another example, if one were needed, of the motives which lie at the bottom of the opposition to Home Rule.

0°

THE CHURCH AND HER HOLYDAYS.1

UR Lord sets forth His royalty clearly. He is a king. “For this was I born, for this I came into the world." The Wise Men of the East at His birth proclaimed Him a king; the representative of the Roman Emperor wrote on the cross the acknowledgment of His kingly rank. He spoke constantly of His kingdom. He disposed it to His twelve Apostles, the peers of His realm, as His Father had disposed it to Him; He committed the chief power to Peter. Standing as King of kings, the Queen Mother stands near him.

In this Kingdom the loyal subjects have their holydays, the birthday of the great King, the days that commemorate His mighty deeds, His campaigns, His victories, His triumphs; the days given to honor the twelve, whom He sent to conquer the world. Is it strange that in days when loyalty abounded in that Kingdom, when every heart throbbed with zeal to do and endure all for Him, the festival days of the Kingdom were celebrated with earnest, spontaneous outpouring of the heart? Loyalty cannot be purchased

or manufactured; patriotism is heartfelt or nothing.

When the royal birthday comes, or the day of a great victory, or the deliverance of the land, and no flag is raised, no voice of gladness is heard, where men speak slightingly of the monarch and his service, it is vain to say that the people are faithful in their allegiance, are enthusiastic in support of the throne. No; loyalty and patriotism are dead, and the men who boast most loudly of their fidelity may be put down as most to be doubted.

How do we stand as subjects of the kingdom of God on earth? The Church, by one of her positive commandments, requires the faithful to sanctify certain holydays in the year, by taking part in the offering of the great sacrifice of the Mass and by abstaining from servile works. To many it has doubtless seemed strange that the holydays thus prescribed were not the same throughout the world, fixed irrevocably, and known by all in every country on the face of the earth. Still more strange has it seemed that in a republic like our own, where the Church, though the oldest of all the institutions existing, can boast of little more than three centuries and a half of history, there have been diversities before the recently held Third Plenary Council of Baltimore made a step towards absolute uniformity.

1 Acta et Decreta Concilii Plenarii Baltimorensis Tertii, A.D. MDCCCLXXXIV. Baltimore, 1886.

Yet so far as this country is concerned, the state of our feasts and fasts excited wonder, not only here, but even in Rome; for years ago the authorities there wrote to this country to inquire into the origin of the diversity.

The holydays of the Church in the course of its history are a kind of meter, showing the days of fervor and the days when faith grew cold, and when all that the spouse of Christ required of her children seemed an onerous burthen, which many sought to shift from their shoulders.

In the days of faith and fervor not only were the great festivals prescribed by the Church, those associated with the life of our Lord and his Blessed Mother, those intimately connected with the work of redemption, and the feasts of the holy apostles by whose ministry the Church was established and the channels of grace led through the world-not only were these kept reverently, but the patronal feast of each country, diocese, and church, the days of the most famous local saints were similarly honored. The devotion was general, and whoso refused to lay aside his implements of trade or traffic on their days was so condemned by public opinion that custom made the law.

The fame of many saints from being local became general, devotion spread to other countries, and then feasts were made obligatory throughout the Church. Devotion to particular mysteries also led to the establishment of special feasts, as in the case of Corpus Christi, to honor the real presence of our Lord in the Holy Eucharist, and the institution of that sacrament.

The great commercial awakening of Europe that grew out of the Crusades was accompanied by a waning of piety and a manifestation of declining interest in the affairs of God and salvation as men's minds became more absorbed in worldly affairs. The institution of the Friars Minor, by Saint Francis of Assisi, was a direct effort to counteract the spirit of greed and worldliness which was sweeping over Europe; but the fervor of the Franscican, of Carmelite, Dominican, and Augustinian, who joined in the new movement for the things of God, though it did much, did not triumph. Less and less Christian grew governments, grew nobles and people; more and more did old pagan ideas reassert themselves, and while Christian civilization declined, material prosperity became the great end and aim of man.

Then came the revolt of the sixteenth century. The Church had acquired a certain amount of material wealth, which was at once seized. This property diverted from the general wealth of the country was alleged to be an injury to the commonwealth. In the hands of the princes, their courtiers and favorites, it would lighten the burthen of taxation, establish great public works, found schools