616 IRELAND AND HER COMMENTATORS. 



and administer charity and pious exhortations to those in need of 

 such assistance. The respect of the lower classes in Ireland for pro- 

 fessors and performers of rigid self-denial is very great; but the 

 power of saying mass, christening, and dispensing the eucharist, and 

 other sacraments, together with the hearing in confession of all the 

 secret and indefinite little spiritual lapses of which untutored minds 

 can be so easily persuaded to accuse themselves, give the secular 

 priesthood the complete mastery of the religious partialities of their 

 penitents. Mr. Croly, in his recent very valuable pamphlet, which 

 made such an uproar in the papers, says that the administration of 

 extreme-unction is regarded as an almost indubitable passport to 

 heaven, and that the friends and relatives of the man or woman who 

 dies without it lament the double death of soul and body of the de- 

 ceased. Now, monks cannot render this service, and cannot com- 

 mand the reverence due to the possessors of such power. We know 

 something of those associations of men who think it spiritual heroism 

 to act unlike the rest of mankind, and pride themselves on their total 

 dissimilarity to their species. The frequent instances of ignorance 

 which Mr. Inglis met among the secular clergy in his tour form the 

 rule among the monastics. They are men of infinitely less cultivated 

 minds than the priests, who, as a body, have little mental riches to 

 boast of. For the most part they are bred to some manual occupa- 

 tion, for which they prove themselves incompetent, and then take to 

 educating children in societies dependent on the contributions of 

 those who think that unfitness for the ordinary pursuits of life is the 

 best criterion of eligibility to save souls and " teach young ideas how 

 to shoot." It is really prolific of indignation in any right thinking 

 mind to see bands of stal worth fellows, whom nature never intended 

 should move in any but the rudest sphere, setting themselves up as 

 paragons of piety, and undertaking with the greatest possible self- 

 sufficiency the direction of other men's thoughts. If the Irish ever 

 resolve to think for themselves independent of their priests, we hope 

 their mental allegiance will never be transferred to those spiritual 

 hybrids called " Brothers" of innumerable orders. 



We quite agree with Mr. Inglis in his estimate, in the chapter on 

 Maynooth, of the Irish Catholic clergy. We regret he did not visit 

 Carlow, of which comparatively little is known in this country, though 

 there are abundance of materials for an amusing and instructive paper 

 on that establishment. 



Though one cannot but regret the absence of more intelligent spi- 

 ritual guides for the Irish people, yet were there abundance of em- 

 ployment religious feuds would speedily disappear. A constantly 

 occupied population could not be excited to excesses, or involved in 

 endless broils about theological quibbles ; for, after all, it should be 

 sufficient that Christianity, of which charity is the basis, be professed 

 in common by all parties. Poverty is the breath of faction, and idle- 

 ness the parent of poverty. Let the people have but plenty of em- 

 ployment, and fair remuneration for their labour, and the grievances 

 of religious disputations, even tithes, will cease to be a prominent 

 source of complaint. The spirit of the age will rectify the absurdity 

 of compelling millions to pay for the maintenance of the alien religion 



