APOLOGY FOR THE BELFAST ADDRESS. 213 



In the light of the knowledge given by this 

 courageous memorial, and of similar knowledge other- 

 wise derived, the recent Catholic manifesto did not at 

 all strike me as a chuckle over the mistake of a mala- 

 droit adversary, but rather as an evidence of profound 

 uneasiness on the part of the Cardinal, the Archbishops, 

 and the Bishops who signed it. They acted towards the 

 Students' Memorial, however, with their accustomed prac- 

 tical wisdom. As one concession to the spirit which it 

 embodied, the Catholic University at Kensington was 

 brought forth, apparently as the effect of spontaneous 

 inward force, and not of outward pressure becoming 

 too formidable to be successfully opposed. 



The memorialists point with bitterness to the fact, 

 that ' the name of no Irish Catholic is known in con- 

 nection with the physical and natural sciences.' But 

 this, they ought to know, is the complaint of free and 

 cultivated minds wherever a Priesthood exercises domi- 

 nant power. Precisely the same complaint has been 

 made with respect to the Catholics of Germany. The 

 great national literature and the scientific achievements 

 of that country, in modern times, are almost wholly the 

 work of Protestants. A vanishingly small fraction of 

 it only is derived from members of the Roman Church, 

 although the number of these in Grermany is at least 

 as great as that of the Protestants. ' The question 

 arises,' says a writer in an able German periodical, 

 * what is the cause of a phenomenon so humiliating to 

 the Catholics? It cannot be referred to want of 

 natural endowment due to climate (for the Protestants 

 of Southern Germany have contributed powerfully to 

 the creations of the German intellect), but purely to 

 outward circumstances. And these are readily dis- 

 covered in the pressure exercised for centuries by the 

 Jesuitical system, which has crushed out of Catholics 



