The practical experiment of this system is impossible in France, at all events for the moment, and for several reasons. First of all there are pecuniary considerations which are of paramount importance. The Government not only exacts that the religious service should be conducted but that the residence should be effective, and if these conditions are not carried out, the salary is stopped. And then it is also possible, it is even probable, that, amongst us, this new organisation would not be accepted by the clergy and people without some difficulty, for it is quite opposed to all our traditions.
It is not the same in Ireland. It is precisely this organisation which seems to have enabled the clergy in my country to acquire and retain the prodigious influence they now exert over the population. There are very few parishes. Few have less than three thousand souls; and most of them have eight or ten thousand. I am speaking, of course, of rural parishes. The population is widely scattered, much more so than in most of our provinces. But yet no attempt is made to create new parishes. This is not for lack of priests. The clergy are recruited with the greatest facility, the lists are full, and every year priests leave for the Colonies. But no one seems to think that any increase in the number of parishes would be desirable.
In fact, in each of them, the religious offices are discharged by several young curates, who aid the vicar and who go wherever they are called, on horseback or in carriages, as a rule, for the distances are often very great. Very simple buildings, without any architectural pretensions, have been erected to serve as chapels, in order that no one should have too far to go to attend the Sunday services. Besides, the number of masses celebrated is considerable, for the custom of the priest celebrating two masses on the same day is very general.
Upon the whole, the priests perform nearly all the parochial work; catechising, confessions, visiting the sick, &c. &c. The vicars are bishops on a small scale, who can concentrate their attention almost exclusively on preaching, on the superintendence of the work and of the schools, and on the temporal and spiritual administration of the parish.
In Ireland, as we know, the clergy do not receive any grant from Government. To be strictly correct, we must, however, mention, that for some years the administration has subsidised the College of Maynooth; but its intervention has been entirely limited to this. We may, therefore, say, that for all requirements, as well as for the construction and maintenance of the buildings used for worship, the Church can only rely upon the offerings of the faithful. She never appears to have had cause to regret this position. Fifty or sixty years ago there were, we may almost say, no Catholic churches in Ireland, the oldest and most important had been confiscated by the Protestants; the others were in ruins; the religious services were celebrated in buildings that were, in reality, only barns barely fitted up. Now, there is scarcely, so to speak, a single parish which does not boast of a superb church. The one at Kenmare is a Gothic edifice of beautiful design. That at Castle Connell, which I saw the other day, is still more important; every one tells me that their dimensions and the beauty of their construction is nothing unusual, that it is nearly the same everywhere. The Irish who have emigrated have contributed largely to this result. For several generations they all remain in correspondence with those branches of the family who have remained in the “ould country,” as the Canadians call it, and are warmly interested in all that takes place there; so that when a church is to be reconstructed in the midst of the cemetery, where their relations are lying, they display the most admirable generosity. The most remarkable thing about these offerings—I am now speaking of those provided by the residents—is not only their importance but their regularity. The vicars’ and priests’ stipends are supplied by two collections made every year. As a rule, they scarcely vary at all. The general distress has not perceptibly diminished them during the last few years, although they are high. A vicar usually receives 250l. to 400l.; a priest 120l. or 160l.; the fee for a mass is three shillings.
The moral purity of the Irish people is proverbial. I do not believe that any nation in the world can be compared to them in this respect. When inquiries are made on this subject, one hears facts that anywhere else would appear fabulous, but which, however, are confirmed by the official documents. There are many baronies containing a population of ten or twelve thousand souls, where for twenty years there has not been an illegitimate birth.
At Dublin, where there is a numerous garrison and a considerable floating population, the morality is naturally a little lax; but everywhere else, even in cities containing thirty thousand souls, like Limerick, we may almost say that prostitution does not exist. Numbers have been quoted to me that, unfortunately, appear so extraordinary to a Frenchman, that I was anxious to confirm them by asking for information on the subject from men of the most divergent professions and opinions. I have consulted priests, Protestant ministers, landlords, police officials, regimental doctors—all tell me the same thing. Let us inquire at home and ask ourselves what a French population would be living in the same state of misery and crowding.
It is quite useless to point out the moral purity that characterises the clergy, when they are recruited from such a population. Even their most inveterate political enemies, those who would have the most interest in destroying their political influence, have never ventured to hint the least insinuation on this subject.
The devotion of the Irish clergy is not less remarkable than its morality. At a still recent date, the Irish Church suffered from a real persecution. At the beginning of this century, a great many priests sacrificed their lives for their faith, exactly like the Roman martyrs in the early days of Christianity. During the war against France, and particularly at the time when an invasion was dreaded, the English Government formed, in every county in the kingdom, regiments of irregular cavalry known as the yeomanry. The English yeomanry was a sort of national guard, who afforded much sport for the wit of the caricaturists of the day, but who have never harmed anybody. In Ireland things happened very differently. All Catholics were carefully eliminated from the yeomanry, and this was quite natural, since they openly avowed their sympathy with France. But in consequence of this exclusion, the yeomanry corps were only composed of small landowners or small English Protestant farmers, who, exasperated by the real or supposed danger that they imagined they were in, surrounded by an excited population, became guilty of abominations which make the hair stand on end as one reads of them. Lord Cloncurry, in his Personal Recollections, p. 39, relates the following anecdote, which gives some idea of what took place at that time.
“It happened that the barony of Carbery, in the county of Kildare, was proclaimed under the Insurrection Act, and a camp established in it, which was occupied by the Fraser Fencibles. One evening the commanding officer, a Captain Fraser, returning to camp from Maynooth, where he had dined and drank freely, passed through a district belonging to my father, which was very peaceable and had not been included in the proclamation. As Captain Fraser rode through the village of Cloncurry attended by an orderly dragoon, just as the summer sun was setting, he saw an old man, named Christopher Dixon, upon the roadside, engaged in mending his cart. The Captain challenged him for being out after sunset in contravention of the terms of the proclamation. Dixon replied that he was not in a proclaimed district, and that he was engaged in his lawful business, preparing his cart to take a load to Dublin the following day. The Captain immediately made him prisoner, and placed him on horseback behind his orderly. The party proceeded about half a mile in this manner to a turnpike, where the officer got into a quarrel with the gatekeeper, and some delay took place, of which Dixon took advantage to beg of the turnpike man to explain that the district in which he was taken was not proclaimed, and that, therefore, there was no just ground for his arrest. While the altercation was proceeding, the poor old man (he was about eighty years of age) slipped off from the dragoon’s horse and was proceeding homewards when the officer and soldier followed him, and having despatched him with sixteen dirk and sabre wounds, of which nine were declared to be mortal, they rode off to the camp. A coroner’s inquest was held on the body, and a verdict of wilful murder returned; whereupon Mr. Thomas Ryan, a magistrate and the immediate landlord of Dixon under my father, proceeded to the camp, with a warrant for the apprehension of Captain Fraser, who, however, was protected by his men, and Mr. Ryan was driven off. Mr. Ryan applied to my father, who sent me with him to Lord Carhampton, then commander-in-chief in Ireland. We were accompanied by Colonel (afterwards General Sir George) Cockburn; and Mr. Ryan having produced the warrant, and Colonel Cockburn having pointed out the provision of the Mutiny Act bearing upon the case, we formally demanded the body of Fraser, which his lordship refused to surrender. At the next assizes Captain Fraser marched into Athy, with a band playing before him, and gave himself up for trial. The facts were clearly proved; but the sitting judge, Mr. Toler[1] (afterwards Lord Norbury), instructed the jury that ‘Fraser was a gallant officer, who had only made a mistake; that if Dixon were as good a man as he was represented to be, it was well for him to be out of this wicked world; but if he were as bad as many others in the neighbourhood (looking at me, who sat beside him on the bench), it was well for the country to be quit of him.’ The Captain and his orderly were acquitted accordingly.”