In the year 1880 the relations between the Liberal Government and the Irish Nationalists were the reverse of cordial, and a good many inquiries used to come from the Foreign Office respecting alleged Irish plots and conspiracies at Paris with requests that the French police authorities should be asked to give their assistance. These requests Lord Lyons was in the habit of discouraging as much as possible, partly from an ingrained dislike to being involved in any secret and equivocal transactions, and partly because he knew that if the French police gave their assistance in tracking down Irish conspirators, they would certainly expect reciprocity in regard to Bonapartists and other opponents of the existing system of Government at that time residing in England. For these reasons he always urged that the English police authorities should communicate direct with the French police authorities without using the Embassy as an intermediary. But the efforts of the Gladstone Government were not confined to endeavouring to check Irish plot by means of the police, and an attempt was made to restrain the turbulent bishops and priests engaged in the Home Rule agitation by applying pressure upon them from Rome. The credit of this expedient seems to have been chiefly due to the active and enterprising cleric, Monsignor Czacki, who was acting as Nuncio at Paris, and who appears to have conceived the idea that if the Pope could be persuaded to intervene on the side of the British Government, it might be possible to re-establish regular diplomatic relations between England and the Papacy. As far back as December, 1879, Monsignor Czacki had made certain overtures, but they met with no attention from Lord Salisbury.
Lord Lyons to Lord Granville.
Paris, June 18, 1880.
Last October a very quiet, not to say dull, old Italian prelate was succeeded here as Papal Nuncio by a very active, talkative and agreeable Pole, Monsignor Czacki.
At the beginning of December Monsignor Czacki came to me and told me that he had received a letter from Ireland accompanied by, or referring to, letters from very important people, among which was, he said, one from you. He had in consequence written to the Pope, and the Pope had written to the Irish Bishops to exhort them to do all in their power to restrain their flocks from taking part in violent or seditious proceedings. Monsignor Czacki asked me whether the state of affairs in Ireland was at the moment so serious as to render it advisable that the Pope should repeat these exhortations to the Irish Bishops. I made a somewhat banal answer to the effect that though there were no grounds for feeling alarm as to the ultimate issue of what was going on, there was good reason that those who possessed influence there should use it for the prevention of crime and outrage, and also of turbulence and disorder.
I reported what has passed in a private letter to Lord Salisbury, but I received no answer from him, and I heard no more of the matter till yesterday.
Yesterday, however, Monsignor Czacki came to see me and showed me a letter he had received a few days before from Lord Emly. The letter said that previous intervention had produced the best results, that several Bishops had denounced the agitation in the strongest terms, but that unfortunately the Socialists were publicly supported by various Bishops. It mentioned that the Roman Catholic Bishop of Meath, and the Roman Catholic Archbishop of Cashel had manifested their sympathy with Mr. Parnell, and that the Roman Catholic Bishop of Kilmore had himself recommended Mr. Biggar to the electors as a candidate. The letter begged Monsignor Czacki to intervene again, but it made the request only from Lord Emly himself, without any allusion to you or to any other person, as being cognizant of it.
Monsignor Czacki said that he entirely sympathized with the views of the writer and intended to send the letter to Rome; and he proceeded to ask me whether I would authorize him to say that he had shown it to me and that he sent it with my approval.
It seemed to me that this would be bringing the thing much too near Her Majesty's Government for it to be right for me to assent to it without knowing your wishes.
I confess this mode of communicating with the Vatican does not commend itself to my judgment, and that it seems to me that it might lead to awkwardness and interfere with better means you have of communicating with the Pope, if you wish to communicate with His Holiness at all. At the same time I was not absolutely sure that you might not think there might be some convenience in having this channel open. I did not therefore rebuff Monsignor Czacki, but without giving any hint that I should refer to you, said simply that I would think about what he had said.
He is very fond of enlarging academically upon the advantages England would derive from entering into regular diplomatic relations with the Holy See, or if that were impossible, from re-establishing an unofficial agent at Rome.
You will gather from all this that Monsignor Czacki is not altogether disinclined to be busy.
The energetic Nuncio returned to the subject at the close of the year.
Lord Lyons to Lord Granville.
Dec. 31, 1880.
You may remember that in June last I gave you in a private letter a long account of a conversation which Monsignor Czacki, the Papal Nuncio here, had volunteered to have with me on Irish affairs.
Monsignor Czacki came to see me three days ago, and enlarged on the great advantage to the cause of order and tranquillity in Ireland it would be for the Pope to pronounce an authoritative condemnation of the wicked acts perpetrated in that country. He hinted that the Pope had been misled by some of the Irish Bishops who had recently been at Rome, and he dwelt on the inconvenience which arose from the British Government's having no channel of its own through which to communicate direct with His Holiness.
On the last occasion Monsignor Czacki offered to be himself a channel of communication. He did not repeat this offer, but his object in what he had said appeared to be to lead up again to the question of the establishment of regular diplomatic relations between England and the Vatican, or if that could not be immediately, then to the return to Rome of an unofficial agent, in the same position that was occupied by Odo Russell, and before him, by me. He told me he spoke entirely of his own accord, but that he was sure that Pope Leo XIII. would most willingly receive even an unofficial agent.
Monsignor Czacki is a very great talker, which makes it easy to say very little in answer to him, and I took full advantage of the facility for being conveniently silent which this afforded me.
The impression he left upon me was that for some reason or other the authorities at the Vatican decidedly wish to have some sort of agent there, from whom they could receive information respecting the views of the British Government upon the accuracy of which they could fully rely.
I don't think that if it had depended on me I should have discontinued the unofficial agent, awkward as the position had been made by the presence of the Italian Government and of a regular British Embassy. But to establish one now would be a question of far greater difficulty than to have kept one going.