O'Connell.
"I want soldiers and sailors for the State; I want to make a greater use than I now can do of a poor country full of men. I want to render the military service popular among the Irish; to make every possible exertion for the safety of Europe ... and then you, and ten other such boobies as you, call out 'for God's sake, do not think of raising cavalry and infantry in Ireland....' They interpret the Epistle to Timothy in a different manner from what we do!"
"'They eat a bit of wafer every Sunday, which they call their God!' ... I wish to my soul they would eat you, and such reasoners as you are!"
Sydney Smith
(Peter Plymley's Letters).
CHAPTER VI.
HOME RULE DIFFICULTIES[ToC]
Those who watch closely the exploitation of the religious cry against Home Rule will have observed that its exploiters always endeavour to make the best of both worlds. One world is expressed in the phrase, "Home Rule means Rome Rule." The other by the watchword, "Priest-ridden Ireland." Those who use the first of these cries are always trying to persuade themselves that the gift of Home Rule will increase the power of the Catholic Church in Ireland and produce a kind of religious tyranny over the Protestant minority. How that could be done under a measure so carefully safeguarded as, for instance, the Bill of 1912,[51] they never condescend to tell us. It is part of their policy never to enter into details, but to produce a general atmosphere of distrust and unreason.