The-papacy-its-history-dogmas-genius-and-prospects-wylie

—:;SPIRITUAL DIRECTION IX IRELAND. 121natives of Ireland, wisely resolve to erect a number of collegesin that dark land, in the hope of mitigating the wretchednessof its people. The priesthood discover that thisscheme interferes with the Church, whose vested riofht inthe ignorance of the natives it threatens to sweep away.The Pope does not throw down a single stone of any of thesecolleges. His interference takes a purely spiritual direction,but a direction that accomplishes his object quite as effectuallyas could be done by a physical intervention. He issuesa bull, denouncing the Irish colleges as godless, and forbiddingevery good Catholic, as he values his salvation, toallow his child to enter them. This bull, given at the Quirinal,makes frustrate the intention of the Queen, and rendersthe colleges as completely useless to the Irish nation,at least to that large portion of it for whose benefit theywere specially intended,—as if an army had been sent to razethe obnoxious buildings, and not leave so much as one stoneupon another.It matters wonderfully little whether we termthe Pope the director of Ireland or the dictator of Irelandwhile Ireland is Catholic, the pontiff is, and must be, its virtualsovereign. The British power is limited in that unhappy islandto the work of imposing taxes,—imposing, not gathering, forthe taxes are taken up by the priests and sent to Romewhile to us is left the duty of feeding a country which clericalrapacity and tyranny has made a country of beggars.Thusthe Pope's yoke is not a whit lighter that, instead of callingit temporal supremacy, we call it " spiritual jurisdiction," oreven " spiritual direction."It would yield, we are disposedto think, wonderfully little consolation to the unhappy sovereignwhose throne is struck from under him, and whosekingdom is plunged into contention and civil war, to be toldthat the Pope inthis has acted, not by jurisdiction, but bydirection; that he exercises this power, not as lord paramountof his realm, but as lord paramount of his conscience;that, in fact, it is his conscience, and not his territory, thathe holds as a fief of the papal see ; and that he is enduringthis castigation from the pontifical ferula, not in his capacity