that the Legislature, in conferring on them the franchise, had intended that it should be used by each elector for the public weal according to his conscience. (p. 16.)

The Rev. Father Cannon, that amiable man [the word "amiable" used by Judge Keogh ironically], seconds this resolution :-"That we regard as a recreant and a renegade any Catholic tenant, who allows himself to be forced to vote for Captain Trench against his conscience." (p. 20.)

Then comes the Rev. Mr. Macdonogh: he said the landlords had no more right to the votes of their tenants than to their souls. (p. 26.)

On this last sentence our own comment would be very simple. Nothing can more emphatically show the gross political immorality of the landlord party, than that it should be necessary even to express so rudimentary a political truth. But the Judge quotes it, as among the most violent of sacerdotal utterances. Later on he thus continues:

Mr. Furlong admits that he used the words "the finger of scorn"; and that he warned them to "hearken to the voice of conscience." (p. 42.)

The Judge accounts it then an imputation on the Rev. Mr. Furlong, that he warned electors to hearken to the voice of conscience. Then the Judge continues in these very remarkable words:

That is the theological device: first you persuade a man that his conscience must lead him to vote for a particular person; and then you menace any man who votes against his "conscience," with all the terrors and depri vations which ecclesiastical influence can supply. (p. 42.)

Words cannot be more express than these in admitting that the influence, to which Judge Keogh objects, is in its substance most legitimate influence. Such influence consists exclusively in reaching the convictions of the voter; and does not touch his external conduct, except through his convictions. This is the one electional end pursued by Irish priests; to press electors by every most urgent appeal, into voting in accordance with their genuine convictions. The Judge speaks ironically (p. 31) of the "never-failing conscience clause." He condemns himself out of his own mouth.

What shall be said then of a landlord, who has full means of knowing that his tenants regard their vote in the light we have described, and nevertheless aims at diverting their suffrage from its straightforward course? Though he were to do this exclusively by appeals to their gratitude,-even in this case he would be labouring directly to tamper with their faithfulness to conscientious convictions, and with their political morality. But what if he hints threats of temporal disadvantage to follow, from their resisting his wishes? He is then simply

trying to bribe or intimidate them into doing an act, which they sincerely regard as a betrayal of their God, their Faith, and their Country. Such conduct deserves the detestation of every one who has a heart or a conscience.*

Will some of our readers say, that we deal out unequal measure to landlord and priest? that we use language against the former, on which we should not venture against the latter? They shall see. We say plainly this. We say plainly this. Let it be proved in a single instance, that some priest has full means of knowing, that certain Catholics honestly regard Trench's election as more conducive than Nolan's to the highest welfare of Ireland; and let it be proved that under such circumstances he sought to deter them from voting for Trench, by threatening them with spiritual evils. Let this be proved, we say, and the most blatant Protestant will not use severer language than our own. The turpitude of such conduct is much greater than that of landlord intimidation: because (1) any moral offence is ceteris paribus far more heinous in a Catholic priest, than in a Protestant layman; and because (2) to oppose virtuous action by spiritual weapons, is indefinitely more abominable than to oppose it by temporal. Let such a priest be visited with condignest punishment, and we shall certainly not complain. But we must be allowed entirely to doubt, whether such a priest exists. Judge Keogh is diligent in accumulating the worst stories he can find against the clergy; but no one fact of this kind' can be found in his judgment.

Instead of this, he makes complaints which are so obviously frivolous, that one is amazed he can lay stress on them. Thus (p. 28) he censures the priests, for enforcing on electors the obligation of breaking any promise they might have made for Trench. But all this (as the Judge does not attempt to deny) proceeded on the supposition, that these tenants regarded Trench's election as adverse to God's interests. Now it is a very elementary ethical principle that, if they thought this, their fault lay, not in breaking their promise, but in having made it. The Judge seems to think, that if I have promised my friend e. g. to tell a lie in his behalf, such a promise binds in conscience; and that if my priest enjoins me to break it, he exemplifies sacerdotal unscrupulousness and tyranny. We call on every lover of morality, be he Catholic, Protestant, or infidel, to protest indignantly against the amazing doctrine here implied.

* We are not for a moment intending to deny, that many of these landlords possess various very estimable qualities. The standard of political morality is so disgracefully low in these islands, that many a man will be guilty in his political capacity of acts, from the parallels to which he would shrink with horror in private life.

In reference to this question, Judge Keogh (p. 23) refers to "Lord Dunsandle's voters": by which choice phrase he characteristically designates those free voters, who happen indeed to be Lord Dunsandle's tenants, but over whose votes-to use a phrase already quoted that nobleman has no more just authority, than over their souls. We grieve to find (if the fact be so) that one hundred and sixty of these, being Catholics, promised to vote for Trench; whereas it is evident from what follows (even if it could be otherwise doubtful) that they considered his election adverse to the interests of religion. But we are glad to find that they abstained from the still graver moral offence, of keeping such a promise.

We now come to what is certainly a more serious matter. A certain priest-according to the Judge, an "insane disgrace to the Roman Catholic religion,"-" said they would use the confessional under the ballot if they required it" (p. 28). We shall not here attempt a theological disquisition; and the less so, because the Dublin clergy have already dwelt on this part of the judgment, in their address to their flock. But we cannot refrain from one remark. We do not see how any one can think himself certain that a case may not arise, in which the interests of religion are so very closely mixed up with some electional issue, that every Catholic who sees clearly its true bearing is bound under mortal sin to take an active part. If such a case should occur, and some given voter commits the offence in question, how can it be avoided that some priest must bring the confessional to bear upon it? Protestants and infidels dislike some of them abhor the confessional; but at least, if honest men, they will not think this one of its evils, that it enforces a high standard of political morality. At the same time let it be distinctly understood, that we could not attempt any defence whatever of the fact, if it be a fact, which Judge Keogh censures at the top of p. 30.

Indeed throughout we have by no means expressed an opinion, that there are not various priests concerned with the recent election, who may have made very serious practical mis takes; who may, e.g., have used language of very indefensible violence; and who may otherwise have more or less let themselves down from their position as priests of God, towards the level of honest but intemperate political partisans. If this on full examination be found the case, of course we from our hearts deplore it. We would only urge, in extenuation, the heat and excitement of a momentous struggle, the peculiarities of Irish character, and the shamelessness of those principles which certain landlords seem to assume as a matter of course. But evidence is alleged (with whatever truth) of mobs keeping

voters from the poll, and of priests encouraging those mobs. If such evidence is trustworthy, we do not defend those mobs, and still less those priests. But in all fairness let the state of things be rightly apprehended. For instance (p. 23), "the tenants of Mr. Bodkin," a Catholic, "expressed their desire to go with their generous and kind landlord, but one of them is threatened with a bar of iron over his head." Let us assume for the moment that this is all true. Does any one suppose that these tenants considered Mr. Bodkin a more trustworthy judge of what really conduces to the welfare of Ireland, than the large body of bishops and priests who supported Nolan? The Judge does not even suggest this; his very point is merely, that Mr. Bodkin is a " generous and kind landlord." Indubitably it was wrong to threaten one of his tenants with a bar of iron; but it was no less wrong in those tenants to vote against what they believed to be God's cause, because they had found one opponent of that cause generous and kind." Let us blame both parties: those who intended to be guilty of a base act, and those whose indignation at such baseness led them into violent courses. To our mind however, the fault of the latter is less than that of the former.

We have said very little about Judge Keogh individually. This has not been because we have failed to form a very definite opinion, as to his display of judicial temper and acumen; nor yet because we forget for a moment those political antecedents of his, from which we might have expected just such a document as is now before us. But we feel that there has already been a great deal too much of personal invective and recrimination; and we are earnestly desirous that the question be considered exclusively on the ground of principle. Let the evidence then by all means be sifted to the very bottom, with the greatest attainable candour and impartiality. We are quite prepared for the possibility, that many facts may be established, which no right-minded Catholic will in his cool moments regard with complacency. But we would stake our reputation on this fundamental issue: is it the priest or the landlord, who really in Ireland presses electors to vote against their genuine and honest convictions? And if the latter alternative be established beyond all possibility of doubt-as will most certainly be the case-then all talk about priestly dictation and ecclesiastical terrorism is the merest moonshine. To express a hope that priests may hereafter exercise less influence in Irish elections, is in fact to express a hope that Irish electors may more largely abstain in future from voting in accordance with their conscience. This is the plain common sense of the whole matter.

VOL. XIX.—NO. XXXVII. [New Series.]

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114

ART. VI.-DR. BAIN ON THE RELATIVITY OF HUMAN KNOWLEDGE.

(COMMUNICATED.)

[The contributor of the series on Mr. Mill being obliged, by considerations of health, to suspend his articles for one or two more quarters, we are very glad that we are able meanwhile to place before our readers some comments on another philosophical enemy of the Faith.]

The Senses and the Intellect. By ALEXANDER BAIN, M.A., Professor of Logic in the University of Aberdeen. Second Edition. Longmans. 1864.

The Emotions and the Will. By ALEXANDER BAIN, M.A. Second Edition. Longmans. 1865.

Logic-Part First, Deduction; Part Second, Induction. By ALEXANDER BAIN, LL.D. Longmans. 1870.

THE

HE Law of Relativity may be briefly summed up by saying that it is impossible to know any one object by itself alone in every knowledge two or more objects are known together according to their mutual difference and agreement. Thus, I know no single atom of matter singly; I know it as differing from the void which surrounds it, and resembling another atom at some distance off it. Furthermore, I do not know even myself in my own individuality apart from others. Self needs to be set into distinctness as an object of knowledge by some foil of Not Self. The proofs of this law are manifold, clustering round on all sides. So the framers of the law think. They tell us how darkness gives all the glory that appertains to light; the remembrance of sickness is the zest whereby health is made pleasurable; it is the passive victim that brings out the operator's activity and power; it is only in comparison with matter and with space that mind knows mind. In a word, fair and foul, light and darkness, order and disorder, power and weakness, life and death, pleasure and pain, justice and iniquity, good and evil, &c., form so many couples, of which the two members of each are inseparable in any mind, and consequently are wholly inseparable. This assumes that there is no being-or rather, I should say, no relation, if I am to be true to the relativist theory,-there is no relation outside of all knowledge; no object, mental or otherwise, on which mind does not somehow prey. It is an assumption which none