becoming tithe-collector-general, and the army being employed in
its collection. They knew that the king's speech had recommended the
settlement of the tithe question. They had heard of the evidence of
Bishop Doyle and other champions, exposing what they believed to be
the iniquity of the tithe system. They had seen the condemnation of it
in the testimony of the Protestant Archbishop of Dublin, who declared
his conviction that it could not be collected except at the point of
the bayonet, and by keeping up a chronic war between the Government
and the Roman Catholic people. They had been told that parliamentary
committees had recommended the complete extinction of tithes, and
their commutation into a rent-charge. Their own leaders had everywhere
resolved:--

'That it was a glaring wrong to compel an impoverished Catholic people
to support in pampered luxury the richest clergy in the world--a
clergy from whom, the Catholics do not experience even the return of
common gratitude--a clergy who, in times past, opposed to the last
the political freedom of the Irish people, and at the present day
are opposed to reform and a liberal scheme of education for their
countrymen. The ministers of the God of charity should not, by
misapplication of all the tithes to their own private uses, thus
deprive the poor of their patrimony; nor should ministers of
peace adhere with such desperate tenacity to a system fraught with
dissension, hatred, and ill-will.' The first proceeding of the
Government to recover the tithes, under the act of June 1, was
therefore the signal for general war. Bonfires blazed upon the hills,
the rallying sounds of horns were heard along the valleys, and the
mustering tread of thousands upon the roads, hurrying to the scene
of a seizure or an auction. It was a bloody campaign; there was
considerable loss of life, and the Church and the Government thus