minority. He concluded simply that Protestantism meant progress, and
Catholicism involved stagnation. He heard dark stories of Ribbonism,
and was gravely assured that if Mr. Cleaver's Catholic coachman,
otherwise an excellent servant, were ordered to shoot his master, he
would obey. Very likely Mr. Cleaver was right, though the event did
not occur. What was the true origin of Ribbonism, what made it
dangerous, why it had the sympathy of the people, were questions
which Froude could hardly be expected to answer, inasmuch as they
were not answered by Sir Robert Peel.

While Froude was at Delgany there appeared the once famous Tract
Ninety, last of the series, unless we are to reckon Monckton
Milnes's One Tract More. The author of Tract Ninety was Newman, and
the ferment it made was prodigious. It was a subtle, ingenious, and
plausible attempt to prove that the Articles and other formularies
of the English Church might be honestly interpreted in a Catholic
sense, as embodying principles which the whole Catholic Church held
before the Reformation, and held still. Mr. Cleaver and his circle
were profoundly shocked. To them Catholicism meant Roman
Catholicism, or, as they called it, Popery. If a man were not a
Protestant, he had no business to remain in the United Church of
England and Ireland. If he did remain in it, he was not merely
mistaken, but dishonest, and sophistry could not purge him from the
moral stain of treachery to the institution of which he was an
officer. Froude's sense of chivalry was aroused, and he warmly
defended Newman, whom he knew to be as honest as himself, besides
being saintly and pure. If he had stopped there, all might have been
well. Mr. Cleaver was himself high-minded, and could appreciate the
virtue of standing up for an absent friend. But Froude went further.
He believed Newman to be legally and historically right. The Church