This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1907 edition. Excerpt: ... said, "All of ye in favour of Parnell, come back to where ye were ." They all came back. Perdition cancels itself in this way every day everywhere in Ireland, and yet the fear of it remains to make thought impossible, and their faculties useless to the Irish people. A case personally known to me occurs in a family of my acquaintance. After a long and cruel boycotting, led by the parish priest, the father broke down, and was told unanimously by the doctors that the boycotting had done it. He never recovered, and he died declaring that the priest had caused his death. The mother had suffered, and her turn came soon. On her death-bed she was asked, "Shall we send for the priest?" and replied, " I believe God will forgive me for preferring to die without the help of the man that killed my husband ." Only Catholics know fully what this means, and yet they permit these horrible uses to be made of their religion. That particular priest is still in his sacred office, and still making the same use of it, with the bishop's full knowledge, and with some claims to become a bishop himself! I can establish facts of the kind in every parish I know in Ireland. It is antiChristian; therefore, anti-Catholic, with the responsibility on the priest, not on the religion. I can have no sort of pleasure in the pain which these facts must be to many of my readers, and most to the best of them, but they go to the very bottom of the Irish problem, and I feel that my work is no more than a sham if I evade them. I can only hope to say no more than is necessary to my purpose, and no more unpleasantly than I can help. Many of the facts known to me are too nasty to be printed at all, though as relevant to freedom in Ireland as any I have stated. How can a people have...