for the present."

The monsignore shook his head. "What do you think of an American
invasion of Ireland?"

"An American invasion!"

"Even so; nothing more probable, and nothing more to be deprecated by
us. Now that the civil war in America is over, the Irish soldiery are
resolved to employ their experience and their weapons in their own land;
but they have no thought for the interest of the Holy See, or the
welfare of our holy religion. Their secret organization is tampering
with the people and tampering with the priests. The difficulty of
Ireland is that the priests and the people will consider every thing in
a purely Irish point of view. To gain some local object, they will
encourage the principles of the most lawless liberalism, which naturally
land them in Fenianism and atheism. And the danger is not foreseen,
because the Irish political object of the moment is alone looked to."

"But surely they can be guided?"

"We want a statesman in Ireland. We have never been able to find one;
we want a man like the cardinal. But the Irish will have a native for
their chief. We caught Churchill young, and educated him in the
Propaganda; but he has disappointed us. At first all seemed well; he
was reserved and austere; and we heard with satisfaction that he was
unpopular. But, now that critical times are arriving, his peasant-blood
cannot resist the contagion. He proclaims the absolute equality of all
religious, and of the power of the state to confiscate ecclesiastical
property, and not restore it to us, but alienate it forever. For the