The Morning Star And Catholic Messenger

Harkin, the Repeal candidate at the recent election which indicates progress in that it cannot be far distant when the great and overwhelming majority of the people, of all creeds, will unite to demand Home Government. The Disestablishment of the late Church has cast down the barrier which separated men of different faith, and all are to see that the wisest and best course to be taken in serving Irish interests is to labor for the achievement of home rule. -Dundalk Democrat.

A great and deplorable want in our national character is our deficiency of that forethought which stimulates our English brethren to mass themselves together and organize for the attainment of a common object. We seem not to appreciate the value of mutual help. We rather stand out solitarily to accomplish our purposes, depending with overweening confidence upon our single, unaided arm. The Church Establishment is gone, and with it one great barrier against the making of common cause among Irishmen. Already we can see the germs of new national life and national union springing up in the bosom of Protestant and Papist. The feeling of unity is spreading over the island; and nowhere, we feel sure, will that union be firmer, more cordial or more true than in Wexford. We were on Tuesday highly gratified to see Rev. Joseph Murphy, Ferns, hold out the right hand of fellowship to Protestant and Dissenter, and to hear him scout the idea that Protestant and Catholic cannot set aside their differences and fight shoulder to shoulder for their common country. This brief, pregnant and stirring exhortation to Catholic and Protestant, and hope to see the feeling it expresses permeate through all creeds and classes. Of those who doubt the sincerity of Protestant patriotism, we would ask what names stand out most prominently in Ireland's history of the last century! Must they not answer, those of Protestants! Who than Protestants were more trusted or more sternly tried in '48 or '98? What were the Volunteers? What the United Irish? Were they not Protestants, and were they not Irish to the core! And are the descendants of these men less honest or less Irish! Let the veil be once drawn from their eyes: let that bugbear Ultramontanism be shown to be a phantom conjured up by the heated fancy of bigotry, and the Protestants of to-day will be as thoroughly Irish as the Protestants of '48, '98, or '83. -Wexford People.