of the peculiar colour that had been given to it
by the high Catholic views of the Lord Mayor of Dublin and the other leading members of the Centenary Committee. This diversion of what was meant to be a national act of gratitude to a purpose which, to say the least, was not national—for the Pope's quarrel with the persecuting Governments in Prussia, Switzerland, Italy, and Brazil is scarcely one in which the Irish people are constrained to interfere—almost provoked the Nationalist party to active resist- ance. The power of the priesthood, however, is still unmeasured over the classes who are especially moved by the memory of O'Connell, and the Nationalists, represented by the Amnesty Demonstration, felt that they could not take up a position hostile to the Centenary without damaging their credit with the people. They had therefore to content themselves with a protest, and a retort discourteous levelled at the "Whig placemen" who were put forward by the Centenary Committee. But this unpleasant split has led to the withdrawal of Lord O'Hagan, while, on the other hand, the Lord Mayor did not invite Mr. Butt to his banquet at the Mansion House, at which Mr. Sullivan and other Home- rulers showed their resentment by staying away. The banquet was quite an ecclesiastical gathering, including Cardinal Cullen and nearly all the Irish prelates, as well as the Bishops of Nantes, of Liverpool, and others. In the ceremonial of yesterday the same note prevailed ; but the Home-rulers intend, it is said, to have a demonstration of their own to-day, in which O'Connell, as a Repealer, will be the object of reverence. The hundreds of thousands of Irishmen who have thronged to Dublin to do honour to the man, probably do not think of him distinctly as either a politician or a devotee, but as the most powerful per- sonality whose influence they have felt.
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