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MY LIFE IN TWO HEMISPHERES
let me despatch briefly some of the correspondence of the current period. My well-beloved friend, Sir Colman O'Loghlen reported some notable successes he had made in consolidating religious liberty in Ireland.
"My dear Duffy,—As I know you still take an interest in Irish legislation, I enclose you copies of two Acts I succeeded in passing this last Session. One of them abolishes the Declaration against Transubstantiation, &c., which has been so long a disgrace to our Statute Book, and the other opens the Chancellorship of Ireland to Roman Catholics—enables Catholic Judges, Mayors, &c., to attend Divine Service in their robes—and establishes one uniform oath for all officeholders, &c., abolishing for ever the offensive Catholic oath which the Emancipation Act imposed on Roman Catholics who might accept office or honours. These bills I carried by great majorities in the Commons, and the Lords had to swallow them as the Government had to support them there after what passed in the Commons. Next Session—if I live—I shall open the Lord Lieutenancy to Roman Catholics. I think you will say that religous liberty, at least, is progressing at this side of the globe. The Telegraph this morning announces that you have a Ministerial crisis at Melbourne. I hope that this crisis will result in your being in power again. Of course you have heard of the 'leap in the dark' we have taken this year under the guide of Disraeli. The Liberal Party for the present is 'nowhere'—Disraeli regularly 'dished the Whigs' last Session.""Merrion Square, Dublin,
"Wednesday, September 18, 1867.
After my return from Europe, I wrote to Judge O'Hagan:—
"My dear O'Hagan,—I cannot refrain from telling you the satisfaction with which I read your charge and address to the prisoner in the case of Captain Mackay. I am not sure that any other Judge would have the courage to treat a Fenian prisoner as a fellow- creature, a man of capacity and honour, and inferentially a patriot. But the thing being"Melbourne, July 15, 1868.
