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the Papists turn over a new leaf and behave themselves more modestly, they shall be forcibly put down, and their "dupes" rescued from their hands. To us this sort of language seems as feeble and contemptible as it is loud. If the Papacy be really so formidable that in countries which have thrown it off for centuries, and where the whole system of the State has been organized without any relation to it, it is impossible to hold our ground against it without laws which are not needed to restrain the professors of any other religion, it is hard to believe that we are really on the side of the truth, and fighting a religion of false, though arrogant pretentions.

But the weak point in all these fulminations is that their authors never seem able to tell you distinctly of what they are afraid. Where, for instance, at the present moment is the justification for all this blood-and-thunder about Ultramontanism in the United Kingdom? The facts of the case are not alarming. The Irish priesthood have now for some decade or two declared against mixed education, maintaining not without justice, though not with too much courage, that the Catholic view of literature and science is far more easily perverted, in fact far less superficially plausible, than the Protestant view; that Catholics are far more likely to be drawn away from the truth, than Protestants to be drawn towards it by common association and common teaching. This has caused a cry in all the Catholic districts and communities of Europe for intellectual and moral and religious education for Catholics apart, before they enter into the competition with Protestants for the prizes of life. Now are we going to ignore the fact that under this term "education," an enormous political field may be comprised. In countries like Spain and Italy, which are still Catholic so far as they are religious at all, and where a vast amount of property is still in possession of the Catholic Church, the question of education really includes that of the distribution of wealth, as well as the social and political influence of great corporations, whose use of their wealth and power profoundly affects the pauperism and industry and the loyalty of the masses. If the State has no right on adequate occasion to say, "These religious corporations are doing mischief, lowering the tone of manliness in the nation, and fostering an enervating indolence and superstition," it is very hard to

say what the right of the State is. We at least should maintain most earnestly that no ecclesiastical body whatever can have absolute rights independent of the State, rights which it may wield so as to inflict gross and habitual wrongs on a large number of the subjects of the State, without being responsible to the civil government. The State must guard its own well-being. If that well-being is seriously injured by any ecclesiastical pretentions whatever, it is not only its right, but its duty to guard itself, even by attacking, if needful, its rival and antagonist. For the most part, we believe that as soon as religious pretensions interfere or seem to interfere with the outward order and morality which it is the State's first duty to guard, it ought to take the matter into its own hands, nay, that it will be as disastrous for the usurping Church as for the submissive State, if it does not do so. As regards the property of the Churches and the use to be made of it, and as regards the influence exercised on family life and social order by the institutions of the various Churches, the State cannot be neutral unless it would cease to be a Government at all. It is idle to devise cures for pauperism, where Churches spread far and wide pauperizing examples, without striking at the root of those evil influences. It is idle to pass penal laws against crime which Churches actively promote, without punishing the promoters of the crimes as well as the crimes. It is not we, then, who will ever be found deprecating the interference of the State in ecclesiastical policy on the ground that the two spheres are mutually exclusive. We deny that any Church worth its salt can help affecting more or less seriously the policy of the State. We deny equally strongly that any good State can help regulating more or less directly the action of the Churches. We are regulating that action in England from one generation to the other. When we take the property devoted to obsolete and injurious charities, and apply it to new and beneficial purposes, when we abolish religious tests, when we require parents to teach their children certain secular subjects and provide for testing the knowledge so given, when we regulate strictly the law of marriage, the laws of testamentary disposi tion, and the law of guardianship, we are checking and controlling at every step the policy of the Churches. If it were possible to-morrow to say deliberately of any Church or sect that its influence is

so deadly and pernicious to the cause of civil order and the health of civil society that it ought to be rooted out, then we maintain that the State would be wanting in dignity and in fidelity to itself not to break up and root out that sect with all possible promptitude.

the natural man altogether, and the schism it creates in non-Catholic countries between the Catholic and non-Catholic populations. But it is simply irrational to say that these great take-offs strike so dangerously at the health of society and the root of civil order as to render it desirable for the State, even if it were possible, to treat Roman Catholicism as a mischievous superstition. The simple truth is, that it is the one logical form of authoritative ecclesiastical organization still existing in Europe, and that scarcely any form of Christianity has as yet completely eliminated the machinery of ecclesiastical authority from its conception of the Christian religion. Under such circumstances, to swear as our contemporary the Pall Mall Gazette does, by Heaven and Earth and its breeches-pocket, and all that therein is, evidently a climax of oaths rising to what the writer regards as the nearest modern equivalent for the old profane oath of Odsbodikins, the oath by the incarnated divine essence, - that it will attempt the rescue of the "dupes" of Catholicism from the power of those who dupe them, if the Roman Catholics give any more trouble, is to talk blustering nonsense. The Roman Catholic priesthood "dupe" their flock no more and probably much less than some nonCatholic priesthoods. And if the Irish were to be weaned from Catholicism and by such agency as the contents of the breeches-pockets of sceptics, — at all, they would become most probably infidels of a very dangerous and very vulgar kind, for Roman Catholicism is the ennobling element in the life of most of the Irish peasants.

But the whole importance of the principle lies not in itself, but in its application. It is admitted that, on the whole, religious belief of some kind is indestructible, or all but indestructible, and that so far from injuring civil order, most kinds of religious belief give civil order a far higher sanction and provide it with far deeper roots than it could have without such belief. The onus probandi lies with the State to show that any particular kind of religious belief is essentially hostile to the health and peace of human society. The whole subject is admitted to be one of the greatest difficulty. The presumption is liberty, and that presumption must be refuted by the most convincing arguments, if the State is to be justified in interfering with liberty. Will any man in his senses assert that Roman Catholicism, as it is found under Protestant Governments, like those of Germany and the United Kingdom, is thus fatal to the health and peace of human society? That it covers imperious and very dangerous principles, we admit, and we assert the same of Calvinism, of Ritualism, of Swedenborgianism, and probably in a greater or less degree of most other sectarianisms, as well as of some of the political tenets of Dissent. On the other hand, no candid man can deny that Roman Catholicism fosters some very high virtues; that in the better Catholic countries the priests and nuns are the most Perhaps the most absurd element in the self-denying and utterly self-devoted attempt to create a panic is the ground members of the community; that no re- on which the friends of a Bismarckian ligion exerts itself so ardently, in any policy towards Roman Catholicism atcountry but Ireland, Englishmen would tempt to justify their view. The writer say far too ardently, -to quell rebellion in the Pall Mall places it, for instance, even against a Government that is dis-on the ground that the Roman Catholics liked and distrusted; that no religion does claim to be "the exclusive guardians and more to qualify the narrow local patriotism authorized interpreters of a divine revelaof nations, though sometimes also, no tion," and to put their claims on the basis doubt, dangerously to weaken it; that in of certainty and infallibility. And it England and Ireland, at least, Catholicism should, he thinks, always be held fair to has the most powerful effect in protecting persecute men who don't admit that their the purity of the people; and that it has faith is a mere probability, not a certainty. a great literature and wonderful history, Is it possible he can be serious? Does which alone would give it greater power he suppose that any orthodox Churchman, over the imaginations of men than almost any Evangelical, any Baptist, any Wesany other faith can boast. The case leyan, any Free-Kirk man, any Sandeagainst Roman Catholicism is, no doubt,manian regards his faith "as an opinion its distrust of the intellect, its suspicious- on a matter about which you cannot get ness of science, its exaggerated fear of beyond probabilities"? Why, many at

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least of the rationalists and sceptics would | it has a right to keep; but it is a strength deny this, Strauss, we presume, cer- which diminishes with every just concestainly would. You can hardly suggest a sion, and which increases in exact proparadox more absurd than to make it a portion to the public injustice of which it ground of complaint against a special can boast. There are no more childish class of the believers in revelation, that statesmen than those who desire a policy they do believe their faith to be absolutely far too grandiose for the occasion, and revealed, and not merely to be a problematic inference of their own. You might render a belief in all revelation penal, if you would, that would be the logical course for such a writer as this, but if you admit belief in divine revelation at all, you can hardly exclude those who regard a divine revelation as necessarily infallible. The paradox certainly lies with us who maintain that there is such a thing as revelation, and yet that it is exceedingly difficult to judge precisely what has been revealed.

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which is borrowed from sterner and more difficult times. Ultramontanism might need special civil checks if it could control a wealth and a social force such as those of the Church and the Monastic Orders in the days of Henry VIII., and dispose of them for purposes dangerous to legitimate patriotic ends and the order of civil society. As matters stand, those who wish to persuade us that it is so, are either, like Prince Bismarck, truckling to a diseased Liberal prejudice, or like our contemporary the Pall Mall, talking nonsensical bounce. The Irish University Bill and its defeat are very small affairs, after all, though they may be incidents of some importance in the political history of an uneventful year.

From The Pall Mall Gazette.

Prince Bismarck does not proclaim his legislative war against the Roman Catholics on ground so weak as this. He says openly, they endanger the German Empire and the Prussian Kingdom by their sympathy with Bavarian particularism and Polish nationality, and therefore they shall be put down. That is intelligible, if despotic. We should understand, though we should condemn, a policy which maintained that because Roman Catho- GERMANY AND THE CHURCH OF ROME. licism in either England or Ireland enTHE burden of Prince Bismarck's dangers British unity, therefore it ought speech in the Prussian Herrenhaus on to be suppressed. We should only an- Monday was that the new ecclesiastical swer that the remedy was a great deal policy is a political necessity. The strugworse than the disease, that it would gle on which the Government has entered, aggravate the disease tenfold; that it has he said, was a very old one. It is the been tried, and has failed; that the oppo- battle, old as the human race itself, besite policy, the policy of complete and tween kingcraft and priestcraft. The cordial toleration, has been tried, and has Papacy has always been a political as had a very considerable success. In no well as a religious power. Its programme, Protestant country in Europe are the Ro- which was near realization in the middle man Catholics so fully and fairly treated ages, is the subjection of the temporal to as they are now in England, and in no the spiritual power — a project of an emProtestant country are they so loyal and inently political character, but an attempt, so little dangerous. All this blustering the German Chancellor maintained, which against the Roman Catholic Church is in is as old as humanity. For there have reality playing into its hands. The Ger- always been persons who claimed that man statesmen are making Catholicism a the will of God was better known to sort of patriotism as well as a religion by them than to their fellow-men, and that their legislation. The English sceptics they have therefore the right to rule are giving Catholicism a new spiritual over their fellow-men. On this founforce by their bluster. We are not in the unhappy condition of Italy and Spain, where the State has to deal with perverted ecclesiastical institutions and a great mass of ecclesiastical property really dangerous to civil order and social health. In Germany and with us the conditions of the problem are much more simple. The Roman Catholic Church is poor, and has no strength but that of its ideas. That

dation are built up the Papal claims to universal dominion. If this be so, as it will scarcely be doubted, the question, how the efforts to carry out this programme are to be met and frustrated, must also be political. It is natural that the Catholics should represent the matter in a different aspect. In Prussia they have represented the new regulation of the relations between Church and State

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which the Government has now on hand | entered upon a fierce internecine strugas the attempt of an Evangelical or Prot- gle with Rome which can only be termiestant dynasty to put down the Catholic nated by the defeat or submission of one Church, or as a fight between religion or other of the two parties to the conand irreligion, between faith and infidel- flict? ity. Their only hope of defeating the Government lay in being able to convince the Conservative majority of the Upper House that religion was assailed by the anti-clerical measures of the Minister of Worship. It was an attempt which was far from hopeless. Prince Bismarck saw the danger, and set himself to meet it. He saw that he must present the matter in another and its only true light. In asking the Herrenhaus to pass the Bill amending the Constitution, and thereby to lay the foundations for the new relations between Church and State that are to be established by the ecclesiastical measures of the Government, he must do more, however if success was to be ensured than merely assert that the Roman Church aims at political supremacy. It was necessary to show that there had been a change in the attitude of the Church which required a change of relations on the part of the State, because there had long been peace and amity between Prussia and the Roman Communion. The compact between them, conditioned by the fifteenth and eighteenth articles of the Constitution, which the Bill before the House amended, was described by Prince Bismarck as a modus vivendi devised at a period when the State felt itself in need of the aid of the Catholic Church. In the National Assembly of 1848 the Catholic representatives were, if not Royalists, at least the friends of order. In these circumstances the compromise between the temporal and spiritual powers was arranged which has allowed friendly relations to be maintained between them for a number of years. The Catholic department of the Ministry of Worship was endowed with authority to regulate the affairs of the Church in relation to the State. Naturally this department became with time more and more the servant of the Pope. Notwithstanding that, Prince Bismarck says he preferred the peace between Church and State thereby ensured, with all its disadvantages, to a condition of war, and often refused, though instigated thereto from other quarters, to renew the old battle. Why, then, it may be asked, was the peace or truce ended? Why was the compromise brought to a close? Why has the Prussian Government now

The concluding portion of Prince Bismarck's speech was an answer to these questions. And his explanation threw light on several points that have hitherto been dark. At the close of the French war, he says, the Government was more inclined than perhaps ever before to come to an understanding with the Roman See. All the statements to the contrary made in the Chamber of Deputies were untrue. The good relations between Germany and Italy had been troubled, if not actually disturbed, by the attitude of that Power during the war. Italy had not shown the activity and vigilance she might have done to prevent Garibaldi's intervention in the struggle on the side of France, and the Italian Government had not exhibited the disposition which might have been expected to shake itself free from French influence. German politics at the close of the war were by no means therefore likely to be influenced by any decided preference for Italian interests. When the Germans were still at Versailles - Prince Bismarck says — he heard of a movement to induce the Catholic members-those who now form the party of the Centre to unite to obtain the insertion in the Constitution of the Empire of the articles of the Prussian Constitution which are now being modified. He was not at first alarmed, as the movement originated partly from a dignitary of the Church high in place (the Bishop of Mayence), and partly from a member of the Centre, of whom he had no reason to doubt the perfect loyalty to the Government. But he was altogether deceived. When he returned to Germany he was soon convinced that this party was composed of irreconcilables. The Church partly hostile to the State was powerfully organized, and the Catholic department in the Ministry of Worship showed the greatest activity in opposing the use of the German language in the Polish districts. There was- - what had never before been the case -a Polish party in Silesia formed under clerical patronage. Even this was not the decisive matter. What first aroused the Chancellor's attention to the peril before the country was the power which the newly formed party had gained. Deputies who had been long sent to the Chamber were unseated, and new repre

was the preparation with those employed by the Imperial Chancellor. He declared it was impossible "to live" without these laws. The life of the State was exposed

did not receive weapons with which to protect it against assailants. The Prime Minister pointed to the case of Count Ledochowski as demonstrating the need of protection, and that protection could only be afforded if the Government obtained from the Legislature the arms they needed in order to discharge their duty. These weapons are the power to regulate the education of the clergy and their appointment to and tenure of clerical offices, and authority over the bishops in the exercise of ecclesiastical discipline. Prince Bismarck has convinced the Conservative members of the Herrenhaus that the political supremacy of Ultramontanism is only to be obviated by such stringent and drastic means. It is singular that at the very time the Imperial Chancellor was explaining the political dangers to which the State in Prussia is exposed at the hands of the Ultramontanes, the British House of Commons should have been discussing a measure for granting exceptional privileges to the Roman Catholic Church in Ireland.

sentatives returned in their places in several instances by electoral districts in which their names had not before been known, under orders from Berlin. The programme of the Bishop of Mayence to the gravest perils if the Government was openly proclaimed, and the organization which had won such influence adoped it as its own. This programme meant nothing less than the introduction of dualism in Prussia through the creation of a State within the State. The Catholics were henceforth in all matters relating to political and private life to receive orders and guidance from the Centre party. This involved the erection of two religious States which would be mutually hostile. The Sovereign of one of them was a foreign ecclesiastical prince who has his seat in Rome, a prince who (said Prince Bismarck) by recent changes in the constitution of the Catholic Church has become mightier than ever he was before. 66 Thus, instead of the Prussian State as hitherto organized, instead of the German Empire which was to be realized, were to be formed, if the programme were carried out, two State organizations running parallel with each other, the one with its general staff in the Centre party, and the other with its general staff in the principle of temporal authority and the Government and person of the King." It was impossible for the Government to tolerate such a situation, and it became its duty to defend the State against the danger to which it was exposed. It would have failed in this duty if it had stood quietly looking on while the principle of State authority was assailed. The modus vivendi provided in the Constitution must therefore be revised and a new one arranged. If the limits of the temporal and priestly powers were not more clearly defined, the State would be exposed to internal conflicts of the most dangerous kind. The Government could not continue to govern and to guarantee the safety of the State with the fifteenth and eighteenth articles of the Constitution unrepealed; and they therefore asked the Herrenhaus to help them to new powers, with which they might be able to protect the State's authority in the future.

The Herrenhaus, as might have been expected, has responded to this appeal by doing what was required of it. It is interesting to observe the similarity, almost the identity, of the terms in which the Prussian Premier Von Roon defined the necessity for the ecclesiastical measures for which the Constitutional Bill

From The Spectator.

THE LIBERATION OF FRANCE. THE German Government is to receive its last instalment of tribute by the end of August, and to evacuate France on the 5th September. The news of the Treaty under which this is arranged has been received in Paris with a sort of exultation, and though we cannot join in all the gratulations, we can thoroughly understand them. It is true that the German Government has made no concessions, has given back no territory, has exacted the last penny of the most frightful tribute ever exacted from any people, that war has henceforward a new motive, and the human race a new capacity of misery. The industry of generations has been pawned because a victor, already satiated with territorial conquest, willed that method of punishing and weakening a conceivable future foe. But nevertheless the treaty indicates that a great European cataclysm draws to a close, and that the State most affected by it still exists, and will continue existing, and we would ask our readers just to consider for a moment

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