Chapter XI (3)

The tide thus set in a right direction does not cease to flow, and it is fed by sources external to ourselves. Scarcely a week passes but some persons knock at the gates of the church for admittance, who have learned the elements of Catholicism from alien teachers. Several high-church periodicals, widely circulated, such as the _Union Review_ and the _Church News_, lay down, with extraordinary boldness and precision, doctrines which the so-called reformers labored to explode. Rumors are ever afloat of important conversions about to take place, and thus Catholics in England are constantly encouraged, while Anglicans are proportionally unsettled and alarmed. The Establishment is dying by the hands of its own pastors. Three hundred of them have quitted its pale, forfeited their position in society, forsaken a thousand comforts, prospects, and endearments, to follow the church in the wilderness and the pillar of fire. The largest-minded and the largest-hearted man Anglicanism ever produced, has long since taken his seat among the doctors in the true temple, and one whom Anglicans esteemed for his piety from boyhood upward, is now the primate of the English Catholic Church, and regarded among its bishops as _facile princeps_ for learning and ability, both as a speaker and writer. The talents which were employed in promoting schism are thus turned into a healthier channel; and a multitude of able and ingenious converts in every literary guise operate beneficially on the public mind. The loud demand for unity of doctrine, a fixed standard of belief and morals, authority in matters of faith, primitive antiquity, asceticism, symbols, sacraments, and aesthetics, is being supplied. Catholic missionaries are covering the face of the land, and they are welcomed wherever they pitch their tent. Thirsting souls, weary of broken cisterns, gather round them, and ask eagerly for living water from deeper wells. Abbeys are raised on ancient sites; convent-walls crown the hills; church-bells tinkle in secluded vales; and in the towns and cities, fanes richly adorned and well served invite with open doors the docile to be taught and the penitent to be shriven. The genius of the two Pugins, the father and the son, has revived the love of mediaeval architecture; and the new churches vie with each other in majestic structure and ornate detail. The winter is now past, the rain is over and gone. {489} The flowers have appeared in our land; the voice of the turtle is heard. The fig-tree hath put forth her green figs; the vines in flower yield their sweet smell. [Footnote 105]

[Footnote 105: Canticles, ii, 11-13.]

What a contrast within forty years! then the heavenly dove flying over England scarcely found where her foot might rest. The waters were abroad on the whole land, and she returned into the ark. In 1830 only 434 priests ministered through the entire country; and these were attached, for the most part, to obscure chapels in low quarters of the town, or to gloomy, old-fashioned houses in the country. Four hundred and ten unsightly buildings were then called churches; and England (which in the olden time, before the Reformation, owned 56 convents of the Dominican order alone [Footnote 106]) could not at that date claim a single religious house consisting of men. Sixteen scanty communities of nuns there were, who sighed and prayed in secret, being but the skirts of the garment of the Lamb's Bride. A change has come over the scene; and how great that change is, the following table will in some degree show:

In 1854. 1864. 1867.
Catholic clergy in England 922 1267 1438
Catholic clergy in Scotland. 134 178 201
Churches, chapels,
and stations in England 678 907 1082
Churches, chapels,
and stations in Scotland 134 191 201
Communities of men in England 17 56 67
Convents in England. 84 173 210
Convents in Scotland. 0 13 17 [Footnote 107]

[Footnote 106: _Fr. Palmer's Life of Cardinal Howard._
Introd. 41-58.]

[Footnote 107: _Statesman's Year-Book for 1867_, p. 238.
_Catholic Directory_, p. 267.]

In the Diocese of Westminster alone there are more than twice as many religious communities of women as there were in the whole kingdom (Ireland excluded) forty years ago. The population, it is true, multiplies rapidly and in an ever increasing ratio, but the spread of Catholicism does far more than keep pace with this advance. It outstrips it in a striking degree, and gives continual promise of further increase. The distance between churches lessens; the means of grace are more copiously supplied; the discipline of the church is more fully carried out; the prejudices of our foes are partly dispelled; their attacks become less violent; the press is more civil; the state more conciliating. In many localities, such as Bayswater, Notting-Hill, Kensington, Brompton, and Hammersmith, in the West of London, the number of Catholic churches, convents, and charitable institutions is greater than would be found over an equal area in many countries where the church is supreme. The number of persons attached to the congregation of the Oratory in Brompton exceeds 8000, and upwards of 13,000 attend the services of St. George's Cathedral in Southwark. The English "Reformation," happily, did only half its work, and the tap-roots of Catholicism have never been thoroughly eradicated from the popular mind. New suckers are ever springing up, and persistent culture soon obtains its reward.

The vast metropolis is not all included in one diocese. The Archbishop of Westminster and the Bishop of Southwark both reside in London, and divide the pastoral care of the great city between them. One hundred and sixty priests, secular, regular, and unattached, minister under Dr. Grant, while 221, including Oratorians and Oblates of St. Charles Borromeo, serve under the primate. The average attendance of children at the poor schools of the Diocese of Westminster was, in the year 1857-8, 8648; and nine years later, in 1866-7, it amounted to 12,056. {490} This increase sufficiently proves that great efforts are made to instruct the Catholic poor children in London. Many of them, especially those of Irish extraction, pass their days in rags, filth, and beggary, living like little "Arabs," as they are familiarly called. In 1866 it was estimated that from 7000 to 12,000 Catholic children were thus wandering through the streets of the capital; but the exertions of Cardinal Wiseman and Archbishop Manning have produced the happiest results, and diminished the evils which want of funds and the difficulties of the case leave for the present without adequate remedy. It is certain that the poor children of Catholics have in the English bishops most able and tender-hearted advocates, and that numerous monastic bodies of men and women are ready to second their efforts with devotion truly heroic. It is on the lambs of the flock that the hopes of Catholic England depend, and just in proportion as they are educated or uneducated, will they be ornaments or disgraces to the religion they profess. Nothing but superstition and vice can be built on ignorance; and the clergy in England are everywhere earnest in promoting the culture of the mind. It is almost as vain to teach religion without secular knowledge, as it would be presumptuous and profane to impart secular knowledge without religion. Nature and grace alike ordain that they should go together, and on this principle the Poor School Committee, or Council of Catholic Education, invariably acts.

There is in England, at the present moment, a strong tendency to compulsory education. The leading thinkers of the day incline to this plan, and press on the legislature the expediency of providing a state system of education, of which all the poor, Catholics as well as Protestants, should avail themselves. The secular instruction would, in this case, be common to all the children, while the religious instruction would be in the hands of the ministers of the several religions which the parents might profess. The Catholic bishops and clergy look with fear and suspicion on such a project, believing it impossible safely to separate secular and religious instruction. They are of opinion that the system would work badly, and prove a failure; that non-Catholic teachers would insensibly instil false doctrine and wrong views into the pupils' minds, and that the denominational system, which provides separate schools for each section of professing Christians, is the best, and, indeed, the only good one for Catholic interests. They point to Ireland, where the "national" education is regarded as a national grievance. They bid you remark how, in that valley of tears, both Catholics and Protestants separate their children if they can. They prove to you that, in national schools with Presbyterian masters, thousands of Catholic children are taught the Protestant religion from the lips of Protestant teachers. [Footnote 108] They complain that while the English receive from the state important help toward denominational education, to the Irish all such help is persistently refused.

[Footnote 108: Archb. Manning's _Letter to Earl Grey_,
1868, p. 22.]

It remains to be seen how far their remonstrances will be attended to, and how far the national education in Great Britain can be made to harmonize with Catholic. Happily, there is no disposition on the part of the state to force on any portion of the people a measure obnoxious to them; and the scheme of national education introduced into Ireland under the auspices of the Catholic and Protestant Archbishops of Dublin, (Drs. Murray and Whately,) having proved abortive, it is the less likely that Catholics in England will be obliged to accept any conditions to which they may be decidedly adverse.

{491}

There is, however, great difficulty in adjusting state concessions to Catholic wants and demands. It is almost impossible for Protestant rulers to understand our feelings, and they often run counter to them, even when they are trying to satisfy them with the best intentions. Thus, for instance, though the government has thrown open the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge to Catholics, allowing them to matriculate and proceed to the degree of Bachelor of Arts, difficulties have recently been raised by ecclesiastical authority respecting their availing themselves of this opening. The Catholic bishops, in fact, have recommended parents and guardians not to send their sons and wards to Oxford and Cambridge; and though their advice does not amount to a prohibition, it has, nevertheless, a deterrent effect. Catholic noblemen and gentlemen of large property have, at present, no other means of giving their sons an education suited to their rank, and such as will form their minds and manners for parliamentary and diplomatic service, except by sending them to these universities, where science is, so far as they are concerned, entirely divorced from religion, and their personal faith is in great danger of being compromised. The Catholic colleges at Oscott, Ushaw, Stonyhurst, and the like, though admirable for ordinary purposes, do not meet these exceptional cases. They have not, they do not, and they cannot produce men equal to the times--men who carefully get up subjects, read much and study deeply, write and speak in public with authority, and leave deep "footprints on the sands of time." [Footnote 109] Such laborious and efficient servants of their country are not likely to be formed by any _régime_ less strict and comprehensive than that of our universities; and the consequence is that, at this moment, there are about a dozen Catholic young men studying at Oxford (not to mention Cambridge) in spite of episcopal discouragement.

[Footnote 109: _Dublin Review_, October, 1867, p. 398.]

The principle of mixed education being absolutely condemned by the church, the want of a Catholic university in England is felt more and more. But it can only be the result of time, since the cost of endowments and professorships, not to speak of buildings, would, as yet, be out of proportion to the number of Catholics in England and the means they possess. The matter, however, is now under consideration at Rome, and it is expected that means will be devised shortly to meet the existing want. Before the Reformation, sixty-six universities covered Europe, and most of them sprang from small beginnings, and were built amid difficulties quite as great as any we shall have to encounter. [Footnote 110]

[Footnote 110: See _Christian Schools and Scholars_,
vol. ii. chap. i. and ii.]

In the mean time, the government of Mr. D'Israeli favors, to a certain extent, the denominational system, and proposes [Footnote 111] to charter the Dublin Catholic University, to endow it from the public treasury, and to grant it the right of conferring degrees.

[Footnote 111: March, 1868.]

This plan, if carried into effect, will materially aid the Irish portion of the church, but will not supply the want of university education which is felt in England. Already the benefits resulting from the state endowment of Maynooth College for priests are clearly manifest, and the present race of ecclesiastics in Ireland differs entirely, in several important particulars, from that of the past generation. {492} They are less Galilean than they were when educated in France, less disposed to accept of state pensions, improved in manners and appearance, more priestly, and perhaps more firmly attached to the Holy See. The old-fashioned "hedge-priest" has disappeared, and if one of our bishops now dines at the Castle in Dublin, he has not, as was sometimes the case in days of yore, to borrow a pair of episcopal small-clothes for the occasion.

The system of mixed education has not taken root in Ireland, though backed by all the influence of the state. The following table will prove that neither Catholics nor Protestants there approve it, and that, though they sometimes submit to it as a kind of necessity, they avail themselves of it as little as possible. The table exhibits the entire number of schools in Ireland under the control of the National Board, and it ought to be remembered that in these it is not allowable to teach the Catholic religion, to use Catholic emblems, to talk of the holy father, use the sign of the cross, or set up a crucifix or an image of Our Lady. [Footnote 112] The schools are, in fact, secular, so far as Catholic children are concerned, and their religious instruction is left to the zeal and labor of their own pastors.

[Footnote 112: Speech of Card. Cullen.]

Catholic Protestant
Children. Children.
Schools.
2,454 with Catholic teachers. 373,756 none
2,483 with Catholic teachers. 321,641 24,381
1,106 with Protestant teachers only. 29,722 114,726
184 with Protestant teachers only. none. 18,702
131 with mixed teachers. 13,690 13,305 [Footnote 113]

[Footnote 113: _Report of National Board of Education_,
1866. _Report of Meeting of Clergy of Dublin_, 18th Dec.
1867, p. 14.]

In England, grants are made from time to time by the Privy Council of the Queen toward defraying the expenses of Catholic poor-schools, for it is only in a hobbling way that public opinion in this country moves toward religious and political equality. The oppression of minorities by majorities has been in vogue so many centuries, that the Houses of Parliament can with difficulty be induced to administer even-handed justice to all. The Poor-School Committee, composed entirely of Catholic noblemen and gentlemen, conducts the affairs of Catholic poor-schools with the concurrence of the bishops and clergy. The schools which are subsidized by government are subject also to government inspection. But this causes no inconvenience, because the inspectors are Catholics, approved by the bishops, and comfortably salaried by the state.

The reformatory schools are most useful and interesting institutions. They date from 1854, when a law was passed to the effect that juvenile offenders should, after a few weeks of imprisonment, complete their term of punishment in a reformatory approved by the secretary of state for the Home Department. By the exertions of Cardinal Wiseman and others, reformatories were established for Catholic children, in order that they might be kept separate from those of other religions, and be duly instructed by Brothers of Mercy, or other pious and charitable persons, under the direction of a priest. Reformatory schools have been followed by schools of industry, to which magistrates send vagrant children, found by the police in the streets without shelter or home. These schools also are recognized by the secretary of state, and the members of the Conferences of St. Vincent of Paul watch over the children's interests and provide, as far as may be, for their welfare.

{493}

Allied to these are such schools as St. Vincent's Home for destitute boys, at Hammersmith, [Footnote 114] where eighty poor boys are boarded, clothed, and educated for four shillings a week each, with thirty shillings on entrance for outfit, etc. The Catholics of England do not wait till they become a rich and powerful body before they engage in extensive works of charity. On the contrary, the number of their charitable institutions is immense, considered in proportion to their means.

[Footnote 114: Now removed to Fulham.]

During the Crimean war the want of Catholic chaplains in the army was felt painfully. Soldiers and sailors are, of all men, most careless about their souls, and Catholic soldiers were doubly abandoned in the hour of sickness and death, having no minister but a Protestant one to attend them, while in his ministrations they had no faith. A few volunteer chaplains were therefore allowed to accompany the troops, and this has led to their being regularly appointed, and to such chaplains being placed on an equality with the Protestant in rank, salary, and retiring pensions. Vessels, also, are moored in the great harbors and prepared for Catholic worship. A chaplain is specially appointed to the service of such ships, and to provide for the Catholic sailors' spiritual wants. The spirit of the Irish tar is no longer vexed with the thought that he must live, fight, and perhaps die for a government which abhors his religion, and deprives him of its consolations. The captains of men of war in the neighborhood of the floating churches just spoken of, are obliged to see that the Catholic seamen attend Mass, and are not now, as formerly, compelled to assist at the Church of England prayers. The field of labor of Catholic army chaplains gradually extends; besides being attached to many home stations, such as Aldershot, Chatham, Portsea, Woolwich, etc., they are found in foreign stations also, such as Bermuda, Halifax, Mauritius, New-Zealand, St. Helena, and Malta. The Catholic chaplains, it may be added, live on the best terms with the officers and with the Protestant clergymen in the same barracks. "We never interfere with each other," said one of the former a few days since to the writer; "indeed, for my part, I would not think of trying to convert the Protestants; I would rather spend all my time in striving to convert the Catholics. I am sure that, out of every hundred of our own men, there are eighty that need to be converted."

The prisons and union work-houses also, which used to be the scenes of so much injustice toward Catholic prisoners, paupers, and children, [Footnote 115] have now assumed a more liberal and Christian aspect.

[Footnote 115: _The Workhouse Question. Lamp_, Aug. 19,
1865.]

Chaplains are appointed to the larger houses of correction to minister to Catholic inmates, and Catholic children in the workhouses enjoy the benefits of instruction in the religion of their parents. There is in the _Catholic Directory_, which appears annually, a list of the charitable institutions in each diocese, and nothing can be more cheering and hopeful than the view it presents. Thus, in the _Directory_ for 1866, we find in the Diocese of Westminster alone 3 Almhouses; 1 Asylum for Aged Poor; 1 Home for Aged Females; 1 Hospital served by Sisters of Mercy; 1 House of Mercy for Servants out of Place; 1 Night Refuge; 1 St. Vincent of Paul's Shoe-Black Brigade; 2 Refuges for Penitents; 1 Reformatory School for Boys; 7 Industrial Schools for Boys, and 11 for Girls. {494} The impression made on society by these admirable institutions is very great. They receive much countenance and support from non-Catholics; they instruct and console the ignorant and afflicted members of our own body; they call forth an abundance of self-denying labor and charity on the part of our own people, and tend more powerfully than any arguments to propagate the ancient faith. They prove that our religion emanates from a God of love, that we are not mere political schemers nor superstitious devotees, but sober-minded, practical Christians, battling with sin, and relieving misery in every shape. The English public is peculiarly alive to the services of Sisters devoted to works of Charity. You cannot walk through the streets now, or travel by railway, without meeting them, and everywhere they are respected. Their costume provokes no ridicule, their youth and good looks (if such they have) are secure from insult. Their crucifix and beads are badges of which all know the import, and involuntary blessings attend their steps. They are, in their way, the apostles of England. Their devotion to the sick and wounded in the Crimea won for them the favor even of their foes. Few will refuse them alms when they ask it for the poor. They are types of self-sacrifice, daughters of consolation, angel visitants. They impersonate the Gospel. Many of them come from abroad, from France, Italy, and Belgium, impelled by an invincible desire for the conversion of England. Their looks bespeak their mission no less than their garb. They are calm, collected, gentle. Children yearn toward them with instinctive fondness, and vice itself is shamed by their silent purity. The names of their several orders tell plainly on what their hearts are fixed. They belong to the "Good Shepherd;" they are the "Faithful Companions of Jesus;" they are handmaids of the "Holy Child Jesus," of "Notre Dame de Sion," of "Jesus in the Temple," of "Marie Reparatrice." They are "Sisters of Mercy," of "Providence," of "the Poor," of "Nazareth," of "Penance," of the "Holy Family," of "St. Joseph," of "St. Paul," of "the Cross." They address themselves to the heart rather than to the understanding, but they are not on that account less powerful instruments in the work of social improvement. They have broken down many of the barriers which prejudice had raised against the Catholic religion, and helped more than any logical triumph to subdue the hostility and soften the language of the press.

That mighty engine is, on the whole, an auxiliary to the Catholic cause in England. If it promulgates many falsehoods respecting us, it is almost always ready to publish their confutation also. It reproduces our primate's pastorals and all other documents of public interest that emanate from our bishops. It helps us, in the main, in the battle we are fighting for the attainment of equal political privileges, and employs the pens of many Catholic writers. No respectable periodical taboos a contributor because he is a Catholic, nor excludes him from its staff if his writing be up to the required mark, and his conduct in reference to controversial matters be discreet. Many non-Catholic journals are edited or sub-edited by Catholics, and this accounts in part for the altered tone of the press toward us of late.

{495}

Our own literature has recently been marked by fewer controversial books and pamphlets than it was some twenty years ago. Then, every convert of distinction, when admitted into the church, thought it incumbent on him to publish those reasons which had influenced him most powerfully in so momentous a change. The library tables in Catholic families were covered by the writings of Wiseman, Newman, Faber, Renouf, Lewis, Dodsworth, Northcote, Allies, Ward, and Thompson. Each presented his plea for Catholicism from a different point of view, and each added something to the aggregate of arguments derived from Scripture and antiquity. The controversy is now taking another turn. The church's historical ground is less violently contested, and she is drawing from her inexhaustible armory weapons to meet subtler foes. She faces the sceptic; she probes liberalism with Ithnriel's spear; she establishes from the very nature of things the necessity of an infallible standard of faith and morals. She draws up her line of arguments with a more compact front and extended wings. She appears at the same time more unbending and more liberal. She recognizes more freely and joyfully than ever the workings of the Holy Spirit in communions external to her pale, while she insists with extraordinary earnestness on her exclusive possession of the entire and incorrupt deposit of the faith. Such was the purport of a remarkable letter addressed to the Rev. Dr. Pusey by Dr. Manning, now Archbishop of Westminster, in 1864. Never were orthodoxy and liberality more happily united than in this pamphlet. Never did a Catholic prelate and divine make larger admissions without sacrificing a particle of Catholic theology. It is marked by the charity of an apostle and the accuracy of a logician. The same remarks apply to the archbishop's work on _England ana Christendom_. "We will venture to say that there is no one Roman Catholic writer of eminence in the world who has spoken more emphatically than he--we doubt if there is one who has spoken with equal emphasis--on the piety and salvability of persons external to the visible church." [Footnote 116]

[Footnote 116: _Dublin Review_, July, 1867, p. 110]

The life of Catholicism in England is evinced by its numerous associations. In every place where it has taken root, Catholics enrol themselves in societies, confraternities, or institutes for social, intellectual, and religious purposes. In no diocese do these flourish more than in that of Westminster. The Archbishop personally promotes social intercourse by throwing open his drawing-rooms every Tuesday evening, during the London season, to such gentlemen as may think proper to attend his receptions. There, may be met, from time to time, prelates from distant countries, ambassadors, members of parliament, noblemen, heads of colleges, artists, men of science, converts, and old Catholics, with now and then a non-Catholic guest, whom curiosity, respect for the primate, or yearning toward a calumniated church, draws into company to which he is little used. The Stafford Club is another centre of union, comprising about 300 members, and including among them a large part of the titled and moneyed Catholics of England, Wales, and Scotland. The archbishops and bishops of England and Ireland are _ex-officio_ honorary members, and they frequently avail themselves of the privilege. A middle class club has lately been opened in the city under the primate's patronage, and at this lectures are delivered, to which, as well as to all other advantages, non-Catholic members are admissible. {496} The only condition required of such members is, that they shall observe the rules of courtesy, and abstain (together with Catholic members) from unbecoming controversy on religious and political questions. Lecturing is not so popular a form of instruction in England as in the United States, yet it is much more generally in vogue than it was, and it is destined, we believe, to exert a wide influence hereafter in propagating anew the Catholic faith through the British empire.

What we need and hope for is the reaction of Catholic Ireland on Catholic England. Centuries of cruel misgovernment have retarded the civilization of that unhappy country, and the loss which it sustains is not its only, but also ours. In knowledge, education, manners, commerce, industry, liberty, in all that constitutes national maturity, it is behind England. Reading, lecturing, mental activity, in Ireland are all in the back ground; and consequently the church, which there keeps alive the faith in the heart of a peasant and small farmer population, does not act indirectly on English Catholic society with that force which would belong to it under more favorable circumstances. "The centuries which have ripened England and Scotland with flower and fruit, have swept over Ireland in withering and desolation;" [Footnote 117] she has therefore little to give us, much to receive from us. If England had been bountiful to her, she would, in return, have been bountiful to England. If we had shared with Ireland our material prosperity, she would now be imparting to us more spiritual blessings, communication between the two churches would be more brisk, and their relations would be marked by more complete unity of feeling and purpose.

[Footnote 117: Archbishop Manning's Letter to Earl Grey. p. 17.]

The time is probably drawing near when this healthy and reciprocal action of the Irish and English Catholic Church will be fully restored. If England is to retain Ireland at all as a part of the empire, it must be by establishing equal laws, repealing all penal enactments against Catholics and their religion, resolving the national system of education into denominational schools, disestablishing and disendowing the Protestant Church, and placing on Irish landlords such restrictions in the tenure of land as will secure the tenant from misery and hopeless serfdom. She must stanch the bleeding wounds of emigration, and wipe away the tears of ages. Then, and then only, can we hope to see Ireland a prosperous nation, her people thrifty and happy, her civilization raised to a level with other Christian countries of Europe, and her church putting forth all its native might to console and instruct its own congregations, and to aid in the work of recovering England to the faith of the Apostles. Political and social degradation, such as that which afflicts Ireland, is incompatible with a free and flourishing church, with a high moral tone, religious zeal, and exemplary lives on the part of its victims. Cottiers, and "tenants at will" of absentee landlords, having no security that their outlay is their own, and that they will ever reap the advantage of it; barely earning their potatoes and buttermilk by the sweat of their brow, and looking wistfully across the Atlantic to the comparative wealth and luxury enjoyed by five millions of their fellow-countrymen in America; liable at any moment to be evicted for political motives, or that their rent may be raised; galled and maddened by the remembrance of 50,000 evictions in one year; [Footnote 118] such persons, we say, deprived of the protection of the law, must be more than human if they do not in many instances prove themselves lawless. But the day of redress is at hand, we trust. May the day of retribution be averted!

[Footnote 118: 1849. _Butt's Land Tenure in Ireland_, p.
34.]

{497}

It is, perhaps, matter for regret that English Catholics have now no political leader. Since the voice of Daniel O'Connell was hushed by death, no representative of their interests in parliament has appeared gifted with genius and eloquence of a commanding order. Mr. Pope Hennessy has been excluded from the House of Commons by his Irish constituents in consequence of his conservative principles, which are not popular among them, and has accepted the governorship of Labuan. His talents are thus almost lost to the Catholic cause; and though there are more than thirty Catholic members in the Commons, their influence is not what it should be. It is neutralized by the many Irish Protestant members who represent landed interests; and valuable as are the services of Mr. Maguire, Mr. Monsell, Mr. Blake, and Major O'Reilly, it is to Protestant rather than to Catholic champions that we look now for advocacy of Irish tenant claims, and the redress of Irish wrongs. In the House of Lords we are most feebly represented. Out of twenty-six Catholic peers, seventeen only have seats, and none of these are distinguished as debaters. [Footnote 119]

[Footnote 119: See _Lord Mahon's Hist. of England_, vol.
i. p. 16.]

In the time of Charles II. the Catholic peerage was more numerous than it is now in proportion to the commoners. Long after that period, also, the lords and gentry held a higher position than was in harmony with the scanty number of their poorer co-religionists. Indeed, we have not yet recovered the blow which was inflicted on us by the expulsion of the peers [Footnote 120] under the rule of a sovereign who was even then a Catholic by conviction, and avowed himself such on the bed of death. But though the heads of old Catholic families in England do not, as a rule, shine as public characters, they have a title to respect which none others can claim. They represent those who suffered a long period of banishment for conscience' sake, treasuring in their hearts a faith more precious than courtly splendor. For this they were outcasts and pariahs, bowed beneath invidious disabilities and penal laws, deprived of all the material advantages which spring from good education, brilliant careers, and fine prospects. Despair of this world had become a part of their inheritance, and it is no wonder that their successors to this day are somewhat rustic and unskilled in the ways of cabinets and courts.

[Footnote 120: _Flanagan's English and Irish History_, p.
665.]

The Catholic revival, in short, in England--a revival of whose reality and strength we daily see the proofs--is not to be ascribed to external causes. No zealous autocrat, no lordly oligarchy, no foreign invasion, no laws, no concordats, have brought it about. Everything was against it, and everything seems now to favor it. Penal statutes, as decided and almost as deadly as those of the Caesars, forbade it; the Revolution of 1688 excluded from the throne any sovereign professing it; George III. fought against it as stoutly and more successfully than he did against the American Colonies; Pitt succumbed in his efforts to obtain for it some measure of justice; Fox abandoned its cause politically as hopeless; [Footnote 121] and the Grenville cabinet, with all the talents, was dismissed, because it planned a trifling concession to Catholic officers in the army and navy.

[Footnote 121: Pellew. _Life of Lord Sidmouth_, ii. 435.
_Jesse's George III_. iii. 476.]

{498}

George IV., like his father, frowned on Catholic emancipation, and yielded to it only under the pressure of a threatened rebellion. But though political privileges were granted to Catholics, it was deemed impossible that their dark, decrepit superstition should ever regain its footing in England. The book of common prayer witnessed against it; the preface to the Protestant Scriptures called its head antichrist; a thousand and ten thousand pulpits thundered against it Sunday after Sunday; dissenters scorned and trampled on it as the worn-out garments of the Babylonish harlot; millions of tracts and volumes pointed out its supposed errors, and cart-loads and ship-loads of Bibles were dispersed through the land as antidotes to its poison. Yet it spread. It triumphed over obloquy. It appealed in its defence to that very Bible which was believed to condemn it. It courted inquiry. It asserted its own divinity. It baffled the law, bent the will of kings and parliaments, scattered the arguments of its enemies like chaff, and advanced steadily as the tide, sapping every dam, and levelling every breakwater that opposed its flow. In the bosom of the adverse church it found advocates, and in almost every family it made converts. New concessions are made to it in every session of parliament; higher and higher offices in the state and in the magistracy are entrusted to its members; the paltry restrictions which yet remain in force will soon be swept away, and having once obtained social and political equality, we have not the remotest doubt that it will obtain, also, superiority approaching as near to supremacy as will be consistent with the liberty of every other portion of society.

There is an increasing disposition among sectarians in England to make common cause with Catholics on a variety of grounds. One of these grounds has already been mentioned. They would willingly see national education everywhere made purely denominational, and many of those among them who are strongly attached to their own particular form of belief would concur with the Catholic primate in asking that the schools endowed by the state may, in each place, be given over to the majority, whether Catholic, Anglican, Presbyterian, or Dissenting, and that schools required by the minority may be supported on the voluntary system. [Footnote 122] There is, however, a difficulty in this proposal which would give rise to endless jangling. In some places there is no majority, religious persuasions are equally divided. In others the majority is small and fluctuating. What is the majority this month may be the minority in the next. How could their rival claims to endowment be adjusted in such cases?

[Footnote 122: Letter to Earl Grey, p. 20.]

But again, there is a growing disposition among religious men of all denominations to make common cause with the Catholic Church in her warfare against infidelity and social crime, particularly drunkenness. Their ministers now are constantly coming in contact with our priests, sitting with them on committees, and speaking side by side with them on platforms on subjects affecting the general weal. They are beginning to recognize the great fact that our war with infidelity is not of yesterday, that we have from age to age maintained the fundamental truths of revelation in the face of a world of scoffers, and that if the banner of the cross could fall from our hands, it would lie in the dust. {499} Ritualists imitate our solemn rites; sedate churchmen have a friendly feeling toward us because we hold the apostolic succession; Biblical scholars in all sects defer to us as the mediaeval guardians and copyists of the Bible; Low-Churchmen endorse our doctrines of grace; Dissenters hold out to us "the right hand of fellowship," because we also are non-conformists as regards the Established Church; and even Quakers [Footnote 123] see in us some hopeful features when they hear us declare that we are affiliated in spirit to all who desire to know and obey the truth, and who err only through invincible ignorance.

[Footnote 123: See speech of Mr. Bright in the House of
Commons, March 13th, 1868.]

As time goes on, they will give us more credit for spiritual acumen. They will see how justly we have estimated the claims of each successive pretender to religious inspiration and knowledge of divine mysteries. They will ratify our decision on the _isms_ of this as of former centuries. They will admit, for example, that we have divined the true nature of animal magnetism, with all those extraordinary phenomena which perplex so many minds in England and elsewhere. To some persons these manifestations appear wholly impostures, to others they seem real and useful, and to others again, indifferent, absurd, and unworthy of attention. The church, on the contrary, after sifting the evidence adduced concerning them, pronounces them real in many instances, useless, unlawful, and Satanic. Theologians like Perrone and Ballerini have devoted long attention to them, and laid bare their wickedness in its most deadly aspects. Under a mask of mingled absurdity and terror, they reveal just so much of the invisible world as may deceive and ruin souls. They are horrible mimicries of the angelic and spiritual economy of the church. In all these phases of mesmerism, somnambulism, clairvoyance, table-turning, table-rapping, and evocation of spirits, they testify to the truth of divine revelation in respect to the spiritual world. So far they are of some advantage, for the evil one is always rendering involuntary homage to the Gospel which he seeks to pervert. But in exchange for this, they draw deluded multitudes away from the true and lawful way of holding communion with the dead, piercing the mysteries of the world unseen, obtaining divine guidance, mental illumination, cure of bodily infirmities, signal answers to prayer, visions, ecstasies, and knowledge of future events. From none of these things are the faithful debarred in the church, but in spiritism, or demon-worship, they are attracted to them in ways which are generally fatal to their morals and their faith. We have heard from an intimate ally of Mr. Home, now a convert to the Catholic Church, that in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred those who put themselves in communication with spirits by means of table-speaking, lose their belief in the Christian religion and adopt a loose mode of life. The political grievances of which English and Irish Catholics have still to complain, are of old not of recent origin. They belong to a system now virtually exploded, and if our statute-book were a _tabula rasa_ they could not be written in it again. There is full proof of this in the fact that Great Britain legislates for her colonies more justly than for Ireland, or even for England. In Sydney and Melbourne, in Australia, there are Catholic colleges endowed by the government, and in Canada there is an endowed Catholic University. Yet Ireland, with 4,500,000 Catholics, has hitherto asked in vain for the like favors. {500} The colonies, moreover, are not burdened with a Protestant establishment, but lie open to the exertions of Catholic and Protestant missionaries alike, who receive from the state equal encouragement and occasional subsidies. The consequence is, that in almost every colonial dependency of Great Britain the true church is in full activity, and gives ample proof of her divine mission. The following table of our episcopate will show how wide is the field of action afforded to it by the tolerant system which England has pursued of late years. If she had not at the Reformation fallen from the faith, there would not perhaps at this moment be an idol temple in the world. If she should ever return as a nation to the fold of Christ, her mighty influence may, with the help of other Christian people, suffice to break in pieces every fetish and exorcise the races possessed by demons. The figures here given are of the year 1867; and it may be observed that in all the twenty vicariates of India, Burma, and Siam there was an increase of the Catholic population over the preceding year, with the exception only of those which are under the Portuguese Archbishop of Goa. In his province there was a small decrease. [Footnote 124]

[Footnote 124: _Catholic Directory_ 1868, p. 19 to 26.]

Archbishops Bishops Vicars Apostolic

England 1 12 ...

Ireland 4 24 ...

Scotland ... ... 3

Malta |
Gozo | ... 2 1
Gibraltar |

Quebec |
Halifax |
Oregon |
British Columbia | 2 17 2
Harbor Grace |
St. John's, |
Newfoundland |

West-Indies 1 1 2

Africa ... 1 4

India, Burma, ... ... 20

Australia 1 10 ...

New Zealand ... 2 ...

Total 9 69 32

From this it appears that there are now no Catholics in the British empire invested with the episcopal office. The number is little short of that of the Anglican Bishops, with all the power and influence of the state, and a vast Protestant population to give effect to their exertions. Yet, poor and comparatively unaided as our bishops are, the results of their labors in the colonies and among the heathen far exceed anything which rival missionaries can boast. As to the Russian clergy, their torpor in regard to idolatrous nations has often been commented on, and they are strictly forbidden by imperial edicts to endeavor to make converts among them. [Footnote 125] It is therefore with Protestant missionaries only that we have to vie, and these, through their disunion, lose, in great measure, the fruits of their zeal. The two millions sterling _per annum_, which their societies in the British isles alone expend, [Footnote 126] do not enable them to make head against the rapid extension of the Catholic faith. In China, India, Ceylon, the Antipodes, Oceanica, Africa, the Levant, Syria, Armenia, and America, they have signally failed in converting the heathen, and in rivalling the happy results of Catholic missions. [Footnote 127]

[Footnote 125: Wagner's _Travels in Persia_, vol. il.
204.]

[Footnote 126: _The Times_, April 19, 1860]

[Footnote 127: Marshall's _Christian. Missions_, vol. i.
9-15.]

Every Catholic nation is a vast missionary society, and if England had been such to this day, her Indian possessions would be basking in the full light of the gospel. But, alas! how awfully has she betrayed her trust. The speeches of Burke, the lives of Clive and Hastings, bear witness against her. Rapine and cruelty marked the earlier stages of her Indian government. {501} During long years she left the Indians to their idols, and then recruited her treasury by a tax laid upon them, and commanded her troops to pay homage to the demons of the land. Her efforts for their conversion, if they can be called hers, are feeble and unsystematic, while Catholic missions in every part of British India are steadily conducted on a uniform plan. Eleven years ago there were about a million Catholics in the wide territory, and the spirit which guided S. François Xavier, Robert de' Nobili, John de Bretto, and Laynez, prospered the work of their hands. Since that time the Madras Catholic Directories show that constant progress has been made. In some dioceses from 500 to 1000 souls are reclaimed annually from Hindooism, Mohammedanism, and Armenian sects. The lives of the converts are often most edifying, and though much ignorance and superstition has to be weeded out of them, they show forth on the whole the glory of Him who has called them out of darkness into marvellous light. Registries of adult baptisms being kept at each of the stations, it is easy to ascertain the progress made. In 1859, 2614 adults in the province of Madura were received into the church, and the native college of Negapatam, frequented by young men of high caste only, had produced seven priests, eight theological students, a large number of catechists and school-masters, with several government officers. The Jesuit fathers had founded five orphanages and three hospitals, beside convents of Carmelite and Franciscan nuns, where Hindoo women, under the constraining influence of divine grace, led devout and austere lives. [Footnote 128] It has hitherto been the policy of our rulers to avoid interfering with the religion of the natives, [Footnote 129] but the time, we may hope, is at hand when more righteous and merciful principles will prevail in the councils of state.

By promoting schism, England delays the conversion of the heathen. Friends and foes alike testify to the inefficacy of English Protestant missions. They can destroy faith, but never inspire it; and those who desire to read the true records of the triumph of the cross in heathen lands, and especially in the dominions of Great Britain, must seek them, not in the publications of London Missionary Societies, but in the Annals of the Propagation of the Faith, and the writings of Mr. Marshall and Father Strickland. [Footnote 130]

[Footnote 128: _Mission de Madurt_, par L. Saint Cyr,
S.J. (1859.)]

[Footnote 129: Marshall's _Christian Missions_, vol. i.
412-419.]

[Footnote 130: _Catholic Missions in Southern India_ to
1865.]

The present Earl Grey, though an Anglican, once said to a gentleman from whom we heard it, that he wished, for his part, that Catholic bishops only were supported in the colonies by the English government; for that they alone, in his opinion, were actuated by pure motives and self-sacrificing zeal. Earl Grey does not stand alone in his truly liberal sentiments. Indeed, it is wonderful how generous and enlightened many of our statesmen have become suddenly, since the Fenians have threatened their English homes. Impossible as it is for us to defend their conspiracy, it seems to bear out the assertion that no people ever obtained their rights by mere remonstrance and petition. The injustice of maintaining a Protestant establishment in Catholic Ireland now flashes upon our rulers like light from heaven, though they have been told of it before a thousand times. Now they are as eager for its destruction as they were for its support. Now they see the matter as all Europe, all the civilized world except themselves, saw ft long ago. {502} Now they quote with approval the question proposed by Sir Robert Peel: "This missionary church of yours, with all that wealth and power could do for her, can she in two hundred years show a balance of two hundred converts?" Now they endorse the opinion of Goldwin Smith, that "No Roman Catholic mission has ever done so much for Roman Catholicism in any nation as the Protestant establishment has done for it in Ireland." [Footnote 131] It has, to use Mr. Bright's words, "made Roman Catholicism in Ireland not only a faith, but absolutely a patriotism." It has made the Irish "more intensely Roman than the members of their church are found to be in almost any other kingdom in Europe." [Footnote 132] "Don't talk to me of its being a church!" exclaimed Burke. "It is a wholesale robbery." "It is an anomaly of so gross a kind," said Lord Brougham, just thirty years ago, "that it outrages every principle of common sense. ... It cannot be upheld unless the tide of knowledge should turn back." "Irish Toryism," wrote John Sterling, in 1842, "is the downright proclamation of brutal injustice, and that in the name of God and the Bible!" All this English statesmen, who long obstinately resisted truth and justice, now see and acknowledge from a conviction too prompt to have been inspired by anything but fear. Terror has been known to turn the hair gray in a night, and to fill the mind with wisdom in a day. In saying this, however, we do not mean to express any approval of Fenianism, knowing it, as we do, to be a detestable conspiracy, secret, unlawful, and condemned by the church.

[Footnote 131: Letter in _Morning Star_, March 30,
1868.]

[Footnote 132: Speech in the House of Commons, March 31.]

The disestablishment of the Irish Protestant Church will directly affect the condition of the Catholics in England. It will place their Irish brethren on a social level with Protestants, and thus add to the respectability of the entire body of Catholics in the three kingdoms. It will diminish the number and influence of those Irish Protestant clergymen who cross the channel year by year to declaim on the platforms of our halls and assemblies against the supposed corruption of the Church of Rome. It will remove ten thousand heart-burnings from the people of Ireland, and enable them, though differing in religion in some districts, to live together in peace and harmony. It will increase self-respect in both sections of the community--in the Protestant, because they will no longer be grasping oppressors; in the Catholic, because they will no longer be fleeced and oppressed. The relative merits of their creeds will then have to be discussed on even ground, and no weapons but those of the sanctuary will avail in the fight. The voluntary system by which their ministers will be supported will throw them entirely upon their moral resources, and every adscititious aid in propagating their belief will be happily rescinded. The settlement of the Irish Church question will soon be followed by legal improvement in the condition of tenants as regards their landlords; and thus the two crying evils of our Irish administration being redressed, speculation will be encouraged, commerce will thrive, fortunes will be made, emigration will be arrested, and emigrants recalled. The church of Catholics will share in the general prosperity, and chapels now little better than mud hovels will be razed to the ground to make room for buildings stately and fair as the collegiate churches of Windsor, Middleham, and Brecon, in the olden time, or as the Priory of Stone, the Orphanage of Norwood, and the College of St. Cuthbert, near Durham, at the present day.

{503}

There is at this moment a concurrence of events favorable to the Catholic religion in the British empire, such as never was seen before since the Reformation. No fires of Smithfield, no renegade queen like Elizabeth, no Spanish Armada, no Gunpowder Plot, no Puritan ascendency, no despotic house of Stuart, no Pretender, no Titus Oates, no French or other foreign invasion, no Lord George Gordon, no rebellion like that of Robert Emmett and Lord Edward Fitzgerald, is looming in the distance, marring the prospect, and nearing us to turn hope into despair. Even Fenian outbreaks are, we believe, anticipated and virtually undone. Every sun that shines is ripening the harvest, and were it not that the enemy is more busy than ever in sowing tares, we might expect that within a century the whole, or at least the larger part, of the population of the three kingdoms would be included in the domain of the church.