Chapter X (2)

The most urgent question appears to be, How far will the control of schools in France ultimately enable the priests to determine the destination of French armies, and how far will their partial control of schools in other countries enable them to support any movements of France, so as to sway Roman Catholic governments, and to paralyse even Protestant ones? The enthusiastic priest strangely exaggerates the power of his order. The superficial politician no less strangely underrates it. What we at present know is, not what the clerical party will be able to accomplish, but the simple fact that the hold which it now has upon schools in France, Spain, Germany, England, and elsewhere, assures to it, in the next generation, a vast number of men trained in the doctrine of the Syllabus, and imbued with the antipathies and the hopes which, in the eye of a Jesuit, form the cardinal virtues of a soldier of God. Jesuits are often very unsuccessful in training the convictions, turning as they do many of their pupils into deadly foes. But they seldom fail to train the antipathies. Hatred of scriptural Christianity is almost invariably a ruling passion with both classes of their pupils, the Papists and the infidels. To all true disciples of the new school, the holiest of public ends will be the reconstruction of society in every country under the sky, according to the outline of the Syllabus. In pursuit of that end all means will to them be not only fair but meritorious, if adopted with a real intention to the greater glory of God. And the States of Europe have put it into the power of priests to train millions for the new school. And England has given to the effort very considerable encouragement, though doubtless that encouragement is praiseworthy in such eyes as those of the Marquis of Ripon and Lord Robert Montagu, both of whom have held high place in our department of education.

The _Stimmen aus Maria Laach_ met the first mutterings of discontent with the Syllabus by saying that when those who, in pride of power, were resisting its authority, had passed away, those judgments of the Pontiff would be taught from every chair in the Catholic world. That forecast is already fulfilled. The politics of the Syllabus and the morals of teachers like Gury are now everywhere forming the clergy of the future. And very carefully are the laity being trained in the same principles, less expanded. To them the ideal of the one commonwealth, with its one pastor-king, its unity of faith, its glory of ceremonial, its divine law, and its supernatural magistracy, is made to appear as the fairest of ideals, as one, indeed, truly divine. Many brave English boys--heirs, some of them, to what once were noted Protestant names; boys whose fathers or grandfathers our great schools and noblest colleges trained up in gross ignorance of the principles that are contending for the government of the world--are now imbibing from continental priests principles and passions that will one day appear in our mess-rooms and our legislature. And what are our great schools and colleges even now doing to prepare our youth generally to understand what the pupils of priests approve, what they condemn, and what they mean when, to innocent Englishmen, they appear to assert one thing and to deny another? Has the Papal cry for the exclusion of modern history from national universities been met by any sensible attempt to teach anything as to the elements struggling in contemporaneous history, especially the most potent ones?

In that strange literature to which the Prefects of the Pope give the name of pastorals, it is in mystic phrases often indicated that the flocks of the bellicose shepherds are to be prepared for a terrific combat. Sometimes the veil is dropped and in plain language war is spoken of as the only means of avenging the Church for her wrongs. Men called bishops in the vineyard of Jesus Christ speak of the mustering of the opposed hosts, and of the inevitable collision, covering the design of raising nation against nation, and of raising the people against their own rulers, by allusions to the fact that in the beginning the Church had to act without the kings, and that once more she will be obliged to throw herself upon the people. In Protestant countries, or in mixed ones, aged men in sacred vestments will say, without a blush, that the Pope himself would not make war. But let only a glimmer of political hope invite, and then kings and queens, ay, ex-kings and ex-queens, are applied to; and could the Pope only find bayonets, the same aged men in the same sacred vestments, and again without a blush, would be heard proving that in making war the Pope was only fulfilling a painful duty imposed upon him by his office as the Vicar of Christ! At this day Europe witnesses a stage of the movement of reconstruction, at which every cope and mitre in the Papal hierarchy covers a centre of force impelling to a general war. Every grey-headed bishop is an official promoter of a cataclysm that shall engulf all that opposes the Syllabus. Every friar schoolmaster and every quiet nun who teaches school is a trainer for future bloodshed. Even at his audiences the man of more than fourscore years old fans the flame in little children dressed as soldiers, sometimes the boys of English converts; and convert fathers flatter him by hoping that their sons will yet bear his banner, so are womanhood, childhood, and old age all fascinated by the war passion of the priest.[491]

We do not pretend to know how it is calculated that the great struggle is to be brought on. We should think that, confidently as its approach is foretold, it must be doubtful to all but those whose faith rests only on the divine destiny of the Papacy. Yet many who may not believe that the Pope is about to recover Rome, and then to make Rome the capital of the world, and who do not even believe that he will succeed in bringing about a general struggle with a view to those ends, do nevertheless fully believe that he will succeed in leading forth France once more against the Italians, and that he will, in some general complication, be able to find means of unsettling other interests so as to advance his own. To this it is replied that the Jesuits who foster these hopes are poor politicians; and that is perfectly true. Yet they are skilled in intrigue, and versed in the ways of courts and of cliques. They proudly note their hold upon schools in France, their growing hold upon colleges, the zeal of General Charette and his ex-pontifical zouaves, the military preaching of Count Mun, the adhesion to the dominion of the Syllabus publicly signified by many French generals whose names are trumpeted with a joyful noise; and with special pride do they note such an incident as that which occurred at a recent examination in the great military college of St. Cyr, when, out of twenty-eight candidates for admission, no less than twenty-two came from one Jesuit college. They note the clubs and associations everywhere spreading; that of the Sacred Heart, said to number a million of members; that of Jesu-Workmen and that of Jesu-King, meant to organize in factory, workshop, and palace a company of soldiers as true to the chair of St. Peter as the central Company of Jesus. They note the numbers of the official class who believe that "moral order" is to be promoted by the priests. They note the zeal of ladies, and of the aristocracy.

Beyond those encouragements openly proclaimed, lies that mystery which, in Roman Catholic countries, envelopes all Courts. At the time when Thiers was taking counsel with Louis Philippe for the fortification of Paris, or even when Guizot was making himself the tool of the court for compassing the Spanish marriages, who would have dared to tell those statesmen that both of them would survive to see the day when the fate of France for peace or war, slipping out of the hands of an exhausted Bonaparte, would virtually fall into those of one who was then a Spanish girl in a private station, one whose very name was unknown to the people of France? To this Court element of strange uncertainty--and women and priests can weave webs around presidents as well as around emperors--is to be added the solid fact that even Frenchmen, who hate the priests and dread their politics, are not healed of the idea that it is well to have weak neighbours, so divided that, at any time, an invasion of their territory is more a matter of excitement than of serious peril. Against all this what have we to set? Humanly speaking, only the fund of good sense and good feeling which, in spite of all appearances to the contrary, does exist among the French people to a degree far greater than they who do not know them well can realize. And beyond this, the good providence of God; for surely France is not to become a second Spain, or else to be partitioned, one or other of which lots would seem to be before her if the priests can drive her as they hope to do.

The "good Press" gloats over every prospect of a general broil of nations. The failure in 1870 of calculations as to what would occur in the Catholic portions of Germany on the breaking out of a war between France and Prussia, did not change the current of Ultramontane hope. Any great conflict, it seems to be assumed, must somehow lead to a restoration of the Pope. The poor old man has himself all along fed a belief in the certainty of that restoration. At first he seemed to emit tentative prophecies giving mystic hints of dates. Time blotted out the dates hinted at. Then came declarations more general but perhaps more impressive to the conscience of his disciples. On the second anniversary of the Roman _plébiscite_, after many promises of restoration had been long overdue, the aged high priest said to the nobles of Rome--

Yes, this change, this triumph is to come: and IT IS OF FAITH.
Whether it is to come while I am living, while this poor Vicar of
Jesus Christ is living, I know not. I know that it is to come. _The
resurrection is to take place_, and this great impiety is to have
an end (_Discorsi_, ii. p. 82).

When from the lips of the Pontiff speaking as Vicar of Jesus Christ fall the words "It is of faith," it is hard to see how the body which has now bound itself to take the faith from his lips can help accepting them as a prophecy which that body is bound to see fulfilled. And it is no insignificant proof of the portentous contents of that one dogma called Papal infallibility that so soon after it had been adopted, the creature invested by his fellow-creatures with such control over them should, in the name of the meek Prince of Peace, commit what they consider their faith to a temporal throne for a minister of the gospel.

On the very day on which the nobles received the above prophecy, the same lips told the youths of the Catholic Association that the faithful, now passing through the deep, would soon reach the further shore of the Red Sea, and would cry with Moses, "We will sing unto the Lord, for He hath triumphed gloriously: the horse and his rider hath He thrown into the sea." So were the Italians to fall, for as the _Civiltá_ expresses it, "Which is of more account, the greatness of one human kingdom, or the independence and the liberty of the kingdom of God?" (X. ii. 143).

When the Pope said, The resurrection is to take place, he reflected language used in an address presented to him a few days previously, on the sad anniversary of the commencement of the "captivity," as it is called, the second time it came round. The _Piana Federation_ said--

Similar in your passion to the God-man of whom You are the Vicar on
earth, the second day of Your mystic burial is fulfilled, amid the
confusion of society and of Your impious guards, destined, in spite
of themselves, and in the day which God shall appoint, to bear
testimony to Your resurrection. In the august sepulchre wherein
those whom You had laden with benefits have confined You, wrapped
in the sweet spices of the lamentation and the love of Your sons,
You also descend into the abyss of society as now existing, and
there does Your voice resound, casting down the demons of sect, and
consoling those who anxious and trembling await the blessed hour
when with You they are to rise again. And the third day is already
commencing; but, as it was not completed for the Divine Saviour,
so have we confidence that no more will it be completed for You,
O Holy Father: the prayers of the blessed Virgin whom You have so
greatly honoured, the prayers of the Saints, Patrons of the Church
and of Rome, with those of so many souls who suffer and who weep
to obtain Your liberation, your triumph, will shorten this day of
utmost anguish, and God, God whom your enemies do with Satanic
impiety unceasingly defy, will not permit the day to close without
having witnessed the fulfilment of the devout desires of Your
sons.[492]

Notwithstanding these promises, not only did the third "day" run its course but the sixth has set, with the Satanic guards still standing around the august sepulchre. For six years Italy has held Rome as her capital, and Pius IX has confined himself to the Vatican, making speeches. But at this moment the hope of a general complication, and of a restoration as the effect of it, is very likely. The present obscuration of the Papacy is treated as if it were passing and light as the shadow of an April cloud on the Alban Hills. The shadow will pass and the hills will abide. Rome, for a moment the mere capital of a kingdom, is to be the capital of the world. Let but the temporal power be once restored, and then the steps to the universal theocratic monarchy can be taken both with deeper secrecy and with greater force.

Even those who most despise the political influence of the priests must own that for disturbance their power is great. Taking the sixty years which have elapsed since the peace of 1815, let us, for a moment, look at the Roman Catholic countries of Christendom, and at the non-Catholic ones, in respect of the one blessing of public repose. In those sixty years the three great Protestant powers--England, Prussia, and America--have not drawn the sword one against the other. The smaller Protestant powers have not fought among themselves. No Protestant capital has undergone a foreign occupation. With the exception of America, no Protestant State has been desolated by civil war. No Protestant army has been given to military insurrection, or has, in the day of trial, proved untrue. No Protestant sovereign has been expelled by his own people. No Protestant President of a Republic has been executed, or exiled, or condemned as a traitor. No Protestant monarchy has been changed by violence into a republic; no Protestant republic into a monarchy. If we set off as one against the other, the war of German unity which partly occurred in the one group of States, and that of Italian unity which occurred in the other group, the only case of war between Protestant States, in the two generations, has been that of Prussia and Denmark, and the only case of war between two great powers non-Catholic has been that of Russia and England, in the Crimea. But how has it been on the Papal side of the line?

No leading Catholic power can be named which has not within the sixty years made war on other Catholic powers as well as on non-Catholic ones. France has fought with Spain, with the Italians, with Austria, as well as with Russia, with Prussia, with Holland, and has even gone away to Mexico to seek a war of which the Vatican spoke as if it were a campaign of the Church. Austria has fought with Italy and with France, as well as with Prussia and with Denmark. As to the wars of Catholic States in America with one another, they have been numerous. Rome has undergone twenty years of foreign occupation; France has undergone two; and Austria has had recourse to foreign intervention. Civil war in Portugal, civil wars in Spain, civil war in Austria, civil war repeatedly in Italy apart from the great war of unity, civil war chronically in the American Catholic States, have made that plague familiar in Roman Catholic countries. The foremost, and the least priest-ridden of them, France, has had her three days of July, her three days of February, her four darker days of June, her bloody days of December, her awful weeks of the Commune. Military insurrections properly so-called have not occurred in the great Catholic nations that refused to submit to the disciplinary decrees of the Council of Trent. But in Spain, Portugal, and the nations of America, military insurrection, that worst of anarchies, seems to have acquired a sort of prescriptive place in the Constitution. In Italy, till 1860, the armies of the princes faithful to the Papacy were largely foreign. As to conspiracies and risings, it is strange that where they have occurred out of Roman Catholic States they have often been among the Roman Catholic portion of the population; and in Roman Catholic States they have been much more frequent within the circle of countries where the decrees of Trent had been fully accepted, than in those which, by Gallican liberties, Josephine laws, or in some other form, uphold national supremacy. As to thrones in Roman Catholic countries, the difficulty is to name those which during the sixty years have not been emptied by violence; Austria and Sardinia, perhaps, exhaust the list, in both of which, however, an abdication, compelled by misfortune, has taken place. Twice has a limited monarchy, once an empire, and once a republic, been overthrown in France by revolution. As to Spain and South America, it were weary work to count up catastrophes. The discrowned princes who, like ghosts, haunt Europe, and the ex-presidents under ban who prowl in America, are nearly all Roman Catholics.

Perhaps the entire course of history does not afford an example of any contemporaneous development of four great Powers, bringing with it in the aggregate such an increase of territory, population, and strength, as that which within the sixty years since the peace of Vienna has occurred in the case of the four non-Catholic Powers, Russia, Prussia, America, and England. No corresponding development has taken place in Roman Catholic or in Moslem nations. Italy, indeed, has risen up, but only by breaking the yoke of the Papacy, and by swimming against a sulphurous stream of anathemas.

It would be a curious and not altogether an idle speculation did some clear-headed and calm economist carefully work out the question, What would be the effect in the course of three hundred years, upon the peace of Europe, on the bulk of standing armies, on the stability of thrones, on the development of arts, sciences, laws, and morals, on the security of life and property, and on the general spread of charity, brotherhood, and virtue among men, supposing that by some unseen power the hundreds of thousands of priests, now working to bring about the dominion of the Pope over our species, could be instantly changed into simple ministers of the gospel, without a political head or a political aim, but each one seeking only to bring the wicked to repentance and to lead the godly onward, adding virtue unto virtue and grace to grace? Would the change bring France more wars and more revolutions? Would the change make the new career opened to Italy more obscure or thorny? Would the change make Austria feebler, or make Spain less united and prosperous? Would it bring a blight upon Mexico? and in South America would it make the rulers less tranquil, the people less obedient to law, and less attached to order? Would the south and west of Ireland less strongly attract capital and residence? Would Croatia be less refined? Would the island of Sardinia be less highly civilized? Would Sicily be less secure? Would the dominion of Canada be more difficult to govern? Would the city of New York and other cities of the United States in which the political power of priests is now formidable be worse ordered and more corrupt? In Hayti and St. Domingo, would public affairs be more unstable, would family life be more blameworthy?

Or conversely: What would be the effect of a change in the opposite direction? Suppose that at once every Protestant minister could be changed into a zealous priest, and that the Headship of the Pope could exert its full influence unshackled by those restraints which have hampered him ever since the Reformation--partly, indeed, ever since the large-eyed man of Lutterworth brought into existence that terrible thing the English Bible--and suppose that with all the liberty of power and all the power of liberty he could rule over the whole of Christendom as completely as he formerly ruled over his own States, what would be the practical effect? Would Scotland produce more authors, heroes, and worthies, fewer beggars, thieves, rioters, and assassins, than she does to-day? Would England produce more good landlords, more comfortable tenants, more honest merchants, more bright men of letters and science, more deeds of Christian charity, and fewer civil wars, fewer conspiracies, fewer insurrections, fewer military revolts, fewer beggared nobles, and fewer ill-cultivated estates than she does to-day? Would Germany be more united? Would Holland, Denmark, and Sweden be more stable? Would the United States be more prosperous, more free, and more peaceable? Would the British Colonies be increasing tranquil and enlightened?

With the facts of the past, and the principles of the present which are to be the plastic forces of the future, before him, a calm and wide-minded observer, taking long stretches of time and great varieties of circumstance to illustrate any hypothesis and to test any conclusion, might form an estimate which would not be without a properly scientific value. We are often told by one class of writers that Roman Catholics are as good subjects as Protestants, and by another that in proportion to their numbers they yield a much greater amount of illiteracy, of turbulence, of pauperism, and of offences against the law. These are points which statesmen have no right to leave to theologians, and on which they have no right to remain themselves in doubt. Above all, they have no right if not in doubt about them, but if they have on sufficient grounds a clear opinion, to keep that opinion back, or to cloud it by ambiguities. Both in England and in America there are intelligent and loyal men who believe that they are more burdened and that public law and order are less well observed in proportion as priests have power over any section of the population. These are questions of fact capable of a scientific solution, and it is the duty of statesmen scientifically to solve them. If the authorities, which are clearly natural and Christian, clearly both divine and human, are undermined where priests do not rule and are built up where they do, let statesmen tell mankind that it is so. If the unnatural, the merely artificial authority of the priest is proved, on a test of ages, of various races, and of various polities, to be unfriendly rather than helpful to the stability and vigour of lawful authority, then let all incumbents of that authority--kings, presidents, nobles, lawgivers, magistrates, parents, and husbands--lift up a clear voice, the voice of intelligent conviction, and tell all men how the matter stands. "The sword of the mouth" is the only sword which ought to be drawn in this war; and if they to whom God has given real authority draw that sword against the spurious authority of the priest, it will prevent the call which otherwise will surely come to draw a feebler sword but a bloody one. Priestcraft, mighty against artifice, subtle against force, invincible against compromise and subterfuge, is strangely weak against a calm and Christian denial of its authority.

Long since this chapter was written, we find that the Italian journals while noting the base immorality which week by week is brought to light among the priests, and pointing to their multitude and the low repute of many of them as a moral plague, now (1877) fasten upon them even more than of wont charges of exciting anarchical conspiracies. The _Emancipatore Cattolico_, the organ of what is called the Italian National Catholic Church, formed by the priests who belonged to the Society for the Emancipation and Mutual Aid of the Clergy, writes as follows--

The _red_ International, in appearance with a different end and
program, but in reality in full accord with its _black_ sister,
after the stimulus from the Vatican sets itself in motion, and
lifts up its head.... We ask, Has the alliance of this double
International a probability of success in a future nearer or more
remote? We do not hesitate to reply affirmatively if the powers and
States in the two hemispheres do not agree rather to overthrow the
_black_ international which is the true and efficient cause of the
other, than the _red_ which is the effect.... Christian governments
of Europe, open your eyes! the international that truly menaces
you, and that will undo you if you are not wise, is that of the
Vatican. You accept it and smile upon it because you suppose it to
be the conservator and champion of order and authority; but the
order and the authority which it represents and champions are those
of the absorption of all the social powers into the despotic and
arbitrary will of a miserable mortal who believes himself to be
God, and who as such imposes himself upon the entire universe.[493]

While these last sheets have been passing through the press, events have occurred which illustrate many of the hints contained in this chapter. Many who, when we first began to write this work, would have seen nothing "practical" in that solemn hint of Vitelleschi when, speaking of the frequent occurrence of disturbances at the same time when the Church is pressing some point upon a government, he says that the circumstance is an organic phenomenon deserving of the most serious attention, now begin to feel that it is scarcely rational any longer to be insensible to facts which day after day rise into the view of Europe.

In March 1877, Pius IX delivered a carefully-prepared Allocution, full of bitter attacks on Italy, and manifestly intended to raise once more the Roman Question. A feverish agitation becoming speedily discernible in different countries, none could help noting the coincidence of the two events. In Italy broke out an attempt at insurrection in Benevento, professedly by socialists, but as the Italian papers believed fomented and directed by priests. This was speedily followed by a vote of the Italian Senate, by which that body threw out a Bill, that had been passed by the Lower House, for restraining ministers of religion, of all denominations, from certain abuses of their office. Italian journals of different shades intimated their impression that this event was solely due to the direct action of the Pope upon the king, and of the king upon a number of courtier senators.

Shortly afterwards the Prime Minister of France, M. Jules Simon, explained in debate, with all propriety of language, that the popular idea about the Pope being a prisoner was unfounded. The Pope, in that characteristic style which has never risen to the level even of municipal, much less of national public life, stated that a certain government had said that the Pope was a liar; and as if to rehabilitate any one who might have been so impertinent, he added that he did not know what government it was! Soon afterwards, on May 16, 1877, M. Simon was abruptly dismissed by Marshal MacMahon, and the Assembly, of which a majority supported M. Simon, was silenced by an enforced adjournment. This pale edition of a _coup d'état_ was hailed and claimed by the clerical papers as a direct result of the interference of the Pope. Its ill effects in France forced upon many the reflection, how enviable is the lot of nations in which the influence of the Pontiff is feeble, and how well would it be with any nation in which that influence should be _nil_!

Strange does it seem that the prophets of reconstruction should for encouragement point more frequently to France and England than to any other countries. To France they look for military service, to England for religious converts. The one is to glorify the Church by a sacred war, the other by an edifying submission. In France they count upon the schoolmasters, the army, the ancient aristocracy, and many of the politicians. In England they count upon that portion of the clergy which they call the Puseyite party, upon a portion of the aristocracy, upon the ceremonies in the churches, and the teaching in the denominational schools. Grossly exaggerating, as they do, the position and the influence of Cardinal Manning, and speaking at times as if the whole English hierarchy, unable to face him, were trembling and falling down before him, they also exaggerate the strides actually made by the Ritualistic party in carrying the whole nation towards submission to Rome. They boast, in the language of Dr. Newman, that the English Church is, through that party, "doing our work;"[494] and they always seem to have taken to heart the principle which he taught them as long ago as 1841: "Only through the English Church can you act upon the English nation."[495] They are not much read in our political literature, and when they meddle with it, often make strange blunders. But some of them are shrewdly aware of the services done to their cause by writers who treat Ritualism as a matter of aesthetics, and treat each particular ceremony as a trifle.

Looking back on the turns and windings of the movement for reconstruction, and remembering how little human foresight would have availed to predict either their successive phases or the results up to the present hour, it is natural to feel that as to those further turns and windings which as yet lie out of ken, hidden behind the veil of an inscrutable Providence, it is not for us presumptuously to divine. Rather would we, in humble hope, await the future, so far as to us it may be permitted to witness its unfolding. In the sixty years since the peace of Vienna the Papacy has passed through two distinct stages, of thirty years each; the one up to the beginning of the present pontificate, the other during the course of it. In the first thirty years the flag displayed was that of Liberal Catholicism. During that time the Papacy gained emancipation in England and Ireland, a footing in the schools of France and Belgium, a repute of liberality and other great advantages; while on the whole it held its ground in Italy, Spain, Austria, and the minor States. But a true instinct taught the Curia that temporary gain was preparing final ruin. Since 1849 the policy has been reversed, and the external results to the Papacy so far have been disadvantageous. "Catholic unity" has been lost in Italy, Spain, Portugal, Austria, Mexico, Brazil, and elsewhere. In Poland the losses to the Church have been immense, whether they may be due to the persecuting policy of Russia, as the Catholic party alleges, or to the rebellious excitements of the Pope and the priests, as others allege, or to both these causes united, as seems most probable. In Switzerland and Germany the Papacy has had heavy loss, and its future is gloomy. In France it has made immense gains; in Ireland heavy loss; in England gain, and that of the kind it values most--gain by the help of the clergy, of the aristocracy, and of a great university. But still, while the population of the United Kingdom has much increased, Pius IX cannot count among the thirty millions now inhabiting it so many Roman Catholics as he found among, say, five millions less. He has to note a decrease in Poland concurrently with persecution, and one in the British Isles concurrently with extended political privileges. The Curia, if not unconscious of these losses, never confesses to them, and avers that the increased compactness gained by recent changes far more than compensates for any increased opposition, and in fact insures the overthrow of all resisting forces; while the submission of England--Queen, bishops, lords, and people--is spoken of as a thing nigh at hand to the eye of faith. Firmly, however, do we believe that in mercy to this great empire, within which dwells in peace and with ample privileges a portion of mankind larger than ever before under one sceptre enjoyed the blessings of free government, and in mercy also to the whole redeemed race in the midst of which this empire holds a place so influential and on the whole so beneficent, never will England justify the promises of submission to the Pope wherewith continental priests are wont to cheer the courage of their partisans, albeit they proudly point to men in important places, and boast how the triumph of the Vatican is being prepared under the patronage of both Church and State.

All this notwithstanding, we do not believe that the English commons are to be reduced into a populace without constitutional representation; or that the English aristocracy is to be reduced into an order of nobles without constitutional powers; or that our magistracy, from squire up to chancellor, is to be put under the bishops' courts; or that our chairs of philosophy, science, and literature are to be placed under the tutelage of chairs of theology filled by Jesuits, or by men of whom Jesuits approve; or that our universities are to be placed under Romish canon law; or that the priest, to the exclusion of the State and of the laity, is to be made as completely moral lord of all the schools in England as he is now of his denominational schools; or that the works of our authors are to wait till a Dominican has cut out what he deems amiss, and has written on the remainder _Imprimatur_; or that our printers are to wait for a licence from the friars; or that our journals and periodicals are to be cut down to the proportions which were allowed to the Press in the Model State; or that our armies are to be composed of men so schooled that to them the word of the priest shall take the lawful command out of the lips of the king. No more do we believe that from these English shores the dear old English Bible is to be driven away as a forbidden book. Neither do we believe that for these fair fields of Britain that dark Saturday night is to come after which will no more dawn the English Sunday morning--a morning when streets thronged and country lanes enlivened with families wending their way to worship God, each as led by the voice of conscience, and each jealous for the religious liberty of its neighbours as well as for its own, present a more Christian-like and more solid display of unity in variety, and of catholicity in charity, than ever can be gained by any preciseness of constrained uniformity. Never will our own happy Sunday morning cease to shine; never instead of it will a dismal day come when the sound of the church-going bell shall be the signal of physical force, and when every one whose conscience will not let him obey the official call shall be spied out by the familiars of the Inquisition.

When priests tell Englishmen that such things as are here indicated are not really embraced within the ultimate objects of their movement, they well know that they can deceive only those who have not sought out their principles at the fountain. And under all their illusions, they must surely have some consciousness that such as have done so can feel but shame and pity when they see any man, born to the blessings of English citizenship, sinking to a moral level at which he becomes capable of attempting to move the noble power of Britain to abet the crime of once more imposing by fire and sword upon Italy the domination of the Pontiff; and who, indeed, even to that can add the second crime of endeavouring to throw back the families of this goodly realm to the same condition as that in which the people of the Papal States lay before their yoke was broken. These things would be mournful, but no more than mournful, did the guilt of them rest only upon one English soul in which still survived a clear consciousness of how repugnant they were to religion and to morals, how offensive to humanity, how subversive of good order; for when conscience still spoke, repentance might be at hand. But such things become more than sad, they become really formidable, when conscience itself is so warped that it learns to acquit them of all guilt--learns even to regard them as actions in which the violence and bloodshed proposed are sanctioned by religion, and become works of Christian merit; and in which the changes contemplated would, if indeed hurtful to nations in things temporal, be for their eternal weal.

In this land of manifold privilege hereafter, as in the time gone by, yea, more than in the time gone by, will the people fear God, honour the king, and prize the family Bible. They will hereafter, more than heretofore, send forth into every region under heaven their happy sons, bearing the glorious gospel of the blessed God, and with swift feet running to tell to all men the way of salvation. In England, in Ireland, and in Scotland; in every place where our own blood flows in the veins of kinsmen; in every broad State of the Transatlantic Union; in every thriving colony that boasts the British name--may the Churches dwell together in unity--may the people grow in wisdom, in virtue, and in faith! May this realm hereafter afford an example of laws being evermore ameliorated under the leavening influence of the kingdom which cannot be moved, of manners ever becoming purer, and of blest contentment growing, year after year, in households over every one of which shall hover the more than earthly charm of domestic bliss, hallowed at the family altar! And may the remote descendants of Victoria and Albert reign, in the love of God and in the love of man, as Christian princes over a happy Christian people, and age after age may the throne be established in righteousness!

GOD SAVE THE QUEEN!

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 485: See _Civiltá_ VIII. i. 46.]

[Footnote 486: Quoted in _Le Concile du Vat. et le Mouvement Infaillibiliste_, p. 62.]

[Footnote 487: _Civiltá Cattolica_, passim, especially the number of December 16, 1876.]

[Footnote 488: VIII. i. 421.]

[Footnote 489: Italian papers sometimes give the total number of journals on the Continent pledged to the Pope as 580, and of these 258 as published in Germany alone.]

[Footnote 490: _Revolution und Kirche_, p. 5.]

[Footnote 491: At the last moment of reviewing this chapter, before sending it to press, months after it was written, we find Italian and French journals ringing with language ascribed to a Bishop in a pastoral, which may pass as an example of the work which the officials styled bishops are preparing for Europe. He describes his entrance into the Vatican, his finding the Swiss guards and the manners of another age, and proceeds: "Pius IX is still a king, even in the eyes of his enemies and of his spoilers. They are obliged to admit that the unity of Italy is not effected, that the temporal power is to be re-established, and that after some _profound commotions which, it may be, will entomb many an army and many a crown_, there will be heard among the nations, from one end of Europe to the other, a single cry, Restore Rome to its ancient lords; Rome belongs to the Pope, Rome belongs to God."]

[Footnote 492: _Discorsi_, ii. p. 70. The capitals to the "divine pronouns" are not ours.]

[Footnote 493: _L'Emancipatore Cattolico_: Napoli, Anno XVI, No. 14.]

[Footnote 494: _Apologia_, Appendix, p. 27.]

[Footnote 495: Ibid., p. 313.]