could have assembled in 1829 would have sanctioned measures of sufficient stringency to put down the great instrument of agitation, the Catholic Association;' and still more whether public feeling, even amongst the most zealous anti-Catholics, would have tolerated the rigours necessary to suppress a rebellion, whose standard bore the watchword of right of conscience. This good-natured inconsistency was especially remarkable in the Papal aggression. The country from one end to the other was in a ferment. The insult was intolerable. Something' it would do. But to enforce the existing though almost obsolete laws it was urged would be unfair; to enact new ones of adequate stringency would be persecution; and the result of debates of insufferable feebleness and length was a bill-a mere ‘brutum fulmen,' which meant but little, and permits that little to be daily violated with impunity.

6

The only middle course is one which was scouted by the majority of the statesmen at the time, and was then, as it is now, singularly unpalatable to the people at large-we mean a contract with the Pope to define the limits within which he shall confine his interference, and to regulate the relations between the Roman Catholic clergy and the Protestant Government. In one word, a 'Concordat.' It must be remembered that even Roman Catholic sovereigns find the unrestrained action of the Papal See incompatible with the independence of the civil power; and hence, to prevent the disputes of the earlier ages, concordats have been stipulated. In 1815 the Protestant governments of the Continent perceived that if when the Pope is friendly the free exercise of his claimed supremacy is intolerable, it cannot be less objectionable when he is hostile; and they too, including Hanover, hastened to conclude concordats. No doubt a concordat at the best is but the least of two evils. There is much to be said against it, but nothing that is not equally strong against 'complete toleration' altogether. Sir Robert Peel considered a direct application to the Pope as 'derogatory to the dignity, the character, the independence of England.' He did not see that to treat with the Bishop of Rome on this point is not to acknowledge he has jurisdiction in things spiritual, but simply to acknowledge that certain persons in this country think he has it, and that this opinion is no longer to debar them from political power. If, however, the Ministry had seen the necessity of treating with Rome, they would not have dared to propose so unpopular a measure; nor would negotiations with the Irish Roman Catholics have been less distasteful to the country: they had moreover at various times been talked of, and even tried; but on the eve of victory the agitators would accept no compromise, and it was obvious to all who had

the

the slightest knowledge of the subject that no stipulations would be binding to which the Pope was not a party.

The result was concession, without stipulation or restriction. It was all that the Pope and the Irish Roman Catholic hierarchy could wish, and gave them and their polity an unlimited power of development and aggression. Pius VII., in the first years of his reign, tormented by the exigencies of the Roman Catholic states, complained that the heretics were the only people who allowed him peace or comfort. Great Britain now is the chief haven of rest for the Papal court. The presence of a Protestant Government ensures concord between the Pope and the national Roman Catholic hierarchy. They satisfy him by admitting in theory his absolute supremacy, and he gratifies them by permitting them to direct its action. They have availed themselves of it to carry their own objects and cement their own power; they have employed it to defeat the Government scheme of education, though carefully framed so as not to give rise to religious jealousies; they use it to keep up agitation, to excite disaffection, and to foment the religious animosities which every Administration has laboured to extinguish, but without which the zeal of their flocks might cool down to an unprofitable level. The natural bias of the Court of Rome is to support authority and to promote order, but it can see only with the eyes of its own agents, and finds it necessary to support them even when it disapproves of their violence.

It is a question of deep interest how far at any future time, when the public is grown wiser, it may be possible to retrace our steps and redeem the past. Our only hope is in the Roman Catholic laity, who having in the first instance employed the priesthood to gain a victory of which they themselves reaped the sole profits, now find themselves excluded from power unless they will be content to be the slaves of their former instruments. The great names which for years stood foremost in the ranks of those who fought the battle of emancipation are driven with insults from the hustings. Even the Roman Catholic landlord finds himself an object of aversion and distrust to his own tenantry if he fail to conciliate the priesthood. All patronage and influence in the Catholic body he has lost, except so far as he makes himself the instrument of their will. The whole tendency of the Roman Catholic system when left to develop itself freely is to subjugate the laity. The Church claims the new born infant from the hour of his birth, she takes possession of his conscience at his confirmation, and as far as he owns the control of conscience, directs his acts. She hears his confessions, pronounces his penances in this world, decides his doom in the next, and prolongs her dominion after death by shortening at

pleasure

pleasure his expiatory pains in purgatory. Her struggles for power are unintermitting, her attacks on his purse incessant. In dealing with him she opposes system to impulse, and brings the most refined and complicated organization to bear on the irregular resistance of individual will. The civil Government is the expression of the aggregate power of defence possessed by the laity; and even when the Government professes what he considers a heterodox creed, it is the Roman Catholic layman's only ally against the encroachments of his own church. The time may perhaps be still distant when the great body of the Roman Catholic gentry in Great Britain will discover their true position in this respect; but we can see no other termination to the troubles of Ireland, no other solution to the yet unsolved problem how a Roman Catholic minority may concur harmoniously with the Protestant majority in promoting the good government of the community.

We have already alluded to the subject of mixed marriages, which in the time of Pius VIII.'s successor ripened into such a prolific source of discord. But it was Pius himself who gave the decision on which the subsequent quarrel was grounded. The Prussian Government had extended to its Rhenish provinces the regulations with respect to mixed marriages which had long been received in the eastern part of its States. The rule was, that the children were to be educated in the religion of the father, unless some other arrangement were made by private agreement between the parents, and the Romish priesthood was by law forbidden to extort, previously to the marriage, any promise or engagement respecting the education of the children. In the Rhenish provinces the population were bigoted and the priesthood proportionally intolerant. Toleration, it must never be forgotten, cannot be admitted by the Roman Catholic as a principle. He may submit to it as a necessity, or if his good feelings are stronger than his logic, he may approve it from impulse; but if he conscientiously believes that all who disagree with him must be perdurably fined,' it is his duty by fair means or by foul to impose his faith on all whom he can reach. The Archbishop of Cologne felt himself strong in the bigotry of his flock, and he applied to the Pope for advice, or, in plain English, for a sanction to his resistance to the Government. Pius was vain of his knowledge of canon law, and he is supposed to have been the principal framer of the apostolical rescript in reply. The document is curious, inasmuch as it illustrates the present position and the general principles of the Church of Rome. In the first place, he lays it down as a broad principle that the Church abhors' mixed marriages. In his own States, where he wields the secular as well as the spiritual sword, he

shows

shows this abhorrence by sequestration of goods, exile, and such other persecutions as may be needed to produce conformity. In countries such as those to which the brief refers, where the Church must condescend to persuade, the clergy are admonished to represent to their flocks the extreme sinfulness of such marriages, and to remind them that out of the pale of the holy Roman Church there is no salvation. But if, notwithstanding, persons will persist in uniting themselves to ⚫ heretics, the priest is bound, in defiance of any prohibition from the civil power, to insist on securities that all the children shall be brought up in the faith of the Church, as the sine quâ non condition of her blessing on the union. Even this is a concession. But Rome will go one step further. If, in spite of remonstrances and entreaties, the parties choose to enter on this unhallowed alliance without satisfying the Church, and without obtaining her sanction, she is too wise to visit them with interdict, which might drive them into defiance or desertion. She acknowledges the validity of the union, and permits the priest to be present as its witness and registrar, provided he stands by in sullen displeasure, and abstains from sign or word which may be construed into sanction or approbation of the rite..

M. Artaud, who in his biographies shows himself the apologist of Pius VII., the eulogist of Leo XII., but the positive idolater of Pius VIII., is at a loss whether most to admire the firmness and wisdom or the mild spirit of concession which marks this document. To us its great merit appears to be the skill with which it is endowed with an infinite pliability to adapt itself to the circumstances of all time. It depends on the temper of the laity whether the concession means everything or nothing. If the people are docile, the Church has carried her point; if they are refractory, she can subsequently, by some temporary or local indulgence, avert the scandal of permitting marriages in which she takes no part. She had not miscalculated her strength. In the days of Pius's successor, the Archbishop of Cologne defied the Prussian Government. He was arrested by its order, and thus cheaply acquired the flowery crown of modern martyrdom. The Chevalier Bunsen negotiated and squabbled with the Roman Government, and finally amicable relations were interruptedwe can hardly say war was declared-between Prussia and the Court of Rome.

Without any assistance from the Government, the laity always have it in their power to defeat this and other similar pretensions on the part of the Church. An instance of successful resistance occurred within our own knowledge. A wealthy banker, somewhat advanced in age, inhabiting one of the principal cities of

the

the Lombardo-Venetian kingdom, and professing the Greek faith, was the accepted suitor of a young lady of very noble birth at Florence. The preliminaries were all arranged; the civil contract was signed. The marriage had already been solemnized according to the Greek rite; the religious ceremony according to the Romish Church alone remained to be performed. The Archbishop of Florence stipulated that all the children should be brought up in the Romish faith. The bridegroom refused his consent, and announced his determination of immediately returning to his own home. The bride could not do otherwise than accompany him. But her conscience was alarmed by the remonstrances of her confessor, and she made repeated efforts to induce her husband to accept the conditions on which alone the sanction of the Church could be procured. He was obdurate: if not a man of strong religious convictions, his obstinacy was such as to justify the proverbial reproach cast on his country. Good and earnest people were not wanting who interfered to widen the breach, and render domestic comfort impossible. At last the mother of the bride declared that the marriage, without the sanction of the Church, was void, and that she could not allow her daughter to live in a state to which she could not decently give a name. The imperturbable bridegroom replied, his wife must use her own discretion, and might leave his home at her pleasure, but he would not resign her fortune, which the laws of Tuscany placed in his power, nor would he allow her one farthing of alimony. Submission was the only course left. The Church gave her blessing. The children are schismatic Greeks, and the union of the parents has never been troubled, at least by religious dissension.

For

In our own country the Roman Catholic clergy have pursued the course marked by Rome for their German brethren. many generations the custom had prevailed that the children, according to their sex, should follow the religion of their parents, and much comfort had been enjoyed under this pact of equality and mutual toleration. This arrangement the Roman Catholic priesthood have opposed of late years, and, except in a few instances, with success, and will continue to do so as long as it pleases the Roman Catholic gentry to play at being tyrannized over by their clergy.

The last months of Pius VIII.'s brief reign were disturbed by the first throes of that earthquake whose fitful convulsions have never since ceased to agitate Europe. In July, 1830, the imprudence of Charles X. hastened a struggle which perhaps was inevitable, but in which the aggressor forfeited the sympathy of the world and the chances of success. With the results of the 'glorious days of July' (glorious now no more) we are no further

concerned