ULTRAMONTANISM AT HOME AND ABROAD. "You remember Miss Isabel, mem?" was what she said, looking her mistress full in the face. "Dear me, Alice, what a question! Resister?" cried Mrs. Eastmember my wood, turning abruptly away from the paper and chintz. "It's a queer question to ask," said Alice, with a grim smile: "but dinna go too fast. You mind your sister, and yet you - her only are going to put her childchild- here in a room next to your own, next to Miss Ellinor's? Between mother and daughter? That's where you place Miss Isabel's bairn? "Alice!" cried Mrs. Eastwood, almost angrily. She looked at Nelly's wondering face and then at her maid with a halffrightened, half-threatening gesture. She was annoyed, but she was startled too. "I say it before Miss Ellinor that you may not do it with your eyes shut," said Alice. "I'm only a servant, with no right to interfere; but I cannot stand by, and no say a word. I'm no in favour of it," she cried, turning round. "It would be best to provide for her, and no bring her home; but if you will bring her home. and, mem, you are always wilful, though put her in any place nobody thinks sobut here." "You are dreadfully prejudiced, Alice -dreadfully prejudiced!" so hasty and premature in everything. I "It is all your doing, Alice," said El- From The Spectator. ULTRAMONTANISM AT HOME AND ABROAD. THERE is something a little humiliating Teutonic and British politicians at the in the spectacle of the alarm displayed by strategy of the feeble old man who, after denouncing modern civilization in the Syllabus, has persuaded the largest eccleclare his official infallibility. He has no siastical Council ever summoned to detroops at all; he has hardly any diplomatists left; he has not a single faithful and orthodox population in the world that is not honeycombed by secret scepticism, except, perhaps, that of the Tyrol and that of Ireland; he is regarded as edly he distrusts vehemently the bias of the foe of physical science, and assurmen whose minds have been chiefly formed by the study of physical science; the historians expose the frauds on which up; the fourth estate, the estate of letters, a good deal of his power has been built is penetrated with contempt for him and his priesthood, and the sacramental assumptions with which they combat the scoffs of the world; the wealth of the world, as well as its physical power and intellectual life, is fallen away from him; it would take a miracle, and a miracle of a more startling kind than any which to subjugate again the blunt and sturdy the recent chronicle of marvel boasts, Mrs. Eastwood grew crimson to her habits of any Protestant people to his hair. "If you think any of my children sway; even his faithful Irish, though resemble my sister, Alice, I can assure they may be more devout than ever in you you are very much mistaken," she their religious duties, are beginning to said, walking up and down the little room refuse the priests that deference in in her agitation. "Nelly, look here, you all other matters which is the best would think she meant something very index of religious reverence; and yet dreadful. Your poor aunt Isabella was with all these chances against him and very secret in her way, and liked to make his priesthood, they appear to inspire a mystery. She got me into some trouble such terror that Protestant Germany is when I was a girl through it. That was all. convulsed with the measures supposed Why it should be remembered against to be necessary for crippling the Papists; her child, or change my natural affections, and not merely Protestant, but veheI can't imagine. Oh, I know you mean mently anti-Catholic England sees its well, Alice, you mean well; but that does most confident and most sceptical journot make it a bit more pleasant. Put nals raising a cry of panic, and threatendown those curtains and things, Nelly, ing "by the Heavens above and by the put them down. I hate so much fuss. Earth beneath, nay, by the breeches' pockThere is plenty of time. You are alwayset and all that therein is," that unless "May be I am; and, mem, you like your own way. We are none of us perfect. But your sister Isabel's bairn, the child of an ill father to the boot, should never come into my house. Maybe you think, mem, that the features of the mind are no transmitted? Poor leddy! Poor leddy! There's enough of her in your blood already without searching out of your way to find more." the Papists turn over a new leaf and behave themselves more modestly, they shall be forcibly put down, and their "dupes" rescued from their hands. To us this sort of language seems as feeble and contemptible as it is loud. If the Papacy be really so formidable that in countries which have thrown it off for centuries, and where the whole system of the State has been organized without any relation to it, it is impossible to hold our ground against it without laws which are not needed to restrain the professors of any other religion, it is hard to believe that we are really on the side of the truth, and fighting a religion of false, though arrogant pretentions. say what the right of the State is. We at least should maintain most earnestly that no ecclesiastical body whatever can have absolute rights independent of the State, rights which it may wield so as to inflict gross and habitual wrongs on a large number of the subjects of the State, without being responsible to the civil government. The State must guard its own well-being. If that well-being is seriously injured by any ecclesiastical pretentions whatever, it is not only its right, but its duty to guard itself, even by attacking, if needful, its rival and antagonist. For the most part, we believe that as soon as religious pretensions interfere or seem to interfere with the outBut the weak point in all these fulmina- ward order and morality which it is the tions is that their authors never seem State's first duty to guard, it ought to take able to tell you distinctly of what they the matter into its own hands, nay, that are afraid. Where, for instance, at the it will be as disastrous for the usurping present moment is the justification for all Church as for the submissive State, if it this blood-and-thunder about Ultramon- does not do so. As regards the property tanism in the United Kingdom? The of the Churches and the use to be made facts of the case are not alarming. The of it, and as regards the influence exerIrish priesthood have now for some de-cised on family life and social order by cade or two declared against mixed education, maintaining not without justice, though not with too much courage, that the Catholic view of literature and science is far more easily perverted, in fact far less superficially plausible, than the Protestant view; that Catholics are far more likely to be drawn away from the truth, than Protestants to be drawn towards it by common association and common teaching. This has caused a cry in all the Catholic districts and communities of Europe for intellectual and moral and religious education for Catholics apart, before they enter into the competition with Protestants for the prizes of life. Now are we going to ignore the fact that under this term "education," an enormous political field may be comprised. In countries like Spain and Italy, which are still Catholic so far as they are religious at all, and where a vast amount of property is still in possession of the Catholic Church, the question of education really includes that of the distribution of wealth, as well as the social and political influence of great corporations, whose use of their wealth and power profoundly affects the pauperism and industry and the loyalty of the masses. If the State has no right on adequate occasion to say, "These religious corporations are doing mischief, lowering the tone of manliness in the nation, and fostering an enervating indolence and superstition," it is very hard to the institutions of the various Churches, the State cannot be neutral unless it would cease to be a Government at all. It is idle to devise cures for pauperism, where Churches spread far and wide pauperizing examples, without striking at the root of those evil influences. It is idle to pass penal laws against crime which Churches actively promote, without punishing the promoters of the crimes as well as the crimes. It is not we, then, who will ever be found deprecating the interference of the State in ecclesiastical policy on the ground that the two spheres are mutually exclusive. We deny that any Church worth its salt can help affecting more or less seriously the policy of the State. We deny equally strongly that any good State can help regulating more or less directly the action of the Churches. We are regulating that action in England from one generation to the other. When we take the property devoted to obsolete and injurious charities, and apply it to new and beneficial purposes, when we abolish religious tests, when we require parents to teach their children certain secular subjects and provide for testing the knowledge so given, when we regulate strictly the law of marriage, the laws of testamentary disposition, and the law of guardianship, we are checking and controlling at every step the policy of the Churches. If it were possible to-morrow to say deliberately of any Church or sect that its influence is so deadly and pernicious to the cause of the natural man altogether, and the schism civil order and the health of civil society it creates in non-Catholic countries bethat it ought to be rooted out, then we tween the Catholic and non-Catholic popmaintain that the State would be wanting ulations. But it is simply irrational to in dignity and in fidelity to itself not to say that these great take-offs strike so break up and root out that sect with all dangerously at the health of society and possible promptitude. the root of civil order as to render it deBut the whole importance of the prin- sirable for the State, even if it were posciple lies not in itself, but in its applica- sible, to treat Roman Catholicism as a tion. It is admitted that, on the whole, mischievous superstition. The simple religious belief of some kind is inde- truth is, that it is the one logical form of structible, or all but indestructible, and authoritative ecclesiastical organization that so far from injuring civil order, most still existing in Europe, and that scarcely kinds of religious belief give civil order any form of Christianity has as yet coma far higher sanction and provide it with pletely eliminated the machinery of ecclefar deeper roots than it could have with-siastical authority from its conception of out such belief. The onus probandi lies the Christian religion. Under such cirwith the State to show that any particular cumstances, to swear as our contemporary kind of religious belief is essentially hos- the Pall Mall Gazette does, by Heaven tile to the health and peace of human so- and Earth and its breeches-pocket, and ciety. The whole subject is admitted to all that therein is, -evidently a climax of be one of the greatest difficulty. The oaths rising to what the writer regards as presumption is liberty, and that presump- the nearest modern equivalent for the old tion must be refuted by the most convin- profane oath of Odsbodikins, the oath by cing arguments, if the State is to be justi- the incarnated divine essence, - that it fied in interfering with liberty. Will any will attempt the rescue of the "dupes" man in his senses assert that Roman of Catholicism from the power of those Catholicism, as it is found under Protest- who dupe them, if the Roman Catholics ant Governments, like those of Germany give any more trouble, is to talk blusand the United Kingdom, is thus fatal to tering nonsense. The Roman Catholic the health and peace of human society? priesthood "dupe" their flock no more That it covers imperious and very danger- and probably much less than some nonous principles, we admit, and we assert Catholic priesthoods. And if the Irish the same of Calvinism, of Ritualism, of were to be weaned from Catholicism Swedenborgianism, and probably in a and by such agency as the contents of the greater or less degree of most other secta- breeches-pockets of sceptics, at all, rianisms, as well as of some of the politi- they would become most probably infidels cal tenets of Dissent. On the other hand, | of a very dangerous and very vulgar kind, no candid man can deny that Roman for Roman Catholicism is the ennobling Catholicism fosters some very high vir-element in the life of most of the Irish tues; that in the better Catholic coun- peasants. tries the priests and nuns are the most Perhaps the most absurd element in the self-denying and utterly self-devoted attempt to create a panic is the ground members of the community; that no re- on which the friends of a Bismarckian ligion exerts itself so ardently, in any policy towards Roman Catholicism atcountry but Ireland, Englishmen would tempt to justify their view. The writer say far too ardently, to quell rebellion in the Pall Mall places it, for instance, even against a Government that is dis- on the ground that the Roman Catholics liked and distrusted; that no religion does claim to be "the exclusive guardians and more to qualify the narrow local patriotism authorized interpreters of a divine revelaof nations, though sometimes also, no tion," and to put their claims on the basis doubt, dangerously to weaken it; that in of certainty and infallibility. And it England and Ireland, at least, Catholicism should, he thinks, always be held fair to has the most powerful effect in protecting persecute men who don't admit that their the purity of the people; and that it has faith is a mere probability, not a certainty. a great literature and wonderful history, Is it possible he can be serious? Does which alone would give it greater power he suppose that any orthodox Churchman, over the imaginations of men than almost any Evangelical, any Baptist, any Wesany other faith can boast. The case leyan, any Free-Kirk man, any Sandeagainst Roman Catholicism is, no doubt,manian regards his faith "as an opinion its distrust of the intellect, its suspicious- on a matter about which you cannot get ness of science, its exaggerated fear of beyond probabilities"? Why, many at least of the rationalists and sceptics would | it has a right to keep; but it is a strength deny this, Strauss, we presume, cer- which diminishes with every just concestainly would. You can hardly suggest a sion, and which increases in exact proparadox more absurd than to make it a portion to the public injustice of which it ground of complaint against a special can boast. There are no more childish class of the believers in revelation, that statesmen than those who desire a policy they do believe their faith to be absolutely far too grandiose for the occasion, and revealed, and not merely to be a problem- which is borrowed from sterner and more atic inference of their own. You might difficult times. Ultramontanism might render a belief in all revelation penal, if need special civil checks if it could conyou would, that would be the logical trol a wealth and a social force such as course for such a writer as this, but if those of the Church and the Monastic you admit belief in divine revelation at all, Orders in the days of Henry VIII., and you can hardly exclude those who regard dispose of them for purposes dangerous a divine revelation as necessarily infallible. to legitimate patriotic ends and the order The paradox certainly lies with us who of civil society. As matters stand, those maintain that there is such a thing as who wish to persuade us that it is so, are revelation, and yet that it is exceedingly either, like Prince Bismarck, truckling to difficult to judge precisely what has been a diseased Liberal prejudice, or like our revealed. contemporary the Pall Mall, talking nonsensical bounce. The Irish University Bill and its defeat are very small affairs, after all, though they may be incidents of some importance in the political history of an uneventful year. From The Pall Mall Gazette. GERMANY AND THE CHURCH OF ROME. Prince Bismarck does not proclaim his legislative war against the Roman Catholics on ground so weak as this. He says openly, they endanger the German Empire and the Prussian Kingdom by their sympathy with Bavarian particularism and Polish nationality, and therefore they shall be put down. That is intelligible, if despotic. We should understand, though we should condemn, a policy which maintained that because Roman Catholicism in either England or Ireland enTHE burden of Prince Bismarck's dangers British unity, therefore it ought speech in the Prussian Herrenhaus on to be suppressed. We should only an- Monday was that the new ecclesiastical swer that the remedy was a great deal policy is a political necessity. The strugworse than the disease, that it would gle on which the Government has entered, aggravate the disease tenfold; that it has he said, was a very old one. It is the been tried, and has failed; that the oppo- battle, old as the human race itself, besite policy, the policy of complete and tween kingcraft and priestcraft. The cordial toleration, has been tried, and has Papacy has always been a political as had a very considerable success. In no well as a religious power. Its programme, Protestant country in Europe are the Ro- which was near realization in the middle man Catholics so fully and fairly treated ages, is the subjection of the temporal to as they are now in England, and in no the spiritual power a project of an emProtestant country are they so loyal and inently political character, but an attempt, so little dangerous. All this blustering the German Chancellor maintained, which against the Roman Catholic Church is in is as old as humanity. For there have reality playing into its hands. The Ger- always been persons who claimed that man statesmen are making Catholicism a the will of God was better known to sort of patriotism as well as a religion by them than to their fellow-men, and that their legislation. The English sceptics they have therefore the right to rule are giving Catholicism a new spiritual over their fellow-men. On this founforce by their bluster. We are not in the dation are built up the Papal claims to unhappy condition of Italy and Spain, universal dominion. If this be so, as where the State has to deal with perverted it will scarcely be doubted, the question, ecclesiastical institutions and a great mass how the efforts to carry out this proof ecclesiastical property really dangerous gramme are to be met and frustrated, to civil order and social health. In Ger- must also be political. It is natural that many and with us the conditions of the the Catholics should represent the matproblem are much more simple. The ter in a different aspect. In Prussia they Roman Catholic Church is poor, and has have represented the new regulation of no strength but that of its ideas. That the relations between Church and State GERMANY AND THE CHURCH OF ROME. which the Government has now on hand | entered upon a fierce internecine strugas the attempt of an Evangelical or Prot-gle with Rome which can only be termiestant dynasty to put down the Catholic nated by the defeat or submission of one Church, or as a fight between religion or other of the two parties to the conThe concluding portion of Prince Bisand irreligion, between faith and infidel- flict? ity. Their only hope of defeating the Government lay in being able to con-marck's speech was an answer to these vince the Conservative majority of the questions. And his explanation threw Upper House that religion was assailed light on several points that have hitherto by the anti-clerical measures of the Min- been dark. At the close of the French ister of Worship. It was an attempt war, he says, the Government was more which was far from hopeless. Prince inclined than perhaps ever before to Bismarck saw the danger, and set him- come to an understanding with the Roself to meet it. He saw that he must man See. All the statements to the conItaly had been present the matter in another and its trary made in the Chamber of Deputies only true light. In asking the Herren- were untrue. The good relations behaus to pass the Bill amending the Con- tween Germany and stitution, and thereby to lay the founda- troubled, if not actually disturbed, by the new relations between attitude of that Power during the war. tions for the Church and State that are to be estab- Italy had not shown the activity and viglished by the ecclesiastical measures of ilance she might have done to prevent on the side of France, and the Italian the Government, he must do more, how- Garibaldi's intervention in the struggle ever if success was to be ensured that the Roman Government had not exhibited the dispothan merely assert Church aims at political supremacy. It sition which might have been expected to was necessary to show that there had shake itself free from French influence. been a change in the attitude of the German politics at the close of the war When the Germans Church which required a change of rela- were by no means therefore likely to be tions on the part of the State, because influenced by any decided preference for there had long been peace and amity be- Italian interests. tween Prussia and the Roman Commu- were still at Versailles - Prince Bisnion. The compact between them, con- marck says he heard of a movement to ditioned by the fifteenth and eighteenth induce the Catholic members - those articles of the Constitution, which the who now form the party of the CentreBill before the House amended, was de- to unite to obtain the insertion in the scribed by Prince Bismarck as a modus Constitution of the Empire of the articles vivendi devised at a period when the of the Prussian Constitution which are State felt itself in need of the aid of the now being modified. He was not at first Catholic Church. In the National As- alarmed, as the movement originated sembly of 1848 the Catholic representa- partly from a dignitary of the Church tives were, if not Royalists, at least the high in place (the Bishop of Mayence), friends of order. In these circumstances and partly from a member of the Centre, the compromise between the temporal and of whom he had no reason to doubt the spiritual powers was arranged which has perfect loyalty to the Government. But allowed friendly relations to be maintained he was altogether deceived. When he The Church partly hosbetween them for a number of years. The returned to Germany he was soon conCatholic department of the Ministry of vinced that this party was composed of Worship was endowed with authority to irreconcilables. regulate the affairs of the Church in rela- tile to the State was powerfully organized, tion to the State. Naturally this depart- and the Catholic department in the Minment became with time more and more istry of Worship showed the greatest acwhat had never before been the the servant of the Pope. Notwithstand- tivity in opposing the use of the German ing that, Prince Bismarck says he pre- language in the Polish districts. There ferred the peace between Church and wasState thereby ensured, with all its disad- case—a Polish party in Silesia formed vantages, to a condition of war, and often under clerical patronage. Even this was refused, though instigated thereto from not the decisive matter. What first the peril before the country was the power other quarters, to renew the old battle. aroused the Chancellor's attention to the Why, then, it may be asked, was peace or truce ended? Why was the which the newly formed party had gained. Chamber were unseated, and new reprecompromise brought to a close? Why Deputies who had been long sent to the Government has the Prussian now |