so prominently a part of their religion as Catholics do, to venerate the civil ruler, as being God's minister and vicegerent on earth for purposes of momentous importance whether to men's spiritual or temporal welfare. So far is this from being inconsistent with their unswerving fidelity to God's precepts natural and revealed, that the very opposite is true : the Catholic would not so profoundly reverence human law, did he not predominantly reverence divine; did he not regard his civil obedience itself as a duty to God. And the evidence adducible for his reverence of human law is so superabundant, that our only difficulty lies in the selection. In our very last number we were accidentally led to cite Gregory XVI.'s ex cathedrâ teaching on this head (pp. 262-3). He sets forth e.g. certain "bright examples of immovable subjection to sovereigns," as "coming necessarily from the most holy precepts of the Christian religion"; and declares that "both. divine and human laws cry out against those, who labour to set at nought their fidelity to their sovereigns." And thi Catholic doctrine is so important an element in the present controversy, that we shall make no apology for placing before our readers numerous extracts from the various works which we have named at the head of this article. We will begin with a venerable prelate whose name carries with it peculiar weight, the Bishop of Birmingham :-*

Let Mr. Gladstone and all men know, that we Catholics-you brethren, your priests and your bishops-besides the motives common to other men, have a motive for obedience to the civil power that is peculiar to ourselves; and that is the fixed and unchangeable doctrine and enforcement of the Catholic Church; that, not merely for man's sake, but much more for God's sake, and as a part of our religion, we should be loyal and obedient to whatever civil government is constituted and established over the society in which we live. Need we point to other proof beyond our own habitual conduct? Indeed we have been often reproached by active politicians with too great an acquiescence in the existing state of things, and with too much indifference as to political changes. Nor is this unnatural with men, who have quiet consciences, and who care more for the future than for the present world.

What would Ireland have become, with all her grievances, had not her bishops and clergy incessantly inculcated the Catholic's duty of obeying the civil authority? It is a well-known fact that the heads of Fenianism maintained and inculcated that the one great obstacle to successful rebellion and revolution was the influence of the Pope and the Catholic Church, ever

The Bishop of Birmingham has given a name to those who call them selves the "Old Catholics," which we think will stick to them. He call them "Döllingerites."

inculcating the duty of civil obedience. That society was condemned and put down by the Pope at the instance of the Irish Catholic Prelates (pp. 13-14).

The Bishop of Clifton :-

Nearly half a century has elapsed since the passing of Catholic Emancipation. During that period Catholic peers and Catholic members have sat in Parliament; Catholic judges and Catholic magistrates have administered justice on the bench; Catholic barristers have pleaded at the bar; Catholic soldiers have fought in the army; Catholics have served their country in every office of trust. During the whole of that period the public voice of the country has proclaimed that Catholics have proved themselves to be loyal (p. 6).

The Bishop of Salford is peculiarly energetic on this head :

To talk of our allegiance either to the Civil or to the Spiritual Power as being "divided," leads in popular language to misunderstanding; nor does it appear correct. To say that we pay a "divided allegiance" is as though we were to say that we paid a divided debt," or performed a "divided act of mercy." And to assert of a wife that she pays a "divided " allegiance to her husband would suggest suspicion. Allegiance is due to each power within its own order or province. That which is one is not divisible or divided; and the two Orders of Power, as set up by God, are not antagonisms but harmonies, as God designed them. Only the sin of man can create a conflict. In intensity and degree our civil allegiance, whether to a sovereign person or to a sovereign body, is without limit in its own order. We must lay down our life in its service when required. We must be faithful to it unto death (pp. 7, 8).

Mgr. Capel thus concludes his pamphlet:

If her Most Gracious Majesty is at any time in danger from enemies abroad or at home, amongst none of her subjects will she find men more willing to shed their blood in defence of the Throne and Constitution than amongst those Catholics who are most loyal in their devotion to the Holy See, who most steadfastly hold every doctrine of the Church, and most heartily accept the condemnations of the Syllabus (p. 67).

We may be allowed to bring up the rear by a citation from Our own pages. We are certainly among those whom Mr. Gladstone accuses of failing in civil allegiance; for "how

ever far" we must indubitably ever be in our humble, sphere from being "abettors of the Papal Chair," we cannot deny that we have consistently endeavoured to "write from a Papal point of view" (p. 7). Now it so happens that in our very last number, when certainly we were far enough from expecting Mr. Gladstone's pamphlet, we wrote as follows:

There are various external marks, by which a good Catholic is known.

He is known by being a good son, husband, father, friend; he is known by being just and upright in his commercial and social relations; he is known again by his loyal devotion and obedience to the Church and to the Holy See, both in matters primarily spiritual, and in matters indirectly spiritual though primarily within the temporal sphere. But no less characteristically is he known, by his profound obedience to his legitimate civil sovereign wherever that sovereign's commands are consistent with God's Law; by his stern disapproval of every attempt to bring the sovereign into discredit, except indeed when such discredit is necessary for a due appreciation of the prerogatives of Christ and His Church; by the utter detestation with which he regards every machination tending to promote sedition and revolt. He wages an irreconcilable warfare against anarchists and revolutionists, regarding them as among the basest, the most odious, the most contemptible of mankind (pp. 263, 4).

At the same time, as we have already said, it is absolutely impossible in the case of any one whatever-however strongly he may feel the obligation of civil allegiance-that conjunctures shall not arise, in which a still higher duty interferes with that allegiance: unless indeed he takes the State's utterances and enactments as a supreme and definitively authoritative guide, throughout the sphere of morals. But the most extreme Cæsarists have not yet ventured to make such an affirmation as this last; though, to do them justice, they are very rapidly advancing even to this. And those who believe in any rule of morals independent of the State's voice, must inevitably be liable to come from time to time into conflict with the civil ruler. Monsignor Capel has done excellent service, by citing a letter from Mr. Frederick Harrison to the "New York Herald," which expresses this with so much force that we cannot refrain from reprinting it. Mr. Harrison, it should be explained, ranks among the followers of M. Comte; and these thinkers have this one (to a Catholic) redeeming feature in the midst of their anti-Catholic and anti-Christian doctrine, that they duly appreciate the utterly fatal character of that Cæsarism, which has of late begun so ominously to display itself in England. These are Mr. Harrison's words:

The revival of a subject which is purely one of technical theology is at the present time a piece of mere mischief.

The Pope's infallibility is a matter entirely between the Pope and his own people.

The Catholic priesthood in England is one of the most industrious, respectable, and peaceable in the world, and the very little political power it wields has long been exerted to national and liberal ends. In Ireland the priesthood has far greater power; but it has been using it to check, not to fan, the insurrectionary movement. It is therefore most wanton for English

politicians to worry a Church like this about mere casuistical difficulties in its theology; and all theologies are full of such difficulties. This may be sensational literature, but it is not statesmanship.

To tell a Church that it is never to meddle with politics, never to teach a duty different from that approved by the Government of the day, is to tell it that it is not to be a religious community at all, but a Government bureau on a par with the official gazette. There is no religious community, no moral or intellectual association, which would honestly accept these terms. And it would be easy to push any religionist into similar logical dilemmas by using hypothetical cases. Quakers object to war: therefore the Society of Friends will turn traitors to an enemy; therefore Mr. Bright is unworthy of political trust. The Cobden Club swears by the doctrines of Mr. Cobden : one of these doctrines was to surrender the Colonies therefore the Cobden Club might be found plotting the dismemberment of the empire. Exeter Hall denounced the opium war: some of our civil and military officers are under the inspiration of Exeter Hall: therefore we may expect them to desert to the enemy in a possible war with China. These exercises of irritating logic are as easy as they are puerile. If every opinion a man may hold is to be followed out to what we think its logical result, and every man is to be supposed in any dilemma which our ingenuity can frame, every man is a rebel. If Mr. Disraeli and the Archbishop of Canterbury succeeded in passing an Act to burn every copy of the Bible, Mr. Newdegate and Mr. Whalley would be preaching sedition and heading a rebellion. If they passed an Act abolishing in Anglican churches vestments, crosses, fonts, and organs, rubrics, prayer-books and hymn-books, Mr. Gladstone would be raging about the country as the Hugh Peters of a new rebellion. No religious body whatever, no association of citizens, ever would, or ever ought, to bind itself beforehand to passive obedience; and it is a mere bit of claptrap to call upon the Catholics of England to surrender in terms a right which, perhaps, they would be the last people in this country to exercise in deed.

The hubbub about the Vatican Decrees is silly mimicry of this flagrant aggression of the military bureaucracy of Prussia. Though no man can have less sympathy than I have with the historical pretensions of the Vatican, or can more heartily detest the intellectual and political aims of Catholicism in Europe, I cannot but regard the Catholic side in this controversy as being, in its broad features, the side of liberty and moral independence.

We repeat: Mr. Gladstone, as being a zealous Christian, should have pursued a course diametrically opposite to that which he has chosen. Instead of inculcating on his countrymen a distrust of the Catholic's civil allegiance, he should rather have eagerly availed himself of Catholic aid in the political sphere. So might he have more effectively resisted that detestable and anti-Christian Cæsarorevolutionism, in regard to which he must agree with Catholics that it is immeasurably the most threatening political peril of our time. The extreme infidels of this day hold that the State

is bound by no laws external to itself; that there are no rights whatever say of family or property-except those derived from the State; that the father e. g. has no right to the office of educating his children, nor the husband to his wife's fidelity, except so far as the omnipotent State may see fit to concede such right. Where the civil ruler is earnestly Christian, no men are more unscrupulous than these in promoting disaffection and revolution; but let them once obtain a sufficient number of proselytes, and they will have just as little scruple on the other hand in making the Legislature their instrument, for forcing their tenets on the rising generation. Anarchy they know, and despotism they know, but orderly Christian liberty is what they cannot understand. It is precisely on this middle ground between two detestable extremes, that the Catholic Church has fixed her immovable position. It is a position with which Mr. Gladstone in his heart must deeply sympathize. And surely it will be a bitter moment when he begins to find out, that he is powerless to arrest the mischief he has himself set on foot; and that he has done all which in him lay, towards assisting atheists, anarchists, and Cæsarists in their assault on true Christian freedom.

In our last number (pp. 461 et seq.) we argued that Catholic principles, and they only, can save England from the perils which threaten her in the theological and philosophical order; and we have now made the same remark in regard to the social and political. This thought suggests the true Christian revenge which Catholics may take, of those who impugn the genuineness of their patriotism. In proportion as they hear it alleged on all sides that they are comparatively indifferent to their country's welfare-in that very proportion (we trust) they will be more active and energetic in using every effort, for qualifying themselves to bear part in the great patriotic work, now lying before them and which none but they can accomplish with full success; the work of succouring their country against her direst foes in this her hour of sore need.

APPENDIX ON THE BULL "UNAM SANCTAM."

A writer in the "Macmillan " for December has attempted to show, that the "Unam Sanctam" inculcates the Pope's "direct," as contrasted with his "indirect" temporal power. The writer's immediate attack is on the Archbishop of Westminster; who has most reasonably declined to bandy arguments with a writer, so deficient in knowledge, so flippant and disrespectful in tone. For our own part, we shall of course not be impertinent enough to volunteer a defence of the