won over waverers or doubters to its ranks, and that it has at last spoken plainly. The position of parties and the question itself will take many new shapes, when the separate chapters of the Constitution come on for discussion.

FORTY-NINTH LETTER.

Rome, May 26, 1870.-The intellectual superiority of the Opposition has made itself so sensibly felt in the course of the debate on infallibility that they have visibly won in spirit and confidence, while a decrease of the assurance of victory hitherto manifested by the majority is observable. There is no sign yet of the breaking up of the Opposition or the desertion of its members to the infallibilist camp. The Court party had confidently reckoned on a considerable number of mere inopportunists giving in and separating from the opponents of the actual doctrine of infallibility, as soon as the dogma came to be discussed. The latter was said to be a mere tiny fraction, who would eventually take fright at their own impotence and come over. But as yet this hope has not been realized, and there are many indications that it is not likely to be realized, for the course of events and their experiences in Rome, as well

as the discussions, both oral and written, have converted inopportunists into decided fallibilists. Cardinal Schwarzenberg has spoken with great power and dignity, and even the most zealous adherents of the Roman dogma must have been somewhat impressed by his declaration that its effect in Bohemia would be to make the nation first schismatic and then gradually Protestant. It at the same time illustrated the conduct of the Jesuits in a way that will not be forgotten. When the Archbishop of Paris affirmed that the much desired infallibilist decree was not one of the causes of the Council, but its sole cause, every one felt what a bitter truth had been uttered, and that the veil would thereby be torn away from that web of untruths and dishonest reticences about the object of the synod, by which the Bishops had been deceived and enticed as it were into a trap to Rome. Veuillot indeed had openly said in his official organ at the end of April, that to decree the new dogma was the principal and at bottom the sole office of the Council. That was at the very time when about eighty Bishops put out their strong protestation that they had come to Rome under the erroneous impression, deliberately suggested by the Curia, that the question of infallibility would not be brought before

the Council; while yet Cardoni had many months before, in the Commission on Faith, presented by command of the Pope the report which has lately been printed, and the whole Commission had agreed with him that papal infallibility should be defined. That same Commission, with the Jesuit Perrone and Dr. Schwetz of Vienna at its head, has now presented an address to the Pope urging the definition of the new article of faith, without which those worthies think they cannot exist any longer.

He

The infallibilist speaker who created most sensation was Cardinal Cullen, Archbishop of Dublin. gained the warm applause of his party by the aggressive tone of his speech, in which he attacked especially Hefele and Kenrick. He appealed to the testimony of MacHale to show that the mind of Ireland has always been infallibilist-a glaring falsehood, as is proved by the famous Declaration of the Irish Catholics in 1757 formally repudiating the doctrine. And it made no slight impression, when the grey-haired MacHale rose to repudiate the pretended belief in infallibility not merely for himself but for Ireland. But it is certainly true that in former times for more than a century the Irish people, like the Spanish, was victimized to papal

infallibility. Every Irishman or Spaniard, who knew the history of his country, would recoil with horror from a theory which has borne such poisonous fruit for both nations in the past and may be equally injurious in the future. To acquaint the Catholic tenants in Ireland with the infallible decisions of Popes about heresy and heretics would be enough at once to increase tenfold the agrarian crimes prevalent there, and would be the surest means for reproducing such a massacre as occurred there in 1641.

When Cullen replied to the Archbishop of St. Louis, non est verum," the aged prelate requested leave of the Legates to defend himself briefly. It was refused. Hefele was as little free to answer Cullen's attack, and has therefore had a pamphlet in his justification printed at Naples. A new work by one of the most illustrious of the French Bishops is also expected from Naples, designed to prove against the Jesuits of the Civiltà the necessity of moral unanimity for dogmatic decrees. Another Irishman, Leahy, Archbishop of Cashel, said such absurd things in favour of the Court dogma that his speech was considered a clear gain for the minority.

There are 89 speakers inscribed for the general debate, and not a third of them have yet spoken. This