man calmly compare the manner in which Episcopalians teach the scriptural evidence of the superiority of bishops over priests, or Trinitarians urge the arguments in favour of the Divinity of the Third Person of the Blessed Trinity, with that in which his lordship of Salisbury scrambles over the far more numerous and certainly plainer and more decisive testimonies to the Primacy of St. Peter, and we do not hesitate to say, that if he be a dispassionate man, he will admit that there can be but one explanation of the difference-a shrinking consciousness, in all that concerns the Primacy, of the strength of the position which they cannot, or will not, bring themselves to recognize. And if to the testimony of Scripture thus clear and decisive, he adds the concurrent interpretation of the fathers, the testimony of councils, and above all, the early and unbroken series of historical evidence to its exercise, he will be driven, in his own despite, to acknowledge that for no other dogma of the Christian faith is it possible to set together a more varied or more powerful array of evidence; and that it is impossible for any candid searcher of the Holy Scripture, or any honest student of ecclesiastical antiquity, to resist the conclusion which, before the controversies of the Incarnation had been brought to a close, was announced to the Greek emperor, Anastasius, by the Pontiff of his day, as "established by the series of the Canons of the Fathers, and by manifold tradition," that "the authority of the Apostolic See has been set over the universal church in all ages."

ART. VI. Allgemeine Geschichte des Well-handels. Erster Theil. Von den frühesten zeiten bis zur Entdeckung Amerika's. [General History of Commerce. Part the First. From the earli est period down to the discovery of America.] By H. SCHERER. Leipzick, 1852.

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THERE is a strange analogy between things visible and invisible-between the spiritual and the temporal order of existence. And this holds good in the relations

which have ever subsisted between Religion and Commerce. As the one upholds the moral life of man, so the other sustains his physical being. As the former binds men with each other, as well as with their Maker; so the latter, though it cannot inwardly unite them, yet brings them at least in external contact with one another. Hence all nations have ever placed Trade under the especial protection of Religion. The cities, to which the routes of ancient commerce converged, were places of devout pilgrimage, as well as emporiums of trade, where men not only bartered their temporal goods, but came from afar to render thanksgiving to their deities, or propitiate their favour. Such was Comana in Cappadocia, for the trading pilgrims that came from Babylon to the cities of Ionia and Greece; such was Meroe in Nubia, and Ammonium in the Libyan desert, for the caravans of Egyptians, and the inhabitants of central Africa. Such, too, in later times, has been Mecca for the Moslems, whom devotion and the love of gain brought in such multitudes to the tomb of their prophet.

The Christian Religion, destined to knit all mankind together in the bonds of a common faith, and which has so eminently promoted the interests of human civilization, must, by the fact of its bringing about a moral and intellectual fellowship between the most distant nations, of necessity facilitate their commercial intercourse. Heathenism, on the other hand, with her national deities, and her local superstitions, arrayed people against people, inspired each with implacable animosity towards the other, and so set up barriers against their physical, as well as moral union. The ancient Navigation, timidly adhering to the coast, guided by the careful observance of the stars, and rarely venturing on distant voyages, aptly symbolized the ancient philosophy, which steered its course with pain and hesitation, was every instant exposed to founder on the latent shoals and rocks of error, and which, amid the dense clouds of superstition, strove painfully to descry the dim star-light of primeval revelation. But the modern Navigation which, guided by the needle of mysterious attraction, fearlessly launches into the ocean, explores every coast, exchanges the commodities of every land and climate, establishes an intercourse between countries the most remote, and now even sets wind and tide at defiance, is it not a fitting emblem of Catholic philosophy,

which, directed as it is by the sure compass of the Christian Revelation, plunges into the open sea of speculation, visits every region, makes the productions of every clime its own, becomes a bond of communication between nations the farthest apart, and defies the adverse winds and waves of error?

Yet, will it be believed that against this Religion, the mighty parent of all civilization, and which has been in an especial degree the source of so much temporal well-being and prosperity, as well as of spiritual happiness to the nations faithful to her guidance, one of the most popular objections of her Protestant and infidel adversaries is, that her influence is unfavourable to trade? "Compare," they triumphantly exclaim, " Spain and Portugal with Holland and England; the Protestant Cantons of Switzerland with the Catholic; the United States of America with the southern kingdoms and Republics of that great Continent! See what a blight Catholicism casts on the growth of nations, and how Protestantism on the contrary expands their energies, and develops their resources!" "One of the great impediments," said long ago even the Edinburgh Review, the staunch advocate of Catholic Emancipation, one of the great impediments to Ireland's advancement in wealth and prosperity is the creed the great majority of her inhabitants profess."

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These false and calumnious charges will utterly vanish before the picture we shall have occasion presently to draw of the commercial greatness which Catholic nations have attained to at various epochs, and in various countries. But they are in themselves utterly absurd and incoherent.

Firstly, these sapient politicians should remember that there are vicissitudes of fortune in the life of nations as in that of individuals, and that an unbroken tide of prosperity is not the lot of men, either in their collective or individual capacity.

Secondly, they must be reminded that Spain and Portugal, in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, were among the foremost nations of Europe in commerce and navigation, as well in every other department of civilization; that Barcelona, the flourishing seat of trade and manufactures, gave, in the middle age, like Rhodes in antiquity, a code of maritime law to Europe; that Portugal, by her bold spirit of adventure, explored the western coasts and isles of Africa, discovered a sea passage to India, and in

both the Indies laid the foundations of a political and commercial ascendancy; and that Spain, supreme in the arts of peace as well as of war, established in Europe and in America that colossal empire whereon the sun never set. The decline of trade in those countries is traceable partly to untoward circumstances, over which human wisdom has no control; partly to the loss of those free political institutions which they owed to Catholicism, and which had been so conducive to their well-being; and partly to the decay of piety and religious zeal.

Thirdly, as regards Switzerland, we must observe that the Church in her social influence is not designed to work perpetual miracles, and suspend the laws of nature; but she furthers and develops the energies of men only within the sphere of operations assigned to them by Divine Providence. Thus it would be absurd to expect that the petty pastoral and mountainous Cantons of Switzerland, which have retained the faith, could at any time, and under any circumstances, cope in commercial intelligence and industrial skill with those large and populous Swiss cities that apostatized at the Reformation, but which, long prior to that disastrous event, had owed to the Church they then betrayed centuries of prosperity as well as freedom.

Fourthly, not less unfair is the comparison between the Northern and the Southern States of America. The former have been peopled by the two most energetic and enterprizing races in the world-the Saxons and the Celts; in the latter, one-fifth only of the population is of European descent, and the remaining four-fifths are composed partly of Africans; but pre-eminently of the aboriginal Indians-a race both physically and intellectually the feeblest on the face of the globe, and which it is one of the triumphs of our religion to have exalted so high in the scale of civilization. Then, the Spanish and Portuguese colonies in America had been kept by their mother-countries in a state of unseemly tutelage, and had never been admitted to a participation in those free political institutions, which the latter were indebted to for so much of their greatness and prosperity. Again, Mexico, if inferior to the United States in the useful, is their superior in the fine arts. Lastly, the civilization of South America, which in the last century had attained to a respectable footing, has been not only retarded, but thrown back by those bloody

and anarchic revolutions which, hatched by European infidelity and liberalism, have carried such wide-spread desolation into those regions.

Fifthly, the reference made to Catholic Ireland by the leading organ of British Liberalism betrays the last degree of cynical effrontery. This is indeed to make the victim responsible for the crimes of her oppressor. That a country whose territorial surface was in the course of two centuries three times confiscated-whose religion was proscribed, and whose Priesthood was hunted down, massacred, and driven into exile-whose native nobility perished partly on the scaffold and in civil warfare, and partly was ground down to penury, or forced to expatriate; whose population, after being decimated by the most cruel proscriptions and bloody civil wars, was kept down in the most galling poverty by every bar and restraint that the most ingenious tyranny could devise; whose schools and monastic and collegiate establishments were closed; whose trade and manufactures were long cramped and repressed by the jealous spirit of English rivalry; that such a country, we say, could not exhibit flourishing tables of commercial statistics, is a truth which surely the boasted acuteness of a Scotch economist ought not to have overlooked, and which might be accounted for without a vulgar appeal to popular bigotry. The skill and industry wherewith, under the most adverse circumstances, the sons of Ireland have prosecuted commercial as well as agricultural pursuits the elegant fabrics that for a long time issued from the workshops of that country-and the high renown which the Irish, whether at home, in England, on the Continent of Europe, or in America, have often attained to in the arts of peace as well as of arms, afford an earnest of what, under a just and beneficent government, they might in their own land have achieved.

It may be sneeringly asked, what proof is it of the divinity of the Catholic Church that she should favour commerce, since we see among ancient Pagan nations, like the Babylonians, the Phoenicians, the Carthaginians, and the Greeks, and among modern Protestant peoples, like the Dutch and the English, trade and manufactures carried to the highest pitch of perfection? We answer, we are not exclusive. We affirm not that the Catholic religion is the only one propitious to commercial enterprize; but, in self-defence, we rebut the calumnious charge that