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pretty generally known. But that Gallicanism was utterly extinct, as now proves to be the case, was not commonly suspected, although the tame acceptance of the new dogma of the Immaculate Conception, promulgated by Papal authority alone, without even the show of the convocation of a General Council, was enough to open men's eyes. The Encyclical may well be dated from that event, which really marks a new era in the history of Romanism. Papal absolutism is now no longer a Jesuit theory; it is the established fact and the accepted law of the whole Unreformed Church. There is no longer an Ultramontane party, and there is no longer a Cismontante party. The Pontificate of Pius IX. has entirely changed all that. When Francis Joseph signed the Austrian Concordat, he signed the deathwarrant of Febronianism, that remarkable system of political opposition to Romish pretensions, to which one of the ablest of that Emperor's predecessors had set the imperial seal, in the socalled Josephine Reforms. And now Rome may congratulate herself that the more religious protest also raised by the whole French Church in 1682, against her eternal encroachments, has been at length as unanimously abandoned. We have before us the "Complete Collection of the Letters, Circulars, Pastoral Instructions, and Mandates of the Bishops and Archbishops of France," a propos of the Encyclical, and not a single utterance of the old Gallican spirit does it contain. Some of these missives are addresed to the Pope himself, and are couched in terms of the most abject submission to any possible definition of faith or morals which His Holiness may please to issue. Others are diocesan circulars, in which, whilst the faithful, clergy, and laity are informed that the publication of the Bull in the newspapers binds them to canonical obedience, the occasion is seized as a fitting one to urge upon them the more zealous collection of Peter's Pence. Most of them, however, are addressed to the Emperor's Minister of Public Worship, whose circular brought down upon him a perfect hailstorm of these edifying communications. Several of the prelates, the Cardinal Bishop of Besançon and the Bishop of Moulins, for instance, openly inform his Excellency of their intention to set his edict at defiance, thus bringing down upon themselves the declaration comme d'abus. By others, in answer to his allegation that the Encyclical is subversive of the Constitution, he is paternally reminded that he has not received grace and mission to interpret a document emanating from Papal inspiration, this being the exclusive prerogative of the Episcopal office. All, without exception, declare their entire adhesion to every jot and tittle of this Magna Charta of Spiritual Despotism. We cull some extracts from these most remarkable manifestoes, that the reader may see into what an

abyss of slavish degradation and bondage the Gallican Church of our days has plunged.

We commence our anthology with a choice flower from the letter addressed by the Bishop of Montauban to the Minister of Worship, in acknowledgment of his Circular of the First of January-a New Year's Gift to the Church, which, we hope, may prove as ominously significant of a new line of Imperial policy, as the Emperor's famous Etrennes to Austria, in 1859:

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"I have received the letter in which, under date of the 1st of January— a day on which it is usual to make only agreeable presents--you inform the bishops that they must abstain from publishing the last Encyclical of the Sovereign Pontiff, inasmuch as it contains propositions contrary to the principles on which the Constitution of the Empire is based. I own, M. le Ministre, that many of the doctrines which are now professed and which are regarded, sincerely no doubt, as a safe foundation for modern Governments, are in direct opposition to those which the Catholic Church has always professed, and which Pius IX. has just once more proclaimed with a frankness, simplicity, and courage which unquestionably evince a certain greatness of soul." He seems to be within a hand's breadth of his fall, and he speaks like Boniface VIII., and like Gregory VII. (Hildebrand).' Of course in this admitted conflict between the new Hildebrand and the Government whose bread he eats, this model Gallican prelate declares unreservedly for the former. So much for the independence of the State. What chance the constitutional theory of Catholicism stands at the present day amongst those who used to be its stoutest champions, may be judged from this incisive sentence of the Archbishop Toulouse. In matters of doctrine the Vicar of Christ is the first and sole judge.' As to both points, this brace of bishops may be simply regarded as the fuglemen of the whole fourscore. All the manifestoes are in the same key. "Your Circular," writes the Bishop of Nimes, to his Excellency, as well as the Organic Articles which inspire it, is condemned by the very acts whose publication it interdicts, and between these two clashing condemnations the Catholic universe will not hesitate; it will be for the Encyclical.' The following is the language addressed to the Pope by his dutiful son, of Limoges :- All the propositions branded in the Syllabus and Encyclical and in other Apostolical letters, without a single exception, I profess are to be rejected and condemned in the same sense and manner which the Apostolical See intends. Of all the words of the Encyclical One jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass away, so far as I can secure their being taught and believed in the whole of my diocese.' In similar terms speaks the Bishop of Poitiers:-'We declare our adhesion, heart and soul, to all the opinions and doctrinal affirmations, to all the rules of belief and conduct enunciated by our Holy Father, Pope Pius IX., from the commencement of his pontificate to the present day, and we pronounce it to be the duty of all orthodox Christians to submit themselves to these same teachings with humble and filial docility of intellect and will.' Well may his brother of Beauvais speak with contempt of the obsolete principles of Gallicanism,' adding, in the name of his now thoroughly jesuitised order, 'When men pretend to oppose to the faith of Peter that of such and such a theologian more or less celebrated, we hesitate not for one instant. We are for the Pope.' The Archbishop of Auch, speaks of the powers reserved by the State in the Organic Articles appended to the Concordat 1801, to overhaul every Bull coming from Rome, as 'pretended rights, which have subsequently become

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extinct. In like manner the Bishop of Autun, in his letter to the Minister, styles the Organic Laws a piece of superannuated legislation, which has always been as mischievous to society at large as to the Church herself. To cite no more, we have the following slavish utterance from the Archbishop of Bourges:Infallible Judge in matters of doctrine and faith, the Sove reign Pontiff is judged by no one. Non est nostrum judicare de Summo Pontifice: It does not belong to us to judge the Sovereign Pontiff, as St. Ives, of Chartres, formerly wrote to Pope Pascall II. No one, neither emperor, nor clergy, nor kings, nor people, judges the First See; no one judges the Supreme Judge. The Roman Church alone possesses authority to judge all, and no one is allowed to judge her. Thus obedience, obedience which does not discuss, which does not judge, but which yields submission pure and simple, behold, in two words, the sum of our duty with respect to the doctrinal authority of our Church.'"

It must be admitted that the conduct of the French prelates in this crisis is all that Rome could desire. They have now as unconditionally surrendered the second great fundamental maxim of Gallicanism, the State's independence of the Papacy within its own sphere, as, ten years ago, they flung its first to the winds, viz., the co-ordination of Ecumenical Councils with the Pope in the determination of dogmatic questions. This sweeping away of the last breakwater against the tide of Ultramontanism which is now deluging the whole of Catholic Christendom, is a grave and alarming fact. It is plain that no reaction is to be looked for amongst the clergy. Unless, therefore, the laity of that communion bestir themselves in time, the millions within its pale, who, whilst desiring to abide in it, are still more firmly resolved never to be Jesuitised, will have to look out for another spiritual home. The causes of this immense revolution in the sentiments of the French priesthood are not far to seek. We have already alluded to the influence of Lamennais. But the constant infiltration of his ideas into the clerical mind in the Seminaries, and through the columns of the Univers, now transformed into the Monde, has been accompanied, especially under the new Napo leonic regime, by a development of Monasticism in France, with which the imperial Frankenstein finds it more and more difficult to deal. This sinister phenomenon is only beginning to attract some share of the attention which it deserves. French politicians and publicists are opening their eyes to the new and disagreeable fact. They find they are no longer living in the times when it was necessary to go to Spain or Italy to see men and women flaunting their monkish weeds in the streets. The First Empire, the Restoration itself, and still more, the Monarchy of July, paid respect to the Revolution, and did not seek to undo its sweeping abolition of monastic vows and orders. The garb of the Jesuits, the Dominicans, the Benedictines, the Carmelites, the Carthusians, the Capuçins, the Mathurins, and the rest of the spawn of Loyola, was known only from the paintings in the public pic

ture galleries. The Jesuits, indeed, were now and then seen gliding amongst the various ranks of modern society, but they were prudent enough to disavow their name, and to hide from view the ultramontane cockade. The Restored Bourbons themselves had banished the odious order, and the government of Louis Philippe was little inclined to tolerate their encroachments. They had a salutary fear of a free parliament, and of the Palais de Justice. They were at work, but it was in the shade, and without daring to make the slightest noise. The February Revolution came and their spider's web seemed utterly destroyed. But the priests' blessings withered the trees of liberty, and inaugurated the Second Empire, fourteen years of which have sufficed to restore the Religious Orders to a more flourishing condition than they enjoyed before 1789! In spite of the stringent provisions of the Code against the encroachments of the dead hand, they possess at this moment estates to the amount of forty millions sterling! M. Guerolt, in moving the amendment in the Corps Legislatif to the extremely mild paragraph in the Address, which echoed the emperor's reference to the Encyclical, brought forward some striking facts and figures to justify the apprehensions expressed in his motion. He proposed that the Chamber should declare as follows:-"The publication of the Encyclical and the adhesion to it of the Episcopate, have enabled us to measure with painful astonishment the progress which Ultramontane doctrines have made amongst us." Of course the amendment of the Liberals stood no chance of adoption in the packed and reactionary assembly before which it was tabled. Moderate as it was, its discussion was brutally stifled. But the serious statistics contained in the speech of the mover, have been published in half-penny Moniteurs, and have found their way into every corner of the empire. No doubt, also, they will make a profound impression upon those numerous and powerful sections of French society amongst whom detestation of the parti pretre is not so much a principal as a ruling passion. betrayed millions will learn with feelings which will explode in the next political crisis, that whilst the Iberian and Italian peninsulas, the Danubian principalities and Mexico are ridding themselves of the fungus of Monasticism, in the France of to-day, after the clean sweep of three Revolutions, twelve thousand nunneries and two thousand convents for the other sex have been authorised to establish themselves under the Imperial regime. This estimate does not include the innumerable communities not directly authorised, but connived at by the Government.

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These, with the Jesuits at their head, from whose house in the Rue des Postes, at Paris, the wires of this vast propaganda are

pulled, serve to swell immensely the horde of Papal Cossacks. Even without this enormous contingent, the regular clergy, Rome's sworn militia, must be put down at one hundred thousand persons; whilst the secular clergy, who serve the thirty-six thousand churches of France, amount to as many more of all ranks. Add to these the lay coadjutors in all classes of society, from the imperial palace downwards, and some idea may be formed of the dangerous expansion which the clerical conspiracy against modern civilisation and enlightenment has attained in the country which prides itself upon being the privileged Apostle of liberty to the nations. Such are the fruits of the second of December in the Ecclesiastical sphere. For even in the heat of their present conflict with the Emperor, the clergy do not forget to acknowledge their immense obligations to Napoleon. Whether he can still mould to his own purposes the formidable spirit he has let out of the box in which the former Governments of France had taken such pains to keep it confined, remains to be seen. Certain it is he must master it or it will master him, for which result, if such be his destiny, he will have none to thank but himself. It was under him that they obtained, for the first time since the Revolution, the darling object for which they had been so long struggling in vain, viz., the lion's share in National Education. Against their passionate demand for this priceless boon the intervening Governments before his own had been deaf as adders, but, in 1850, they got what they wanted, and now every other French child that one sees, is but clay in the hands of a monk. The Jesuits, have got firm footing in the Polytechnic, Military, and Naval Schools. Out of 250 pupils at Saint-Cyr more than one-fifth have been bred at their school in the Rue des Postes. They have 130 of their boys at the Great Polytechnic. Moreover, so assiduously do they look after the interests of their young protégés, as they emerge from the public schools into the various professions, by pushing forward their promotion, negotiating for their rich marriages, and in many other ways, that even Protestant parents are found, who, in the hope of getting their children on in the world, are induced to intrust them to the care of the all-powerful Orders.

Meanwhile, according to the law which prevails in the moral universe, no less than in nature, as the bane grows, the antidote also is slowly but surely forcing itself into the light. When diseases are seen to be desperate, mere palliatives become unfashionable, and radical remedies stand some chance of being tried.

It is thus that in the present posture of Ecclesiastical affairs in France, the liberal party, in their unaffected dismay at the

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