preparing for their converts a renewal of everything they had left. The Papacy is saturated with the crimson blood of ambition and the lust of empire; from its very cradle, it lisped in the accents of an infant despot. Let us not be beguiled into the folly of supposing that the inheritor of so many absolutisms will ever stand on any pinnacle of the Vatican, and for the love of God and the good of man renounce his imperial claims, and like one who ought to be his Master, but Whose name and prestige are utilized by the Pope as His pretended Vicar, proclaim that Kingdom of God which cometh not with observation,' but is formed within the heart of the humble and the just.

In course of time the power of the Papacy will perish, as the power of the Caesars has perished.

In the

Roman Missal, one sovereign besides the Pope is alone prayed for, and that is the Emperor of Austria; because he is regarded as the Cæsar, the Emperor of Rome and the West, and next to the Pope, in Europe supreme. His State is called 'the Holy Roman Empire,' and yet its power, in that aspect, is nothing but a phantom. No Italian recognizes his sovereignty. His Greek orthodox and his Protestant subjects, aided by liberal Catholics and liberated nationalities, have compelled him to become a constitutional monarch and to grant immunities condemned by the Syllabus: whilst his imperial supremacy has been

transferred to the most Protestant potentate on the Continent of Europe. Thus absolutism will perish, but it will be by no voluntary concession. The grave question then arises : How ought we to comport ourselves toward the Papacy? Religiously? Religiously? Politically? The Papacy admits of no compromise. If we believe the Papal claims to be true, our duty is clear we are bound to humble ourselves and become for Christ's sake the vassals of the Pope, and to treat

as aliens and criminals all persons who oppose his absolutism. Persecution, when possible, becomes a duty; intolerance a part of the Gospel; Christian liberty of worship, of thought, of speech-a devilry. If, on the other hand, we regard the Papacy as false, it is then the most stupendous imposition in the world; an imposture the most injurious to the world; for the deification of an error which anathematizes even the mental feeling after truth is an incarnated lie which no righteous man can pretend to be indifferent to. Thus it is unworthy of any independent man to show any honour to the Pope as Pope (of course to the man we should act as to any other supposable good man labouring under an illusion). We ought not to go and pay our respects to him. We can pay homage to a foreign sovereign who recognizes our independence, but if a foreign sovereign ostentatiously claims to be our sovereign, to render homage to him becomes unfit. At a time when the Papal Court especially looks to England for help, and boasts of the fidelity and increase of her British subjects, it is all the more incumbent. on us not to countenance such pretensions. If all English and American visitors at Rome stayed away from Papal services and Papal presentations, they would be more consistent and more respected. Fortunately, now we can visit Rome without en

riching the Papal exchequer.

What we say of the Pope appliesalso in a lesser degree to the members. of his Court, who, like all the Cardinals, take an oath of allegiance to the Pope, as temporal sovereign, and for the extermination of all heresy. Thus it ought to be a point of honour to every Englishman in no way to endeavour to show consideration to Prelates who are established in England as Papal Prefects, to subject us to a power hostile to our country, to our constitution, to our laws, rights.

and liberties, and bound to exterminate by force (when possible) every form of Christianity but her own. It is obvious that such a conscientious consistency does not require us, when obliged to meet such persons, to show rudeness or unkindness, or to abstain from the use of titles so far as the qualified recognition is necessary for ordinary social courtesy.

What befits the individual, religiously and consistently, is obviously the line to which the statesman should endeavour to conform. Indeed, the statesman is doubly bound, for he is in the presence of a usurper claiming rights over himself personally, as also over the State whose independence he ought to maintain. But no question is more surrounded by practical difficulties; difficulties on the side of principle, difficulties on the side of expediency. Amongst the latter, we might allude to such as the following the number of our Roman Catholic subjects in Lower Canada, in Ireland and in our large cities; and the fact that at present they are not only peaceable subjects, but even kept under by ecclesiastical authority. If it had been the Pope's interest to adopt an anti-English policy, Lower Canada would now have been one of the American States, and Ireland might have been under the protection of the French flag. The English and Scotch Roman Catholic gentry are really loyal in spirit to the British Crown, as well as outwardly peaceable. All the English and Scotch Roman Catholic Bishops, and probably nearly all the Irish, except Archbishop McHale, are worth to the English Government a troop of dragoons. Granted that the same power which now makes them act as Government constables may hereafter cause them to be ranged against England on the side of rebellion, let us nevertheless avail ourselves of present advantages, and leave

the rest to the men of the future.

It is time to treat people as enemies or as suspects when they have proved themselves to be such. Moreover, when that day arrives, some remedy may unexpectedly arise, some cause of division of which we can avail ourselves. Then there is that happy inconsistency causing often human nature to find excuse for serving country and loving friends in defiance of ecclesiastical precepts and threats. Strong States never show themselves frightened: just States deal with acts, not with theories. On the other hand, concessions, wrongfully and unwisely given to undeserving persons, obtain the rights of possession.

Then grave difficulties arise in consequence of our conscientious maintenance of the rights of conscience, and our rejection of persecution and intolerance. It may seem trying to have to exercise these principles in defence of the most injurious and aggressive acts of persons who anathematize us for teaching those very principles; we may feel this all the more aggravating when urged upon us by men like Cardinal Manning, who have been striving to obtain the infallible condemnation of liberty of worship and liberty of conscience, and who would deprive us of all those rights as soon as an evil day constituted such men rulers backed by an imposing majority. On June 29th, 1867, Archbishop Manning assisted at the canonization of a new patron and saintly model, it was Peter de Arbues, the Spanish inquisitor and at the Vatican Council he assisted in proclaiming the infallibility of the Syllabus and its anathemas; and yet that man has the audacity to claim liberty for his sect, hostile as it is to every sacred and human possession, and to claim it because, though he is bound to denounce the threefold liberty of speech, thought and worship, we are as heretics bound by our ' damnable opinions' to admit and pro

claim it. This is irritating; but the irritation does not invalidate the truth. We declare persecution to be wrong; we even say that, on the whole, it does not answer its object: that a feeble persecution irritates and fails; that a destructively severe persecution indirectly injures the persecutor whilst it crushes the perse

cuted.

Persecution can be political, social, interior. Interior persecution is, when we indulge in all bad suspicions and mental condemnations of persons whom we dislike, in consequence of opinions held by them which we deem false. Social persecution is, when we refuse to visit them, to hold intercourse with them, to deal with them. Political persecution is, when we try to force them out of their opinions, by depriving them of political privileges they would otherwise possess. We reject persecution in its threefold aspect. But the rejection of persecution does not require us to reject the ordinary safeguards of our own independence, of our own consistency, of our own honour as citizens and as men. We must not claim any civil or political advantages in consequence of religious truths we possess; but it is our duty to guard that independence, consistency and honour which is the recognized heritage of a man, a citizen and a child of God. We have now discovered that there is really no practical difficulty in the way of this entire avoidance of all persecution as to any Protestant sect, as to the Greek orthodox, as to Freethinkers, as to Mohammedans and as to Buddhists. In the United States of America, no practical difficulty has arisen, except when the Mormonites claimed the religious right to practise polygamy. In India, with our millions of Brahmanical and Moslem subjects, no question of persecution arises; and we all condemn the social persecution exercised by English residents toward the native races, though

in reality such regards their colour more than their religion. All the difficulty of the question of persecution has reference to the NeoCatholics.

Previously to the decree of Infallibility the difficulty had been surmounted, in consequence of the long habit of comparative freedom amongst Roman Catholics and the silence of the Popes as to their ancient claims. But now it is all changed. The grounds on the strength of which equal rights were conceded have been declared to be untenable, heretical and criminal. The Neo-Catholic no longer claims equality-he demands supremacy; a supremacy not even to be vested in a native, but to be possessed by a foreign sovereign to whom entire allegiance is to be given nay, it is distinctly and prominently taught that national laws are worthless unless approved by the Papacy. What renders the position more embarrassing, is the fact that all Roman Catholics who approach the Sacraments are bound to believe that all other forms of religion, all anti-Catholic literature, all non-Catholic places of worship, should be exterminated as soon as this can be accomplished without a convulsion calculated to endanger the interests of the Pope and his subjects. We now know that all Roman Catholic ecclesiastics are working on towards not merely our conversion, but, failing that, our violent extermination. If we cannot be exterminated, we are to be oppressed. It is folly for the Press to speculate as to whether this or the other Pope or Prelate may be more or less 'irreconcilable.' If we were at war with France or Austria, we should not waste time in considering which sovereign or general uses the pleasantest language; whether he might compliment or denounce us-we should know that it meant just the same thing.

Our position as to the Papacy cannot, however, be accurately likened to

any other form of hostility. The Papacy has declared that we must be crushed, that we must be deprived of everything we care for; but-that it is a question of time, of plans to be long and carefully matured; that war and treason and prison, exile and executions, all must be resorted to; but not just yet-events are not ripe for such weapons: that it is possible we may be brought to capitulate and hand ourselves over into bondage, and in that case, it would be pleasanter to have been enabled to avoid violent remedies that, anyhow, the Papal schemes are not yet ready for such remedies. The Papal Cardinals and Bishops in each country are therefore preparing; they are quietly developing their plans for our destruction.

Thus Neo-Catholicism is an enemy organized and organizing, but not as yet physically fighting. If we were in a position of undeclared but proximate war with Russia; and Russian military spies were stationed in our towns, fortresses and Legislature; such a state of things would be essentially analogous to our present relation to the Papacy; but to make the analogy closer, we ought to suppose Russia to be a State advancing permanent claims against the integrity and liberty of our nation, and yet not in a position perhaps for some years to carry out her plans to the full. Thus an armed truce might endure throughout a long period, each nation showing courtesy to the other, but one bent on the subjection of the other. What should we do in that case? We should not quarrel and scold and call names and do mean, ungenerous acts:

we should adopt a marked difference as to our treatment of the Russian officials resident in our country, and the quiet Russian families amongst us for the purposes of trade or interwoven with us by life-long ties. Thus if a Russian resident qualified as a ratepayer, we should let him vote, without enquiring scrupu

lously as to his nationality, whether or not he had been naturalized as an Englishman; we should let him take part in ordinary municipal and public matters, and if quite convinced that he was a Russian in full sympathy with England, and only nominally a vassal of the Czar, we might even trust him in some office of national importance. Whether or not we are compelled to find an analogy in the Papal Empire with its subjects dispersed throughout many nations, can be better decided if we consider the facts as thus summarized by Mr. Arthur:

'The stupendous scope of the ends might well demand as means measures exceptionally great, and the magnitude of the measures already carried as means may now well excuse, if not justify, confidence that the ends after they shall have been steadily pursued for ages will also be attained. Those ends were not less, when united into one, than the dominion of the world. They would not be attained till the voice of the Church in her tribunals gave forth sentence of plenary authority on all affairs into which entered any moral element, whether those affairs were personal, social, national or international.

'The Internal Tribunal, seated in every church, in every palace, in every castle, and at need in every private chamber, would always in point of authority take precedence of any local law, and would rule bed, board, purse, family and all action which conscience determines.

The External Tribunal, seated in every city, would maintain the headship of the bishop over the civil magistrate, and the supremacy of spiritual over civil law and authority, as sacredly as we should maintain the supremacy of our civil law and authority over military law and authority. We do not call the civil authority military, any more than Rome will call her spiritual authority temporal, but we make, as she does, the higher order of authority include control over the affairs of the lower order. The External Tribunal would make the Internal an establishment of the law. Every man, every woman, ay, every child of a certain age, who should not appear at least once in the year in that tribunal, would run into a punishable offence.

'The Supreme Tribunal in the person of the Pope, acting either directly or through any Court or Congregation he might appoint, would be the final bar at which