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THE RUSSO-TURKISH WAR.

In Europe the event of the year that calls for most attention is the war between Russia and Turkey. On this subject we can say little or nothing probably that will not have already suggested itself to others. All have watched the progress of the painful struggle from day to day; have formed their own conclusions as to the manner in which it has been carried on on both sides; as to the necessity of such a war having taken place at all; as to its probable results to both parties and to Europe at large.

At the time of our last review war between Russia and Turkey was thought imminent. We then wrote—and we may be pardoned for quoting our own words, as some of them, at least, seem to us to apply equally well to the present situation—as follows:

“If we may hazard an opinion, we believe that there will be no war, at least this winter. As for the alarm at the anticipated occupation of Constantinople by Russia, while—if the Russian Empire be not dissolved before the close of the present century by one of the most terrific social and political convulsions that has ever yet come to pass—that occupation seems to lie very much within the order of possibilities, wedoubt much whether it will occur so soon as people think.... It would seem to us difficult for Russia to occupy Constantinople without first mastering and garrisoning Turkey, and Turkey is an empire of many millions, whom fanaticism can still rouse to something like heroic, as well as to the most cruel and repulsive deeds.”

Those words seem to us to have forecast fairly enough the general aspects of the war. The war was declared because Russia burned to go to war—Russia, or the Russian administration. The invasion of Turkey by Russia was not a thing of the past year. It was foreordained. It was dreaded from the close of the war in the Crimea. The only question with the other powers was how long or by what means could it be staved off. That Russia would invade Turkey as soon as she thought she could do so without much danger of outward interference and with good prospects of success was probably a fixed thought in the minds of all men who chose to give a thought to the matter. For almost a quarter of a century has Russia been girding herself for a fight that had become an essential part of her national policy. Within that period, under the wise guidance of Prince Gortschakoff, she has more than repaired the terrible losses sustained in the Crimean war. She grew stealthily up to a power and a status unexampled in her history. She guarded her finances, lived within her means, prospered, refused steadily to enter into any embarrassing European complications. She saw the European alliance that had crushed her in 1854 hopelessly dissolve, and a new and friendly power rise up and take the lead in European affairs. As a military power she was looked upon as having only one superior, or rival perhaps, in the world, and that her friendly neighbor. So strong was she, and so singularly had every change in European politics told in her favor, that when her opportunity came, with a word, a beck, a stroke of her chancellor’s pen, she snapped asunder the iron gyves forged for her and laid on her by a united Europe, and no power dared whisper a protest. All the world saw whither she was drifting. She was drifting to the sea, stretching out her giant arms to clasp for ever those golden shores that she claimed as hers by destiny. The hour of destiny struck at last.The strifes of exhausted nations and the jealousies of others left her alone to deal with the power that held those shores and that to Russia was an hereditary foe. She proceeded cautiously to the last. She did all things with becoming decorum. She invited the nations to a conference, held in the Turkish capital, to determine once for all what was to be done with the Turk, while she mobilized her armies in order to give effect to her peaceful protest.

What the conference of European diplomatists did, or rather did not do, is now matter of picturesque history. “Death before dishonor!” was the ultimatum of the Turk. “Death, then, be it,” said Russia, and the new “crusade” began.

It has been a sad “crusade” for both parties, a disastrous one for Russia and the Romanoffs, even though there can be little doubt as to the final victory of Russia. What we may call the great Russian illusion has been dispelled by this war. It was speedily discovered that the feet of the giant who was running so swiftly and surely to the goal of his ambition were of clay. Why, victory invited him, danced before him, strewed flowers in his path. It was a very race with fortune. To a great military power half the battle was won before a single engagement worthy of the name had been fought. But it has stopped at that half. Russia is still knocking at the gates of Plevna, and even when Plevna is opened, as it will be probably soon, the inglorious victory will have been so dearly won that Russia herself may, with too much reason, be anxious for the peace which she wantonly broke.

Fortune was too good to Russia at the opening of the war. Her smiles begat an overweening confidence. The destruction of a stubborn and warlike race was looked upon as a thing of a few months, as a game of war. Reverses came fast and thick—reverses that were invited. Comparative handfuls of splendid soldiers were sent to destroy armies entrenched in natural fortresses. Then leaked out a fatal secret. Russia had everything but generals and competent military officers, or, if she had them, they were not with her armies, or were not allowed to take the lead. The dress parade to Constantinople was speedily and effectually checked, and Russia is to all intents and purposes as far fromthat city to-day as she was in the summer.

The details of the campaigns must be looked for elsewhere. We can here only look at results. There are two or three reflections regarding the war itself which seem to us worthy of attention as affecting other interests than those immediately engaged in the contest.

In the first place, the fact of the war having been declared at all showed the powerlessness of Europe to shape or deal with grave questions of international interest when any one strong power chooses not to be advised, coerced, or led. This practically places the peace of Europe in the hands of any power. For instance, there is no means of preventing Germany from declaring war against France to-morrow, should the German government so will. Early in the year, and at the invitation of Russia, the leading European powers sent their representatives to Constantinople to prevent, if possible, the outbreak of this war. These were doubtless experienced diplomatists. There is no reason to doubt that all of them—save, perhaps, the Russian representative, General Ignatieff—wished honestly and strove by every means in their power to prevent, or at least stave off, the war. They failed, because it was meant by the strongest there that they should fail. The only argument to sway Europe to-day is the sword.

Thus the representatives of united Europe, backed by all the vast resources of their empires, could do nothing to prevent a war which at the outset looked as though it incurred the gravest consequences to Europe; and it may incur them still. Why was this? Simply because there is no such thing as a united Europe. The family and comity of European nations was, as we pointed out last year in dealing with this very subject, broken up by the Protestant Reformation. The catholicity of nations, which in the order of events would have become an accomplished and saving fact, from that date yielded to selfish and narrow nationalities which made a separate world of each people, bounded by their own domain. But humanity is greater than nationality, and the world wider than a kingdom—a truth that will never be felt until one religion plants again in the leading nations of the world the great unity of heart and soul that God alone can give.

As for Russia, however, the tide of events may turn; she has lost more than she will probably gain even by victory. Not in men and money and material alone has she lost, but inmoraleandprestige. The czar may return in triumph to St. Petersburg, but his victorious ranks will show a grim and ominous gap of something like a hundred thousand of his bravest men, lost in less than a year against a foe whom Russia despised, and thousands of whom were sacrificed to incapacity. A careful estimate made in September last set the daily cost of the Russian army at about $750,000. That figure must have since increased; but take it as an average, and spread it over eight months, and we have the enormous sum of $184,500,000 as the cost of the campaign from May to December. Loans must be raised to meet such expenditure, and loans are only obtained at high interest.

Victories bought at such prices are dear indeed. Taking the Russian victory for granted, it is likely after all to prove a barren one. The Turk is an impracticable foe, and, though the signs of his exhaustion are multiplying, he has made such a fight as, by force of arms at least, to vindicate his title to national existence. Indeed, his terms are apt to go up instead of down. Loss of money is nothing to him, for he has none to lose. His empire was bankrupt before the war. For trade or commerce he cares little. His life is easy and simple. He cares for little more than enough to eat, and a little of that seems to satisfy him. His fatalism robs life of the charm it has for other men. He would as lief die fighting as not, and he would sooner fight the Russian than any other foe. You cannot reason with men of this kind. They see one thing: that single-handed they made a very good fight against a most powerful antagonist; that they have hurt him badly, even if they have been worsted. The whole struggle can only be likened to an attack by a giant on a poor little wretch who was thought to be half-dead. If it takes the giant six months to thrash such an antagonist; and if during the fight the giant gets something very like a sound thrashing himself from his puny foe; and if, when both are pretty well exhausted, he succeeds in throttling the pugnacious little chap at last, the verdict of the world will be that there is something the matter with the giant, andthe self esteem of the little fellow will rise proportionately.

Of course it is idle to speculate on the end. Russia has lost so heavily that she may insist upon very tangible fruits of victory. On the other hand, the war has been such a butchery that humanity cries out against it, and the European powers will undoubtedly strive at the first opportunity to make a more effectual appeal than before to both the combatants. Peace rests on this: How much will Russia ask? How much will Turkey concede? How much will the jealousies of other powers allow Russia to take?—questions all of them that are sure to be asked, but which we confess our inability to answer.

FRANCE.

The armed struggle in the East has scarcely attracted more universal attention than the civil struggle in France. France is trying to solve problems that touch her very life, and they are problems in which all men have a personal interest. The French questions are eminently questions of the day and of the age. The struggle going on there is one between the elements of society. MacMahon, Gambetta, “Henri Cinq,” “Napoléon Quatre”—these are but names. The fight is not on them and their personal merits or demerits. It is at bottom between the men who find the “be-all and the end-all here” in this world, and the men who believe that there is a God who made this world for his own purposes, who is to be obeyed, loved, and served, and according to whose law human society must conform itself, if it would fulfil the end for which it was created, have happiness in this world, and eternal happiness in the next.

The first class is not restricted to the men and women who figured in theCommune. These only compose its rank and file, and their sin is less, for multitudes of them sin through ignorance. It embraces also the men of the new science, the professors in the atheistic universities; statesmen of the Falk and Lasker type; preachers of the Gospel as expounded by Dean Stanley; philosophers and scientists, like Darwin or Herbert Spencer, like Huxley and Tyndall, like, descending a grade, Professor Fisk or Youmans; women like some we knowhere at home, who tread the platform with so masculine a stride; the men of “progress” such as Brigham Young was, such as, in a more intellectual sense, John Stuart Mill was, such as “tribunes of the people” like Charles Bradlaugh, or his friend M. Gambetta, or Garibaldi, are; poets like Victor Hugo or Algernon Swinburne. The men who have the teaching power in the secularized and secular universities of the day, who shape a purely secular education, who edit too many of our leading newspapers, who preach atheism or blasphemy from pulpits supposed to be consecrated to the service of Christ, are equally members of this party with the outcasts of society and the avowed conspirators against order. This it was that gave its significance to the late French elections; that induced men to study so carefully the name, character, antecedents, and political color of each man elected; that caused to be telegraphed on the very day of the elections the long files of the deputies to England, to Germany, to Austria, to Italy, even to these distant shores. Why, such a fact as that last mentioned is unexampled. For the time being the world centred in France.

This is a dangerous pre-eminence for France. The country is for ever in a fever. It is in a constant state of crisis. Ministry after ministry is tried, found wanting, and thrown aside. The truth is the parties cannot coalesce. There is a barrier between them that it seems cannot be overthrown. The elections decided nothing. They left the country and parties in much the same condition as before. As a matter of fact the conservatives, if any, gained, but the gain was too small to indicate the will of the country. We doubt if the country has a will beyond the desire to be at peace, which the contentions of its own parties alone threaten. M. Gambetta, the leader of the radicals, is for ever clamoring for a republic. Well, he has a republic; why not make the most of it? He has certainly as good a republic as he could make. The difficulty with him is that the republic which he wishes to lead must be founded on the negation of Christianity. In France the dividing lines between creeds are very clearly drawn. Protestantism counts for nothing there, and the little that there was of it has gone to pieces. Gambetta’sbête-noiris “clericalism”—i.e., Catholicity.He would abolish the Catholic Church, not merely as an adjunct of the state but altogether. No Catholicity must be taught in the schools; that is a vital principle with him. The pope must have nothing to say to Catholics in France. The clergy must receive no pay, scanty as it is, from the state. No such thing as a free Catholic university is to be tolerated. The children of France are to be brought up and educated free-thinkers, and be made to turn out true Gambettists. In a word, the foundation of M. Gambetta’s scheme for the regeneration of France is to abolish the Christian religion there. Irreligion is to be the corner-stone of his republic.

This is a pleasing prospect for French Catholics, and it may be necessary to remind our able editors who denounce “clericalism” so lustily, and see no hope for France but in the republic of M. Gambetta, that there are still Catholics in France; that the bulk of the nation is Catholic. It is a pleasing prospect, we say, for them to contemplate the suppression of their religion at the word of M. Gambetta. Is it very surprising that the oracle of the new republic should only bring hatred on the very name of republic to men who can see in it, as expounded by its oracle, nothing but the most odious tyranny? It was John Lemoinne, if we remember rightly, who in the anti-ChristianJournal des Debatssaid, on the retirement of Mr. Gladstone from office, that religion lay at the bottom of all the great questions that move the world. If that be so, and it is so, why not recognize the fact? Must the French republic which M. Gambetta advocates and our republican editors on this side advocate be first and above all an irreligious despotism? Must it begin with religious persecution? M. Gambetta says that it must.

We are not accusing him wrongfully. His own words express his meaning plainly enough. It must be borne in mind that the epithet “clericalism,” in the mouths of French radicals, means Catholicity. Every French Catholic who believes in and practises his religion is a “clerical”; so every Catholic who believes and does the same all the world over is, in the mouths of anti-Catholics, an “ultramontane.” If there is one lurid page in all history that sears the eyes of humane and sensible men, itis that of the French Revolution—the most awful revolt, save its offspring, theCommune, against all order, human and divine, that the world has witnessed. Yet “the French Revolution,” and none other, is M. Gambetta’soriflamme.

Just on the eve of the elections he addressed an immense meeting at theCirque Américainin Paris. “Amongst those present,” says the correspondent of the LondonDaily Telegraph, “I observed the most prominent members of the various groups of the Left. When the great orator of the evening (M. Gambetta) appeared, he was received with a shout of welcome, renewed and continued for several minutes. There were only two cries issued from every lip: ‘Vive la République!’ and ‘Vive Gambetta!’ ... On the latter rising to speak he was received with another storm of cheers.”

Well, and what had he to say to this enthusiastic assembly and to the leading deputies of the Left? We can only find space for a few sentences, though the whole speech is instructive, as giving the character and aims of the man:

“What is at stake?” he asked. “The question is the existence of universal suffrageand of the French Revolution(Loud cheers). That is the question.” This declaration, which was so uproariously cheered, needs no comment. He made a little prophecy, that was unfortunate for him, regarding the returns of the elections. The prophecy turned out to be false, even though M. Gambetta assured his friends by saying: “I should not risk my credit with you five days before the event on a rash statement.” “The country will say,” he thundered on, “at the forthcoming elections that she wants the republic administered by republicans, and not by those who obey the voice of the Vatican.” He appealed to the example of this country, where he said, with brilliant vagueness, “law has taken the place of personal vanity, and conscience that of intrigue.” We accept the example. There are millions of good enough republicans in this country who certainly “obey the voice of the Vatican” as faithfully as any “clerical” in all France, and who find that voice agreeing admirably with their republicanism. Indeed, that same voice has recently, with justice and openly, proclaimed that in the republic the Pope ismore Pope than in any other country; and we have yet to learn that the republic has suffered any hurt from that declaration.

“There is no principle,” said M. Gambetta, “that binds together the three parties which are now opposed to us, and the nation will do justice to their monstrous alliance. There is but one binding force, and that is called clericalism. Those parties wanted a word of order to rally a formidable army against us; they found it in Jesuitism.” And he closed his speech by saying:

“I feel that what Europe fears most is that France should again fall into the hands of the Ultramontane agents. I fear that the universal suffrage may not take sufficient account of surprise and intimidation. We must look this question in the face, and be able to say to Europe, pointing to clericalism, Behold the vanquished!”

As we said, M. Gambetta made a little mistake in his prophecy. Catholicity is not dead in France; Catholics are not a small fraction of the people, and in the government of the country of which they form so important a part they must be taken into account. They will not and cannot submit to have convictions which are sacred to them disregarded, to have necessary and national rights trampled under foot at the will either of M. Gambetta or of anybody else. He assumes altogether too much. What did the figures of the election show? As M. de Fourtou pointed out in his speech in the Chamber of Deputies, November 14, 1877: The Opposition had flattered itself that it would return with four hundred, and yet it lost fifty votes. “It required an astonishing amount of assurance for the Opposition, after such a check, to pretend to claim power in defiance of the rights of the Senate.”

“The Opposition,” he continued, “had obtained 4,300,000 and the Government 3,600,000 votes, France thus dividing herself into two almost equal parties. Instead of striving to oppress the one by the other, it would be better to seek a common link to bind themselves together. Candidates presented themselves to be elected in the name of a menaced Constitution, the public peace in jeopardy, and in the name of modern liberties and civil societies. But if the Opposition only asked for that, it had no adversaries; if it asked for somethingelse it had no mandate. (Applause from the Right.)”

There is no denying the force of this reasoning. The parties in France show themselves almost equal, and the only hope of governing the country is by mutual concession and good-will. M. Gambetta must let the church alone, if he is so very anxious for peace.

Frenchmen not blinded by passion might have taken warning from the attitude of Germany and Italy previous to and during the elections. These two powers—for Italy has now become a sort of tender to Germany—were earnest for the success of the party led by Gambetta. Why so? What sympathy can Prince Bismarck possibly have with Gambetta? What sympathy could he be supposed to have with a republic of the Gambetta stripe, of the red revolutionary stripe, as his next-door neighbor, while he so dreads his own socialists? The cause of his new-born sympathy for a red republic, or a republic of any color, is not far to find. It was the same sympathy that he had with theCommuneduring the siege of Paris. He knows Gambetta, and has had a taste of “the tribune’s” effective generalship and governing qualities. He was in France when M. Gambetta made that famous “pact with death” of which we heard so much and so little came. He knows thoroughly the elements that make up the strength, the very explosive strength, of M. Gambetta’s party, and there is probably nothing he would better enjoy than to see thefou furieuxat the helm of state once more. A few months of the Gambettarégime, and Prince Bismarck might say of France, as he said of Paris, “Let it fry in its own fat.” France is now a most dangerous foe to Germany—negatively so, at least. She is growing more dangerous every year. Every year of quiet is an enormous gain to her. She is vastly richer than Germany. She can stand the strain of her immense army far more easily than Germany. She is winning back something of the old love and admiration of the outer world, which she had lost on entering into the war with Germany. She is patient, laborious, industrious, desirous of peace with all the world, and day by day becoming more able to maintain that peace even against Germany. But a revolution in France would destroy all this and throw the nation yearsbehind. And so sure as Gambetta attained to power a revolution would follow;i.e., if he adhered—and there is no doubt that he would—to the programme of a republic which he has sketched in such bold colors. Once in power, once the strong but quiet hand of Marshal MacMahon was removed from the helm, the ship of the French state, with or without Gambetta’s will, would go to speedy wreck.

That is why Prince Bismarck so carefully encouraged the Gambetta faction. That is why his press thundered against a “clerical” government in France. That is why the Italian press took up the cry, as it explains in great measure the mysterious comings and goings between the courts of Berlin and the Quirinal. That is why, if France would abide in safety, she must retain her soldier at the head of affairs, and hasten during the next few years of his term to heal her internal discords and become one heart and one soul. Marshal MacMahon has attempted nothing against the republic that was confided to his safe-keeping. There is yet time, before his term of office expires, for all Frenchmen to come together and shape their government so as to ensure peace, freedom, and order in the future. If they cannot do this, the republic is hopeless in France. It will go out as its predecessors have gone out within a century, only to make room for a new usurper.

GERMANY.

There is every year less likelihood of a renewal of the dreaded war between Germany and France. France does not want to fight. Even if Germany did want to fight she must reckon on a far stronger and more dangerous foe than she encountered in 1870. Competent military critics, like the writer inBlackwood’s Magazine, whose articles on the French army attracted such wide and deserved attention, assert that France, though probably unequal to an attack on Germany, is rather more than able to hold her own against attack. A stronger critic yet establishes this fact. In his famous speech in the German Parliament last April, in favor of the increase of one hundred and five captaincies in the army—an increase that was bitterly opposed—Count Von Moltke said:

“What the French press does notspeak out, but what really exists, is the fear lest, since France has so often attacked weaker Germany, strong Germany should now for once fall upon France without provocation. This accounts for the gigantic efforts France has made in carrying through within a few years the reorganization of her army with so much practical intelligence and energy. This explains why, from the recent conclusion of peace till to-day, an unproportionately large part of the French army, chiefly artillery and cavalry, is posted, in excellent condition, between Paris and the German frontier—a circumstance which must sooner or later lead to an equalizing measure on our part. It must also be taken into consideration that in France, where the contrast of political parties is even stronger than with us, all parties are agreed on one point—viz., in voting all that is asked for the army. In France the army is the favorite of the nation, its pride, its hope; the recent defeats of the army have been condoned long since.”

“The total strength of all these [the French] battalions,” he said in the same speech, “in times of peace amounts to 487,000 men; whilst Germany, with a much larger population, has but little over 400,000 under arms. The French budget exceeds the German by more than 150,000,000 marks (shillings), not including considerable supplementary sums that are there required. Even so wealthy a nation as the French are will not be able to bear such a burden permanently. Whether this is done at present for a distinct purpose, in order to reach a certain goal placed at not too great a distance, I must leave undecided.”

That speech alarmed Europe at the time. Yet it was only a plain statement of facts which it is as well for Europe to look in the face. It may seem strange that under the circumstances we should feel so sanguine about the preservation of peace between these two armed and hostile nations. But both want peace, and both are too strong to fight. Of course the unexpected may always occur. France does not disguise her purpose of revenge, and she means to “mak siccer” next time. But the gentle hand of Time softens the deepest hatreds; and if even this enforced peace can only be prolonged the war-fever may die away. Politics and administrations will changein both countries. Prince Bismarck will not live for ever. The French had just as bitter a resentment against England after Waterloo. The resentment died with the generation that bore it; and only for the evil legacy left by Prince Bismarck to the empire—the provinces of Alsace and Lorraine—we could fairly hope for better feeling between the two peoples at least within a generation.

The smoke of battle cleared away, Germans are beginning to look around them and investigate civil affairs in a spirit not at all pleasing to a military administration. The word of command is no longer obeyed so blindly as before. Even the cabinet does not move to the tap of Prince Bismarck’s drum as promptly as it was wont. Perhaps, after all, the chancellor did not gain so very much by his bitter prosecution of Count Arnim. There have been some notable resignations within the year, and rumors even, partially confirmed, and again renewed, of the chancellor’s own resignation. The opposition increases at every election; and the response of Catholics to the men who make vacant the sees of their bishops is to return a stronger number of representatives to the Parliament at each new election. The social democrats do the same, and altogether the policy of blood and iron appears to be in strong disfavor.

Even the “orthodox Protestants” have at last openly revolted against the Falk laws, which were good enough for Catholics, and right in themselves so long as the orthodox Protestants did not feel them pinch. They see at last that such laws strike at all religion; that a generation brought up under them would have no religion at all; and that if they would retain the congregations who are so rapidly slipping from their grasp and melting away, they must strike out those laws from the calendar.

The persecution of the Catholics goes on unrelentingly, but we have no doubt that better times are in store. The Catholics, as we pointed out, are gaining in the Parliament. The administration is weakening in unity and in the confidence of the country. Poverty is pressing upon the people. The emperor, in his speech from the throne early in the year, was compelled to allude to the continued depression of trade and industry. He might very easily have given one great reason for a large share of that depressionin the vast armaments which he finds it necessary to maintain at a ruinous cost of men, money, and labor to the country. As recently as last November the LondonTimes, which is certainly a friendly critic, in treating of “Prussian Finance,” took occasion to say: “The exaction of the five milliards was thought to crush for ever the growing wealth of France, and to be almost a superfluous addition to the abundant exchequer of Germany.... At least the state was rich for a generation to come. Five years have not yet passed since this huge mass of wealth was transferred, and already we find bankruptcy almost the rule among German traders, and hear cries rising on all sides of the hardness of the times and the impossibility of bearing much longer the crushing weight of taxation. In the hands of the government the French milliards seem for the most part to have melted away and left budgets which vary only in the shifts by which expenses are coaxed into an equality with receipts.”

The conclusion at which the writer arrives is a very suggestive one, and one that it would be well for Germany to take to heart:

“It would be better that Germany should be content to remain for a year or two not quite prepared to meet the world in arms rather than that her citizens should find that the country so impregnably fortified offers them no life worth living. A man does not buy Chubb’s locks for his stable-door when his steed is starving.”

Granting that the general peace of Europe is preserved during the next year, it would not surprise us at all to see a complete change of administration in Germany, and a consequent relaxation in the laws against Catholics. We do hope for this. Even Prince Bismarck must now see that the persecution of the Catholics was, in its lowest aspect, a political blunder. He miscalculated the faith of these German Catholics. The beating of his iron hammer has only welded and proved and tempered that faith, while the world resounded with his blows and all men saw that they were ineffectual. Thus has the very cradle of the Protestant Reformation borne noblest witness in our unbelieving age to the greatness, the strength, the invincibility of the faith and the church that Luther dreamed he had destroyed,out of Germany at least. Here is the result, as pictured by an adversary of the Catholic faith, within the past year: “It pleased Prince Bismarck—whether, as he himself alleged, in consequence of the council or not—to undertake a crusade against the Roman Catholic bishops and clergy which, to the vast body of their co-religionists all the world over, and to many others also, had all the look of downright persecution. They were challenged, not for submitting to the Vatican dogma, but for maintaining what they had always been accustomed to regard, before just as well as after the council, as the inalienable rights and liberties of their church. Only one course was open to them as ecclesiastics or as men of honor—to resist and take the consequences. Some half-dozen bishops have accordingly been fined, imprisoned, or deprived; and several hundred—we believe over a thousand—priests have incurred similar penalties. Whether the policy embodied in the Falk laws was or was not a wise and a just policy in itself is not the point. If we assume for argument’s sake that it has all the justification which its promoters claim for it, the fact remains equally certain that no greater service could well have been rendered to the cause of Vaticanism than this opportune rehabilitation of the German bishops. The bitterness of the antagonism provoked by the Falk legislation may be measured by the startling news recently given in the German papers, that an alliance, offensive and defensive, is being formed between the Catholics and democratic socialists, who can have hardly a single idea in common beyond hostility to the existing state.”—Saturday Review, February 24, 1877.

THE CATHOLIC OUTLOOK.

Of other states there is little that calls for special attention here. Italy is linked with Germany, but Italy can scarcely be regarded as a very strong ally. Its alliance, however, is useful and necessary to the leader of the conspiracy against the Catholic Church—the conspiracy of the kings, into which some have entered in a half-hearted way like the Emperor of Austria, others with the most determined resolve like Prince Bismarck and the German emperor.These powerful men are doing all they can to destroy the Catholic Church; and undoubtedly they impede her growth, and harry and harass her in a thousand ways. It is easy to say that this is the best thing that could possibly happen to the church; that persecution is her very soul; that suffering begets repentance, and chastisement purity of life. That is all very well and true, but there is another aspect to the matter. Catholics have worldly rights as well as heavenly. They are here to live in this world, and to live happily and freely, and to do their work in it. No prince or government introduced them into life; no prince or government escorts them out of life. No prince, or government, or state can absolutely claim human life as theirs. Life is a free gift of God, to be used freely. Government is not divine, save in so far as it conforms to the divinity. Men are not chattels and tools to be used as things of no volition. The government of a people is only a human institution erected for the people, by the people, and of the people. It cannot lay claim to superhuman power, and where it does it is an infamous assumption. Thenumen imperatorumis more than a myth; it is a devil. The “divine Cæsar” is but a man, and generally a very disreputable man. The assumptions of many modern states to absolute rule over man—states that for the wickedness of those ruling them have been turned topsy-turvy time and again by the subjects whom they absolutely ruled—is a return to paganism, and a very artful return. Obey us, it says, and we will set you free—free from the Christian God and the laws that go against your nature. Obey us, and you need bow the knee to no God; you need have no religious belief or practice; we will abolish sin for you; you shall marry and unmarry as you please, and as often as you please; you shall do what you like and have no one to gainsay you. Fall down and worship us, and all the kingdoms of the world are yours.

This is only a true reading of the pet measures of modern governments: of the divorce court, of civil marriage, of civil baptism, of schools into which everything but God may enter. And this is the drifting of the age: the Gambetta party in France, the revolutionary party in Italy, of which Victor Emanuel is the regal tool and ornament; theBismarckian and Falk party in Germany; the Josephism of Austria; the “free” thought of all lands. It is this that is in conflict, eternal conflict, with the Catholic Church. It calls itself liberalism; it is the tyranny of paganism. It does not threaten the Catholic Church alone. It only threatens that openly, because it feels it its necessary foe; it threatens the world and carries in its right hand the social and moral ruin of nations. There is no possiblemodus vivendibetween it and men who believe in Christ; and men who believe in Christ form the bulk of all civilized peoples. There will be no peace in the world, no peace among nations, until religion is free to assert itself. While the creeds of Christendom are still divided there must be freedom for all—freedom to adjust their differences and come back once again to the lost unity for which all honest men sigh. Politics are the affairs of a day; religion an affair of Eternity to be settled in Time. It must have freedom to work; and the attempt to restrict and restrain that freedom is the secret of more than half the troubles that afflict mankind.

This freedom is all that the head of the Catholic Church demands. He has no other quarrels with princes than this. He blesses and loves Protestant England, for it recognizes this freedom; he blesses and loves this country, for it also recognizes this freedom. The wonderful reign of Pius IX. will, in after-time, be most memorable for this: that in a deafening and confused time, in a time when all things were called in question and all rights invaded, his voice and vision were for ever clear in upholding the most sacred rights of man, in detecting and exposing what threatened them, and in maintaining the truth by which the world lives, at all hazard and in the face of all sacrifice. The truth of which he is the oracle is the faith in God that makes men free—faith in the undying church founded by the Son of God, in its work and its mission among men, in the present and the future of a human society spreading over the world and built upon that faith. And the world has recognized this. It recognizes in the Pope, not because he is Pius the Ninth, but because he is Pope and head of the Church Catholic, the centre of this society, the headof Christendom; for Christendom is wider than nations; it embraces them in its arms; they are children of it, and the Pope is their spiritual father. Is not this truth plain? Whither have the eyes of the world been turned during the year? Less to the bloody battle-fields of the East, less to the hearts of European nations and the courts and cabinets of kings, than to the sick bed in the Vatican. The gaze of many has been that of brutal intensity; the gaze of many more, and those not all Catholics, has been one of affectionate and tender regard. Speculations as to the future are not in place here. The Pope, of course, will die some day. He has stood the brunt of the battle. He has lived a great life, given a great example, and done great things for the church of God. Not a stain, not a breath or whisper of reproach, mars that long career of mingled triumph and suffering. He has witnessed strange events. He has seen the church discarded by all the powers that were once her faithful children. He has seen the sacred territory of the church invaded and torn from his grasp. He sees himself in his old age and at the close of a stormy life imprisoned in his own palace. He has seen the world and the princes of the world do their worst against the church of which he is the earthly guardian. And yet he sees the church spreading abroad, growing in numbers and in virtue, borne on the wings of commerce and carrying its message of peace and good-will to all lands. There is no faltering in the faith. His eyes have been gladdened, even if saddened, by as noble confessors, of all grades, rising up to testify to it as the church in her history of nineteen centuries has ever known. When he obeys the last call of the Master he has served so well, there will pass from this world the greatest figure of the age, and as holy a man as the ages ever knew. But his work will not pass with him. That will remain, and the lesson of his life will remain to the successor, on whom we believe that brighter times will dawn—a brightness won out of the darkness, and the sacrifice, and the storm braved by the good and gentle man who so resolutely bore Christ’s cross to the very hill of Calvary and lay down on it and died there.

NEW PUBLICATIONS.

Monotheism.The Primitive Religion of Rome. By Rev. Henry Formby. 1 vol. 8vo. London: Williams & Norgate; New York: Scribner, Welford & Co. 1877.

This is a very interesting and, in some respects, a learned work; but we are fain to confess that we have been disappointed in it. If the author, instead of attempting to show that the worship of the one true God was the early religion of Rome, had contented himself with proving it to have been professed by the primitive Gentile nations in general, we should agree with him, and thank him for unfolding in our English language the incontrovertible truth that polytheism and idolatry are but corruptions of great primeval traditions collected, preserved, and handed down by Noe, and that heathen mythology can be made to bear witness to the original idea of the unity and spirituality of God. This view of the religious errors of the ancients has been held up by several eminent writers, and particularly by two who deserve to be rescued from an unjust oblivion—by Monsignor Bianchini (1697) inLa Storia Universale provata con Monumenti e figurata con Simboli Antichi; and by Abbé Bergier (1773) in hisOrigine des Dieux du Paganisme. While we do not accuse our reverend author of a want of modesty precisely in stating his prime opinion about the monotheism of the second king of Rome, we do think that he writes a little too dogmatically and as though he had discovered some historical treasure-trove wherewith to enrich his arguments; whereas no new documents or monuments whatever have been brought to light to throw a different or brighter ray upon the character of Numa Pompilius, in connection with whom, moreover, he seems to us to confound idolatry and polytheism. We confidently believe that theCœleste Numenof Numa, on which so great stress is laid, like theDeus Optimus Maximusof Tully, or theDivûm pater atque hominum rexof Virgil, was nothing more than another form of man’s continual, almost involuntary, protest against the falling away of the human race from the worship of theCreator, but practically did not betoken more than a recognition of one among many greater than his fellow-gods. While Numa forbade the worship ofidolsin Rome, and consequently professed a less corrupt error than did many contemporary rulers, he never asserted the unity or, we prefer to say, theonenessof God. He was a prolific polytheist, multiplying divinities and introducing new superstitions among his people. Father Formby has brought up nothing in his favor unknown to Arnobius, Orosius, St. Augustine, and Tertullian. This last writer, although he absolves Numa from the crime of idolatry, distinctly charges upon him a many-parted god: “Nam a Numa concepta est curiositas superstitiosa” (Apol.xxv.)

Our author’s present work is an amplification of a smaller one published in pamphlet form two years ago, in which he shows the “city of ancient Rome” to have been “the divinely-sent pioneer of the way for the Catholic Church.” On this subject we cannot too closely agree with him, or sufficiently thank him for turning towards our students and illustrating for them a side of Roman history which is so important. Our own studies have always pointed in the same direction, and we cannot better conclude this notice of Father Formby’s work and show our sympathy with him than by a brief extract from our commonplace book, made up many years ago in Rome itself:

“The celebrated Gallo-Roman poet and statesman, Rutilius Numatianus, was much attached to the false ancient divinities of Rome and no small help to the political party of Symmachus, which so stubbornly fought St. Ambrose and the Christians. The following lines from hisItinerarium(i. 62et seq.) are truly beautiful and express a grand idea, but one that is still grander in another sense than his; for if a heathen understood it to be a blessing in disguise upon the conquered peoples of the earth to be brought under the domination of Rome on account of the prosperity and civilization that accompanied her rule, how shall not a Christian admire the action of divine Providence, preparing theworld for the New Law, and applaud those triumphs that brought so many countries through the Roman Empire into the Church of Christ. Of Christian less than of pagan Rome we shall interpret the poet’s sentiment:

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