elements, but out of national elements already existing. Those elements are imperialism, democracy, and Catholicity. This, we think, is undeniable. The only way, then, in which a Frenchiman can serve his country effectually, is to work with these elements, and content himself with such combinations of them as are practicable. He must work with the national sentiment, not against it. We do not like the politics of the Univers, for it advocates not only the imperial régime as the best for France, but a similar régime as the best for all nations. It forgets that France is not all the world, and that what may be the political duty of a Catholic in France, is by no means necessarily the political duty of a Catholic in Belgium, Holland, Prussia, England, or the United States. We have had, in the interests of our relig ion and of our country, to take strong ground against the absolutist doctrines, which were, in virtue of the reaction against the revolutionism of 1848, beginning to find favor with some Catholic publicists; but we have believed that the party opposed to that represented by the Univers, ought not to stand aloof from the actual government, or to assume the attitude of discontent, if not of hostility. The imperial order, whatever its defects, is eminently national; and no movement in favor of defunct constitutionalism, or of parliamentary government in imitation either of the English or the American, will, or can be successful. The true policy for patriotic Frenchmen who wish the nation to have a more direct voice in the management of its affairs, is, it seems to us, to accept the order established as the basis of their future operations, and to contemplate nothing that is not in harmony with its genius, or that may not be peaceably and legally developed from it. The worst possible way to ply the defects of existing political institutions, is to begin by exciting the jealousy, the aversion, or the fears of the government, and to compel it to act in its own defence, or in reference to its own preservation. The government should be allowed to feel that the era of revolutions is closed, and that no effort will, intentionally or unintentionally, be made, tending to render its existence insecure. The institutions founded by the emperor, should be loyally accepted as the will of the French people, and the law of the empire. These institutions must be held as inviolable, and nothing be attempted that would alter their essential character.

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Count Montalembert and his friends are men whom the French nation cannot well afford to lose. They have exerted

an immense influence in resuscitating Catholic France, and in promoting Catholic interests throughout the world. They have been, in a certain sense, the leaders of the Catholic movement of our times. They have been brave champions of the most holy cause; they have done knightly service; Catholic hearts everywhere thrill with grateful emotion at the bare mention of their names. Is their work done, their mission ended? Are they now to abandon us while they are still in the prime and vigor of their lives? They have long stood at the head of the Catholic party, and have directed under the hierarchy Catholic affairs. Why need they lose their position? Why can they not rise to the level of the new times, and still remain our leaders? Yet they will not lead the Catholic mind, they will not direct Catholic interests, or be followed by the Catholic people, if they have only regrets for the past, and criticisms for the present. To retain the position they have heretofore held, they must command the future; they must have a word for us now, a spirit-kindling word, that will rally all heroic minds and hearts to their standard. But with all their brilliant genius, their varied and profound erudition, their lofty eloquence, their generous sympathies and noble aspirations, they are lost to France and the world, if they can propose nothing better than the resuscitation of defunct constitutionalism or the importation of a feeble copy of aristocratic England.

We love and esteem Count Montalembert; we admire his genius, we respect his erudition, we venerate his purity and disinterestedness of purpose, and we sympathize with his political principles; but we confess his essay on the political prospects of England disappoints and afflicts us. It is not what we had a right to expect from such a man, and is by no means worthy of his practical wisdom, or his French patriotism. It has evidently been inspired by his regrets, not by his hopes. It is a mistake, and will go far to compromise the cause he has at heart. England is a powerful and influential nation, we grant, but not even he can write her into the affection of any people on earth. Every people suffers by her contact, and those she protects, for whom she has expended her blood and treasure, hate her more than they do the powers against whom she defends them. Every people that has attempted to imitate her political system has been ruined or brought the next door to ruin. The friends of liberty in Europe may wish to use her, but they do

not love her, and they despise her constitution. She represents an order of things which has had its day. The domninant element in the English order is aristocracy, and it is against aristocracy far more than against monarchy that our age is at war. Even in England herself there is a war raging against the aristocracy, and there are indubitable signs that it will ultimately have to give way before the accumulating forces of the democracy. The imperialism of France is daily acquiring popularity even with the English, and commands far more sympathy throughout the civilized world than British constitutionalism or parliamentarianism. Nothing, then, can be more unpopular, or more opposed to the tendencies of our age, than the attempt to make it copied by a foreign nation. We respect, perhaps we share, the aristocratic predilections of the noble author, but we should deem it a most egregious blunder, to make them, either in France or in our own country, the basis of the slightest political action. We cherish them as an heirloom transmitted from an age that has gone, never to return. No restorations are successful, and all imitations in politics are bad; but of all imitations, that of the British constitution has, in our times, the least chance of being successful. He who proposes it by that very fact throws distrust on his cause, and can hardly escape rendering himself odions to all, except the few who wear their faces on the back side of their heads.

The illustrious author seems to us, in this holding up of the English constitution in contrast with the imperial, to abandon the policy he has hitherto pursued. As an hereditary peer of France, and the son, we believe, of an émigré, his natural position was that of an adherent of the elder Bourbons; but he accepted without approving, the monarchy of July, and sought to make the best of it. A constitutional monarchist in principle, he accepted the republic of 1848, and served it with the loyalty native to his heart. Wishing to retain the republic, not because he preferred it, but because it was instituted, and because he was strongly opposed to socialism and revolutionism, he yet supported the coup d'état of December 2d, 1851, and urged his friends to sustain Louis Napoleon as the chief of the state. Thus far his rule had been not to quarrel with the nation, but to accept the order it willed and to make the best of it, to abandon the past and march with the future. Why should he not do so now? To break from the empire, or to attempt to convert it into British constitutionalism is, it seems to us, to adopt a

different rule of action, and instead of going with the nation, to place himself against it. The church is wiser than he, and, without having willed the empire, she accepts and respects it as the will of the French nation, leaving it to time and events to amend what in it may be faulty.

We

We have said that we did not like the imperial constitution. It does not, in our judgment, give sufficient part to the nation in the management of its own affairs, and intrusts too much to the will of the emperor. But we do not forget that a dictatorship, at the time it was formed, was in some measure necessary to save France from the horrors of civil war, if not from the greater horrors of socialism. observe, too, that the imperial constitution provides for its own amendment, and is susceptible of a development in a liberal sense. As things settle down, as the revolutionary spirit dies out, and the dictatorship ceases to be necessary, there are many indications that the emperor is himself disposed to favor such development, nay, that he contemplates it. He has said the rock on which his uncle split, was in suffering the government to incline too much to absolutism, and his writings indicate that he himself is opposed to despotism. He has proved himself the strongest, perhaps the wisest, man in France, if not in Europe. May not more be done for political liberty in France, by accepting his leadership, and cooperating with him, than by separating from him, or setting up an independent standard? He is not merely the legal, but he is the real sovereign of France, the man who best understands her sentiments and wishes, and most fully sympathizes with them; no man living seems to us more capable of carrying into effect what he conceives to be necessary. Is he not in fact, then, not only the emperor, but the real political leader of Frenchmen? If so, it is under his drapeau they should consent to march.

We have said that the three existing elements of French society are imperialism, democracy, and Catholicity. The whole future of France is contained in these three elements, and the wisdom of the statesian consists in skilfully harmonizing them. The imperial element is provided for, and the only fear that any one need have, is in regard to the Catholic and democratic elements. Count Montalembert, if we understand him, fears that these have not sufficient guaranties. We share his fear. But we do not think that these guaranties would be strengthened by any efforts to introduce the aristocratic element in imitation of England, or by a

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parliamentary limitation of imperialism. guaranties needed, it seems to us, should be sought in the development of the Catholic element. danger in seeking guaranties for the freedom of the church There is always in politics, for we are, in attempting it, liable to lose sight of religion, and to become engrossed in efforts to organize the state. No political guaranties will secure the freedom. of the church, where the state or the great body of the nation are hostile to her existence. No government is really more hostile to the church than the parliamentary government of England, and the English people are even more anti-Catholic than the English parliament. Even the people of this country find it exceedingly hard to be faithful to the freedom of religion recognized as a fundamental principle of our institutions. Where the people are truly Catholic, popular forms of government are the most favorable to relig ious freedom; but where the popular sentiment is decidedly hostile to it, they afford the greatest facilities for extinguishing it. It is not in politics that we must seek guaranties for the freedom of the church, but in the church that we must seek our guaranties of political and civil freedom. What, it seems to us, our friends in France who wish more political freedom, whether by tempering the imperial element or the democratic, should make the basis of their operations, is Catholicity. They should, after making their protest, as they have done against absolutism, labor to bring France up to the highest toned Catholicity, to make her thoroughly Catholic in the Roman apostolic sense. they need fear nothing either for political or religious libThen erty.

We are afraid that our friends in France do not sufficiently appreciate the Catholic element as a guaranty against absolutism. With the best devised political constitutions, with the most nicely adjusted scheme of checks and balances, and with the most explicit recognition of the freedom of the spiritual order, there is no security for any species of liberty without religion. The temporal is never safe unless founded on a spiritual basis, and sustained by the lively faith of the people. No human contrivance is worth any thing without religion. Temporal interests, self-interests, hower pitted one against another, will never suffice even for themselves. It is, after all, to the church that we must look, and it is under the safeguard of religion we must place even our temporal interests, if we would have them secure.