disabuse them of this error, and bring them to place God and heaven before all things else. As long as they entertain their present false view, the church cannot rely on them,cannot work with them, without falling herself into error,and they are out of the condition of either effecting or receiving their emancipation. The church can really aid only those who love and obey her,-submit themselves to her instructions and authority.

Padre Ventura appears to hold that the evil in the present dispositions of the European populations is, not in their overweening attachment to a merely temporal good, but in their mistake as to the methods of gaining it. He approves the end aimed at, and only dreads the attempt to obtain it without religion, and by violence. The error of Jacobinism was, then, it would seem, not inherent in itself, but in its attempt to gain its object under the banner of philosophism, and by war and bloodshed. But we are inclined to believe that Jacobinism could not march under any other banner, or reach its end by any other means. It would, we must believe, be the same thing, though divested of its red cap and sea-green coat, and decked out in the drab-colored suit and broad-brimmed hat of the Quaker. It is not alone the horrors of the revolution that are to be dreaded, but also the revolutionary spirit; for if the spirit itself be fostered, the horrors sooner or later will inevitably follow. We have never heard of a peaceful subversion of an old government, and institution of a new one in its place. "Peaceful agitation" may suffice to carry a specific measure, when nothing is necessary for carrying it but to collect and concentrate the scattered rays of opinion already existing; but it will prove impotent, where fundamental or organic changes are demanded, unless backed by a threat of force in the last resort; and even then rarely, if ever, without an actual collision of forces. A whole people, wrought up by agitators to the highest pitch of enthusiasm for political changes, will soon begin, let leaders and chiefs say what they will, to sharpen their pikes, if obliged to wait longer than their impatience judges to be necessary. It is too late to think of controlling a people when once so wrought up, and if so wrought up for an object which is merely temporal, in vain will you talk to them of God and religion. Not in the moment of passion or debauch does the voice of the preacher reach the heart, and startle the conscience from its slumber. None but a religious people can be controlled by religious motives; and

no truly religious people can be wrought up to a pitch of enthusiasm for a temporal object adequate to the purpose of the peaceful, any more than of the violent, revolutionist. Whenever, then, you agitate for civil liberty as such, prepare to fail, or prepare for the horrors of rebellion and bloodshed, the reign of terror, ay, and the military despotism which is to supplant it.

Finally, we cannot understand how the church can raise the banner of democracy, and call upon the faithful to rally under it. She prescribes no particular form of government; in her view, all forms of government, when and where legitimately established or legally existing, are alike sacred and obligatory. She commands the administrators of governments, whether they be kings, nobles, or the people, to administer the government wisely and justly, in subjection to the law of God, for the public good. This is as far as she ever goes. How, then, can she side with the people in their movements for popular forms of government? Is she to change her policy, pursued without deviation for eighteen hundred years, and at this late day propose a particular form of government as an article of faith? Or because kings now are tyrants, is she to preach up democracy, and when democracy becomes a tyrant, to be obliged to preach up monarchy? There is in the demand, it strikes us, quite too much of short-sighted human policy, pursuing a course to-day which it must retrace to-morrow, or which seeks to gain a temporary óbject at the expense of an eternal principle.

But if we oppose the policy which seems to us to be recommended in the oration before us, it is not because we op pose liberty, or are the friends and apologists of the crowned tyrants or imbeciles of Europe. We have no sympathy with the policy of the principal European courts. That policy is opposed to the freedom and independence of the church, without which no people can be free, and no government wisely and justly administered. We abhor and detest it, because it is hostile to freedom of conscience, and would enchain the word of God,-because it would subject the spiritual to the temporal, and rob Almighty God of his own. Let there be a crusade preached against them in behalf of the freedom and independence of the church-let the populations be summoned to break the cords with which these infidel governments bind the Lord's anointed, and we will be first among the foremost to bind on the cross, and march

to the battlefield, to victory or immortality. In securing this, the highest of all liberties, and the source and guaranty of all liberty worthy of the name, the people would be emancipated from their tyrants, to the full extent compatible with human infirmity. Civil freedom would be secured for all. "If the Son make you free, you shall be free indeed." It is, therefore, the freedom of the Son, the freedom wherewith he makes free, that we should first of allnay, alone-seek, and all other freedom shall be added thereto. Seek God alone, and you find what you seek, and, over and above all, the good you did not seek. Give all to God, and he gives all back to you in a hundred fold.

We wish the church to go as far against the governments of Europe as Padre Ventura does; but for her own emancipation, which includes every other emancipation. We would have her go, as she always does, to the extent of her power, for her own liberty; but not for liberalism, whether conspiring in secret with free-masons and carbonari, marching openly with Swiss radicals to the destruction of states and the desecration of temples, or assuming the Quaker garb of peaceful agitation. Then the end proposed would be distinctively religious, and the church might well consecrate the banner and bless the armies of the warriors enlisted; for they would be her own soldiers, her own sons, not foreign allies or mercenaries. In a work of this kind every Catholic could sympathize, and would give at least his prayers for its success.

We admire our great and good father Pius IX. for the administrative reforms he has introduced into the immediate patrimony of St. Peter; but we admire him still more for the free, bold, and commanding attitude which he assumes before the lay lords of the earth,-recalling the sainted Hildebrand, the heroic third Alexander, and the third Innocent, who made crowned heads feel and acknowledgethat the church is paramount to the state, and that, when she speaks, kings as well as the meanest of their servantsmust bare the head and listen. Thanks, devout thanks, beto Almighty God, who has sent us a successor of St. Peter, that brings back the heroic ages, and, in face of an infidel, and scoffing, and time-serving generation, renews the chivalry of the cross, and speaks in the tone that becomes the vicegerent of God on earth! Let the faithful rally at his bidding; let them glory in his reassertion of the independence of the spiritual power, that as pontiff, as well as prince, he spurns

the dictation of the Austrian, the wiles of the Gaul, and the cajoleries of the Briton; let them support him by their prayers, and, if need be, by their deeds; and be assured that the tyranny which now weighs so heavily upon the European populations will be lightened, the chains which bind the souls of the toiling and starving millions will be broken, Christian civilization, so fatally interrupted by the Protestant rebellion in behalf of heathenism, will resume its march, and effect for man as full a measure of earthly well-being as it can be for his interest to possess.

In conclusion, we say, though we have criticised with some severity, Padre Ventura's oration, we have done so only in the sense in which we think his language likely to be understood here among our own countrymen. We are far from supposing that he has put forth any thing really unsound, as he himself understands it. He looks, as we question not, solely to the glory of religion, to the freedom and prosperity of the church. He finds the governments everywhere seeking to render the spiritual power the slave of the temporal, and he would defeat their efforts; he sees, also, the people everywhere bent on political reforms, and reforms, he would tell them, they may have, should have, only they must seek them in a peaceful manner, and from religion, and under her direction; and he believes that the church, by aiding the people in effecting those reforms, in emancipating them from the tyranny under which they groan, may emancipate herself from the secular power, and secure her freedom and independence. Therefore he would urge upon all Catholics who are afraid of revolutions not to oppose the popular movements, but to seek to bring them under the inHuence and direction of religion. This we suppose is his real thought, and this in the main is sound and just. We wish, however, that for our sakes here, where our greatest danger is from radicalism, from an exaggerated democracy, he had been a little more careful to mark the place of relig ion as that of sovereign, and not have presented her in the character of an ally. The error, in this view of his meaning, into which Padre Ventura falls, if he errs at all, is in supposing that popular governments will be more favorable to the freedom and independence of the church than are the existing governments of Europe. For ourselves, we have full confidence in the church; but we have as little in the intelligence and virtue of a people bent only upon the acquisition of temporal goods, as we have in infidel and li

centious kings, and half mad and imbecile emperors. The government in the hands of the people, unless they are profoundly religious, will be hardly less hostile to the real freedom and independence of the church, than in the hands of royal tyrants and their minions. We have seen enough of popular governments to be aware that the people, as well as the king, need a master, and a master, too, that is under the special protection of Almighty God, and able at all times and in all places to command with divine authority.

SOCIALISM AND THE CHURCH.*

[From Brownson's Quarterly Review for January, 1849.]

THIS handsomely printed volume, has been sent us from the author," and we can do no less than acknowledge its reception. It is filled with the wild speculations and demoralizing theories hardly to be expected from "a Woman." In a literary point of view, it is beneath criticism, but it bears the marks of some reading, and even of hard, though ill-directed, thinking. Nature has treated the author liberally, and she will have much to answer for. The work could have proceeded only from a strong mind and a corrupt heart.

The work itself pertains to the socialistic school, and, substantially, to the Fourieristic section of that school. According to it, the human race began its career in ignorance and weakness, and established a false system of civilization. Modern society, dating from the fall of the western Roman Empire, has been engaged in a continual struggle to throw off that system, and to establish a true system in its place. It has been engaged, thus far, in the work of demolition, which it has finally terminated. It has prepared the ground for true civilization, and the human race now stand waiting, or did stand waiting on the first of January, 1848, the sig nal to introduce it, and to put an end for ever to all evils, moral, social, and physical.

England the Civilizer; her History developed in its Principles; with Reference to the Civilizational History of Modern Europe (America inclusive), and with a View to the Denouement of the Difficulties of the Hour. By a Woman. London: 1848.