pire. In so doing, she made her Protestant church a monstrous anomaly in her constitution, and really committed herself to its annihilation as a state religion. A party resolutely opposed to it, strong enough in spite of its influence to recover their liberties as electors and senators, could have no disposition to sustain it, and could hardly prove unable, in the long run, to withdraw from it the support of the state. C'est le premier pas qui coûte. They could more easily, after having gained admission into parliament, go further, and overthrow the establishment, than they could gain that admission itself. They could not be expected to stop with that achievement. Logical consistency, if nothing else, would require them to go further, and eliminate the anomaly from the constitution. The necessity of logical consistency might not, indeed, be strongly felt by the adherents of the establishment, who generally contrive to dispense with logic, and to utter much solemn cant about via media, or the middle way between truth and falsehood; but the party opposed, and whom this solemn cant only insults and disgusts, could not be stayed by so feeble a barrier. They must have consistency; either the consistency of dissent with the non-conformist, or the consistency of truth with the Catholic. In opening her parliament to Dissenters, and in signing the Catholic relief bill, Great Britain, whether she intended it or not, gave the death-blow to the Anglican establishment. She committed herself to what was for her a new policy, and from which she cannot nenceforth retreat without shame and ruin. The Anglican establishment, or Church of England, it is well known, is a creature. of the state. It was made by the crown and parliament; and now that the crown counts for little, and the royal prerogative yields to the majority of the house of commons, it is idle to suppose that a parliament in which Catholics and Dissenters have seats will not, sooner or later, exert its power to unmake it, especially since it is no longer in harmony with the other parts of the constitution.

The late ministry, probably for the purpose of breaking up the tenant league that was forming in Ireland and boding no good to Irish landlords, made a show, in its ecclesiastical titles bill, of reëstablishing Protestantism, and governing as if the state were still a Protestant state. Its success threw it from place, and secured it the contempt of the Christian world. The Derby ministry, seeing the embar

rassment the English and Irish Catholics might cause them in carrying out such policy as they have, seem to be in earnest to restore deposed Protestantism, and to administer the government as if the Catholic relief bill had never been granted. This we regard as a proof of its madness. It is too late to threaten the disfranchisement of Catholics, or to hope any thing for the state from the persecution of the church. Statutes may be passed against Catholics of the most oppressive nature, the old penal codes of England and Ireland may be revived in all their satanic rigor, but all in vain. England can never become again an exclusively Protestant state. The Catholic element in both England and Ireland is stronger than it was in 1829, when it was strong enough to force Wellington and Peel to concede emancipation, and graver consequences would follow the repeal of the Catholic relief bill than were apprehended from a refusal to grant it. Neither English nor Irish Catholics are now the timid and depressed body they were then ; they have a firmer and a bolder spirit, a higher and a more thoroughly Catholic tone; and are, in England at least, more numerous and better organized. They are cheered now with visible tokens of God's grace. The Lord seems to have withdrawn the rod of chastisement for the present, and to permit his countenance once more to shine upon them. In the light of his countenance they rejoice and are strengthened. The day of their deliverance, and of his vengeance on their oppressors, is apparently nigh at hand. Persecution cannot now break their spirit; it will serve only to give them fresh courage and zeal, and to add daily to their numbers and influence; for the present seems to be one of those seasons when in the divine providence judgments are not delayed, and punishment follows close on the heels of the offence. This may be seen in the results of the late red-republican revolutions. They were got up and directed primarily against the church, the only solid basis of society, and they swept as a tornado over more than half of Europe. They have all failed, and their only notable result has been that of breaking the bonds with which infidel governments and paganized statesman had bound the church, and giving her a freedom and independence of action she has hardly enjoyed before since the breaking out of the Protestant reformation. Even the republic of France, with General Cavaignac at its head, found itself obliged to send its troops to restore the Holy Father, com

pelled by the very party that made that republic to fly from Rome.

It seems to us that the time for reviving the old persecution of Catholics is exceedingly ill chosen. Such persecution will naturally force Catholics to seek the means of selfdefence. The ecclesiastical titles bill has destroyed their confidence in the Whigs, who can never again count on their support as a boly. They never had much confidence in the Tories, and will certainly have less if the Tory ministry continues to persecute them. They will be driven, then, to unite with such as are opposed to both the Whigs and the Tories, and therefore with the Manchester politicians; that is, with a republican party. If you turn both crown and aristocracy against them, they will, however reluctantly, combine their force with the party from whom crown and aristocracy have nothing to hope, but much to fear. The accession to power of the Manchester school, commanding as it does the sympathies of both the people. and government of this country, would be virtually the accession of democracy; and Great Britain cannot become a democracy without descending from her present proud eminence to the rank of a third or fourth rate European power. Catholics are loyal and patriotic, and would not join with the party whose views are so hostile to the temporal interests of their country, without a severe struggle; but they do and must place their religion before their politics, and they know perfectly well that the prince who persecutes their church forfeits his right to their allegiance. Our obligation to obey the temporal ruler is restricted to obedience in those things which are not repugnant to the law of God, as interpreted by the Catholic Church. When the prince commands that which is contrary to that law, so interpreted, we are released from the obligation of obedience; for we must obey God rather than man. How, then, count on the support of Catholics for a government that persecutes them? or not expect them to oppose such government by all means in their power not in themselves unjust? If the temporal interests of their country suffer by the course they adopt, let it be so. The church of God is more to them than country, and they can never hesitate to sacrifice the interests of the latter rather than the rights of the former, when you place them in a position in which they must sacrifice one or the other. You have no right to seek the temporal interests of the state at the expense of the in

terests of religion. If you do not, you will find Catholics among your most loyal and patriotic subjects; if you do, you must expect them to oppose you. You have no right to complain of them, for you, not they, are the party in the wrong. It seems to us, then, a very mad policy, in a professedly conservative British ministry, to force the Catholics of the empire into a union with radicals or democrats as the only means of securing the freedom of conscience.

Great Britain is, at the present moment, not only threatened with a democratic revolution, but also with a formidable foreign invasion. We have no doubt that Napoleon III. wishes for peace, and will seek it, if by it he can effect his purposes; but we cannot suppose him afraid of war, placed, as he just has been, at the head of an empire whose chief recollections are of military glory. He not unlikely wishes to repair the defeat of Waterloo, and we cannot presume him unwilling to return at London the visit paid by the British troops to Paris in 1815. He appears to be preparing to return that visit, and the attempt to do so we can well believe would not be at all distasteful to the French army, or to the French people. Appearances certainly indicate that at no distant day the haughty island queen will be visited by a French army, and that she will have to fight,-not to annex new kingdoms to her Indian empire, not merely to save her distant colonies in Africa or America, but in defence of her own fireside, against an enemy her equal in bravery, her superior in military science, and urged on by the enthusiasm of a new dynasty, the memories and rivalries, the victories. and defeats, of seven hundred years. England's insular position has saved her from being the theatre of the principal foreign wars in which she has been engaged; but we recollect no instance in her history, from Julius Cæsar down to William Prince of Orange, in which she has been invaded, without being obliged to succumb to the invader. If the new French emperor should effect a landing on her shores, as it is thought he may without serious difficulty, she will find it no child's play to prevent it from becoming another Norman conquest. She is strong, we grant, but she is also weak; strong abroad, in a war carried on at a distance, but weak at home, for her possessions are so scattered over the world, and require for their preservation such a dispersion of her forces, that she cannot concentrate her strength there in defence of herself. All commercial and manufacturing nations, however strong they may be abroad,

when they can subsidize other powers, are always weak when attacked in their own centre.

In this no improbable struggle where is England to find friends and allies? Not with us, certainly, though allied to her by blood and language; for the great body of our people would far more willingly fight against than for her, and are only waiting a fair opportunity of measuring their strength with hers. Moreover, we have certain designs on Central America which she is the only power likely to thwart. She is also our most formidable rival in the mar kets of the world, and we shall be quite willing to find ourselves able to supplant her. We have now no secretary of state disposed to form an "Anglo-Saxon alliance," and are not likely to have one again for some time to come. Our cotton, and California gold mines, render us in the main independent of her money power, and able to withstand the shock of a conflict with her. She can find no friends or allies on the continent, if Napoleon takes ordinary care not to excite the apprehensions of his neighbours, and abandons the old French policy, so long and so fatally pursued, of humbling Austria. She has by her pride, her arrogance, her intermeddling with the affairs of her neighbours, her support of revolutionists, and her readiness to stir up rebellions in all the continental states, alienated from her all these states, unless perchance Sardinia; and there is not one of them that would not willingly see her fall, and utterly ruined, providing that it could be done without rendering France too formidable. If the new French emperor takes the pains to give ample security on this head, he may count, in a war with Great Britain, on the sympathy of very nearly the whole world.

We do not say that Great Britain, in such a contest as we suppose, would be beaten, but we do say, that to sustain herself she would need the cordial and loyal support of her subjects. The Catholics constitute about one-third of the population of the United Kingdom. Can she afford, in the pres ent juncture of affairs, to alienate the affections of so large a portion of her population? Can she dispense with their aid? Or can she, if she disfranchises and persecutes them for conscience' sake, count on their support? Will Catholic Ireland, whom she hardly keeps tranquil by one-half of her regular army at home, consent to shed her blood in defence of her tyrant and persecutor? Ireland is indeed somewhat apt to disappoint the calculations of her friends,