under favor of the government his benefice, and the bishop has no power to remove him and appoint a successor. Here, in a similar case, our courts would decide, as they have decided in principle, in several cases, that the benefice being a trust for the benefit of the Catholic religion, is vacated when the priest ceases by the laws of his own church to be competent to hold it, and they would decide so in case of a Catholic priest, because the principle is just, and because they would decide so in the case of any Protestant minister. Both the church and the state suffer from the present state of things, and unless it can be so changed as to place matters on the footing they are with us, we see no hope in Mexico for either. The fact that Bishop Rosati, when he was sent to arrange ecclesiastical affairs in Hayti, received instructions from the Holy See to place them, if possible, on the same footing they are in the United States, tells us plainly enough what are the wishes of Rome in this respect, and may satisfy us, that, if there are objections on the part of individual Catholics who suppose the world has stood still for the last two hundred years, or that it is perfectly possible and easy revocare defunctos, they are such as we need have no scruples of conscience in disregarding, or even combating, providing we do it with the respect always due to those who adhere to the past, and resolutely resist all changes.

Let us not be misunderstood. We do not, as we could not as a Catholic, censure or complain of the order which obtained under the Christian emperors, under the barbarians in the middle ages, or under modern monarchy. We do not oppose concordats; we do not pretend they are either wrong or unwise; we defend the practice of the church and the principle of her practice in every age. We are finding no fault with what has been. The church, as we often say, deals with the world as she finds it, and when she does not find free men, she cannot deal with free men. Where thero are only sovereigns, and no free citizens, she can in her political relations deal only with sovereigns. She has done the best that was to be done with the ages she has traversed. If circumstances have changed, or are changing, so as to render a different policy practicable or expedient, it does not follow that she has ever been wrong or unwise. No reproach is necessarily cast upon the past, nor do we demand. a revolution in France or anywhere else in favor of republicanism. We do not like the Napoleonic régime, or dynasty,

but we believe a revolution against either would, even if successful, cost more than it would be worth. Our readers need not to be told that we are opposed to all revolutions, because they generally fail in their purpose, and because we are not at liberty to do evil that good may come. In France, even, we should be a loyal subject were we a Frenchman.

But what we do ask, and what we write, as far as in our power, to effect, is, that Catholics should not allow themselves to regard modern liberalism as an unmixed evil, and that in all countries where even a shadow of public liberty remains, and Catholics have a degree of freedom and equality, they should resist with all their power and influence every attempt, under whatever guise it may be made, to establish despotism on the ruins of the liberties of the citizen. We have wished also to draw attention to the connection there is between religious freedom and political freedom. What we ask for our church is not state patronage, is not special favors or special protection from the government, but liberty, and that liberty which is liberty for all as well as for us. Give the church an open field and fair play, she needs nothing else. We confide in her own intrinsic power and divinity to win the victory. We pray, therefore, those inconsiderate Catholics, whether in France or out of France, who make themselves the adulators of cæsarism, to look ahead and see that they are only storing up wrath against the day of wrath, or only preparing the way for the new republican revolution, when it breaks out anew, to be more hostile to religion than ever; that they are confirming in the minds of non-Catholics the grand objection we have in our age to combat, and that they are so compromising the Catholic cause that Catholics in the new revolution must either join a movement hostile to the church, or join the cause of the sovereigns, fight on the side of despotism, and go down with kings and Cæsars. The revolution may be put off for a time, but come again it will, if the sovereigns have their way, and all their military forces will prove impotent before the irrepressible instincts of humanity. True prudence foresees the evil and guards against it.

The danger is not now of a republican outbreak, for the pear is not ripe, but there is danger that the reaction against republicanism in Europe, since 1850, will provoke such an outbreak, and one that will not be repressed so easily or so suddenly as was that of 1848. The danger to us Catholics is that in this new outbreak we shall be found associated in

the popular mind with the defenders of cæsarism, and thus be opposed even by the sincere and earnest friends of rational liberty. We warn our brethren of this danger, and we earnestly entreat them not to let our words pass unheeded. Many things indicate to us that the emperor of the French is losing, rather than gaining popularity. He was thought to have come out of the eastern war with a manifest advantage over England, and as the arbiter of Europe. But however much British interests may have been disregarded by the peace of Paris, it is clear that the English government has since contrived to recover the ground it had lost, and to make its policy for the East triumph over that of France. In diplomacy, Lord Palmerston has carried it over the emperor. He has defeated the French in regard to a canal across the Isthmus of Suez, gained a footing in the Persian Gulf, defeated the Russian policy in the Persian court, induced Napoleon to aid his views of conquest in China, and obtained a grant from the porte of a railroad along the valley of the Euphrates, with the guaranty from the Turkish government of a minimum of six per cent, while the emperor of the French has to content himself with the present of St. Anne's church at Jerusalem. This in this age of materialism will not render the emperor popular with the active spirits of his empire. English supremacy seemed never so near being permanently established as at this moment. The interests of France seem to us to have been more compromised by the developments of the English policy in the East during the last year than those of England were by the peace. Lord Palmerston seems likely, so far as regards France, to prove in effect a second Chatham. Let this defeat of French interests be exploited as it will be by French republicans, and the effect upon the imperial régime will prove all but fatal. Let not our Catholic friends repose in too much security. The throne on which they lean may fail them, and the only way in our judgment to sustain it, and ward off the revolution, is to anticipate it, and develop the imperial constitution into a liberal government, satisfactory to the friends of rational and well-ordered liberty.

BRITISH PREPONDERANCE.

[From Brownson's Quarterly Review for October, 1857.]

THE succession of events is so rapid, and the changes in the aspect of things are so frequent, that a review published only once in three months cannot keep pace with them. When our July Review went to press, Lord Palmerston appeared everywhere in the ascendant, and France every where as overreached and compelled to second the policy of Great Britain, British preponderance everywhere established, and not likely soon to be disturbed. But hardly were our speculations on the subject published before news from British India rendered our speculations, for the moment at least, doubtful, if not false.

An English periodical has pleasantly remarked of us, that our strongest passion after love for our religion is hatred of England. But this proves that even English periodicals are not infallible. We do not hate England, indeed hatred is not with us a very strong passion, and we are not aware of hating any nation or any individual. We like England as the land of our ancestors. We like the English people, and perhaps have more points of sympathy with them than with any other European people. But both as a Catholic and as a patriot, we do dislike English preponderance, and we would rather, for the best interests of mankind, see any other European nation supreme than Great Britain. This is because we are, rightly or wrongly, opposed, heart and soul, to the British industrial and mercantile system. We have been opposed to that system ever since we had a thought on the subject, and our opposition becomes stronger and more intense in proportion as we see more of its workings, especially in our own country. Wherever the influence of Great Britain is felt, the virtue and simplicity, the peace and happiness of the people depart, and a fierce, bitter, all-absorbing struggle for the goods of this world alone ensues. English influence has ruined Portugal, has prostrated Spain, embroiled Sardinia, demoralized, to a fearful extent, the greater part of Italy, and weakened France. It corrupts morals, weakens the hold of religion on the heart, and diffuses a degrading heathenism. Her literature, her

philosophy, her religion, as well as her industry and commerce, tend to materialize the nations, and to produce the conviction that man lives for this world alone. She is of the earth earthy, and the grand apostle of carnal Judaism. We cannot, then, but dread her preponderance, and though we may admire her intense energy, we cannot but deplore its direction.

We regretted that the opposition to the British system had, in the late eastern war, no better representative than Russia, but we believed that the interests of religion and humanity required the defeat of what we regarded then and regard now as an unprincipled combination against her. We regretted the Anglo-French alliance, and in the war we own we wished the defeat of the allies, not because we had any hostile feeling to France, but because we believed their success would tend to confirm British supremacy, which in our view is worse for the world than would be that of Russia, as bad as that no doubt would be. We believed that Great Britain was the enemy from whom France had the most to dread, and that Russia or Austria was the ally the emperor should have courted. The true interest of France is to labor to isolate Great Britain from the continent, above all to prevent her from finding, as in times past, an ally in Austria and central Europe. France now, no doubt, has a good understanding with Russia, which we are glad to see. but it has been purchased at the expense of an equally good understanding between those old allies, Austria and England. What is desirable is that France and Russia should so accommodate their respective interests to the legitimate interests of Austria as to detach her from her English alliance, and enable her to act in harmony with them; for we regard English policy as alike hostile to every continental state.

England depends for her rank as a first-class power on her Indian empire, threatened by the Transcaucasian expansion of Russia and the African expansion of France. Her policy is, very properly, to guard against these two expansions; Russia dominant in the Turkish and Persian courts, and France dominant in Egypt and Syria, with a ship canal across the Isthmus of Suez, the Indian empire is not worth a life's purchase and British preponderance has ceased to exist. Finding the new emperor of the French ready to engage in a war to consolidate his throne and to force his recognition as legitimate sovereign of France by the mon