this fact. Pope Pius IX. on the 20th May, 1850, delivered an allocution in Secret Consistory, in which he advanced grave allegations against the Belgian government "on account of the perils which menaced the Catholic religion in Belgium." In reference to this we find in the first of Cardinal Wiseman's lectures, printed " by authority," a passage from the speech of "the Minister of Justice in Belgium," in the debate which took place in the Belgian Chamber of Representatives on 16th Nov. 1850. "How little fear," the Cardinal observes in the moral which he draws from the language of the minister, "is entertained in that country of danger to the state, from the action of the Papal power!"

It might be supposed from the Cardinal's representation, that the Minister of Justice was called upon in his capacity of Minister of the Department of Religious Affairs to give explanations to the Chamber; and that his explanations were perfectly satisfactory, and allayed all their fears. But his Eminence, in referring his readers to this debate, has omitted to notice the debate of the 15th Nov., which was on the subject of the allegations of his Holiness against the Belgian government, and of which the debate of the 16th Nov. was, as it were, a renewal.

The Minister of Foreign Affairs was the member of the Cabinet, who was called upon by M. de Percival on the first day of the opening of the Chambers after the lamented death of the Queen of the Belgians, to give explanations as to the attitude assumed by the Belgian government in consequence of "the Allocution of the Holy Father;" and he thereupon laid before the Chamber the written despatches from the Foreign Office to the Belgian Chargé d'Affaires* *See Appendix, p. cxiv.

at Rome, with the substance of the verbal note communicated officially in reply to the Chargé d'Affaires by the Cardinal Secretary of State. The purport of this diplomatic communication was to claim the attention of the Pope to the real state of the law in Belgium, and to appeal to his high impartiality to do justice in regard to the misrepresentations which had been spread abroad concerning the measures of the Belgian government.

His Holiness on this occasion directed the Secretary of State to correct an inaccuracy in the report of his allocution, and to explain that his language as to the Catholic Faith being in peril, had reference to the law of education at that time (May, 1850), under the consideration of the Belgian Chamber. The Belgian Government, in answer to this explanation, declared that they did not consider this reply on the part of his Holiness to be sufficient; and the Chamber, after a long debate, approved the language and the conduct of the Government by a division of fifty against twenty-four.

It thus appears that his Holiness the Pope did not consider his authority in such a matter to be out of the reach of diplomatic negotiation, and that Belgium, to which country Cardinal Wiseman directs the attention of his readers, as illustrating in the simplest manner "the reciprocal right of a Church not established in monopoly, and of the civil Government," deals and negotiates with the Papal Power as a Foreign Power. Further, to mark the dissatisfaction of the Belgian Crown, a discontinuance of the usual mode of friendly intercourse has been adopted according to the practice of Europe between independent Sovereign Powers, and the Belgian Envoy to the Court

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of Rome is not for the present to resume his diplomatic functions at that Court.

It is further said, that any interference on the part of the Sovereign with the restoration of the Roman Catholic Hierarchy, "is an interference with the internal government of the Roman Catholic Church, which is as absurd on Protestant as on Catholic grounds. This remark of Mr. Bowyer's tends to change the issue altogether, and to transfer the question from the domain of law, to the region of theology. It is not a question of Protestant or Catholic interference, which is involved in the present issue between Rome and England: it is a question of Public Authority and National Preservation.

Let us consider for a moment what the present Brief purports to effect. And here, indeed, a serious question arises for the Roman Catholic body in England. The Pope ordains that his Letters Apostolical shall be valid and take effect, notwithstanding the sanctions of Universal Councils to the contrary. In other words, the Pope here proclaims himself to be above the authority of Universal Councils. This principle of Ultra-Montanism* has hitherto never been accepted on the Northern side of the Alps.

* Cf. Bellarmine de Auctoritate Conciliorum, 1. 2. c. 13., who discusses "An Concilium sit supra Papam," and says, "et quamvis postea in Concilio Florentino et Lateranensi ultimo videatur quæstio diffinita, tamen quia Florentinum Concilium non ita expresse hoc diffinivit, et de Concilio Lateranensi, quod expressissime rem diffinivit, nonnulli dubitant, an fuerit necne Generale, ideo usque quæstio superest etiam inter Catholicos." The Councils of Constance (1414-1418) and Basle (1431-1443) rejected the doctrine of the Pope's authority being paramount to that of General Councils. That doctrine, in its most extravagant form, was set forth in the Bull "Pastor Eternus," published by Leo X., in 1516, almost immediately after the last Council of Lateran,

If the omnipotence of the Holy See be thus openly maintained at the very outset, what power but the temporal power of the State remains, which can be successfully invoked to limit the things appurtenant to the spiritual function? If the Pope's Brief shall run vigore suo within the realm of England on the present occasion, notwithstanding it is admitted to be contrary to the Law of the Land that it should be published and put into execution, to what sanction can an appeal be made to stay the execution of any other Brief? If it should prove to be an article of faith amongst the majority of the Roman Catholic body in England, that the Pope's authority is above that of Universal Councils, they must bow to his ordinances, whatever be the nature of their subject-matter, and it becomes a spiritual duty for them to carry into execution the Papal decrees, however much they may be opposed even to the judgment of the Universal Church; and, according to the doctrine set forth on the present occasion, the majesty of the Law of the Land, if it forbids the particular act enjoined by those decrees, must veil its head before the majesty of Individual Conscience! If this doctrine be not destructive of public authority-if it be not fatal to national preservation—let it be publicly recorded in the Tables of the Laws of the Realm, so that all who pass by may note it.

But the Roman Catholic body in England, if it accepts the Brief of Pope Pius IX. and its territorial

for the purpose of condemning the Pragmatic Sanction in the kingdom of France. This Bull recites that the Eternal Shepherd "migraturus ex mundo in soliditate petræ, Petrum ejusque successores Vicarios suos instituit, quibus, ex libri Regum testimonio, ita obedire necesse est, ut qui non obedierit, morte moriatur." Bullarium, tom. iii. pars iii. p. 430.

H

Hierarchy, must accept the doctrine that the Pope is above the authority of Universal Councils; it must, in fact, accept Popery, as distinguished from the Catholic Faith, in its most ultramontane form. For the Catholic Faith does not require that doctrine to be received; and the Roman Catholic Church in Germany and France still maintains with Pope Zosimus, "contra statuta Patrum condere aliquid, vel mutare, nec hujus quidem sedis Apostolicæ potest auctoritas."*

It cannot therefore be matter of surprise, on the contrary, it was to be expected, that the Chiefs of the Roman Catholic Laity in England, who hold the Catholic Religion of their ancestors, which admitted no such doctrine, should raise their voices and protest with instinctive good sense against an Act of the Pope, which places them "in a position where they must either break with Rome, or violate their allegiance to the Constitution of these realms."

Here we may revert once more to the proceedings of the Synod of Thurles, to which allusion has been already made in an earlier chapter. Her Majesty's Government, anxious to afford to the middle classes of Ireland the means of educating their sons in a manner suitable to their station and wants, seeing that half a million of the children of the lower classes attend the national schools, proposed to establish three colleges in Ireland, in which, by appointment of the Crown, professors were to lecture in all departments but theology, in which

* Cf. Déclaration du Clergé de France, touchant la Puissance Ecclésiastique, du 19 Mars, 1682, in the fourth volume of Les Libertés de l'Eglise Gallicane, par Durand de Maillane, p. 458. "Le jugement du Pape n'est pas irréformable, à moins que le consentement de l'Eglise n'intervienne,"