taken upon themselves their office under the Commission of their Sovereign. Let us also suppose that the authority asserted in these proclamations was without personal limitations, and as full and comprehensive as could be asserted after a formal cession of Judæa on the part of the Ottoman Porte to the soi-disant heir of the King of Jerusalem. Let us suppose all this to have been carried into execution. without the consent of the Ottoman Porte; and that in answer to the remonstrance of the Ottoman Porte, it should have been said, that the authority claimed by the heir of the King of Jerusalem was a purely voluntary authority; that it was only over the minds, not the persons, of those who were resident within the dominions of the Sultan, that any power was intended to be exercised; that every commission of a Christian King had its proper form, and that had the Sultan who blamed the tenor of the commission just issued, taken any pains to examine the tenor of the commissions of Christian Powers, he would have found nothing new and unusual in the form of that which he objected to. So far from such an answer founding a justification for the proceeding, it would rather aggravate the outrage; and the Sultan would have every reason to conclude, that there" was a pretension to sovereignty over his realm, and a claim to sole and undivided sway;" and he would be justified in resisting to the utmost such an encroachment on his rights of sovereignty, and such a departure from received practice. It is not sufficient to say, in reply to such an imaginary case, that there is no parallel between temporal and spiritual matters, if there should happen to be a parallel between them in respect of an infringement of the law of the land, and if that infringement be inconsistent with due respect to those attributes of sovereignty which appertain to the Crown

of an independent Prince. The Holy See may, of course, say, that it is not bound, as a Foreign Power, by the Municipal Law of England; but if its proclamations hurt the sovereignty of the British Crown, the Holy See, for all-purposes of redress, is not out of the reach of the same arguments which it is customary to address to other Foreign Powers, who violate the received practice.

In order to test this principle, let it be applied to an extreme case. Under the system established by the present Brief, it is competent for the Pope to lay the kingdom of England under an Interdict, which the Roman Catholic Clergy, though subjects of her Majesty, would be ecclesiastically bound to execute, as they are henceforth made subject to all the regulations of the Common Law of the Roman Catholic Church. But the Crown of England could not ignore such an application of so-called spiritual authority on the part of the Pope to matters, which the law of the land should hold to be of a temporal character, in the nineteenth, any more than in the fifteenth century. Let us suppose that the Rescripts of the Pope, which have been issued in accordance with the resolution of the Synod of Thurles, should not be obeyed in Ireland, and that it should be in contemplation to lay that kingdom under an Interdict, and so constrain its Roman Catholic population to withdraw their children from the national schools s; would not the Crown of England be as much entitled to exercise its rights of sovereignty in preventing the publication of the Interdict, as the Crown of France was in the time of its Parliaments? and would not the issuing of such an Interdict constitute a casus belli as much in the nineteenth century as in the fifteenth, although the interdict might be spiritually operative only upon a third of the population of the British

Islands? Yet, if the doctrine is to prevail, that religious toleration implies the absence of all interference on the part of the State in "matters which are called spiritual," the action of the Crown of England is paralysed by religious toleration, whilst the action of the Crown of France remained unfettered in the presence and in despite of an Established Church.

But it is said that the case involved in the present Brief is concluded against England by reason of the circumstances of Ireland, and that the same proceedings must be tolerated in England, which are tolerated in Ireland. It is said also, that in Ireland the law is systematically violated, and that this has been immemorially done without let or hindrance. Lord St. Germans has set forth, in a very simple form, the difficulties which suggest themselves under this head, and which deserve a more particular examination.

In the first place, then, it may be observed, that Ireland is pre-eminently the land of anomalies. Dr. Cullen, for instance, in the very document in which he inculcates loyalty to the Crown, commits a flagrant violation of the law of the land, by assuming the title of an Archbishop of the Established Church of England and Ireland. Dr. Cullen may, indeed, cite the precedent of Richard Creagh, consecrated Archbishop of Armagh by Pius V., as far back as the reign of Queen Elizabeth, although that See was already filled by Dr. Loftus, the Primate of the Established Church; and he may point to a long series of Bishops in Ireland created by the Pope's authority, and contend that the government of the Roman Catholic Church by Titular Bishops in Ordinary has never been practically intermitted in Ireland, although it has been totally abandoned in England. Lord St. Germans may also be quite correct in stating, for the subject must have been peculiarly within the knowledge of the Secretary for

Ireland, that the appointment of Bishops with territorial titles in Ireland has been immemorially practised in that country without let or hindrance. But these, and similar arguments, instead of establishing a precedent for England, seem rather to point in another direction.

The ancient titles, for instance, in Ireland, have been habitually usurped, in spite of the laws against recusants; and the Pope has been accustomed to appoint Titular Bishops to Irish Sees from the reign of Queen Elizabeth. These Bishops have thus the sanction of custom and usage long prior to the Act of Union, and the Notizie of Rome furnish a long catalogue of them. They were, however, for the most part resident out of the Queen's dominions, and delegated their authority to ordinary Priests as their Vicars-general.

Such, however, has not been the case with England. The Sees of the English Church have never been filled with Titular Bishops of the Roman Church; nor has the Pope ventured to erect new Sees within the realm of England until the present moment. It is said, indeed, by Dr. Wiseman, that the Warden who has governed the tribes of Galway in spiritual matters from time immemorial, was created a Bishop in 1831, when the Wardenship was converted by Pope Gregory XVI. into a Bishopric. This may have

been done secretly in a corner of Ireland, without any remonstrance at this exercise of Papal power, but the present measure is "proclaimed from the housetops! The law of the land is, in this case, not evaded, but defied! and a Cardinal Prince of the Roman Court sets up his Archiepiscopal throne over against the Sanctuary of the Legislature, and it is now gravely contended, that the English nation is not at liberty

to remonstrate, because the Irish nation has acquiesced in a wrongful act of Pope Gregory XVI.

It is not necessary to disapprove of the generous spirit of toleration which the legislature has of late years exhibited towards the Roman Catholics of Ireland, in order to justify a resolution to repel a wholesale act of aggression upon England. On the other hand, it is not necessary to bring down England to the same level with Ireland in order to maintain the integrity of the United Church of England and Ireland. The distinction has, in a previous place, been pointed out between the several conditions of toleration, protection, and establishment. These distinctions do not rest upon theory, but upon facts. There are three separate conditions in which the Roman Catholic Communion may be studied as existing in connection with independent sovereign states. In the first place, it may be under the superintendence of Bishops in partibus, as Vicars Apostolic of the See of Rome, as in Sweden, Denmark, and Saxony. This condition is one of religious toleration, under which the exercise of religion is free, and perfect liberty of conscience is permitted in matters of doctrine, but positive restrictions are imposed by the law of the land in matters of discipline. In the second place, it may be under superintendence of Bishops in Ordinary, as in Belgium, and in the Rhenish Provinces of Prussia, and in Poland, and in Little Russia. This condition is one of ecclesiastical protection, under which perfect liberty in matters both of doctrine and discipline is enjoyed within the general limits of the law of the land; but the law of the land stops short with the bare recognition of this liberty, and does not aid the law of the Church by the process of the civil courts. Thus in Belgium, the law of the land does not aid the foreign law of the

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