sion. Gigantic abuses have crept into all of these departments, frauds and peculation are being brought to light every day, and when those responsible for these abuses have resigned or been dismissed, their accounts and other compromising documents are not to be found. The townspeople, who see the neglect and disorder around them, and look for some equivalent for their ever-increasing taxes, can find nothing but a vast addition to the primary and middle class schools, to which the most respectable take care not to entrust their children. The crowning scandal of all has recently been brought to light, and is of such a disgraceful nature that we may hope it will at last arouse the electors from their apathy, and recall them to a better sense of their interests. The burgomaster suddenly resigned his office, at a moment when the Hôtel de Ville was already in a state of complete disorganization. This resignation was provoked by the disclosure of one of the most discreditable transactions ever connected with a public authority. He had sold a house which he had just inherited from his family, to have it converted into a house of ill fame, in the success of which vile enterprise the contract gave him an interest, and the College of Echevins (aldermen) had been summoned to give the necessary licence for carrying out the project. Since his resignation no one has been found to succeed him, and the Corporation of Brussels now remains without a burgomaster-the first Echevin performing the funetions of chief magistrate until the next election, when it is to be hoped a better class of men will be entrusted with the municipal government. So much for the ultra-Liberal municipality of the capital. Those of the provincial towns, although not disgraced by such glaring scandals, have, as a rule, proved themselves equally blundering and incapable of transacting

business.

How, then, the reader may again ask, are we to explain their existence? The answer is not difficult to find. They are the result of the system of caucus elections; these administrations are elected not by the people, but by the Liberal Associations to which we shall now refer. Prominent amongst these, both for its marvellous organization and the influence it exercises over the electoral corps, is the Liberal Association of Brussels. This body has all but entirely usurped into its hands the functions of the electors. The Liberals, knowing that their only hope of retaining power depends upon their union and discipline, have surrendered to the chiefs of the party the task of selecting suitable candidates and managing the business of elections. Availing themselves of this necessity of centralized action, the Radical leaders have established the so-called Liberal Association; by their zeal and activity they have won the confidence of the more important

Liberal electors, and have, little by little, arrogated to themselves the direction of the affairs of the party. Freemasonry has thrown its weight into the balance, and has naturally exerted its vast influence in favour of its most unscrupulous partisans. Thanks to the apathy and indifference of the great mass of the citizens, the political club thus formed has substituted itself for them as the arbiter of elections. In case of any disobedience to its dictates, the Liberal electors are threatened with the danger of a Catholic representation; any division in their ranks, any hesitation in their votes, will open the door to reactionary candidates, and expose the country to the designs of an ever-watchful clerical party. Union is our sole force, it urges, therefore you Liberal and neutral electors must obey us or be prepared to pass again under the yoke of the priests. All Liberals who wish to rise in their party have to bow down to the caucus; for them there is no other road to success. It may easily be imagined what an association of this nature can effect in a town like Brussels, where a majority of the electors, if not actually Liberal by inclination, are indifferent as regards public affairs, and easily played upon by the sophisms and calumnies propagated against the Catholic party. They have remained passively under its tyranny, and suffered themselves to have their eyes bandaged until it was too late to shake off the yoke. At the present moment, the electoral force of the capital, made up of some thirty thousand voters, returning to the Chamber of Representatives alone fourteen deputies-a ninth of the total representation of the country has become a mere instrument for ratifying the decisions of an Association, the supreme council of which only numbers from three to five hundred men, but a small proportion of whom are themselves electors. When an election for the Communal Council or the Legislature is at hand, various meetings of the Association are held, the chiefs only of the various sections being summoned. The claims of the different candidates are here discussed; they address the assembly in turn, explain their programmes, and, in fact, go through all the forms of a competitive examination in socialistic atheism. After being tested before the different branches of the Association, a poll is taken-some three hundred associates generally voting and the candidate who receives at the final poll the most votes is selected and gazetted in the Liberal press as the candidate-elect of the Association, his competitors being required to efface themselves. The contest for the council, or the deputation, as the case may be, is now virtually decided, the Association being content with addressing a circular to the citizens informing them of its decision, and demanding their attendance at the polling booths to register and put the legal sanction upon it. They are never for one moment

consulted as to whether they approve of the candidate or not; they are considered to have resigned all liberty of choice in the matter, and are summarily told to vote as desired. The result is a foregone conclusion; the bulk of the electors are disheartened and dare not resist; at the same time, they do not care to vote for candidates who have never solicited their suffrages, and of whom they have no means of forming a judgment; consequently, only from a thousand to fifteen hundred of them go to the poll at all on the day of the election, and these record their votes as they have been directed. The same proceedings take place in the other large towns which are blessed with Liberal Associations modelled after that of the capital: and thus the representatives of the nation are chosen, as far as the Liberal party is concerned, by the suffrage of a clique of demagogues and wire-pullers, possessed of the confidence of a mere handful of the population. This, then, is the solution of the problem, and gives a reason for the otherwise inexplicable fact that a nationreputed free, and endowed in an eminent degree with sound common-sense has submitted to the incapable and disastrous administration of the men who now preside over its destinies. Here we have a striking example of the deplorable state of things which may be brought about, when those who have a right to vote forget that at times it may also be a duty, and prefer, from want of energy, or a culpable sacrifice to party principles, to abdicate their rights and leave the direction of their country to a noisy minority. The leading spirits of the Liberal Association know well that their opinions are not shared by any considerable section of the nation, and that they can only hope to enforce them on the country by returning to office men entirely subservient to themselves, and who will never murmur against their behests. It is clear that they have not usurped the authority of the electors for the sake of allowing freedom of judgment and independence of action to the elected. Their main object being the destruction of religion, cost what it may to the country, and the triumph of their sectarian doctrines upon the ruin of the ancient order of things, it was evidently not to men of large and upright views that their cause could be confided. Those who would only use their influence for the good of the whole nation; who were capable, not only of recognizing, but of acting on the principle that good government consists in legislating for each and all, and not only for such as thought with themselves, would clearly refuse to be guided in public life by the narrow and petty policy of a clique. Consequently, the Liberal Association has jealously excluded such politicians from public affairs. And this is natural; for to put power into the hands of those who were bent upon legislating on the principles of justice, be they Liberals or

Catholics, would be a suicidal act, and the surest means of defeating its own ends. Its mandatories, therefore, must look only to the advancement of Liberal principles; common justice must be justice for Liberals only; every consideration opposed to the realization of the Radical programme, no matter how conducive it may be to the moral and material good of the country, must be set aside. In proof of our theory, it is only necessary to read the accounts of the examinations which Liberal candidates have undergone at the meetings of the Association. To go to Mass or attend Easter duties was pronounced a disqualification for political distinction. In April of last year the caucus rejected for a senatorial election three candidates; two because convicted of having been to confession; a third for having contributed to the building of a church, nothwithstanding that he was able to prove satisfactorily that he had only done so as a commercial speculation, and that personally he never entered a place of worship. At another election two candidates presented themselves before the Association, whose only possible claims to a seat in the Chamber, were based upon the intensity of their hatred of religion, neither offering to bring forward any other test of capacity as a legislator. The choice eventually fell upon the President of the Society "La Libre Penseé," although his opponent eloquently pleaded that he also had a stake in that noble society, and, moreover, that he had two sons, neither of whom had ever been baptized? It is hardly necessary to say more upon this subject, and our readers will no longer be surprised that an administration composed of such despicable individuals is not likely to give proof of any great ability in the management of affairs. What precedes will be sufficient to show whither Belgium Liberalism is tending, and in what utter ruin it must involve the country if it is ever successful in attaining its ends. We can conceive of no system of despotism more crushing than this, no more complete destruction of all that constitutes the true and healthy life of a nation. Local and provincial liberties, the greatest safeguard of political freedom, have, as we have seen, been virtually annulled; the real force of Representative Government has been paralyzed, and its benefits transformed by reason of the encroachments of the Liberal Associations upon the rights of the elector. Yet this is only a first step; the designs of Freemasonry extend over a much wider field, and are directed towards the establishment of a far more complete dominion, not only over men's actions, but over their minds and souls. The negro under the most cruel of masters, the most oppressed serf in the darkest province of Russia, was a free man compared with what the peoples of the Continent will become, unless they arouse themselves and throw off the iron yoke which modern Liberalism

is fastening around them. The tyranny which it seeks to establish is more harsh and grinding than any the world has yet witnessed; it is one that seeks to interfere with what men think and say as much as with what they do; its aim is to take the child from the custody of its parents, to stamp out alike largeness of principle and individuality of character, to reduce free nations to the veriest associations of slaves, curbed under one degrading and inexorable law. Reverence of God, loyalty to men, honour, virtue, are all vain words; are ignored, if not prohibited, in the godless creed which it is sought to substitute for the ancient precepts of Christianity; the equality which it writes on its banner is not that which would raise us by directing the human mind to imitate what is higher and nobler, but what would fain lower everything to one dead, unworthy level; its fraternity would develop hatred; its liberty we have seen means slavery. Catholics are then called upon to defend the noblest of causes; they stand, almost alone, the advocates of liberty and the true rights of man. The old type of Liberalism, in Belgium as in France, is fast disappearing, its followers are rapidly dwindling under the exigencies of the New School, and the struggle is being concentrated between Radicals and Catholics. Upon the latter devolves the task for the future of upholding not only their faith, but the independence of their country, and its political and municipal liberties. It is well, perhaps, that it should be so; now that the contest has been confined to its real issues, we may hope that a day will arrive when the triumph of the religious party will prove once for all that in the modern state true progress can only be made in maintaining the union of Government and Religion, and that those who are now unwittingly forging the chains with which the Secret Societies seek to bind them, will finally acknowledge that a recognition of the rights of God is the only guarantee for the security of those of man.

B)- Clifford in his first actide decore, that the 18th chap: Genesis is a hymn, & not a declaration of histone fact..

This artice deals with dopections.

ART VIII. THE DAYS OF CREATION. A REPLY.

THE article in the DUBLIN REVIEW of last April, entitled “The Days of the Week and the Days of Creation," has evoked a sharp controversy and a voluminous correspondence in the pages of the Tablet. Some critics have expressed their doubts and fears regarding the orthodoxy of the writer. It is not necessary I should enter into any explanation on this point; such fears can only be entertained by persons who are unacquainted with the decisions of the Church, the writings of S. Augustine, and the