CONCLUSION.

AND now there only remains for me the hardest and saddest part of the task, which has not been sought by me, but has been forced upon me. A few months ago I could not have believed that I should have ever written these pages. I have never written any with more pain, and none of them have cost me so much as that which I am about to write.

Thus far I have endeavoured to confine myself to the subject-matter of Mr. Gladstone's pamphlet; but before I end, I feel bound by an imperative duty to lay before him, in behalf of his Catholic fellow-countrymen, the nature of the act which he has done.

He has not only invited, but instigated Catholics to rise against the Divine authority of the Catholic Church. He has endeavoured to create divisions among them. If Mr. Gladstone does not believe the authority of the Catholic Church to be Divine, he knows that they do.

If he thinks such a rising to be 'moral and mental freedom,' he knows that they believe it to be what his own Litany calls schism, heresy, and deadly sin.' If he believes religious separations to be lawful, he knows that they believe them to be violations of the Divine law. I am compelled therefore to say that this is at least an act of signal rashness.

No man has watched Mr. Gladstone's career as a statesman with a more generous and disinterested

good-will than I have. No one has more gladly appre ciated his gifts; no one has more equitably interpreted certain acts of his political life, nor has hailed his successes with greater joy. But when he casts off the character of a statesman, for which he has shown so great capacity, to play the Canonist and Theologian, for which he has here shown so little, and that with the intent of sowing discord and animosities among six € millions of his fellow-countrymen-and, I must moreover add, with an indulgence of unchastened language rarely to be equalled-I feel bound to say that he has been betrayed into an act for which I can find no adequate excuse. I must tell him that if he would incline the Catholics of the Empire to accept the ministries of his compassion, he must first purify his style both of writing and of thinking. Catholics are not to be convinced or persuaded by such phrases as 'the present perilous Pontificate; the Papal chair, its aiders and abettors;' 'the great hierarchic power and those who have egged it on;' 'the present degradation of the Episcopal order;' 'the subserviency or pliability of the Council;' hideous mummies;' 'head-quarters;' 'the follies of Ecclesiastical power;' 'foreign arrogance; the myrmidons of the Apostolic Chamber;' 'the foreign influence of a caste.' I transcribe these words from his pages with repugnance; not, indeed, for our sake against whom they are levelled, but for the statesman who has thought them fitting. Mr. Gladstone can do many things; but he cannot do all things. He has a strong hand; but there is a bow which he cannot bend. He has here tried his hand at a task for which, without something more than mere

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literary knowledge, even his varied gifts will not suffice. This Expostulation is, as I have already said, an act out of all harmony and proportion with a great statesman's life.

I have written these words with a painful constraint; but, cost what it may, duty must be done, and I believe it to be my duty to record this judgment, in behalf of the Catholics of this country, on an act unjust in itself, and therefore not only barren of all good result, but charged with grave public dangers.

But, I cannot break off with a note so cheerless. If this Expostulation has cast down many hopes both of a public and a private kind, we cannot altogether regret its publication. If such mistrusts and misconceptions existed in the minds of our fellow-subjects the sooner and the more openly they were made public the better. We are not content to be tolerated as suspect or dangerous persons, or to be set at large upon good behaviour. We thank Mr. Gladstone for gaining us the hearing which we have had before the public justice of our country; and we are confident that his impeachment will be withdrawn. His own mind is too large, too just, and too upright to refuse to acknowledge an error, when he sees that he has been misled. It is also too clear and too accurate not to perceive that such is now the fact. I see in this the augury of a happier and more peaceful future than if this momentary conflict had never arisen. shall all understand each other better. Our civil and religious peace at home will be firmer by this trial.

We

If the great German Empire shall only learn in time, thirteen millions of contented Catholic subjects,

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reconciled as they still may be by a return of just laws, will give a support to its unity which nothing can shake.

If Italy shall only come to see that the Roman question is, and for ever will be, a source of weakness, contention, and danger to its welfare; and, seeing this, shall solve it peacefully, as Italy alone can do, by undoing its un-Catholic and therefore un-Italian policy, then its unity and independence will be secured by the spontaneous co-operation of a united people, gathered around the centre of all its Christian glories. Such a solution would then be consecrated by the highest sanctions of its faith. If wise counsels prevail, and wise friends of Italy shall gain its ear, it may be again what once it was, the foremost people in the Christian world.

They have come Divided as we are,

And, lastly, for ourselves, our world-wide Empire cannot turn back upon its path without disintegration. It is bound together, not by material force, but by the moral bond of just laws and the glad consent of a free people. But justice and freedom cannot be put asunder. They flow from one source; they can be kept pure only by the same stream. down to us from our Christianity. we are a Christian people still. By religious conflict our Christianity will waste away as a moth fretting a garment. By religious peace, all that is true, and wise, and just, and Christian, will be perpetually multiplied, binding indissolubly in one all men and all races of our Imperial Commonwealth.