ever varying air of the French metropolis. Men so small, however, could not have repaid their employer, had they not entered into the labours of others. By two minds of distinction had the crisis been prepared.

Joseph de Maistre, armed with a style at once cutting, biting, highly coloured and picturesque, placed himself before a public with whom style is almost every thing, as the champion of the theocratic society of the middle ages. He fell on the modern notions of liberty and progress in a manner which Frenchmen can least resist. He assailed them with ridicule; he threw scorn upon them; he treated them insultingly. It was Voltaire in a Jesuit's cloak. It was Voltaire undoing Voltaire's work. With equal ardour and with full enthusiasm did he celebrate the absolute authority of King and Pope. Even persecution of all kinds found favour in his eyes, and called forth the admiring tokens of his pen. Having confounded and derided ideas, he assailed institutions. Alas for the republican forms of government which had sprung from the Great Revolution; he overwhelmed them with sarcasm; he handled them as a boxer in his wrath handles a retiring adversary. Read his work on The Pope; read his Evenings at Saint-Petersburg.

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Bonald, less of an enthusiast but more of a metaphysician than De Maistre, professed the same doctrines and aimed at the same objects. Especially did he give them the support of a new basis, derived from his study of languages. He set out on the principle that speech must have been immediately given by God to man. But if speech was given, ideas, of which speech is the representative, were also given the shell contains the kernel. Hence truth comes from withont. Truth originally rested on the authority of the God who gave it. But our truth is only the old truth with augmentations. Consequently all truth comes from a higher source, namely, God; and depends on the authority of that source that is, God and his ministers. Here, then, is the function of the Church, and here is its justification. The Church is in God's stead to man. Consequently the Church is the teacher, man the pupil. The very ideas imply supremacy and submission. And as the Church represents God in morals, so does the King represent God in politics. Their law is God's law; their will is God's will. Each perfect and supreme, the two when united are the voice of God and the power of God on earth.

The propounding of these slavish doctrines at first struck society into a maze. It became giddy, it staggered. Recovering from the amazement, it felt repelled and disgusted. In that state of the public mind liberalism gained influence and began to make head. But the intoxicating draughts were renewed. Supplied

VOL. III.-NO. V.

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freely, they began to bewilder. At last the public mind, fully intoxicated, fell into a deep stupor, or was seized with spasmodic ravings. The hour had come. Here was fear and anguish; there was outrageous extravagance; and there, in the great body of society, stolid indifference. Jesuitism in politics and Jesuitism in religion solemnised their nuptials in the decrees which enslaved a nation, and the firing which carried barricades, decimated districts, and slaughtered innocent and unoffending individuals.

No sooner was the blow struck which converted Louis Napoleon from the president of a free republic into the supreme lord of a dictatorship, than the clergy of France gave in their adhesion to the new order of things, and hastened to lend all their aid to the usurped despotism. At the command of the dictator a Te Deum was celebrated in all the Romish churches of France. A formal compliance with the decree was perhaps inevitable; but every thing beyond a perfunctory observance of the ceremony was a gratuitous testimony of favour towards the illegality of the coup d'état, the butcheries by which it was attended, and the tyranny and persecution that ensued. In Paris the Te Deum was sung in the most imposing manner and amid the most solemn pomp, the archbishop himself, the metropolitan of France, and so the representative of its religion, taking the chief part in the ceremony. On behalf of the selfish dictator, and at the very moment when his hands were reeking with the blood of murdered citizens, whose only crime was their adherence to the laws which their sworn conservator had violated, the papal authorities introduced into the prayer Domine fac the ill-omened words Ludovicum Napoleonem (Lord, save Louis Napoleon); and after the completion of the supplication, the archbishop gave the benediction of the Holy Sacrament with the censer brilliant with diamonds which the emperor had presented to the metropolitan church.' At the end 'his lordship the archbishop in a procession conducted back to the entrance of the cathedral (Notre Dame) the President of the republic, with the same pomp which had accompanied his reception.'

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The following extract from a circular issued on the 1st of January to his clergy by the Cardinal Archbishop of Bourges will illustrate the joy with which the usurpation was witnessed by papal France:

'Solemn thanksgivings are indeed due to the Most High who has saved us from an immense peril. To testify to him our gratitude for so great a benefit, is to draw down on ourselves new favours. You feel this as well as I, and you will not fail, my Reverend brother, to

L'Univers, Jan. 5, 1852.

A fine instance of the remark that gratitude is a lively sense of favours to come ' !!

inspire with the same sentiment those who are intrusted to your care. Let us together beseech the Lord to finish what he (!) has begun, and for that end to preserve the man of his Providence.'

What a profanation of the holiest words and the most venerable of objects! What a degradation forced on religion, to make her an accessory after the deed of the greatest and most outrageous political crime in the annals of the world!

As might be expected, the news of the revolution was welcomed at Rome. On hearing it, Pius IX. exclaimed, ‘Heaven has paid the debt which the Church owed to France!' Why what a pair of religionists have we here!-a Pope thrust on an unwilling people by French bayonets, and an usurper raised to the first step of an imperial throne on the dead bodies of fellow-countrymen whom he had slain, and the merit of the first act so great as to call down from Heaven such special aid as might reward it with successful usurpation. Such, in plain English, is the import of the Pope's joyous words.

An extract from an article in the Jesuits' paper, L'Univers, will let the reader know how entirely the usurpation was regarded by the Romish church as the act of God:

'The truth is, Louis Napoleon has understood at once the strength and the peril of society. With the felicitous audacity of good sense, he put that strength in opposition to that peril. Doubtless he dealt profusely in illegality; he would have committed the greatest wrong, if, instead of being president, he had been a mere steward. But society when in peril gives itself chiefs precisely to commit those acts of illegality. For us we never thought Charles X. perjured, and we are thankful to Louis Napoleon for having been less unfortunate. Revolutionary problems are not solved by legality, they are put an end to by claps of thunder. Only the thunder may come from below or from above. If from below, it bursts forth like the earthquake, overturning everything, setting everything on fire. This was the socialist or parliamentary solution. If from on high, it selects the spot on which it will fall. This is the solution of the 2nd of December. It was instinctively foreseen and desired; it has been universally applauded. The prompt adhesion of the clergy has been ascribed to the influence of M. de Montalembert and that of some other catholics. The advice they gave for that end was very well received, but it was not required. The clergy knew the state of society, and knew what was wanted and what was coming. The clergy saw that bloody tide coming in. The wave which at the last overflowed, appeared to it as the instrument of Providence, and it blessed God who sends whom he pleases and when he pleases. We have had letters from all parts of France. Everywhere sound religious and popular sentiment regards the result as grand and glorious."

Which of the two is worse in this extract, the bad logic or the L'Univers, Jan. 9, 1852.

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impiety? They are both Jesuitical; which is nearly the same as to say that they are both very bad.

Unquestionably it is true that Louis Napoleon's coup d'état was approved generally by the papal clergy. The moment it was accomplished they saw that the long-desired moment had arrived, and that it was now the time to strike a blow for the restoration of religious despotism. All kinds of tyranny are congenial, and between its patrons there is a tacit sympathy and practical understanding which urge them to act in concert at the right juncture, as for a common object. The clergy of France in consequence threw themselves ardently into the conflict; and, next to Napoleon's fire-arms and bayonets, earned the honour of determining the issue. In every parish and corner of the land they employed all their social and personal influence, and all the awful power which superstition has put into the hands of a Romish priest, in order to prepare men to vote agreeably to their wishes; and when at last the day of election came, the clergy in many instances led their ignorant serfs by hundreds to the poll, holding aloft as an electioneering token the cross, the purest symbol of disinterested pity and love!

6

Popery

Immediately consequent on the President's election and the establishment of his power, Popery began to start into new life, and France manifested a desire to become the most Catholic of Catholic kingdoms. Hitherto that country had preserved for itself no inconsiderable share of religious freedom, in spite of all the aggressive attempts of Rome. The liberties of the Gallican church had been gained by costly sacrifices and numberless efforts. Of those liberties the national mind was proud. France prided herself in being Catholic without being Papal. For a time at least the end of that state of things has come. lifts her head boldly in the land, and Jesuitism walks with brazen front by her side. Rather cautious at the first, they are now as bold as men can be in a bad cause; and certainly they have had great encouragement. The President himself unfurled his banner to them by restoring to the worship of the poor peasant girl the church of the patron saint of Paris, St. Genevieve. With an ardour long unknown the churches became crowded by congregations who, if not pious, were at least of decent behaviour. A host of tracts and pamphlets poured forth from the press, not prohibited to diffuse fatuities, fanaticisms, and superstitions. The Abbé Migne set in rapid motion at Mont-Saint-Rouge the wheels of his immense manufactory of Jesuitical folios, of which, after the rate of one per week, he has promised that some two thousand shall appear-doubtless to the imminent peril of Protestantism, and perhaps of religion too. Even persons of rank and distinction obeyed the general impulse, and idled away an hour in church or

chapel. Marshal Soult died; a religious ceremony was com manded, and, like a matinée musicale, the great world hurried thither. On the 21st of January masses were performed in all the churches of Paris for the repose of the soul of Louis XVI. The sacred edifices were filled. 'See,' exclaimed the Papacy, 'see how repentant every one is for the crime of 1793.' Long and severe had been the contest between the University of Paris, together with its affiliated colleges, on the one side, and the Papistic clergy of France, headed by the Jesuits, on the other. The booty was the education of the nation-who should have it in their hands? Various, aforetime, had the issue been; and ever as it seemed at an end, did the conflict break out afresh. Now literature prevailed, and now Jesuitism. In the recent revolution, the latter, feeling its strength and borrowing courage from success, swaggered up to the University, and while the former stood there with its hands bound, dealt it a blow from which it will hardly recover. About the same time ecclesiastical associations and proselyting societies, on whose operations police regulations had imposed some restrictions, obtained from the President, too glad to pay homage to the power by whom he was made, relaxations and privileges which have given them augmented efficacy as well as fresh activity, and will cause them in number and power speedily to surpass the details we have here supplied.

The material prosperity of ecclesiastical despotism in France is not enduring. Let it be observed that the prosperity is material. Such it appears to be in all the data we have set forth. Superficial is the movement from first to last; or if at all it goes below the surface, it descends not to the heart of society. It does not mingle with the great under-currents of life. The movement is superinduced, and it lies like oil on the face of the waters, smoothing them for a moment, but liable to be tossed to the winds when the volcanic forces of the inner soul again burst forth.

The prosperity cannot last because it is antagonistic to the public mind. In the first place the religious despotism is bound up with the political despotism. The Pope and Louis Napoleon as supreme powers came in together; they will at least for a time reign together; and they will also, when their hour comes, go out together. Two suppositions may be made: Louis Napoleon remains firm in his seat, or he is cast out. If he remains firm in his seat, he will reduce the power of the church as soon and as much as he can; and in this work he will receive effectual aid from the national sympathies and aversions. If Louis Napoleon is cast out, a republic of reality is established, or legitimacy is restored. Let it be a real republic; a real republic is the very negation, the positive antithesis of Romish despotism. Instead of