DR. WARD republishes his argument on "doctrinal decisions which are not definitions of faith," which has appeared from time to time in this REVIEW. He has added a Preface, which may serve both as an analysis of his various essays, and also as a kind of cramp to hold them together. He explains in that Preface that he is throughout addressing Catholics; and only applying himself to an investigation of the Church's teaching on the subject. His main principle is that the Church possesses whatever infallibility she claims; and his main business, therefore, is to consider the dry and simple question what infallibility she does claim. In these days the matter is admitted by every one to be of inappreciable importance. All which he desires of his readers is that they will labour to put aside prejudice; and, under a grave sense of responsibility, seek seriously for the truth. And all which he desires of his critics is that they will treat the matter on the ground of argument, and not as a theme for vague declamation and invective. Of this there has been a great deal too much.

561

Foreign Events of Catholic Interest.

A

LARGE majority of those who were entitled to vote took no part in

the late Italian elections. The candidates who offered their services were numerous; but the electors were few. The eagerness and zeal were all on one side,—on the side of those who had something to gain. The people were utterly indifferent,-they remained deaf to every appeal that was made to excite their interest in the proceedings. It was all one to them who was elected. In every part of the country, indifference, more or less strongly marked, prevailed. Candidates of every description, lavish in promises, thronged the electoral booths. Ministerialists, Mazzinians, and Liberals of every shade, contended fiercely with one another; but the people stayed away. The streets were dull; a stranger in a city which was electing its representatives would scarcely have been aware that anything unusual was taking place, had his eye not been arrested by the flaring placards on the walls. But this abstention of the people was not the result of any deep-laid policy, or of any shrinking, from conscientious motives, to exercise under the rule of Victor Emmanuel their political rights. On the contrary, not a few Catholics and Conservatives of note, zealous for the preservation of the Church and of the nation, had urged, with all the authority which their position and character gave them, the necessity of vigorous action on the part of the large Catholic majority of the people in the elections. But the Catholic majority to a great extent took no pains or part in the matter; for in truth the real people of Italy have no trust or confidence whatsoever in the constitutional system as practised by the clique who, backed by the armies of France, have taken possession of their country, and who ever since have done nothing else but consume the substance of Italy and persecute its Church. The people believe, whether rightly or wrongly, that such a state of things is not to be altered by casting an adverse vote into the electoral urn. To them such an attempt seems labour lost, for they feel assured that were a Catholic majority returned, the Chambers would be dissolved at once by the unscrupulous men who are masters of the kingdom. The people of the south of Italy have not forgotten-how should they?—the atrocious fusillading, the cold-blooded massacre, the wholesale burnings, which so recently desolated whole tracts of the country. They know the character of their masters. They stand by and await the end. Thus, while the large Catholic majority of the people regards the elections with profound indifference, the Government, in virtue of the lavish and profligate expenditure on its parliamentary supporters, have it all their own way. The Mazzinians, moreover, are by no means content

with the measure of success which, by the aid of the masonic and secret societies, has fallen to their lot. Whilst, on the one hand, the Conservatives are urged by many journals, says the Civiltà Cattolica, not to let slip from their hands the opportunity of sending to the chambers men of conscience, capable of making head against the revolution, or of at least raising their voice in defence of religion trampled under foot-of the Church despoiled-of the rights of property attacked; on the other hand, the Garibaldians are all in a rage against what, with good reason, is called the clique-that party, namely, which has for its leaders the Minghettis, the Peruzzis, or the present Ministry. Thus, a fortnight before the voting took place, the Diritto, the organ of Mazzini, prophetizes that "without a miracle--we don't know by whom it ought to be or could be worked,—the future elections will give us a new chamber which will follow close upon the heels of the last. Of speechifying, declamation, talk, of proposals and amplifications, we have already had more than enough; but before the end of October we shall have still much more. But when it comes to the cutting of the knots, then we shall have nothing but thick fogs and puffed-up clouds, with much disjointing of jaws and straining of throats." "From which it is to be inferred," observes the Civiltà Cattolica, "that even the Diritto knows and confesses that the Italians are anything but enthusiastic for the system of representative or parliamentary government, since nothing is able to induce them to make use of those rights which are essential to the constitution. But the Mazzinian organ," it adds, "proclaims at the top of its voice as a truth, based on facts what, from the mouth of a Conservative, would have been characterized as malignant exaggeration or calumny." Let us listen again to the Diritto; for it is interesting to see truth wrung by the force of facts from the mouth of an enemy. He," it says, "who is under the persuasion that Italy knows how to govern itself, runs the risk of suffering a great disenchantment in the next elections. It appears to us that they will show how the people of Italy allow themselves to be governed by a few busybodies who, by means of promises a thousand times proved mendacious, and of scarecrows at which even children nowadays ought to laugh, deceive not the multitudes who, careless of parties, stand lazily by, but certain small sections of faithful followers to whom belongs the making or the unmaking of Italy. Little by little we are being persuaded," it adds, "not without much grief and bitterness of spirit, that the affairs of our country are in reality governed by an oligarchy-an oligarchy so much the worse and the guiltier as it is not constituted by laws and statutes, but is artificially built up by the wickedness of the few; and endured, sheep-like, by the incapacity of the multitude." What a confession! Has it come to this, then, after all, that the revolution which has robbed the Pope of more than two-thirds of his territory—which has confiscated church property, banished we know not how many bishops from their sees, suppressed monasteries, turned nuns out upon the street, which everywhere has encouraged licence and blasphemy and irreligion; which has fusilladed the people by tens of thousands in cold blood, and filled the prisons to suffocation, and has brought Italy to the verge of absolute bankruptcy-was accomplished, not by the Italian people, nor with their consent,

66

but, on its own showing, by the wickedness of a small and now divided minority. Criminally negligent, it is true, of their highest interests, the people of Italy are nevertheless guiltless of active complicity in the revolution, as we have all along contended; they have stood idly by and watched the ruin which they could have averted. Whilst the active and guilty few, aided by the material support of the secret societies of Europe, by the moral support of England, at least since the notorious letters of Mr. Gladstone to Lord Aberdeen, and at last by the armed intervention of Napoleon, have made Italy what it is. The mendacious and guilty oligarchy which now governs the country is beseeching in vain for the support of the people; but the people stand by in silence; the electors won't vote; the ratepayers are unwilling to pay the tremendous cost of a work they never consented to. Things are coming to a dead-lock. But supposing, for argument's sake, the Italian people to be totally indifferent to the welfare of religion, and to the preservation of all the most sacred institutions of the country, yet surely a sublime indifference to taxation is no peculiarity of the Italian character. They know that deputies impose the taxes under which the country is groaning, and that the electors make the deputies; but, nevertheless, on the day of the elections the voters stayed within doors. Whence this indifference, then, except from the profound conviction, rightly or wrongly felt, that the elections are a farce, or worse; and that no matter how the elections were to turn out, nothing would change the course of things, or hold the hands of those-freemasons, infidels, revolutionists, home or foreign, crowned or uncrowned-who are now in possession of the country? In a word, the Italians believe-and what business have we who judge from a distance to question the reasonableness of their conviction ?—that the European revolution which is become incarnate in the Italian Government is not a power that can be checked by casting a vote in the urn.

"The Italians are convinced," says the Civiltà Cattolica, "that elections and deputies serve to no purpose; that it is not worth while to lose time in the tedious operation of putting on a fixed day, and at the call of the journals, a bit of paper in a wooden box, then infallibly to see issue out of it -we do not know by what unhappy chemical combination-as out of a Pandora's box, a pestilential flood of corruptions, of wickednesses and confusion, of injustice, of thefts and violence and strife, and especially of taxes." "All are agreed," adds this writer, " that the indifference has been greater at the late than at former elections. What does this, then, show? It simply shows the force of experience; for out of former elections the good of Italy was to have sprung, but instead thereof is come the present ruin."

Hence the existence of an indifference which, at such a juncture, to say the least, seems so strange in a Catholic people. If we examine the results of the elections more closely we shall see that the present chamber-which, we believe, is but too ready, not only to endorse all the worst acts of its predecessor, but, at the bidding of the Government, to commit still more guilty sacrileges-is in nowise the representative of the people of Italy. In the Unità Cattolica of the 24th and 25th of October a complete analysis of the elections was published, from which we now cite-for such facts explain, of themselves, the state and

hopes of Italy-the following examples :-The electors of Florence number 10,531; of whom only 3,501 took part in the elections. The four Government candidates in the capital of the kingdom, a city of 150,000 inhabitants, obtained scarcely 1,413 votes, whilst the opposition split up into numerous factions, claimed for its various candidates 2,088 votes. At Milan, which has 250,000 inhabitants, and 10,450 registered electors, only 3,860 voted, and yet the enemies of the Papacy triumphantly described such an election as a battle gained over the temporal power of the Pope! At Turin, “so long accustomed to parliamentary life," says the Diritto, educated for so many years to consider and understand the importance of elections, and this time more than ever interested, by the use of the electoral urn, to take care of its own fortunes, the number of those who abstained was surprisingly large. In this city of 180,000 inhabitants, and of 4,906 registered electors, only 1,389 cared to come to the poll. At Bologna--to continue our selection of representative cities—with its 96,660 inhabitants and its 4,942 registered electors, the contest was not able to beat up more than 1,930 votes. In Genoa, a city of 120,000 inhabitants and 3,435 electors, only 1,744 voted. In Parma, with a population of 46,000 and 3,220 electors, only 1,450 voted. In Ancona, with 40,000 inhabitants and 1,365 electors, only 757 gave their suffrages. But still more marked and striking, and still more offensive to the Government, was the manner in which the provinces of the south mistrustingly abstained from the elections. Naples, with its half-million of inhabitants, has 46,646 registered electors, but of these scarcely 5,000 took part in the elections. These figures speak for themselves, and afford an ample and convincing proof of the indifference and hostility of the mass of the people of Italy towards those who by craft, unscrupulous treachery, and foreign intervention, have gained possession of the unhappy country which they have already brought to the brink of ruin. Out of such a chamber, so composed, consisting to a large extent of unknown and untried men, who have come to seek their fortunes in the head-quarters of unprincipled and profligate expenditure, the Government can make what it chooses. Many of the former deputies, leaders of the extreme party, men notorious for their hostility to the Church, as well as to the existing order of things, have lost their seats, but their places have been filled, if by better, nevertheless by men more docile to the direction of the Government. The voracity, moreover, of Liberal deputies is proverbial in Italy, says a writer familiar with the class, in allusion to the Homeric laugh with which the famous "Let us be honest" of Ricasoli was received throughout Italy. Any measures, no matter how extreme or how dishonest, brought in by the Ministry, the dispensers of the last loaves and fishes of Italy, will be certain to receive the sanction of a chamber so obsequious and docile as the present.

An acute and intelligent observer of things, familiar with political affairs, at home and abroad, reports from Italy "an entire absence of all order, regularity, and respect for law." He gives, as an instance of such a kind, "the open spoliation of Church property, in direct violation of a statute of Charles Albert, that property of every kind whatsoever should be held sacred. Another of Charles Albert's laws-that the