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no fewer than fifty-five out of four hundred Protestant clergymen declared against the doctrine of the resurrection: they resolved that Jesus Christ was to be regarded as a great man, but that it was futile to see in him a God. The President of the Senate, M. Bonjean, in reply, declined to interfere in the matter of the petition, on the ground that the Senate, as a political power, was not competent to judge, in matters of faith, as to what was true or false. "As a Catholic," he said, "I do not recognize in any civil power the right to say, to-day, that my faith is true; because that would be recognizing its right to say, to-morrow, that it was false." Considering that Protestantism rested on the principle of free inquiry, he thought, that the very divisions in that community were so many proofs that the reformed Christians had remained faithful to their standard; and as to the measure proposed by the petitioner to bring about unity of faith and discipline in the Protestant community, he held them to be utterly futile. What would be the result, he asked. For instance there are, he said, in France, 105 Consistorial churches of the Protestant sect, which would give 21 synods; and to these 21 synods it is proposed to confide the mission of establishing unity of faith in the Protestant Church. In the state of anarchy which now exists in the Reformed Church, these 21 synods would perhaps draw up 21 different confessions of faith; and as, according to law, the resolutions of these synods have no force until they have been approved of by Government, in what a dilemma would not the Minister of Public Worship find himself. He would have to decide between these various confessions of faith, to pronounce which was orthodox and which was not. The Minister of Worship would thus be the Pope of the Protestants. At the close of this remarkable discussion, the Marquis de la Rochejaquelein described the petition as the cry of alarm of Protestantism; he also concurred in the alarm which was justly felt at the spread of unbelief in France, and which was making way in all religions. The attack was first made on Catholicism; and now it was conquering Protestantism. They who up till now doubted, believed no longer. What shall become of us, he asked, Catholics and fathers of families, when French society shall have become Materialist ? "One thing," he said, in concluding his speech, "is clear, and that is the destruction-the laying bare of Protestantism. Protestantism exists no more; its professors teach openly the doctrines of Renan; and they are left in their pulpits, where they profess the most destructive principles. A remedy is sought; it is in unity of faith. But this remedy cannot be found where the evil exists to-day in Protestantism, which denies all things,— disputes all things. But without unity of faith men are brought to a state of confusion. . . I am against those who deny all things, both in religion and in politics. The great evil of our epoch for Protestants, as for others, is negation; but Protestants reap to-day that which they have sown."

As a corrollary to this discussion in the Senate on the spread of unbelief in France, we call attention to a speech which has just been delivered, by M. Pelletan, as we are writing, in the Lower Chamber, on the moral and intellectual degradation of French society. After ascribing the demoralization of modern times to the system adopted by Government, to which we have already alluded, of putting down free speech and free writing, and of debarring the VOL. VI.—NO. XII. [New Series.]

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people from the healthy and ennobling pursuits of public life, he describes the depths of degradation to which the stage has fallen in France. "It was no longer," he said, "intellectual dissoluteness; the stage at the present day pandered to ocular demoralization." The moral condition of France at the present day, he imputed, as a consequence of her intellectual famine. People said, "Let us amuse ourselves as we have nothing else to do." And they did 'amuse themselves" with a vengeance; but pleasure had its evil consequences. It led to excess, to satiety, to vice, to crime. The speaker showed that according to the last Report of the Minister of Justice, offences against morality continued to increase in an alarming proportion. "From 1856 to 1860, they formed 53 per cent. of the whole number of offences against the person, whilst from 1826 to 1830, the proportion was only 23 per cent. Formerly, we are told, extreme demoralization used to be the result of a long career of crime, of a long apprenticeship to vice, but vice had now become precocious, and acquired its full development before the human frame. Young men of good family are trying to revive the morals of the Regency." "They squander away their lives and their patrimony." In a report lately published, an eminent magistrate stated that between the 31st July, 1862, and 1st of August, 1864, it had been found necessary to provide with legal guardians twenty-four young men of fortune, incapable of taking care of themselves. We can do no more than allude to the description which M. Pelletan gave, and which is but too well known, of the luxury and wantonness of Parisian society, of its extravagant and reckless expenditure, of its "toilettes sans reticences." He denounced, in no disguised terms, "the unimpassioned debauchery and languid depravity of the Parisian jeunesse d'orée, and a certain class of courtezans, which dazzles the town by its riches," and he held up the undeniable popularity of this " aristocracy of vice" as one of the characteristics of modern society. M. Pelletan concluded by asking the Chamber" what Europe could possibly think of them, when it found the salons of Paris, at one time the abode of taste and elegant refinement, borrowing songstresses from the wine-shop, and going into fits of enthusiasm over ditties of the gutter."

From such a description, which, we fear, is but too true, of the religious, intellectual, and moral state of society under the second empire, we turn with a sense of relief to a primitive land, a mountainous people, and to a purely Christian society.

The most satisfactory news of its kind from Germany is the address of the Tyrolese Diet to the Emperor of Austria. We do not know whether our readers remember the magnificent protest, published a few years ago by the bishops of Tyrol against the violation of the ancient religious rights of the country by the authorization given by the Viennese Cabinet to Protestants to purchase land in the Tyrol, to found communities, and to establish places of heretical worship. In the Tyrol there never has been any other religion but the Catholic ; and no worship, to the confusion of Liberals, Catholic and Protestant, but that of the Church of God, is to this day tolerated by the laws and customs of this Catholic land.

On the advent of Schmerling to power, and under the new constitution of

the Austrian Empire, certain Protestant communities, desirous of intruding their false religion and teaching into the Tyrol, petitioned the Diet for authorization to found independent Protestant parishes or districts, on the establishment of which the right of holding public worship depends; on the rejection of the petition by the Diet, an appeal was made to Vienna, and Schmerling peremptorily overruled the decision of the Diet of Tyrol. Such a flagrant violation of the constitutional rights of the country and of the immemorial unity of religion excited universal indignation and discontent among the proverbially loyal Tyrolese. The rigorous protests of the Tyrolese Episcopate and the voice of the people were alike unheeded by the Austrian Government. On the fall, however, of the Schmerling administration, the Emperor, on the 17th of November, 1865, laid before the Tyrolese Diet, for its constitutional consideration, a Bill in harmony with the first and second decrees, touching the introduction of Protestant worship, of the Diet held on the 25th of February of the same year. In its address to the Emperor, the Diet recognizes in this magnanimous act an acknowledgment on the part of the Emperor that the unity of faith in the Tyrol is a matter which is subject to the laws of that country; and, while laying its deepest thanks on the steps of the Imperial throne, it expresses the hope that, in this important matter, such a law will be passed as is in harmony with the sacred custom of the country. The "faithful and obedient Diet," however, said that "it missed with deep sorrow in the Government Bill the Imperial assent to the fourth decree of the resolution of the Diet, touching the limitations of the rights of non-Catholics to possess property in the Tyrol." It pointed out that, in his letter of the 7th of September, 1859, the Emperor had recognized this proposition as of the highest moment, inasmuch as he had declared that it was a question which would have to be submitted to most mature and cautious consideration by the Diet.

"In fact," says the address, "if full liberty be given to non-Catholics to possess lands and to be naturalized in Tyrol, so is in future the great happiness of unity of faith in this country, in a certain measure, given up to chance. Such a surrender we cannot reconcile with our conscience; for, as we are appointed to act for the welfare of the land in the present time, so we are also responsible for the future. Such a surrender we cannot take upon ourselves to answer to our constituents. The people of the Tyrol have made known their will to preserve their national possession-unity of faith-by all the means which a loyal people can make use of. They consider such a wish as perfectly legitimate, and they will never be able to comprehend how or in what manner they have lost a right which their fathers enjoyed, and for which they had sacrificed possessions and life. The members of the Diet are well aware that their petition will be exposed to the most manifold misinterpretations and to the most unmitigated abuse. But," they say, "for this we are prepared, for we live in a time which, in its aim at completely separating Church and State, and at secularizing the laws of the State, tends towards atheism; and in such a time naturally the language of the Tyrolese people, inspired for the preservation of the unity of its faith, sounds strange and unintelligible."

The members of the Diet conclude their address by calling to mind the words lately used by the Emperor on the celebration of the five hundred years' union of Tyrol with Austria. With God's help, for hundreds and hundreds of years more will the Tyrolese stand firm and faithful by their Kaiser, and the Kaiser will keep faithful and firm to his Tyrolese.

The principles avowed in this address of the Tyrolese Diet and its manliness of tone are quite invigorating in these Liberalistic days of mock loyalty and half-hearted faith.

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We are requested to publish the following correspondence between the Rev. W. Lockhart, of the Order of Charity, and the Writer of the Article on Freemasonry, which appeared in our January number.

THE REV. W. LOCKHART TO THE WRITER.

DEAR SIR, After reading the observations on Rosmini in your article on Freemasonry in the DUBLIN REVIEW, I wrote in the following terms to the Editor. "I beg to call your attention to page 142 of the 'DUBLIN,' for January, 1866, in which the old, often-refuted calumny against our founder, Rosmini, is once more repeated. The passage is as follows:Freemasonry is condemned, first of all and chiefly, because its essential principle is indifferentism, and speculative indifferentism inevitably leads to Pantheism, in other words to a denial of the personalty of God, and is a rejection of the first motives of morality. In the same way it may be said that the practical side of Pantheism is a simple indifference to all forms of religion. This ancient error, as subtle and penetrating as the miasma which arises out of decaying matter, is drawing new force from the corruption and dissolution of Protestantism. In the seething state of society such as Europe now presents, there is no time for delay or hesitation in purifying the moral or intellectual atmosphere, in separating the sound from the unsound elements. Nothing is more remarkable than the way in which the Papal Allocutions of the last and present Pontificate revert, again and again, to the errors of Pantheism, or than the zeal and watchfulness with which unsound speculations are at once detected and condemned. The false theories of Lamennais, the errors of Gioberti's philosophy, Rosmini's untenable positions, were not allowed by Rome to pervert for an instant the minds of men unawares. In the like manner, the Holy See corrected the perhaps unconscious pantheistic tendencies of Baader, the graver errors of Günther, and the open Pantheism of Frohschammer. Rome everywhere stamps out this speculative plague; and because Freemasonry gives Pantheism a home and a practical office, Pius IX. has renewed the condemnation of the Church against the detestable Masonic sect.'-DUBLIN, p. 142.

"At page 173, the following passage occurs-The secret societies. made use of the errors of men like Gioberti, or even of Rosmini, to dazzle and mislead the people. Whatever was rotten in society they scented out like ferrets, and battened on like carrion birds.'-DUBLIN, p. 173.

"I am quite sure that if I shall show you that a grave injustice has been done to the good name of our founder, and a grievous injury inflicted on his order by the DUBLIN REVIEW, you will make us the best reparation in your power. Before taking notice of the injurious statements to which I have referred, I should be glad of a line from the author of the article, pointing out the Roman authority by which ANY POSITIONS OF ROSMINI have been condemned or pronounced untenable."

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