respect, a politeness, an elevation of feeling, a true manliness, a moral perception, a nobility of sentiment, that an Englishman of the same rank in life, not only has not, but is usually unable even to conceive. In all Catholic countries you cannot fail to remark in the lower classes, if they retain their faith, that they are never so low as the corresponding classes in other countries. They never feel that because they are poor they cease to be human, or that they are of a different nature from the rich.

Catholic Ireland, I concede, is not as rich as Protestant England; but when you take into consideration the circumstances in which the Catholic Irish have been placed, the legislation that for so long a time rendered their property, if they had any, insecure, and operated to prevent them from acquiring property, you must concede that in true industry and thrift, those cardinal virtues in the estimation of New Englanders, they have proved themselves in no sense inferior to the English. We are more struck by the fact that they have been able to live, have contrived to keep soul and body together, than we are by the immense accumulations of Protestant England. In strength of body, in physical courage, in all manly exercises, in ingenuity, in all that tries or developes one's manhood, the Irishman is at least equal to the Englishman of the same class. The English are superior to the Irish, only in the genius of organization,—a natural, not an acquired superiority. The Irish genius, like that of all the Celtic tribes, is disintegrating, and in politics yields to the English, as the old Gallic tribes yielded to the Romans, although surpassing them in numbers, and equalling them in courage and military ardor. The reason of this difference I cannot explain, but it is not owing to difference of religion, for it was as striking when England and Ireland were both Catholic as it is now. This genius of organization, which makes a people a king-people, and fits it to be a robber as well as a moral people, and its material conquests and accumulations, with the physical power growing out of them, are all that Protestant England can boast over Catholic Ireland. In all else, the Catholic Irish, allowance made for the oppression they have suffered from power in the hands of Protestants, are far above the Protestant English. The Protestant Englishman is

prouder; does not doubt that he is a greater and a better man; he walks the earth with a sturdier step, and speaks in a louder and a gruffer tone; but he will be found on examination to be inferior to the Catholic Irishman in mental quickness and activity, in intelligence, wisdom, virtue, politeness, and grace.

But this is not all, nor the most. We would ask Mr. Derby to tell us what has during these three hundred years sustained the Catholic Irish, and saved them from utter moral debasement and degradation. The high moral character, the deep sense of religion, the stern virtues, the noble sentiments which mark the majority of the Catholic Irish, must be conceded; but how have they maintained them in spite of the efforts made for three hundred years to brutalize them, and to crush the life out of them? How have they been able to preserve one of the finest national characters in the world, and to give to the humblest shealing a dignity and moral grandeur and beauty which not one of England's proudest palaces can surpass? No man can for one moment doubt that it has been the Catholic religion, the Catholic faith, the Catholic Church. A Protestant people under similar circumstances, would have sunk to a condition but one remove from that of the brute creation. That it is Catholicity which has sustained the Irish in their virtues and noble sentiments is evident from the fact that the Irishman loses them the moment he loses his religion, or turns his back upon the old Church. The Protestant Irish have no superiority over the Protestant English. If, as is undeniable, the Catholic Irish are not utterly debased and degraded, and if it is due to the Catholic religion that they are not, how can Mr. Derby pretend that debasement and degradation necessarily attend the Catholic system? The Jurist would have a good case, if the facts did not happen to be dead against him. As long as stands Catholic Ireland, so long he must concede that a Catholic people cannot by all the arts and contrivances, by all the malice and force of earth and hell, be utterly debased and degraded. Catholic Ireland, say what you will of her, stands there a living answer to the proud conceited Protestant's charge that Catholicity is unfavorable to the refinement, the improvement, the civilization of the world, and we ask no

other answer to Mr. Derby's ill-considered and ill-chosen argument against our religion.

We are far from pretending that all in Catholic States satisfies us, and have no disposition to deny to Protestant States any thing good which they can claim as their own; but we tell Mr. Derby that if he speaks as a Christian, the refining, civilizing effects of the Reformation he assumes exist only in his imagination, or the exigencies of his argument. They are nowhere to be seen. In Protestant countries you find in the middle classes a certain rough energy, a certain barbaric pride, which talks large, and which owing to its devotion to the world commands a certain measure of material success, not ordinarily to be met with in Catholics devoted to their religion, but in the arts, graces, refinements, and charms of civilized life, the latter are every where in advance of the former. A careful comparison of the two will establish the fact that in material civilization, in the purely material order, in which infidels and Christians stand on the same footing, Protestants take the precedence, though still behind the more advanced heathen nations of antiquity; but in that higher civilization which regards the heart and soul, and demands for its attainment and maintenance the Christian virtues, temper, and spirit, the only civilization the Christian prizes, Catholics take the precedence, in reality stand alone. We conclude, therefore, that the Reformation, while it gives free scope to the material splendor and aggrandizement of a nation, tends directly to its moral debasement and degradation, and that Catholicity, while it detaches men from the world, moderates the desire for worldly goods, and therefore in some measure checks the growth of a rank and poisonous material civilization, fosters the spiritual, ennobles the soul, purifies the affections, elevates the sentiments, and renders man a higher and a more dignified being, and society more simple, just, and humane, in which moral worth is held in higher honor, and the poor and unfortunate are treated with more consideration, gentleness, and affection, nay, respect.

We have treated this argument at greater length than its intrinsic importance demands, because it contains the only objection to Catholicity that has much practical weight with our non-Catholic countrymen, and because we

have wished to show that it is at bottom, so far as it is an argument at all, an argument against Christianity itself, and based upon principles which every one who believes in the Gospel does and must reject. Mr. Derby does not see this, because he does not see any difficulty in serving, at the same time, both God and mammon, or very clearly distinguish the worship of mammon from the worship of God. Yet nothing is more certain than that this devotion to the world, to the development and advancement of material civilization, which leads us to estimate nations and individuals by their wealth and worldly greatness, which treats the poor as vicious or criminal, and regards them as the curse and opprobrium of a country, which even our Protestant ministers eulogize from the pulpit, the press, and the rostrum, as an evidence of our enlightenment and true wisdom, is incompatible with the spirit of the Gospel, offensive to God, and injurious to society itself. It implies a forgetfulness of God, and the nations that forget God must sooner or later experience the fate of all the great nations of pagan antiquity. The men who live for this world, in the long run, lose this world and that which is to come; and all experience proves that you can never increase a man's happiness by enlarging his material possessions. One of our old New England worthies, who amassed a large estate, and was a man of note in his day, used to say that he and his wife when married were both poor, that he told her he wished to be rich, but she told him that she did not wish to be rich, she only wished to be comfortable. "I have," he would add, "long since had my wish, but she has not yet had hers." He was a wiser man than Mr. Derby who said, "If you would enrich a man, study not to increase his possessions, but to moderate his desires." The contented poor man is richer than he whom the world calls rich, is in fact more independent, and can do more as he likes. Our desires increase with the increase of our riches, riches bring cares and responsibilities which render them a snare to the bad man, and a burden to the good man.

But enough of this. We must proceed in our dissection to other, though hardly graver matters.

66

Its

Again, let me recur to the origin of the Romish Church. basis should be the Gospel. Here we have a safe starting-point.

All denominations recognize the mission of our Saviour, and the authority of the Gospels, Acts, and Epistles. Now how far do these sacred books establish the faith, doctrines, and usages of the Romish Church? First, the Church of Rome relies upon the sixteenth chapter of St. Matthew, eighteenth verse, in which our Saviour says, 'Thou art Peter, and on this rock I will build my Church.' But we must remember that in the same chapter, verse twenty-third, our Saviour rebukes Peter in terms stronger than he used to any apostle, save Judas, who betrayed him, saying, 'Get thee behind me, Satan, thou art an offence unto me.' And we must not forget that in the hour of trial Peter faltered, that he thrice denied our Lord, and, drawing a sword against the wishes of our Saviour, wounded a servant of the high-priest, because he stated the truth.”—p. 11.

Mr. Derby would do well to remember that Catholics hold that our Lord himself founded the Church, not that men have founded it, whether on the Gospel or any thing else. In the mind of the Catholic the Church is Jesus Christ's own institution of the Gospel, and it is the Gospel instituted as a living kingdom, not as an abstract idea, or a dead book, that we embrace and hold to be authoritative. Out of the Church, and distinguished from her, there is no Gospel for men to appeal to, or to recognize as authority. The Gospel is what the Church teaches and administers. The written word can be cited against her only for the purpose of convicting her of contradicting herself. For such a purpose you may cite it against her, but for no other. Mr. Derby is a lawyer, and should understand this. She is the court, and he must dispossess her before he can make her amenable to his reading of the law. But this by the way.

Where our Lord says to Peter, "Thou art Peter, and on this Rock I will build my Church," he does not mean, Mr. Derby thinks, what he says, because he subsequently rebukes Peter in severer terms than he used to any other disciple save Judas. But did not our Lord know very well when he said, "Blessed art thou, Simon, son of Jonas, and I say unto thee, thou art Peter and upon this rock will I build my Church," that he would also have occasion very soon to say unto him, "Go behind me, Satan ?" Whence then does it follow from the rebuke that the promise so formally made was not made, or that it was to be of none effect? Mr. Derby must concede that, not