Hence,

therefore ought not to be tolerated by a free people. in this country, they contend, in the name of civil freedom, that Catholics ought to have no political rights; and form, in the name of liberty of conscience, Protestant unions, and seek, by means of fanatical lecturers and colporteurs, and incendiary publications, to kindle the flames of persecution, and to raise up against us a war of extermination, as if liberty of conscience meant only liberty for the Protestant conscience!

Did it not concern a serious subject, this claim of the Protestants would strike us as a capital joke,—of the lucus a non lucendo kind. Nothing is or can be more unfounded. In no country has Protestantism, as Protestantism, shown itself the warm and generous friend of liberty; and in no country has it, thus far, aided the progress even of civil liberty. Its rise and progress in the sixteenth century were accompanied and followed by immense accessions to the royal prerogative, and the destruction or virtual destruction of the estates which controlled the royal will and protected the subject. The governments of Europe are not so popular in their elements now as they were before the Reformation. The English Commons have less power in the state than they had in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, and the mass of the French nation are not so fully nor so effectually represented in the government as they were in the old feudal times. Spain lost, by the commotions caused by the Reformation, the greater part of her franchises, and the few not already lost the modern Liberals are trying to sweep away. The condition of the mass of the laboring classes, saving in a few localities, where favored by certain accidental and temporary causes, has been constantly deteriorating for the last three hundred years, especially in Protestant countries, and countries under Protestant influence. Wealth has accumulated in certain localities, but it may be questioned whether the aggregate wealth of the old world has been after all much augmented by modern industry. Let England restore to India and other lands what she has robbed them of, or what they possessed when she began her traffic with them, and she would be not a wonderful deal wealthier than she was before Henry the Eighth. We have very positive evidence to show that the laborers in Western Europe fared better in the Middle Ages than they do now. Some striking facts have lately been alleged, which go far to show that the population of Western Europe was as great in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries as it is now, if not even greater; that the soil was un

der a higher state of cultivation, and commerce equally extensive; art, literature, and philosophy, we know, from the monuments which remain, were of a much higher order, and really more flourishing; while education, in every proper sense of the word, was more generally diffused and of a better quality. In mere physical comforts, we may form some notion of the superiority of Catholic times, when we are told, that, in England, prior to the Reformation, the laborer could obtain for a day's labor four times the amount of the necessaries of life that he can now, and that there were no paupers then, no union workhouses, no poor-tax, no national debt. Governments have become centralized machines for taxing the people; they cost millions now where they cost thousands then, and yet do far less for the public weal.

As for republicanism, which with us is considered to be the synonyme of liberty, there is less of it in Europe now than before the Reformation, and less of it in Protestant Europe than in Catholic Europe. England is a miserable oligarchy, in which the mass of the people have very little influence, and less than they had before passing the Reform Bill. Sweden, Denmark, and Prussia are Protestant states, and as despotic as one could wish; and even here, where republicanism is firmly established, it is rendered nugatory. Some two or three hundred individuals rule the country as absolutely as the emperor of Russia rules his subjects, and not for the common good of all, because they control the business operations of the country, and Protestantism can oppose no antagonist power to wealth. We need no prophet's ken to foresee, that, unless Providence interposes in our behalf, liberty with us, before many years, will be an empty name, and republicanism be nothing but demagoguism and mammonism. The virtues which sustain freedom are every year disappearing, and the corruption of the mass is becoming every year greater and greater. Even the intellect with us degenerates; and education, while in appearance more, is less efficient in stimulating and strengthening the mind. The reading of the country is the newspaper and the cheap novel, or some other trash equally vile, producing intellectual flatulency, but affording no wholesome nourishment to the system. And Protestantism has no remedy. Its "Bible societies," "Tract societies," "Sabbath conventions," its "Morrison pills," which it proposes and seeks every now and then to cram down our throats, like all quack medicines, divert perhaps for a moment the patient's fancy, but reach not the seat of his disease, effect no radical cure.

Puseyism sees this, and thinks that the evil will be remedied by a stricter observance of the rubrics, by preaching in the surplice instead of the gown. Fourierism sees this, and fancies that the cure will come if we but organize the Phalanstery, and provide for the free development of the passions, on the homœopathic principle of like cures like, or the hair of the same dog that bit will cure, carry out to its perfection the system which works the evil, and it will remedy it. The dose of lobelia did not cure, because it was too small;- take another, a larger dose, and dose after dose, and you will live, if you do not die. Owenism sees all this, and comes forward with its wise saws about "circumstances," and proposes to gather us into communities, to live in parallelograms, all sides and ends facing to the south. Radicalism sees this, and cries out for the popular will, Only let the people speak—vox populi, vox Dei and, presto, all evils vanish ;-just as if the evil was not in the very popular will and popular passions, as if there could be more in the collective will than the sum of the several parts! Agrarianism sees this, and, Hurrah! down with the monopoly in land! the earth belongs to the children of men, — therefore to no body, and therefore each may take what he wants ;-as if any one takes now more than he wants, himself being judge. Infidelity sees this, and cries, Down with religion! down with the priests! down with all inquiries about right and wrong, and study chemistry, astronomy, and gastronomy, and all will go well! Transcendentalism sees this, and bids us believe it all comes from forming too low an estimate of our own nature, from looking abroad, instead of looking at our own noses; and it tells us to believe that we are gods or God, to fix our eyes devoutly on ourselves, and the huge world will come round to us and shape itself to our wishes. Still the evil goes on, and Protestantism, proud of her motley brood, boasts of her wondrous power, of her love of freedom, of her marvellous achievements for the human race, and her ability to enable us to live like pigs in clover here, and enjoy the celestial paradise for ever hereafLucus a non lucendo !

ter.

In regard to religious liberty, the picture is not a whit more pleasing. Protestantism, quoad Protestantism, has never favored or tolerated religious liberty. We speak advisedly, and know very well what we say. We were born Protestant, and grew up with the usual Protestant prejudices. We know what Protestantism pretends to be. We know, also, what she is. Nothing is more false than the pretensions of modern Protes

tants; and, if they were not blest with ignorance of Protestant history, or with conveniently short memories, they would—yes, even they would — blush to call themselves the friends of religious liberty, the advocates of freedom of conscience.

Protestantism was not, in its origin, as some in these days pretend, a protest against tyranny, and an uprising of the soul for religious freedom. No such thing. It originated with the temporal powers who sought to crush religious liberty. It was a movement, not in behalf of religious liberty, but against it. It is all very fine to talk of Luther and Melancthon, Calvin and Zwingle, Carlostadt, and John of Leyden; but these men were but mere instruments in the hands of the political sovereigns. The fathers of your "glorious Reformation," - yes, Republicans, Democrats, know the truth!- the fathers of your "glorious Reformation" were the temporal princes who were hostile to religious liberty, who were opposed to the independence of the Church, who wished to bring it into subjection to the state, and to make it their ally, their tool in oppressing the masses and fleecing the multitude. They would have no power that dared rebuke the wearer of a crown, no priest whom they could not make or unmake, as he conformed or not to their will. They wished to make the Church a branch of the civil police, and the sovereign pontiff a sort of high constable, or chief of the constabulary, and responsible to the crown. They wished to make the Universal Church the mean, contemptible, crouching slave of the state, which the Anglican Church has been for three hundred years, and still is, - powerless for good, but a most effective instrument in the hands of the sovereign for oppressing the people, and keeping them quiet under the most grievous burdens. This they could not do, so long as they acknowledged the spiritual authority of the Pope, or a common centre of ecclesiastical unity. Here is the noble, the royal origin of Protestantism, which has the impudence in open day to call herself republican, and the friend of religious liberty.

It is not now for the first time we have said this. We said this years ago, long before we ever dreamed that we should become a Catholic, and when no Catholic prejudices blinded us, if they do now. We quote a paragraph or two :

"In classical antiquity religion is a function of the state. It is the same under Protestantism. Henry the Eighth of England declares himself the Supreme Head of the Church, not by virtue of his spiritual character, but by virtue of his character as a tem

poral prince. The Protestant princes of Germany are protectors of the Church; and . . . . . there is an implied contract between the state and the ecclesiastical authorities. The state pledges itself to support the Church on condition that the Church support the state. Ask the kings, nobility, or even church dignitaries why they support religion, and they will answer with one voice, Because the people cannot be preserved in order, cannot be made to submit to their rulers, and because civil society cannot exist without it.' The same or a similar answer will be returned by almost every political man in this country; and truly may it be said, that religion is valued by the Protestant world as a subsidiary to the state, as a mere matter of police."

"Such, in its general aspect, in its dominant tendency, is Protestantism. It is a new and much improved edition of the classics Its civilization belongs to the same order as that of Greece and Rome. It is in advance, greatly in advance, of Greece and Rome, but it is the same in its groundwork. The material predominates over the spiritual. Men labor six days for this world, and at best but one for the world to come. The great strife is for temporal goods, fame, or pleasure. God, the Soul, Heaven, and Eternity are thrown into the background, and almost entirely disappear in the distance. Right yields to expediency, and duty is measured by utility. The real character of Protestantism, the result to which it must come, wherever it can have its full development, may be best seen in France at the close of the last century. The Church was converted into the Pantheon, and made the resting-place of the great and renowned of earth; God was converted into a symbol of human reason, and man into the Man-machine ; . . . . . and the French Revolution marked the complete triumph of Materialism (the material order)."*

This is the testimony, not of a Catholic, but of one born and bred a Protestant, and as far removed in his own estimation from being or becoming a Catholic as Drs. Beecher and Breckenridge themselves. We could sustain the same view, if we had space, by ample quotations from eminent Protestant writers, but we forbear for the present. Not the exactions of the popes, but the exactions of the kings and princes, rent the Church in the sixteenth century; and the only love of liberty that placed Protestantism in the world was the love of license on the one hand, and the liberty of plundering on the other.

Not one of the Protestant sects, unless in a pitiful minority, has ever favored religious liberty; and every one, where it has

*New Views of Christianity, Society, and the Church. By O. A. Brownson. Boston, 1836.