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principles of revolution, as Young Ireland contends. It is Ireland, Old Ireland, whose life is at stake, and which it is necessary to rescue and save. Ireland can know no Young Ireland. A nation cannot be twice born. There can be no Young Ireland. By the very fact that these

young enthusiasts call themselves “ Young Ireland,” they declare that they are not Ireland, proclaim themselves, not nationalists, as they falsely pretend, but anti-nationalists. Nationalists are those who live the national life, are true to the national constitution, and ready to die in its support; not they who separate from the nation, discard the national constitution, and are ready to draw the sword, not for the nation that is, but to hew out a nation after their own image. They may have poetry ; they may write stirring newspaper essays; they may excel in vague and frothy declamation ; they may believe themselves honest, enlightened, and patriotic ; they may even fancy that their spirit is not Jacobinical, and regard the charge of being revolutionists as a gross calumny ; but, alas ! all men who demand liberty by appeals to sentiment instead of conscience, and expect it from passion instead of law, are revolutionists in principle, and need only the time and the occasion to reënact the part of Mirabeau, Danton, and Robespierre. These Young Irelanders, most likely, foresee not now whither tends the spirit by which they are governed ; but let them follow it for a time, and they will find that there is no retreat for them, that they have placed their country in such a situation that they cannot prevent a Jacobinical revolution, even if they would, and such a revolution would only complete the work begun by the Saxon. If Ireland, the Ireland we have known and loved, the Ireland which has withstood the storms and tempests of two thousand years, famous in the annals of literature and religion, rich in saints, sufferings, and long centuries of perpetual martyrdom, be not doomed to utter extinction, she will disown these her pretended children, and treat them as St. Patrick did the less venomous serpents and reptiles which he found on her soil, and which can no more touch it and live.

But let no one be so silly as to imagine that the conservative principle contended for by Count de Maistre is hostile to such social meliorations and such administrative changes as time and its vicissitudes may render necessary or expedient. But the true social reformer is the state physician, and proceeds in regard to the state precisely as the medical doctor does in regard to the human body. He seeks always to heal the disorders of the state without destroying or impairing the constitution, and by the application of such remedies as are peculiarly adapted to the constitution. If the constitution is already broken up and become incurable, he knows there is no effectual remedy, and that complete dissolution, sooner or later, must inevitably ensue. But if he finds the constitution still sound at bottom, he seeks simply to restore it to its normal state, and to guard against whatever would tend to impair its healthy and vigorous action. In other words, he restores, but does not seek to create ; develops, but does not attempt to institute.

On this principle we see our present Holy Father introducing administrative changes in the temporal government of the States of the Church. How far the reforms he has introduced or proposed extend, we are not able to say ; and how far they will effect the end intended, and serve to tranquillize the turbulent spirits, the unprincipled and ambitious, among his subjects, it is not for us to judge, or even to inquire. But we can easily believe that in an old government, like that of the Roman States, some administrative abuses may with the lapse of time have crept in, and that the alterations which for the last hundred years have been taking place around them have rendered some administrative changes expedient. As a wise and judicious prince, as a watchful and tender father, the Pope seems to believe such to be the fact, and to be determined to correct the former and to introduce the latter ; and for this he has been applauded to the echo, rather in the hope of inducing him to go farther, we apprehend, than from any real satisfaction felt for what he has thus far done or proposed. But we confess, that, notwithstanding the shouts which ring in our ears, and the loud praises he has secured from those whose praise is always suspicious, we have seen in him not the least conceivable tendency to countenance the misnamed Liberalism now so rise in the European populations. They who flatter themselves that the Sovereign Pontiff of Christendom is about to place himself at the head of the Liberals, as their leader in the war against legitimacy, will find their shouts have been premature, and their hopes fallacious. That Pius the Ninth is the father of his people, that his sympathies are with the oppressed and down-trodden of all nations, that he is the uncompromising enemy of injustice and arbitrary rule, whether of kings or peoples, is no doubt true, and in saying so we only say he is Pope ; but because this is true, we have the fullest assurance that nothing can be farther from his thoughts and intentions than to countenance, even in the remotest degree, the mad and ruinous radicalism or socialism of the day, or that it has aught to hope from him but his anathema.

We know the enemies of law and order have rejoiced ; we know that even some Catholics, placing their politics, unconsciously no doubt, before their religion, — and we commend the fact to the London Tablet and its Parisian correspondents, - have flattered themselves that our Holy Father seeks to effect an alliance between Catholicity and modern socialism; but he is the Vicar of Jesus Christ, not a pupil from the school of the apostate De Lamennais, and can no more form an alliance with socialism than with despotism. One Pope is not in the habit of reversing, in what involves a principle, the decisions of another. We all know the doctrine of the l'Avenir ; we all know that after the revolution of July, 1830, De Lamennais sought to persuade the Church to make common cause with the European populations against their political sovereigns, to throw herself into the arms of the people, and trust for her support to their holy instincts; and we all know the answer he received from Rome. The Church throws herself into the arms of neither the people nor the sovereigns ; she relies for support on no power foreign to herself. She rests on God alone, who has promised to be with her all days unto the consummation of the world. She forms no alliances. The sects may trim their sails to the breeze, and appeal now to despotism and now to liberalism, now seek to avail themselves of a temperance excitement, and now of an Abolitionist or a socialist movement, for they are all impotent in themselves, and can subsist only by means of supplies drawn from abroad. But the Church draws all her support and all her motive power from within, from God himself. Her ensign is the cross, the cross alone, and her battle-cry, from the first to the last, is Deus vult. As she withstood the despotic tendency of kings and emperors in the Middle Ages, and taught the sovereigns that they held their power as a trust from God, and were bound to exercise it for the good of their subjects, so will she withstand the popular tendencies towards license and anarchy, and teach the people that their duty and their interest are in the maintenance of the order Almighty God has established for them, and in frank and conscientious submission to law.

Nothing could be madder, on the part of Catholics with us, than to give in to the radicalism of the country. Our only security here is in the supremacy of the law, and the prevailing sense of its sacredness, without which its supremacy is impos

way

sible. The Catholic who does not wish to pave the for the confiscation of the property of his Church, and for the suppression of his worship in these States, must beware bow he binds himself to the extreme liberalism of the country, and aids the tendency now so active, under the name of progress, to sweep away all the guaranties of law. It is natural that persons who have during their whole lives felt only the pressure of government, and known government only in its abuses, should on coming here be disposed to adopt extreme views, and think only of restricting the sphere and diminishing the power of government ; and it is natural also, that, finding their religion generally unpopular, they should seek to conciliate favor for it, or to acquire popularity for themselves, by falling in with the popular political current, and showing themselves enthusiastic in their support of the dominant tendency of the country ; but in doing either they are as far from consulting their true interest as they are their duty as Catholics. Majorities may protect themselves; minorities have no protection but in the sacredness and supremacy of law. The law is right as it is ; we must study to keep it so; and if we do, we shall always throw our influence on the conservative side, never on the radical side.

It may be objected, that the doctrine we contend for is opposed to progress; but it is opposed to progress in no sense in which progress is not a delusion. There is progress of individuals, but no progress of human nature, -a progress of particular nations, but none of the race. Nations are like individuals ; they are born with their peculiar constitutions and capacities, which determine all that they can be. They grow up like individuals, attain their growth, their maturity, decline into old age, become enfeebled, and die, and pass away. It is the universal law, and there is no elixir vitæ for nations any more than for individuals. The Rosicrucians pretended that it is possible in the case of the individual to ward off death and maintain perpetual youth, and Godwin, and Balzac, and Bulwer have made the notion the theme of interesting romances, as all know who have read St. Leon, Le Centenaire, and Zanoni, and our modern politicians try to persuade us to believe the same is possible with regard to the state ; but, in either case, it is a mere dream of the fancy or a delusion of the devil. The limits of our national progress are fixed by the inherent principles of our constitution, and it is madness to dream of passing beyond them.

In conclusion, we would express our thanks to the translator of the excellent little work which we have made the theme of

our remarks. He has done his task with taste and fidelity, and the notes he has annexed to the work add to its permanent value. There is one thing, however, the translator has not done ; but as he knows what it is, and as it concerns him personally, we say no more. Disagreeing with De Maistre as to bis monarchical views, at least so far as concerns our own country, and avowing it as our full and settled conviction that the destiny of our country is inseparable from the destiny of its republican constitution, we yet recommend his Essay as worthy of general study, and as almost the only sensible political pamphlet that has ever been published amongst us.

Our politicians may slight it, may denounce it, and denounce us for recommending it; but if they do, so much the worse for them, so much the worse for the country.

But, be this as it may, dark and lowering as are our political heavens, we know there is a good Providence over us, and we will never despair of the republic. There is a limit to the power of evil, and when things are at worst they sometimes mend.

We will hope that we have reached the term of our downward tendency ; that radicalism has had its day; that a reaction has commenced, and that the mass of our people will recover from their folly, and henceforth not fear to be conservative.

ART. III. - The Dublin Review, No. XLIV., Art. III. Lon

don : Richardson & Son July, 1847.

The July number of the Dublin Review contains an article, by one of the recent converts from Oxford, on Doctrinal Developments, professedly in reply to some remarks of ours on the same subject, in our Review for January last. For the obliging terms in which the writer speaks of ourselves personally, he will accept of our grateful acknowledgments ; but he must permit us to say that his article, regarded either as a reply to our remarks, or as a defence of the Theory of Development, has struck us as singularly deficient, and as exhibiting by no means that extensive and accurate acquaintance with Catholic theology which we naturally look for in a contributor to so respectable a periodical as the Dublin Review, the leading Caiholic periodical in our language. NEW SERIES.

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