grand, or maintain a demeanor so austere and difficult. There seems to be a notion prevailing, that it is particularly necessary in this age, to manage-menager-tenderly with the world; and yet by their own showing, there never was a time when it was less necessary, because, as they say, you cannot resist the march of improvement, it will bear down all opposition, and sweep you along with it. So then if it is necessary that we participate in the commodities of the age, let us spare ourselves a longer solicitude, and with the better grace make light of its behests. For, if in compassion of our infirmities and many miseries, a beneficent Providence permits us to derive, even from the perturbation of the age, some alleviation, though in a most humble kind, of the increasing wants and defects of society: so even when the world goes reeling to its dissolution, we know that it is impossible there should ever be a point of time, when some element of good, some egress of relief, or some virtual compensation for the man of good will, should not be mingled with every temptation and disaster of the race; and with every wo, save that final and yet imminent one, of which the manner is beyond discussion, and the event passes all speculation.* E. P. N.

ART. IV.-Politics at Home-Democracy-Republicanism -Know-Nothingism-the Slave-Trade-Filibusterism.

THOUGH Open to essays on political science and the relations of politics to religion and morality, the pages of the Review are for the most part closed to the discussion of the respective merits of political parties, or of political questions which involve no great and important social principle;— not indeed because we hold the triumph or defeat of this or

* There are some expressions in the foregoing admirable article which may seem not to be in precise harmony with those the Review generally adopts, but the difference is more apparent than real. Besides, every writer must be allowed to express himself in his own way, providing he keeps within the limits of orthodoxy, and we make it a point to leave to our collaborateurs their own individuality, and all the freedom of opinion the Church or Catholic faith permits. We do not expect, we do not exact in matters of opinion a perfect correspondence with our own. The writer of the article is responsible for what he writes, and his name if given in full, would carry with it more weight than that of editor. Articles which have no signature are from the editor; those that have are from his friends, who speak on their own resposibility.-Editor Quarterly Review.

that party to be a matter of indifference, or because we hold it lawful to be unmindful of one's rights or duties as a citizen of a great and growing republic; but because we have not found a public sufficiently enlightened and tolerant to permit us to engage in party politics without detriment to the more important religious and philosophical purposes to which they are primarily devoted. The constitution and laws guaranty us the most perfect freedom of thought and speech, but public opinion, which in a Democracy is supreme and reigns as a despot, exercises here a more effectual restraint on both thought and speech than is or can be exercised by the most arbitrary and despotic government in the Old World. The journal that undertakes to enlighten and correct the opinion of its own public has no lease of life, and it will be as speedily and as effectually suppressed with us, as by the police in France would be a journal that should dare question the wisdom or justice of the Imperial régime, or the Imperial policy. No periodical with us can live except on condition of pleasing the special public it addresses, and that public, be it what it will, is impatient of contradiction, and requires the journal it supports not simply to tell it what is true, right, and just, but to defend its opinions, prejudices, sympathies, and antipathies. supports a journal only on condition that it is devoted to its cause, or its convinctions and sentiments. A slight exception, no doubt, must be made in the case of the Catholic public, which has some conscience, but even the Catholic public would soon drop a journal that constantly contradicted its political convictions and sentiments, however conclusive the reasons it might give, or however unexceptionable in a religious point of view it might be, while its devotion to the Catholic cause would effectually prevent its circulation among non-Catholics, however acceptable it might be under the point of view of politics.

It

Moreover, we are opposed to the alliance of the Catholic cause with political parties. The Church is self-sufficing, and we wish her cause to be compromised by no real or apparent league with monarchies or republics, aristocracies

or democracies, the Republicans or the Democrats, the Americans or the Nationals. No one of these parties are Catholic, and no good can come to religion by making the prosperity of the Catholic cause dependent on the success or defeat of any one of them. Catholics have the same political rights and duties with other citizens, but the interests of their Church does not require them to throw all their influence on the side of any one of these parties, not even in case it promises to elect now and then a nominal Catholic a member of Congress or of a State Legislature, or give to a few brawling politicians, whose fathers were Catholics, a place in the customs, or a clerkship in the public offices. With the strong anti-Catholic sentiment of the country, no Catholic known to be firmly devoted to his religion, and publicly associated with the defence of Catholic interests can be elected or appointed to any office of importance. To succeed politically, except in one or two localities, one must be an indifferent Catholic, and an indifferent Catholic in office is of less service to Catholic interests than the most bigoted non-Catholic. Nor is it a sufficient reason for opposing a party that it refuses to elect or appoint Catholics to office. To be elected or appointed to office is no man's natural right, and should never be regarded as the chief end of politics. No man has the right, prior to his election or appointment, to depend on office for a livelihood. Offices are created or supposed to be created for the public good, not for the private benefit of individuals, and the man who cannot get his living without an office, has rarely the right to get it at all.

We have always considered it, under a Catholic point of view, a gross blunder on the part of those twenty-one Catholic members of the British parliament, who by their votes threw out the Derby ministry, and put in the Palmerston-Russell ministry. The Derby ministry did not appoint Catholics to office, but they conceded more to Catholic interests than has ever been conceded by all the Whig ministries that have ever governed the United Kingdom. What they lost by displacing Lord Derby and installing Lord

Palmerston and Lord John Russell,-two of the worst enemies Catholicity has in Great Britain, and the very worst men for Catholic interests to be at the head of the government in the present state of affairs on the Continent, was poorly compensated by having four or five Catholics appointed to subordinate places in the ministry. If the Derby ministry had remained in power we should not have seen Central Italy annexed to Sardinia, or Æmilia wrested by an unprincipled revolution from the Holy Father. So far as Catholic interests are concerned we should have little to regret in our country were the so-called American party to rise to place and power. Its open and avowed hostility is less to be deprecated than the coquetry of the Democratic party, every whit as hostile, and coquets with us not indeed because we are Catholics, but because the great body of us are naturalized citizens and cast what is insultingly called "the foreign vote." They appeal to us as foreign voters, as Irishmen or as Germans, not as Catholics.

There should be no distinction, made between naturalized and natural-born citizens. Their rights are equal, and there should be no more objection to the elevation of the one than of the other to any office to which either is constitutionally eligible. The objection is not that a citizen of Irish or German birth or descent votes or is voted for, but that he votes or is voted for as an Irishman or as a German, that the appeal is made to him on the ground of his former, not of his present nationality. The evil is in the naturalized. citizens being made or treated as a class by themselves—in their acting or being induced or forced to act as a distinct class of citizens. No American can object to the election of a citizen of Irish or German birth; but every American ought to feel indignant at being called upon to select or to vote for a candidate because he is a German or an Irishman. As a German or an Irishman he is a foreigner, and is ineligible. Nothing is more injurious to American politics than the practice into which we have fallen of treating naturalized voters as a separate class, and of soliciting their suffrages under foreign appellations. It introduces into our

politics a foreign element, and one which cannot fail to be an element of corruption. Nothing can be worse than for political parties in selecting candidates or in proposing measures of policy, to feel obliged as the condition of success to consult the "foreign vote," the tastes, inclinations, passions, or prejudices of naturalized citizens. Now each party bids for the "foreign vote,"-is anxious to secure the vote of our "adopted citizens," just as if they remained foreigners after adoption! The evil is a great one, and has done much to bring our country to the verge of ruin. It has virtually given the balance of power to a class destitute of American traditions, and who, however worthy they may be as individuals, lack necessarily American habits and associations. Nobody questions their readiness in case of war to fight or die for the country, but the country of their heart, as it must be with all true men, is the land of their birth, the land consecrated by the joys and sorrows of their ancestors. We are all creatures of habit, and none of us by crossing the ocean can jump out of one national character into another, be a German or an Irishman one month. and an American the next.

We simply state facts. We say nothing in disparagement of American citizens of foreign birth. No man can leave the old homestead, find himself in a new and strange country, surrounded by new and strange faces, away from all his early associations, and all that goes to the making up of home, without some shock to his moral being. We ourselves, feel this, in removing even from one State to another within the Union. The migratory habits of the American people, whether the effect of choice or of necessity, make a large portion of us strangers even in the land of our birth, and give us more or less the character of adventurers, restrained by few ties or associations of early home; and to these habits is due much of the rash and adventurous character of our politics, and not a little of the growing corruption and immorality of our public men. I am, where I now live, as much a stranger, as much an exile from home, as the Irishman or German in