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as we may learn from our own experience, where the great mass of the young men who graduate are little better than downright infidels. A more insidious or destructive measure it is impossible to devise, and we regret to find it countenanced by some who would fain persuade us they are Catholics. We trust, however, Catholics generally will treat the measure as it deserves; for the well instructed Catholic knows that education not based on religious principle and coupled with thorough religious training is a curse, instead of a blessing; and no religious training, to satisfy a Catholic, is possible in a school not exclusively under Catholic control. We would much rather our children should grow up ignorant of letters, than be taught in a school which is not Catholic. Better to be ignorant and believing than to be learned and doubting.

The second measure is the proposition to pay the Catholic bishops and clergy a salary from the public treasury, which, it is hoped, will make them the tools of the state. The English Tories seem to have still too much respect for principle to make such a nefarious proposition; but the English Whigs, in whose ethical code honor, justice, manliness, independence, never found admission, and never will, a party notoriously without principles, and held together by cant and a common love of chicanery and baseness, make no scruples in boldly avowing such a policy and its motives. Events may rapidly drive the government into its adoption. Its acceptance would be the death-knell of the Irish Church, Irish nationality, and Irish liberty. We trust the dignitaries and clergy of the Irish Church do not need to be told this; and we trust in God, that in the hour of trial they will be found firm and unflinching, choosing "to be afflicted with the people of God, rather than to have the pleasure of sin for a time, esteeming the reproach of Christ greater riches than the treasures of the Egyptians." Retain the Catholic faith of the Irish people and the independence of the Irish Catholic Church; Irish nationality will never be lost, and Irish liberty will assuredly ere long be triumphantly vindicated and established. Corrupt the faith of the Irish people, make them infidels, or educate them merely with reference to success in this world, and reduce the Catholic prelates and clergy to the condition of stipendiaries on the British govern ment; Ireland's degradation will be complete, and all hope of her regeneration delayed for ever.

For ourselves, we confess that we feel more lively apprehensions as to the effect Repeal agitation is likely to have on the

cause of the Catholic Church in Ireland, than we do as to its probable success in securing Irish freedom and national prosperity. Temporal prosperity, however great, is too dearly purchased, if purchased at the expense of that faith without which it is impossible to be saved. Great popular movements in behalf of any worldly end, however unexceptionable or praiseworthy in themselves considered, are always to be viewed with something of fear and anxiety. They almost necessarily draw off the mind and the heart from the great work of securing our celestial destiny, and concentrate them on the means of working out an earthly destiny; and therefore tend to make us worldly-minded, instead of spiritually-minded. We look upon all popular movements with a certain degree of distrust; for they are almost always sure to be carried on by blind impulse or enthusiastic zeal, and to fall at last under the control of the unprincipled and the designing, instead of the true, the good, the holy, the practical, and the discreet. So far as we have observed them, though in behalf of a great and praiseworthy object, they generally strike down more good by the way than they secure by gaining their end. We can see no good that has, as yet, resulted from the terrible popular movements of modern times. The giant turns that he may rest his wearied limbs; but the mountain merely sends forth volcanic eruptions, which spread fear, consternation, and ruin through all the neighbouring towns, villages, and hamlets. In order to secure success, the masses make concessions and form alliances which are incompatible with truth and goodness, and which rarely fail, in the end, to rob victory of its most valuable fruits.

There may be no cause in the Irish Repeal movement for any of the apprehensions we here express, and we would fain hope there is not; and yet we are not without our fears. Great men and good men, engaged in a cause they have much at heart, looking steadily at its final success, are apt to be a little blinded, and to give countenance, unconsciously, to principles and measures which they would not for the world adopt, if clearly and distinctly proposed and contemplated. In their patriotic zeal, Mr. O'Connell and some others, who are not to be judged by us, may, in order to unite all Irishmen for Ireland, make concessions to Protestant prejudices, and professions of policy, which grate rather harshly upon the sensibilities of a Catholic not engaged in the strife, and which may have, in the end, unhappy consequences. We may be oversensitive, and led astray by the zeal and enthusiasm of the re

cent convert; we may assume a tone and freedom of remark not becoming one just from the ranks of Protestantism; and we have some suspicion that such is the case; but, if so, we shall take meekly any rebuke which may be administered to us. But we have seen so much of Protestantism, that we cannot bear in silence the least concession, or shadow of a concession, to it, for any cause whatever. It is a rebel to the Church, and therefore a rebel to God; as such we hold it, and as such we would have it treated, whenever and wherever we come in contact with it. We will throw not one grain of incense upon the altar of Jupiter; no, not to gain the whole world. It is no calamity to suffer and die for the faith; but it is a terrible calamity to succeed in the best of temporal causes by lending the least conceivable countenance to any of the distinctive principles of Protestantism. There can be no alliance between Christ and Belial. If we live in Protestant countries, we will obey the laws, demean ourselves as good citizens and subjects, but have no communion with what is distinctively Protestant. We can do without the earth, but we cannot do without heaven. If infidelity and misbelief hold the dominion of this world, so be it; we can enter into no covenant with them for the purpose of sharing that dominion. We seek a kingdom which is not of this world.

But if we express our apprehensions, it is not because we fear any thing for the final result. The Church is of God, and can never fail. She never takes the initiative in regard to any form of government, for she can adapt herself to all forms of civil polity. She is eminently anti-revolutionary, eminently conservative; but she always can, and always does, accept and conform herself to the political order she finds established. She did not stir up the popular movements of modern times, nor set on foot the efforts of the people for popular governments. But she was not bound to the old political order now passing away, and in no sense depended on it as the condition of her existence, or of fulfilling her high mission. She did not seek to overthrow it, for she seeks to overthrow no existing political order; nor does she seek to recall and restore an order once overthrown and passed away. But when one order has been thrown off, and a new one introduced, she leaves the old, and accepts and conforms to the new.

A new political order seems to us to be rendered inevitable by the popular movements of modern times. It seems to us, that there is to follow, perhaps throughout all Christendom, after a

more or less protracted struggle, an era of popular governments. The people are to take the place of the old kings and nobles. Whether this will be a change for better or for worse, we, perhaps without offence, may be permitted to regard as problematical; but that it is to be we regard as inevitable. The Church will conform, and we see that she already is conforming, to the new state of things. It is in accordance with the principles on which she has always acted, to accept the new state of things, when once established. The new order being the popular order, the Church will accept and sanction the popular order. The Church, which has always been on the side of the people, will hereafter, we venture to predict, be on the side of what is called popular liberty, and the triumph of the Church and of the people will be celebrated together.

In this view of the case, the popular tendency has nothing alarming. A few years will develope the fact, that the freedom of the people and the independence of the Church are one and the same cause, and that the one cannot be effected without the other. The republican will see that his protection against the tyrant is only in the maintenance of the freedom and independence of the Church, in regard to all her spiritual functions; and the Church will appeal to the popular energy to save her from the slavery to which infidel governments everywhere attempt to reduce her. In this way, the providence of God will make the terrific popular energy, which was at first waked up by the enemies of the Church to crush her, serve as the instrument of her triumph and of their confusion. In this way will Providence bring good out of evil, and turn the weapons forged against his Spouse in her defence and against her enemies. When the cause of popular government becomes identified with the cause of the Church, it will become a holy cause; and the most democratic government, under the sanction of the Church, or where the Church is free to fulfil her mission in the spiritual order, will be a good government, and perhaps the best of all conceivable governments. Whatever evils might be apprehended from popular liberty, where we have not the Church, will be avoided, where we have it, and the good of the people will assuredly be promoted.

We hope we shall be forgiven these some somewhat desultory remarks, which, after all, to those who will meditate them, may be pregnant with some not unimportant suggestions. We have made them in no spirit of arrogance; for we do not, because we fill an editorial chair, forget that we are not one who

has received authority to teach, and that it is for us to receive, and not to give, or, if we attempt to give, to give only that which we have received from her whom God hath commissioned to teach and to govern the nations. The layman does not cease to be a layman because the conductor of a public journal. But we claim the right, with submission, to labor with what little ability we have for the cause of truth and goodness; and we feel the more earnest, because we must redeem the time we have lost, and can have at best but a few years in which to redeem it. With us, the Church is paramount to all other considerations, and we ask no greater boon than to be permitted to labor in her cause. First of all, we are Catholics, and first of all does that which concerns the Church interest us. Next in order, we are American citizens. In becoming Catholics, we do not cease to be citizens and patriots, and we feel bound to demean ourselves as faithful citizens and loyal subjects. As the conductor of a public journal, we have the honor and glory of our country at heart, and are bound to raise our voice, feeble though it be, against whatever would attack either, come it from what quarter it may. Here, free institutions are the established order, and we have no option left us; we are solemnly bound to do our best to defend these institutions against all impugners from within or from without, and to do what we can to preserve them and provide for their free practical operation and success. Next in order, after our own country, we give our best affections and warmest sympathy to the cause of Ireland. We, as a people, are much to Ireland. She has given us a large portion of our population, many of our best citizens, of the firmest, bravest, and most enlightened friends and defenders of our republican institutions. She has also done more; she has contributed more than any other one nation to introduce and build up among us the Catholic Church. For this, as little as the mass of our countrymen may esteem it, we owe her an immense debt of gratitude, greater than we shall ever be able to pay; for to the existence and prevalence of the Catholic Church among us shall we be ultimately indebted for the preservation of our free institutions, and their success in working out the happiness of the people. Dear to us, then, is the cause of Ireland; and we give her, if nothing else, the warm affections of a grateful heart, and fervent prayers for the true freedom and prosperity of all her children at home, or whithersoever they may be scattered abroad over the earth.

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