How many new varieties have been added to the twentyone enumerated above since 1854, we are unable to say. As the inventive faculty of religious "reformers" is incapable of exhaustion, and "grows by what it feeds on," we should not be surprised to hear that the number has doubled in Missouri, as it has elsewhere. We may safely take it for granted that this spectacle of shameful riot and confusion has also doubled the number of those who profess no religion at all, and regard all these rival sects as a decisive proof that a religion which produces everywhere such results is more likely to separate the soul from God, to whom division is supremely hateful, than to unite it to Him, and is therefore unworthy of notice. If we may trust the concurring reports of those who ought to know, a great majority of the American people are unbaptized, and do not even affect to belong to any sect whatever. They find it hard to choose among so many, and being occupied with more engrossing cares, seldom find leisure to choose at all. Where all is equally human, the practical conclusion of popular logic is that judgment may safely be postponed. One faggot, the American woodman knows, is the same as another, and it is not of the least importance which is flung into the fire first. But when men hesitate to decide in questions of the soul, in most cases, without knowing it, they have already decided. That is the one living controversy in which delay is ruin, and suspense destruction. The world does not cease to revolve while we are making up our minds, and today, in the field of truth as well as of space, we are thousands of leagues away from the position which we occupied yesterday. The joint action of the will and the understanding, though prolonged only during the twinkling of an eye, may decide our eternal destiny. There is a moment in every man's life in which Truth is proposed to his intelligence as the sovereign good; if he hesitates, there is a motion in the air as of an angel passing by, but the messenger is gone, and who can tell if he will ever return? And for this reason in nothing has the so-called Reformation been a more appalling calamity to the human race than in the new motive which it has furnished to millions for abstaining from all religious profession, and in the contemptuous indifference which its jarring sects have inspired and justified towards the fickle and inconstant creeds which even the world perceives to be false, since they refute one another, and cannot unite a single household in a common faith. But if it has lent to impiety a plausible excuse, it has extended the right of revolt against every form of authority, and throughout the whole range of human action, It has made men as impatient of subjection in the

civil as in the spiritual order, and while its fatal maxims have enthroned the individual above the Church, and human caprice above Divine law, they have destroyed the throne as well as the altar, subverted the foundations of all government, and delivered the destinies of nations to the selfish arbitrament of. of an irresponsible power or the rude control of an unreflecting mob. That is the work of the Reformation; and though the United States do not present the only, nor even the worst example of its ruinous effects, they do perhaps display the combination of religious and social confusion which results from its leading principles, and the intimate relation between the two, more clearly than any other nation. For this reason we propose to examine, with the help of the French writer from whom we shall borrow some of our illustrations, the evidences of that fatal relation, not to find in them any ground of reproach against a kindred people who have so many claims to our sympathy and goodwill, but only to establish a new basis of an old argument which we confidently submit to the searching investigation of American candour and intelligence.

We have no protest to make, nor does Catholic theology allow us to make any, against the form of government which the people of the United States, in the exercise of their undoubted rights, have thought proper to adopt. There is probably no section of their community which accepts it with a more cheerful and cordial spirit than that which professes the Catholic faith. The Church of God is charged with no message to mankind as to the form, but only as to the spirit of human governments. As long as they recognize the supreme authority of God, her children are equally bound to honour and obey them, whether they are monarchical or republican. But, as one of her profoundest theologians has said, "When a State is founded," no matter on what basis, "its government should be modelled on that of God Himself." And the reason is evident. "To govern, is to guide the governed to their true destiny," which is, "to attain by virtue a union with God."* And for this the temporal power requires the help of the Church, which was founded to aid men in securing that union, by means which she alone can place at their disposal. When, therefore, certain modern States, monarchical as well as republican, acting on the principles of the Reformation, renounce alliance with the Church, and govern with a sort of ostentation in complete indepen

*S. Thomas, "De Regimine Principum," lib. i. cap. 14. Cf. Suarez, 'De Bello," § 8.

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dence of her laws and precepts, they proclaim at the same moment that the true aim of governnient has no place in their programme, and that they have neither the will nor the power to guide the governed to their true destiny." In other words, they abdicate the function of every lawful government, and deprive justice and liberty, as well as religion, of their only stable foundation. This result of the divorce between the Church and the State, between God and society, is so clearly proved by the facts of modern history, that, as Montalembert observes in the introduction to the "Monks of the West," "the unanimous testimony of all the democratic writers of our own day who have profoundly studied the past, and, above all, of M. Augustin Thierry," attests the loss of true liberty, and the savage domination of unscrupulous majorities, which, in spite of its boasts, is the degrading characteristic of our generation. Such writers admit, with Montalembert, that in the Middle Ages, when the union between Church and State was closest, "the world was bristling with liberty. The spirit of resistance, the sentiment of individual right, penetrated it entirely; and it is this which always and everywhere constitutes the essence of freedom." In those times, the great French orator adds,—and the statement is confirmed by a multitude of eminent writers of our day who hardly profess to be Christians,-the principles which everywhere governed society, and which were those of the Gospel applied by the Church, "rendered all prolonged despotism absolutely impossible." The Popes, who were the appointed guardians of Christian liberty, took care of that. "Everything there," continues Montalembert, "breathes freedom, health, and life. . . In public life as in private, in the world as in the cloister, strong and magnanimous souls everywhere break forth-illustrious characters and great individuals abounded." The contrast has been pithily summarized by a living English rationalist, who says: "Those times produced great men, ours produce great inventions."

Our objection, then, to modern States, which pretend to govern without God and the Church, applies equally to monarchies and republics, so far as they are influenced by the destructive principles of the Reformation. We are not

enamoured of any form of government for its own sake, and however favourable our judgment may be of that which exists in England, which has been truly described as a republic with a monarch for its chief magistrate, we cannot deny that what Washington called "the baneful effects of the spirit of party" are constantly seen in the substitution of personal for national interests, and in a hindrance to wholesome legislation so in

veterate that, as an acute critic has lately remarked, "if some remedy is not devised, the whole British system of legislation will be discredited."* But while we admit that forms of government are rightly determined by the choice of those who accept them, we contend that the choice should be limited to those who are capable of exercising it. What Cicero called the "infinitus forensium rerum labor" is a burden with which dwarfs, of whom mankind is chiefly composed, cannot be safely charged. Government belongs only to the wise and strong, as we learn both from sacred and profane history. And for this reason, "the false dogma of the sovereignty of the people," as the French writer whom we shall presently quote styles it, is a reversal of all the rules and maxims which have given to the world such peace and order as it has hitherto enjoyed. When fools govern, States decline; and as Holy Scripture tells us that "the number of fools is infinite," it follows that the sovereignty of the masses is only another name for the supremacy of fools. But this "false dogma" is the inevitable corollary of that which was first proclaimed by the so-called Reformers; for if every individual is qualified to teach the Church, much more is he able to instruct the State. Hallam says, in spite of his own prejudices, that "the Reformation appealed to the ignorant"; and one of the agreeable consequences of that fatal sedition has been, that, in too many countries, the few who are wise are now subject to the merciless domination of the many who are ignorant. The statesmen and philosophers of other ages held the opinion, which they supported by cogent arguments, that the lot of the multitude is, not to govern, but to be governed. Washington and the other prudent founders of the American Union shared that conviction, and made no secret of it; but the sovereignty of the people" has cast down the feeble barriers which they opposed to it, and the only men who are now definitively banished from all share in the government of the Republic are precisely those, as its wisest citizens proclaim, who are best qualified, by dignity of character and elevation of mind, to fill the offices from which their wisdom and virtue exclude them. But whatever reproach is involved in this fact attaches not so much to the American people as to human nature, and to that "doctrine of devils" inaugurated by the Reformation, that the individual conscience is the only supreme judge, and therefore the rights of error are as sacred as those of truth; that there is no universal tribunal to which every conscience is subject, and therefore God is a pure

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* "Pall Mall Gazette," May 4.

abstraction, without any representative in this lower world; that obedience has ceased to be a Christian duty, because there is no authority which has a right to claim it; and that, in the affairs of the State as in those of the Church, folly has the same constructive power as wisdom, or rather a great deal more, because wherever the masses reign, the fools are to the wise as millions to one.

One object of government, men of every political school will admit, is to secure his own lawful rights to every member of the community, and the largest measure of liberty consistent with public order which is possible to the creature. But tyranny is an instinct of human nature, and is displayed even by children; and as there is a larger amount of it in many than there can be in a few, the surest way to make it universal is to introduce the "sovereignty of the people," and multiply in every society the agents of oppression by all the units which compose it. And this is the experience of mankind in all ages and in all lands. When Augustus became emperor, Gibbon remarks, "the provinces, weary of the oppressive ministers of the republic, were willing to submit to the autho rity of a single master."* "All republics," says a learned English writer of the liberal school, "rule selfishly and oppressively. There is no exception to this in either ancient or modern times. Carthage, Rome, Venice, Genoa, Florence, Pisa, Holland, and Republican France, all tyrannized over every province and subject state where they gained authority." The most famous republic of all, that of intellectual Athens, "avowed that its empire was a tyranny."† Aristotle taught the doctrine that Greeks had no obligations towards those whom they called barbarians, and most of them recognized as little responsibility towards one another. And the spirit of the people when they had power in their hands was the same in modern England as in ancient Attica. During the Commonwealth, as Lingard proves by many notable examples, the sole thought of each contending party was to put down its rivals by force. Never were the rights of minorities or of individuals less respected than in an age when every man had the word "liberty" in his mouth. "The fanatics," Lingard remarks, "not satisfied with the death of the king, demanded, with the Bible in their hands, additional victims"; and they were not particular to what class they belonged. When Lilburne appealed on his trial "to Magna Charta and the liberties of Englishmen," and two years later charged his

* Ch. ii.

+ "The Fifteen Decisive Battles of the World," by Sir Edward Creasy, p. 60, tenth edition.

VOL. XXVII.-NO. LIII. [New Series.]

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