tudes of modern history, become formidable, and may be regarded as now on the point of seizing the political power in both Great Britain and the United States.

It is this Evangelical element, a singular compound of cant and hypocrisy, of cunning and impudence, of philanthropy and hate, of infidelity and fanaticism, that renders the Know-Nothing party dangerous, and this element enters into both sections or divisions of the order, and is that which distinguishes the so-called American party from the ordinary Whig party of the country. In this Know-Nothing organization, Evangelicalism hopes to accede to power. That it will succeed we are unwilling to believe, and if it were confined to our own country we should confidently count on its failure, for though it constitutes the life and vigor of Protestantism, it is very far from commending itself to the whole Protestant body. But the Evangelicals of the United States and of the United Kingdom constitute only one and the same people, acting in concert under the guidance of the same leaders, and its victory or defeat in one is its victory or defeat in the other. We fear the aid the American Evangelicals will derive from their brethren in Great Britain, where they are far more formidable than with us, and where, if not met with equal firmness and wisdom, they will soon have a Parliamentary majority.

The danger in Great Britain would not be so great as with us, were it not for the unhappy divisions among the Irish Catholics, which neutralize their influence in the House of Commons. However desirable may be the Tenant's Compensation Bill, there is at this moment a far greater interest for Catholic Ireland at stake. The accession of the Evangelicals to power would be the destruction of the little religious and civil liberty still remaining in the United Kingdom. All that was gained under O'Connell would be lost, and Ireland most likely would feel the curse of another Cromwell. We are much mistaken if the expulsion from the Cabinet of the Earl of Aberdeen, the Duke of Newcastle, Sir James Graham, Mr. Gladstone, and Mr. Sydney Herbert, the men who stood up so firmly against the Ecclesiastical Titles Bill, and the elevation of Lord Palmerston to the premiership, ought not to be looked upon as a victory gained by the Evangelicals; and certain we are that civil and religious liberty

has nothing to hope, but much to fear, from the present administration. Still, such is the complexion of parties in the United Kingdom, that it must be difficult to say on what side the patriotic Catholic ought to cast his influence. The Tories can hardly be trusted for Ireland, and the Whigs just as little for England. The Tories insist upon governing Ireland through the Orange faction, and the Whigs by nature and tradition belong to the Evangelicals. It is not for us at this distance, and with our imperfect information, to say what is the political course most advisable for our Irish Catholic friends to adopt. It is not our business to decide the political dispute between the Tablet and the Telegraph, but our friend, the editor of the Telegraph, must allow us to say, that we have deeply regretted to find him laboring to bring national prejudices to bear against Mr. Lucas of the Tablet. It seems to us unwise, ungenerous, and uncatholic. Mr. Lucas is not infallible, and we are far enough from approving all we have seen in his journal; but we have full confidence in him as a sincere Catholic and a docile child of the Church. The Catholics of England and Ireland, and we will add of the United States, could ill spare such a man in the present conjuncture of their affairs. We could ill spare him from the House of Commons, where he has won by his ability, his honesty, and his straightforward, manly conduct, an honorable position. He may in his zeal have expressed himself on some occasions in terms not decorous to some members of the hierarchy; but to pretend that he is laboring to set the priests of the second order against their bishops, or to abolish the episcopacy, seems to us to be simply ridiculous. Bishops and priests, when they enter the arena of politics, expect to be treated as politicians, and it may sometimes well happen, that the well-intentioned layman, in a field in which he stands on the same level with them, may in the heat of debate or in the fervor of his zeal forget for a moment their sacred character. As we understand the case, the Callan speech of Mr. Lucas was objectionable, and we certainly disapprove in the strongest manner of some articles which we have seen copied into the Telegraph from the Dublin Nation; but Mr. Lucas is not Mr. Duffey, and we do not think that such a man as he should be cried down by Catholics, even had his fault been greater than it has been. These are not

times when we can afford to visit with excessive rigor the improprieties, imprudences, or indecorums of well-intentioned, able, sincere, and earnest laymen, who in good faith devote themselves to the defence of Catholic interests. Indeed, there are reasons why more than ordinary latitude should in our times be given them, and more than ordinary indulgence should be shown to their unintentional errors. The controversy between Catholics and Protestants is now mainly a secular controversy, in which laymen are far less unfitted to take part than they were in former times, when it was more exclusively theological. We have a high esteem for Mr. MacCabe, the distinguished author of The Catholic History of England, but we must remind him, and we do so in all kindness, that there are things to be pardoned in him as well as in the editor of the Tablet. In fact none of us are faultless enough to be inexorable to what we may regard as the faults of others. We hope that these remarks will be taken in the spirit in which they are made. We wish to see an end to the disedifying divisions among our Irish Catholic friends, for almost everything in the present crisis depends, under God, on their united, firm, bold, energetic, and manly action.

We like exceedingly the tone and advice of the last Dublin Review, which seems to be arming itself to meet the new phasis assumed by the controversy between Catholics and Protestants in the United Kingdom. It understands that the enemy, discomfited for the hundredth time in the field of theological controversy, and unable to meet the arguments, now proposes to shut the mouths, of Catholics. What we Catholics have now to do in Great Britain and the United States is to defend civil and religious liberty against the conspiracy of Evangelicals, led on by such men as Lord Shaftesbury, Achilli, Gavazzi, the Beechers, the Clarks, and the Ned Buntlines, aided, no doubt, by all the cunning, subtlety, and malice of Satan. In this grand contest it will serve little purpose to show that we are friendly to civil and religious liberty; we must take higher ground, and show from incontrovertible facts and arguments that Evangelicalism is in its very nature and tendency in the last degree hostile to every species of rational liberty, and that it is only on Catholic ground that either civil or religious liberty can be sustained. We must hurl back upon these Evangelical 63

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canters and snifflers the charges which they falsely allege against us and our religion. Let there be no timidity, no trimming, no compromise. They are the party opposed to civil and religious liberty, ingrained tyrants and despots, who are ready to march to power over the grave of all that is dear and sacred to the human heart, all that is liberal and ennobling in human culture, all that is cheerful and recreating in human society, all that is true and holy in religion. We can speak to the public as well as they, and we must undeceive those whose confidence they have abused, and rally anew the real friends of British and American freedom.

We can do this if we will but heal our divisions, and venture to depart from the old routine of controversy, and meet the question as it is practically presented to-day. We must dare look it, in its present form, in the face, and approach it with strong, fresh, and fearless thought. Consult the old writers for principles we must, but in their application, in the forms of our expression, we must not fear to be original, however we may shock a superannuated pedantry or a cowardly imbecility. Our friends across the water are doing much, and doing it nobly. We are amazed at the marvellous fecundity of the English press. Let Ireland, who must cease to call herself "unhappy Ireland," feel that in the present crisis the hopes of Catholics in England and here turn to her. Let her, from her advantageous position, be true to herself, be bold, energetic, dignified, commanding, as becomes a Catholic kingdom, and this Evangelical party, composed of unbelievers and fanatics, assisted, as it may be, by Satanic cunning and malice, will fail of its purpose, and British and American freedom be saved from the grasp of its deadliest and only foes. Let American and British Catholics deserve success by their free and manly conduct, by their firm and heroic spirit, and they may count on success; for then Almighty God himself, and all the hosts of heaven, will be on our side, and fight for us.

ART. IV. La Raison Philosophique et la Raison Catholique. Par le T. R. P. VENTURA DE RAULICA. Paris: Gaume Frères. 1851-1853. 2 tomes. 8vo.

A WARM personal friend of the distinguished Father Ventura has very obligingly presented us with a copy of this highly instructive and most valuable work of the exGeneral of the Theatins, which consists of discourses preached during the season of Lent, at Paris, in the years 1851 and 1852, augmented and accompanied with remarks and notes by the author. The first volume had been previously noticed by a writer in this Review, but the second volume we meet now for the first time. Of the genius, learning, ability, and extraordinary eloquence of the illustrious Italian it is not necessary for us to say a single word. In these respects he is above any eulogism of ours. When Gregory the Sixteenth, of immortal memory, was asked by a Frenchman who was the first savant at Rome, he replied, after a moment's reflection, "Father Ventura." "We have," continued his Holiness, "no doubt, many distinguished theologians, apologists, philosophers, publicists, orators, and men of letters, but there is only the Father Ventura who is all these, and in himself alone."

In 1848 we made some strictures on Father Ventura's Funeral Oration on O'Connell, for it seemed to us to incline too much to the liberalism of the day. We regarded it as likely to encourage the revolutionary party throughout Europe, and as containing expressions which, in the state of men's minds at the time, were likely to be understood as conceding that the Church had not always been on the side of true freedom. His stay at Rome during the Roman revolution, and his conduct, as reported to us, during the short-lived reign of the Roman republic, gave us very unfavorable impressions as to his Catholic loyalty, and we feared that he would prove another Lamennais. But a friend of his, who professes to have been with him during the period we refer to, and to have shared his confidence, has assured us that the gravest things laid to his charge were false reports, and has satisfied us, if his account be correct, and we have no reason to doubt it, that the most to be said against him is that he suffered his impulsive nature to betray him into some imprudences, and perhaps