ists, that the nation has a right to a voice in the management of its affairs, and that there can be in modern times political freedom only under a constitutional and parliamentary government, which secures publicity and freedom of discussion. He is no enemy of the Bonapartes, he is a loyal subject of Napoleon the Third, but he wishes political guaranties, which the imperial constitution does not give, both for the sake of the temporal order and the spiritual. For this, whatever others may do, we honor him, and deem ourselves honored in so doing.

We know that there are Catholics, at home and abroad, who think the cause of religion is to some extent identified with the present imperial régime in France. They regard Louis Napoleon as the defender of religion and the protector of the Church, and our refusal to give him our confidence has made us more enemies than friends. We regret this less for our own sake than that of our holy religion. We believe the Emperor wishes well to the Church, but he is ignorant of her interests, and seeks only his own. He neither understands nor loves the freedom of the Church, and, like absolute princes generally, he will protect no further than he can enslave her. As a question of policy, we doubt the prudence, in a republican country like ours, or under a constitutional government like Great Britain and Belgium, of identifying the cause of our Church with that of absolutism. We are charged with being the friends of despotism, with being opposed to political liberty, and we only confirm the charge by our sympathies with Louis Napoleon. He has done nothing, that we are aware of, to endear him to the hearts of Catholics, and if he is fighting against one bitter enemy of the Church, he is in close alliance with another, avowedly in defence of a third. The Univers, the leading Catholic journal in Europe, and which under many relations deserves well of the Catholic public, is doing great injury to the Catholic cause, in France and out of it, by its devotion to modern Cæsarism, and its fierce attacks upon liberty in the past and the present, in the old world and the new. It is doing not a little to aid the powerful reaction already commenced against Catholicity. We regret to see some of our own Catholic journals copying its bad example. From 1830 up to 1852, the great leaders of the Catholic party in Europe and this country had adopted

liberty as their watchword, and had advocated, each as the necessary condition of the other, both religious and political freedom; and we have seen no reason, because France has passed from constitutionalism to Cæsarism, to change this wise and sound policy. The Church has no natural affinity with despotism, and has herself always been on the side of freedom. We think of Red Republicanism precisely as we did in 1848, and as we opposed then all alliance of the Church with the Revolution in its favor, so do we oppose all alliance of Catholicity with the Cæsarism which has supplanted it. We do this, not only because we hate despotism in whatever shape it comes, but because the centralized monarchy now dominant in France and Austria will soon provoke a Red Republican reaction, and involve the world anew in the horrors of anarchical revolution. Europe will settle down permanently neither under absolute monarchy nor under absolute democracy, and will alternate from the one to the other till the friends of freedom and order grow wise enough to avoid either extreme.

Religion certainly had much to fear from the revolution, but it has even more from the Cæsarism which is accepted as a remedy against it. This Count Montalembert shows clearly enough in the fragment we have translated. In all ages absolute princes have been the worst enemies of religion, and the Church has nothing more to dread than their protection. They may keep her churches in repair, contribute liberally for the support of the clergy, and the maintenance of the pomp of divine service, but they will never allow her her rightful freedom and independence. They seldom consent to serve her any further than they can use her, and her interests must always be sacrificed to the policy of state. They study always to confine her action to the narrowest possible sphere, to deprive her ministers of all manliness and independence of character, and to render them imbecile or the mere worshippers of power. They oppose every effort on the part of the clergy to educate the faithful, and to elevate the moral and intellectual character of the people. We have seen this in every Catholic country subjected to their domination. A few are educated. Churches are multiplied, the pomp of religious worship amply provided for, but the mass of the people are suffered to vegetate from age to age in the gross

est ignorance. A traveller through Mexico is struck with what appear to be monuments of the piety of the Spanish government. Large and magnificent churches were built and richly endowed wherever needed, and in no country was more ample provision made for the material support of religion; and yet in no country was the religious and secular instruction of the people more shamefully neglected. The clergy were permitted to administer the sacraments if they saw proper, and were assigned an honorable place in processions, but an arbitrary and jealous government took good care that they should content themselves with giving the least possible amount of instruction, and do nothing to create a great, energetic, and enlightened people. Despotic Spain wanted loyal subjects, not free and enlightened citizens. The state of religion in Cuba, the Queen of the Antilles, is most deplorable, and would gain immensely by the annexation of the island to the American Union. It is hard for any but a courtier or the servile tool of some grandee to be made a bishop or to be appointed to a benefice, and if a bishop or a priest should really attempt to discharge the duties of his office, he would be thwarted by the civil authorities. In all despotic countries the Church, whatever the external splendor she may exhibit, is crippled in her power, is reduced to a sort of gilded slavery. The clergy, confined to the narrowest sphere possible, lose their independence and manliness of character, become indolent and luxurious, servile and selfseeking, and neglectful of the duties of their charge. The people are left to perish. Nothing but the storms created by revolutions or new heresies can purify the atmosphere, and prepare the way for their resuscitation. Hence we explain that imbecility which we so often meet in old Catholic populations, where the Church has for a long time enjoyed the protection of the temporal authority.

Yet it is so pleasant to have the protection of the civil ruler, to have the state take care of the temporal wants of the Church, that many Catholics are prone to think that it cannot be purchased at too high a price. Hence their delight in the present state of things in France, and their fulsome adulation of the new Emperor. To obtain the imperial protection for religion they are willing to surrender to the newly elected monarch all their rights as men, and all the rights of the nation. Yet, unless all our

information is erroneous, the external respect gained for the Church in France but ill atones for the reaction going on in the minds of the intelligent classes against Catholicity. The political press in France is not allowed one particle of freedom, but in return the Presse and the Siècle are free to blaspheme religion to their heart's content. Churches are built, repaired, or embellished, but the Church is losing much of what she gained under Louis Philippe and the Republic. Experience proves that what is best for the Church is not imperial or royal protection, but freedom and independence. We cannot make all men monks, nor can we convert the world into a cloister. It will not do to proceed as if the evangelical counsels were precepts. We must take men as we find them. If we ask too much, we shall get nothing. Rational liberty is a natural right, and men will not, unless brutalized, be content with slavery. If power exacts too much, men do and will resist it, and if they find religion associated with it, apparently its accomplice, they will resist religion also. To identify the Catholic cause with Louis Napoleon, or any other Cæsar, and to make the Church in any degree responsible for his government, were to alienate the affections of every lover of constitutional government or political freedom.

Were

We do not attack the imperial régime in France. It is not our business to do it, and we are not disposed to do it, if it were. We have no hostility to the Emperor, and should be sorry to see any disaster befall him. we a citizen of France, we should demean ourselves as a loyal subject; but as an American Catholic we owe him no allegiance, and protest against being required to admire or uphold the Cæsarism he is fastening upon his beautiful country. If Frenchmen like it, that is their affair; if they choose to defend it, they have a right to do so, providing they defend it in their character of Frenchmen, for themselves, not as Catholics, for the whole Catholic world. For ourselves we take our stand on the side of constitutional government, and demand as our right both political and religious freedom. We believe the less connection the Church has with the state, especially in our times, the better. It was not without significance that Gregory the Sixteenth was accustomed to add, "From our protectors, O Lord, deliver us." The lay society has relapsed into Paganism, and the Church has

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once more to resume her character as a Missionary Church, and to rely on herself, and not on the state. A new martyr age not unlikely awaits us, and we must not suffer it to find us unprepared. The Church is spread through all lands, but there is now no Christendom, and the Church is as free with us, and as independent, as in the most Catholic state in Europe, notwithstanding all the KnowNothing opposition we have to encounter. She is freer than she would be if the government professed to be her protector, and she will yet prove to be the grand protector of our American liberty. Leave our Church to herself, that is all we ask, and leave us our equal rights as Catholics with others, and we are content. Give us an open field and fair play, and we ask no more. We have no fears for our religion. It can survive the rough and tumble of even American life, and maintain herself in any kind of encounter to which she may be exposed, if not hampered by the so-called protection of the government.

ART. III. Institutes of Metaphysic: the Theory of Knowing and Being. By JAMES F. FERRIER, A. B. Oxon., Professor of Moral Philosophy and Political Economy, St. Andrews. Edinburgh and London: William Blackwood and Sons. 1854. 12mo. pp. 530.

THIS work of Professor Ferrier claims the attention of the reader, as something more than an ordinary work on philosophy. It is earnest and original; its pretensions are bold, and deserve a careful examination. It purports to be a closely reasoned system of philosophy, and if its doctrines are deduced with all the exactness of mathematical demonstration from the proposition with which it starts, and this first proposition itself is also true and evident, a great work has been accomplished, something certain has been established in philosophy, and so clearly demonstrated that it can no more be called in question than a proposition of Euclid. Has the author succeeded in this grand attempt? Does his work merit the title