power a party that under its own name and organization had lost all chances of success. Its design was, by appeals to the anti-Catholic and anti-foreign feeling of a large portion of our countrymen, to draw off from the Democratic party a sufficient number, when united with the radical and demagogical portion of the Whig party, to make up a majority. But all appearances indicate now that it will not succeed. The administration party seems to have taken a decided stand against it, and the administration seems to be taking a course much more satisfactory to the conservative portion of both the old parties than it appeared to have at first decided upon. We are much mistaken if it do not succeed, before the presidential election of 1856, in reorganizing a stronger and a more respectable party than that which elected General Pierce. The old questions which separated Whigs and Democrats are for the most part disposed of or grown obsolete, and we think the honest and patriotic portions of both parties will unite to form a true American party against the party falsely so called. Everything we see indicates to us the probability of such a result. All the signs now are, that the secret order as a political party has culminated, and that it will descend rapidly to the condition of a contemptible fac

tion.

However this may be, there is no cause for our Catholic friends abroad to feel any alarm for American Catholics. Annoyances, vexations, and petty persecutions we have always suffered, and shall continue to suffer; but nothing can justify the desponding tone of those who are advising Catholics to emigrate to Canada, to South America, or to some other country. There is no country where the Church is freer than she is here, and no country, Protestant or even Catholic, where, after all, ecclesiastical property is safer than with us. Look at Mexico, New Grenada, Central America, Spain, Portugal, Sardinia, the kingdom of the Two Sicilies, Baden, Bavaria, and Austria, and tell us if Catholics are freer, or their church property safer, than in our republic? We can speak as freely in our Review on political and religious topics as we please, and yet the Civiltà Cattolica, published at Rome, an eminently Catholic periodical, is prohibited in the Catholic kingdom of the Two Sicilies, and has lost, we are told, four thousand subscribers by the prohibition. The Corre

spondance, a truly Catholic periodical published in French at Rome, was suppressed, in order not to offend French sensibilities. Nothing of the sort has taken or is likely to take place here, and this is probably the only country where the Catholic press is absolutely free. Let us not be insensible to the advantages we enjoy, nor tolerate without rebuke those misguided journalists, who, under pretence of defending Catholic, but more especially Irish, → interests in America, traduce the country abroad. The honor of our country is as dear to us as that of our own mother, and we do not think it the best way for a naturalized citizen like the editor of The American Celt to prove his American patriotism by holding up the country which opened her arms to receive him as a refugee from his own, to the scorn and contempt of foreign nations. When a reaction against Catholicity for her supposed alliance with absolutism is taking place, and the exaggerations of centralized monarchy in France and Austria are preparing the way for another Red-Republican outbreak, to underrate the advantages we enjoy in this, the only free country on the globe, and to blacken the fair name of the republic abroad, is anything but to serve the cause of our religion. We see much to blame in our countrymen, many faults that we deplore, and have no disposition to conceal or extenuate, but we remember that they are faults of our countrymen, and we labor, not as foreigners, but as Americans, to correct them. They are faults in our own family, and as such we seek to treat and remedy them. Our own lot is bound up with those who commit them, and we cannot think of withdrawing it. We have too much patriotism and too little cowardice for that, as we trust is true of American Catholics generally, whether native or foreign-born. Catholics have a mission to perform here, a great and glorious work, and it would ill become them to grow faint-hearted at the first approach of difficulty, and to meditate running away. As men we trust they are made of sterner stuff, and as Catholics they have more confidence in God than that would imply. D'Arcy McGee may think it wise and prudent to recommend such conduct, and therefore to urge a new exodus of the Irish Catholic settlers in the country, but in doing so he proves that, if naturalized, he is not yet nationalized, and we greatly mistake the genuine Irish character if he

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Mr.

finds many to listen to him. The great mass of the Irish who have migrated hither from their own loved Ireland have come determined to make this country their home, and the home of their children, and here they will remain, Americans in thought, feeling, and action, whatever their imprudent and ill-advised would-be leaders may attempt to the contrary.

The present storm will soon pass over, without doing us any substantial injury. Foolish and vexatious laws may be made, but they will either be repealed on the returning good-sense of the people, or suffered to fall into desuetude. The great body of the Catholic community have felt, and feel, no alarm. They have been and are perfectly at their ease. Let them remain so. American non-Catholics come, and will come, to their defence. There is yet a sense of justice in the American people, and the country is by no means prepared to make an exception even against Catholics to the great doctrines of equal rights and religious liberty which it has hitherto so loudly and energetically professed. This very pamphlet by Mr. Hale, which we have referred to, and the reception it has met in our nonCatholic community, would prove it, if we had no other evidence. For our part, we have placed, and we intend still to place, a generous confidence in our countrymen, and we will not readily believe that they will suffer their Protestant prejudices to carry them so far as to deprive us of our rights as a citizen, because we have exercised our natural and constitutional right to embrace the Catholic religion. We do not believe, and we will not believe, that this Know-Nothing party represents the real sentiment of the American people.

We have spoken of the anti-Catholic proceedings of our Massachusetts Legislature, not as illustrative of the popular sentiment of the State or of the country, but as illustrative of the character of this new party, which has the impudence to call itself American. If we know our countrymen, it is as anti-American as The American Celt, or The Irish American, or its late organ, The New York Herald, and the Massachusetts Legislature, elected by a stupendous fraud on the people, shows what havoc it would make with all Americans hold most dear, if it should once attain to power. It behoves every loyal citizen, every lover of his country, every advocate of republican institutions,

every man who believes that popular government is a blessing, and that the people are more trustworthy than absolute monarchs, to set his face against it.

ART. VII. LITERARY NOTICES AND CRITICISMS.

1. The Primacy of the Apostolic See Vindicated. By FRANCIS PATRICK KENRICK, Archbishop of Baltimore. Fourth Edition. Baltimore Murphy & Co. 1855. 8vo. pp. 440.

THIS is a revised and enlarged edition of a well-known and in general highly appreciated work. We have not compared it throughout with the third edition, nor with the edition in German, but we recognize in it several improvements. It is altogether superfluous for us to praise this popular work, and to find fault with it might be regarded as indecorous, to say the least. The author is by general confession the most learned of our theologians, and his opinions on any point of theology, or ecclesiastical history even, must always have great weight, at least with mere laymen like ourselves. Yet he will permit us to say, and we do so with the profoundest respect, that his work would please us personally far better if it was marked by greater firmness and decision. Lest he should be accused of overstating his case, he seems to us not unfrequently to understate it, and on several points of no little importance, which he takes up and discusses, we regret a certain vagueness and indecision, a certain non-committalism, which leaves the reader sometimes in doubt as to his real opinions. We refer more particularly to the third and fourth parts of his work. The majority of readers will understand him, we apprehend, to discard the doctrine of Bellarmine and Suarez, which we have endeavored to defend, as to the mutual relations of the spiritual and temporal orders; and yet the careful student of his pages is well aware that this would be to do him great injustice. It is clear to us that he does not in reality differ from Bellarmine and Suarez as to the prerogatives of the Papacy, and that his doctrine, when fairly and distinctly drawn out, is substantially that of our Review, and by no means that of the Hon. Joseph R. Chandler's speech on the temporal power of the Pope, delivered last January in the Congress of the United States. Of course he disclaims for the Pope all civil or temporal power or jurisdiction, strictly so called, out of the States of the Church, and so do we; but he asserts, if we are to give his lan

guage its proper sense, the power of the Pope, as representative of the spiritual order on earth, to loose the Catholic subject from the religious obligation of fealty to the temporal sovereign, when that sovereign by the law under which he holds has forfeited his powers by his abuse of them, or lost his right to reign by his tyranny and oppression; and this is all that we have ever asserted.

To understand this, it must be borne in mind that for Catholics what is called civil allegiance is a religious duty. The Church binds the subject to submission to the prince, under pain of damnation. "Let every soul be subject to higher powers; for there is no power but from God, and those that are, are ordained of God. Therefore he that resisteth the power resisteth the ordinance of God. And they who resist purchase to themselves damnation."* Civil allegiance being a religious duty, binding in conscience, it is elevated from the purely temporal order to the spiritual, and therefore necessarily comes under the jurisdiction of the spiritual order. In that it is purely temporal, the Church has nothing to say in regard to it; but in that it is spiritual, a religious obligation, and pertaining to eternal salvation, it is for all Catholics under her authority. We cannot deny the religious character of civil allegiance without going against the express declaration of Scripture, and leaving every man free in conscience to obey or not to obey, as seems to him good, which were to assert political atheism, or modern revolutionism in its most offensive form, and to undermine all political and social order.

But if it is a religious duty, binding in conscience, the Catholic is held to unqualified submission to the powers that be, till released by his Church. No matter what the tyranny and oppression of the rulers, he is bound to submit, and under pain of damnation to resist, "for they who resist purchase to themselves damnation." We cannot suppose the illustrious author of the Primacy stops there, for that would be to bind the subject, and to leave the prince free to tyrannize at will, to make the Church the accomplice of the civil despot, and to confirm the standing charge of the Liberalists against her. Nothing is more certain than that power is a trust held from God for the common good, and may be forfeited by abuse; or that the people are not bound to obey the tyrant and oppressor, but may lawfully resist him, rid themselves of him, and choose a new sovereign. This is the common doctrine of our theologians, confirmed by the practice of the Church for ages. But the Catholic, it is equally certain, cannot act on this doctrine till the Church through the Sovereign Pontiff has loosed his conscience from the religious bond, and declared that under the circumstances he is no longer held to obedience, but may rightfully resist. That

*Romans xiii. 1, 2.