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

some improprieties. But his subsequent conduct, and his honorable submission to the censure of the Congregation of the Index on one of his discourses, have amply repaired whatever faults he may have been guilty of, and should restore him to the full confidence of the Catholic public. We have nothing to censure ourselves for in what we have heretofore said respecting him, for we were never animated by any uncatholic feeling towards him, and we spoke according to the best information at the time within our reach. But if we have expressed at any time any opinion respecting him personally founded on false or inadequate information, we of course regret it, and assure him that we are anything but disposed to persist in it.

In the confusion of revolutionary times, many false judgments of men and things are inevitable, even to the best disposed and the best informed. In 1848 and 1849, though ardent lovers of liberty, we found ourselves obliged to oppose what was called the republican or democratic movement, and to oppose it both in the name of religion and rational freedom. We thought we saw Father Ventura on the side of that movement, and aiding it against the Holy Father and the real interests of Europe, and we judged his doings and sayings by the position in which we saw him, and the company in which we found him. If he did and said the things ascribed to him, we did not judge him too severely. Many of those things, we are assured by his friend, were falsely ascribed to him. We are told that he did not celebrate High Mass on the grand altar in St. Peter's on a certain occasion, as reported, and that, though present, it was not as a priest, but as the Neapolitan [Sicilian?] ambassador. And we are further told, that he remained at Rome after the escape of the Holy Father to Gaëta, in order to do what he could to restrain the excesses of the republicans and to protect the interests of the Papacy. If this was so, we can exonerate him from the charge of disloyalty to religion, but we cannot think very highly of his discretion. But those things are past, and he has made all the submission that has been required of him, and we have no right to remember them against him. We shall make it a point, for ourselves, to give him all the respect and confidence due to his eminent ability, his profound learning, his rare genius, and his zealous and energetic labors as a Catholic priest.

Father Ventura is not, and never was, a sympathizer with Red-Republicanism; he is not, in the popular sense of the word, a democrat; but there can be no doubt that his sympathies are with the people rather than with their masters, that he would wish to see the Catholics of Europe less disposed to make common cause with the superannuated dynasties and modern bureaucracy, and more in earnest to restore the free constitution of European society which generally obtained prior to the heresy and schism introduced by the so-called Reformation. In this there is much. with which we agree, but there are serious difficulties in the way of realizing what he wishes, and the most serious of all is in the corruption of the people themselves. We are in favor of republicanism, but not on the principles of the party in Europe struggling for it. We like the general constitution of European society as it was during the Middle Ages, though not the barbarism we meet there, side by side with Christian civilization; but joining the democracy, and aiding what is called the popular movement of the day, will not bring back what was good in those ages, or advance the cause of civil freedom. The republic, on the principles of English, American, or French statists, is not a whit better than the cæsarism of the courts. The fundamental principles of cæsarism and modern democracy are precisely the same, and liberty, in any rational sense, is possible under the reign of neither. Liberty presupposes the sovereignty of the spiritual order, under whose dominion authority and liberty are harmonized. But this sovereignty is rejected alike by modern democracy and modern monarchy. The one places the monarch, the other the people, above all law, and the principle of both is political atheism. The people are as averse to recognizing the supremacy of the Divine law in the government of the world as are kings and emperors. The shallow and atheistical political system, which flows from the innovations of Luther in theology and of Descartes in philosophy, has penetrated nearly the whole modern world, and is embraced by the Catholic populations almost as generally as by the Protestant. Scarcely a Catholic statist of our acquaintance retains any conception of the profound political philosophy engendered by Catholic theology; and seldom do we meet one who seems capable of comprehending the state as it was comprehended by St. Augus

tine, St. Thomas, or even Suarez and Bellarmine. In the political order the mass of Catholics, as well as Protestants and infidels, follow either Bossuet and James the First of England, or Locke and the shallow-pated Rousseau.

Here is the grand difficulty. If we side with authority and uphold the sovereigns, we favor, and cannot help favoring, monarchical despotism, what we call Cæsarism. If we side with the revolution and support the popular party, we favor, and cannot help favoring, the despotism of society, the absolutism of the many, and the unlimited right of the majority for the time being, which is scarcely less intolerable. The essential element of liberty is rejected alike by princes and people, and we are compelled to alternate between the despotism of the one and the despotism of the many. Gallicanism so called with Catholics, and unbelief with Protestants, have excluded God from the state, and no place is given to the Divine Idea, or to the sovereignty of him who is King of kings and Lord of lords. Nor is this the worst. In countries where Protestantism prevails, we are obliged to wish for the success of the party that professes the least respect for religion, for, politically speaking, religious indifference is less to be deprecated than Protestant or Evangelical fanaticism. We have then in Protestant countries another difficulty. The support we give to religion as an element of government turns to the advantage of Evangelicalism, the predominant religion of Protestants, and the favor we show the party of indifference, though it may stave off the evil day, tends in the end to undermine society, and to render the catastrophe still more terrible when it comes. The truth is, modern society, in both Catholic and Protestant countries, is pagan, and is everywhere becoming a prey to pagan errors, vices, and corruptions. All we can do is to refrain from siding absolutely with either party, and to use what freedom we have to recall men to the recognition of the Divine sovereignty, to make our Catholic populations, who have as yet a conscience, as Catholic in their politics as in their religion.

The divorce of Christianity from the Church, proclaimed by Luther, led the way to the divorce of philosophy from theology, proclaimed by Descartes, which in its turn led to the divorce of religion from the state, proclaimed by Louis the Fourteenth and his courtier bishops, who forgot