12 FEBRUARY 1870, Page 2

There is hardly any news this week of the great

Council worth telling. 1Vhat there is, seems to be as much in favour of the defi- nition of the dogma of Papal infallibility as ever. That the Pope himself expects it, and is not afraid to publish his expectation of it, what he said in the College of American bishops on the feast of St. Francis de Sales, as reported by the Vatican of this week, sufficiently shows :—" There is a time to keep silence and there is a time to speak ; but when the time to speak has arrived, the truth must be declared, the whole truth, without limitation and without disguise. Let us never consent to any suppression of truth, nor to half-measures, nor to compromises. The truth will save us, but only on condition that it be exposed in its integrity and without a veil." The Pope could not speak out his own expectation more plainly. The Tablet states, that accord- ing to its latest information only three of the English and Irish bishops have signed the counter-memorial, that ten of the thirteen British North American bishops are strongly in favour of the definition, that all the Bishops of Australia and Ocean ica and nearly all the bishops of the British Colonies have expressed their desire for it, that the whole episcopate of Holland and Belgium, without exception favour it, all of the Spanish race, whether in Europe or America, and nearly two-thirds of the Bishops of France. We conclude from our contemporary's silence that the strength of the Opposition is to be found in the episcopate of Germany, Ilungary, and that region.