LETTERS TO THE EDITOR.
AN ANGLICAN " MISSION " TO CONVERT ITALY.
[To THE EDITOR Or TIER " SPECTATOR."] SIR,—I am very far from wishing to controvert the opinions which you have expressed on the character and conduct of the present Pope; nor do I desire to promote an " active pro- paganda" in Italy against the Church of Rome. But a homely proverb tells us that "what is sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander,"—a proverb of which your correspondent " Catho- liens " takes no heed. What the Anglican Archbishop of Dublin is doing in Umbria, the Pope is doing every day, and all day long, in England, Scotland, and Wales. " Catholicns " may be too young to remember the Letters Apostolic of 1850, and the famous missive of Cardinal Wiseman from the Flaminian Gate ; but some of us remember them well. At that time, the Pope took upon him to abolish for ever the whole English Episcopate, including the See of Canterbury. By his Cardinals, Archbishops, and Bishops, he asserts the Roman claim to obedience from every baptised. person in these realms; laor is there any art or practice of proselytism which is not now constantly employed by them, in order to subvert our English Church. I have no desire to imitate their arrogant and aggressive policy, nor even to spend my time in cen- suring it. I took my part in opposing the popular agita- tion in support of Lord John Russell's Ecclesiastical Titles Act : I have lived to take part in its repeal. I hold that the Pope and his Cardinals are free to attack the Church of England, and to try to destroy English Christianity, if their principles oblige them to do so. But it is a little too much to expect me to deny to Roman Catholics in Italy the freedom which Rome claims to use for her own aggrandisement and our humiliation in England. If Count Enrico di Campello asks us to help him in Umbria, be has as much or as little right to do so as Lord Ripon or any other English convert has to ask for the Pope's blessing here. Let us by all means be liberal and courteous ; but do not require us to part with our common-sense. If you do, we must look up the records of the Inquisition and of the massacre of St. Bartholomew's Day. Be it observed that these names are memories of acts which have never been con- demned or disavowed, even by Leo XIII , nor ever can be, unless the dogma of Papal infallibility be first annulled.—I am,
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