her success has in many instances of late been marvellous.
mined, and most prosperous of the population, to declare war Nowhere has it been so striking as in Belgium, and we against their wills on her, to strike at the very roots of her would recommend every reader who cares to comprehend power, to threaten the religious societies with confiscation, Continental politics to study for himself the paper in the and to assail the very faith on which her organization is Revue des Deux Honda, the unacknowledged text of so many built. There is no door left for compromise ; two spiritual recent articles, in which M. de Laveleye explains the modus forces, "religion" as Rome understands it and the tremendous operandi of her action. In Belgium the Papacy had many mental stimulus called progress are openly arrayed against each advantages for the fight. It found itself in a little but very other, and a Minister therefore says " we must have done civilized country touching the frontiers at once of Germany with convents," while a great journal openly calls the rite of and France, in which while the majority of the population baptism a " betise." It is war to the knife, war between a were heartily Catholic the priests were heartily Ultramontane, party which can reckon only on the old and one which is in which the Church was untrammelled by laws, by disabili- joined by all the young, between the men who are dreaming TOPICS OF THE DAY ties, by the instinctive jealousy of the Royal caste, or by an . aristocracy united enough to resist the corporation of priests. • Between 1832 and 1864 she bent her whole energy to the ROME IN BELGIUM. task of subduing Belgium, and her success was marvellous. She hate. priests had not a clear majority. They therefore put in force of a stationary Utopia where all men shall be happy under the shadow of the Church, and the men who are dreaming of a progressive Utopia ever growing more brilliant in the open sunshine. The result is not hard to guess, for good and evil alike combine to advance the Liberal cause, the good which is in man detesting the immobility to which Romo now stands pledged, the evil which is in man envying the undying owners of wealth so vast and so increasing. The combination over- threw the corporation in England while it possessed a third of the soil, was guided by the ablest man in the island, and was so liked by the peasantry that they rose in arms to defend the Foundations throughout the North and half the Southern counties. Rome died in England when the nobles felt that her victory was their imp overishment,—the peasantry will hold 'the spoils with more than the tenacity of nobles. But grant success. Concede for the moment that the next election gives the hierarchy its majority, that it carries the educational law, that it releases the convents from super- vision, that it suppresses the press, that the priests become visible masters of the land, what then ? Simply that Belgium loses all influences in the world, that the Frenchman and the Anglo-Saxon, the Voltairian and the heretic, will gain by all that activity which in Belgium will cease. Priestly rule may lead to heaven,—we are not discussing that,—but it cer- tainly does not lead to commerce, to material prosperity, to mental activity, to varied secular energy, to the civilization its chiefs now openly denounce. Priestly government cannot support free trade, for books might be imported with cotton ; or fair taxation, for the Church must have immunities; of rapid intercommunication, for that germinates ideas; of scientific invention, for those who search the secrets of nature will end by examining the mysteries of theology. " Why 'they're calves' bones," said a pious anatomist, as he bent before some holy relics, quite prepared to worship but unable not to see. Civilization is strength at least for this world, and in destroying it Rome simply destroys herself, blunts her own weapons in order to sharpen those in heretics' hands. Granting her own view sound, she is simply giving to the evil the mastery of the world, losing the very object to which all her masterly plans, her deep- laid schemes, her patient untiring energy is professedly -directed. Suppose the hierarchy successful, and not only .dominant but cordially obeyed, and what for their end is the value of obedient but pauperized, uninstructed, and unener- getic millions against the heretics who sway other millions brimming over with bad energy, plethoric with " accursed " prosperity, strong with all that knowledge which they have pro- nounced " deadly to the soul." Of course if the priests expect a miracle eadit quastio, and they are only employing superfluous energy in rendering the certain sure,—but we know that they do not. Honest or false, faithful or only ambitious, they ex- pect to succeed by human means, and they are so using those means that if they fail they perish out of the land, and if they succeed they are supported only by the weak. They are _seeking to win a secular game by organizing secular strength, yet hope to defeat the soldier of civilization by the aid of a carefully manufactured monk. Verily if the spirit of Hildebrand be not extinct his brain at least has disappeared.
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