25 OCTOBER 1873, Page 2

Archbishop Manning has had a controversy this week with the-

Times on the subject of the Prussian ecclesiastical legislation, in which he has got much the best of the battle. On one point, indeed; his denial, apparently, of the right of the State to interdict. foreigners from exercising ecclesiastical authority within ita boundaries, if such a measure seems needful, we cannot agree with him. That surely must be an administrative question for the State. If every State assumes the right to refuse hospi- tality to dangerous aliens, aliens who. may disturb social order, a fortiori a State may refuse to admit such aliens to oppor- tunities of great influence, and in case they are so inclined, of very mischievous influence. Rome certainly, while she held her temporal power, would never have surrendered- this right,—though of course it is one which may be used in a persecuting sense, i.e., abused. For the rest, the Times really has nothing to say for Prince Bismarciee polity on its merits. It cannot assert that any one Prussian priest has been indicted for political conspiracy or treason, much less convicted, by way of justification for the new policy. It cannot deny that the State has taken power to fine, imprison, and otherwise per- secute Roman Catholic priests at almost every step in their lives, simply for doing acts which no faithful priest of that Church could leave undone ; nor that it is using this power with increas- ing severity day by day. The truth is, Prince Bismarck finds a. political war against Rome very convenient just now to soothe the National party, and is very anxious, while making it a reck- lessly aggressive war on a very powerless section of the Catholic Church, to persuade outsiders that it is simply a defensive one, into which he -has been reluctantly, but absolutely forced.