30 APRIL 1870, Page 2

Count Daru, before leaving office, composed a long memoran- dum

in rejoinder to Cardinal Antonelli, who had replied to his former representations against the substance of the schema de Ecclesia% This memorandum it seems that M. 011ivier ordered to be communicated " officiously ''—not officially,—to the Papal See, with a request that it should be communicated to the (Ecumenical Council; and yesterday we were informed by tele- graph that the Pope, by the unanimous advice of the College of Cardinals, had declined to communicate it to the Council. Indeed, on the Roman theory, it is not easy to see how the Pope could have done otherwise. As the Tablet puts it, to

communicate a political warning to the Holy Spirit, or at least to His infallible org.tn, " not to go too far," would be almost blasphemous. And of course politically there can be even less right to claim from the Pope as Sovereign that he should com- municate any political document to the Council, than there would be for a foreign government to claim from the Queen as a matter of right that she should communicate a particular despatch to Parliament.