6 DECEMBER 1873, Page 2

It looks very much as if the Prussians were preparing

for a civil war in Posen. They are filling it with troops, and have summoned Archbishop Ledochowski to resign his See, which be has refused to do. He will, therefore, be summoned before the new State tribunal of ecclesiastical appeal, and be deprived of his See, which the Pope,—who has written him a letter strengthening him, and predicting that supernatural help is at hand because there is no sign of human help,—will refuse to fill up. Then, we suppose, some other Archbishop, approved by the King and Emperor, will be imposed on Posen, and then the Catholics must either submit to a State "reformation," or to a steady persecu- tion of the fine-and-imprisonment kind. At present, the rumour is of "a state of siege" in Posen, to prepare for the elections to the Reichsrath, just as a state of siege in forty odd departments of France is considered by the Due de Broglie the natural pre- paration for good constitutional laws. The logic of tyranny, Protestant or Catholic, seems to be always nearly the same.