SPIRITUAL INTIMIDATION.
TWO letters in our own columns, one called forth by the. article of last week on "Berlin and Rome," the other by Professor Beesly's article in the Fortnightly Review on the subject of Spiritual Intimidation in relation to Judge Keogh's Galway judgment, show the very great interest which the collision between the Church of Rome and modern ideas excites amongst us, and also how extremely difficult it is for Liberals to define their exact ground in relation to the claims of the Catholics on the one side and the claims of political freedom on the other. We cannot say that either of our correspondents appears to us fully to understand his own position. The difficulty in defining spiritual intimidation ' is this,—that it is impossible to forbid overpowering considera- tions sincerely addressed to men's minds and consciences with- out forbidding what is of the very essence of free argument and discussion, while it is impossible to allow it, without allowing what must in many cases interfere with the State's ideal of political action. It is easy to say, as our corre- spondent " " says, that " the substantial question is, whether the person whose act is called in question was or was not a free and reasonable agent " in respect to the intimi- dation alleged. If we admit that he is made into a mere instru- ment of the person who exercises the intimidation, by its use, then, according to the existing law, such use of intimidation with political ends is illegal, and ought to be punished. Granted; but let us change the battle-ground from a question such as interests the Irish priests deeply, to a question such as interests English moralists deeply. Let us suppose that it is unlimited liberty of divorce, or a political attack on the institution of property, or even a question of "godless educa- tion," about which we are divided,—and that a Baptist or Wesleyan minister, or a Socialist orator, or an anti-Socialist orator, or a religious fanatic, is addressing his con- gregation or other audience about the great political conflict of the time in the most impassioned language he can find. Can anybody doubt for a moment that such a speaker, speaking on such themes, would be able to brandish spiritual menaces or motives, fully as exciting, fully as paralysing to the free agency of ignorant audiences, as any wielded by the Roman priests when threaten- ing to refuse the sacraments ? Would not the fury against liberty of divorce, from the religious and moral side, carry with it, and for the orators of religious sects at least, legiti- mately carry with it, threats of eternal perdition as profuse and as overpowering as any menaces of priests at the altar ? Yet is it reasonable to suppose the law would interfere at all against them, or would dream of punishing the most impetuous orators for their appeals on the subject, on the ground that they cancelled the free agency of the voter f No doubt the law might punish the socialist orator for his alluring appeals to ignorant voters in favour of a bill of Confiscation, or what the men in power would call by that name ; but that only shows how one- sided our conception of spiritual intimidation is, how we regard as 'spiritual intimidation' the appeal to overpowering motives tending to an end which the existing social order dreads, but not the appeal to overpowering motives tending to an end which the existing social order approves. The law would probably regard the former as legitimate though impassioned argument, the latter as an illegitimate, though perhaps even a less impassioned, influence. But is there the slightest difference of principle between the cases ? In both cases we suppose the speaker to be in earnest, and to be exhorting his audience either to support or to overthrow the existing law by consti- tutional means, and to be exercising over them a power quite irresiatible,—a power reducing them to the level of his 'crea- tures. Yet no one really would doubt that the one appeal
would be justified as perfectly allowable, and the other condem- ned. Now it is by tests of this kind alone that we can judge of the justness of a principle. Let us turn to the Roman Catholic
case again. A priest believes that secular education without Roman Catholic teaching is really likely to en- danger the souls of the children of his parish. He accord- ingly tells the voters that it is a mortal sin for them to vote for any candidate who advocates these views, and that if any of them die without repentance and absolution, they will go to hell for such a vote. The people thus instructed are undoubtedly no more free agents in the election than are the Englishmen told by all their superiors, clergy and laity alike, that perfect liberty of divorce would be the destruction of family life, and the advocacy of it damning to the soul of any one who supported it ; but they would not be less free. The priest has the solemn duty, as he holds, of telling his parishioners what is and what is not mortal sin; and if it is wrong for him to -do so, the State should interfere at an earlier stage, and not allow him to preach to the people at all. How is it possible to say that this is spiritual intimi- dation which the State has a perfect right to forbid and punish, unless you go farther, and say that all,—not only Roman Catholic teaching, but all teaching which imports over
considerations into an election contest, — all theological and moral appeals of this kind and degree of urgency, however conscientiously made, are bad, and ought to be forbidden. Is the State to guarantee every one of its citizens a reason, as the United States guarantee them a Republican Constitution, and to take steps to protect that reason from undue influence The only conceivable result would be that we should play fast and loose with our principles, try to secure our citizens a reason against Catholic priests, bat not even attempt to secure them one against Protestant moralists or Unionist orators.
While strongly disapproving Mr. Justice Keogh's vio- lence of language, and his partiality in relation to the land- lord influences of Galway, we concurred at the time, and still concur, with him in the condemnation he passed on the Catholic priests of Galway for threatening their people with Hell if they should vote for Trench, but why I Because they were not applying uprightly the theology of their Church. They were, and knew they were, distorting, for the benefit of a favoured political cause, principles which did not authorise them to interfere authoritatively at all as be- tween Captain Nolan and Captain Trench. They knew perfectly well that Home Rule was a strictly political subject on which the Roman Catholic theology had nothing to say, and on which, therefore, spiritual terrors, if launched at all, were launched without a shadow of justification. In fact, the priests of Galway in using this influence were wresting the powers of their Church to a political purpose, just as some of the landowners of Galway in threatening their tenants were wresting their powers as landowners to a political purpose,—and that is properly intimidation. But had the question been one of theology,—had it been a question of morality and religion, like a divorce question, or of religion alone, like secular education, and had the priests simply fulfilled, as they believe, their true functions as priests, in the threats they uttered, we should say that whether that be legally spiritual intimidation ' or not,—we suppose it would be,—it is a kind of spiritual intimida- tion which ought to be perfectly lawful, unless the Govern- ment chooses to undertake the impossible duty of protecting the reason of all its subjects against what it is pleased to regard as too forcible, though perfectly sincere and conscientious appeals. The State, no doubt, thinks that every voter ought to vote freely ; and clearly it ought to protect its citizens against sinister uses of either physical or spiritual motives for trench- ing on that freedom. But to tolerate all Churches and then assert that they are never to make such a use of the powerful religions sanctions they wield,—even though a perfectly simple and straightforward use,—as to charm away the freedom of the voter, seems to us simply absurd. And we are perfectly sure, as we have said, that the theory, even if adopted, will never be carried out when the intimidation is exerted not against, but in sympathy with, the upper current of Parliamentary opinion.
As to our other correspondent's distinction between liberty of " individual " and liberty of " public " action, if we understand him rightly,—of which we are not quite sure, for his illustrations of his position are not clear—it will not hold water for a moment. We do not quite follow him, for while he generously concedes to individuals the right of teaching any sort of creed they like, as individuals, he does not contrast this with the absence of any right in authoritative Churches to enjoin the same creeds, which is what he leads us to expect, but with the absence of any right to enjoin conduct which the State has declared unlawful. Where, then, is the contrast between individual action and public action ? Have individuals any more rights than public bodies to enjoin on others unlawful conduct ? If an individual enjoins on another this robbery of a bank or the forgery of a signature, or even the resistance of a legal tax, he is as punishable as any public body whatever. And if a public body simply teaches as doc- trine that the State is in grave error, that an Established Church is an injustice and an army a sin, it is as much within its rights as any individual. Battening by an individual is just as punishable as rattening by the rules of a Union ; and the doctrine that a Throne is abstractedly an injustice and a blunder is just as lawful in the mouth of a public body as in the mouth of an individual. Where, then, is the room for any distinction between the unlawful acts of an individual and the unlawful acts of a corporate body ? If the Roman Catholics or Jesuits in Germany are conspiring against the Empire, punish them for their acts ; and if the Roman Church as a Church is proved to be so conspiring, no doubt you may treat it as a whole, and punish it too for its acts, by a general disabling law ; but in neither the one case nor the other have you the smallest pretext for proceeding by special legislation, till the common law against treason has been tried and proved in- adequate for the purpose. Where are the State trials in which the treason of the German Ultramontanes and Jesuits has been prosecuted without effect, but by which the nation has been convinced that the treason is real and its ramifica- tions wide-spread ? The publication of an Ecclesiastical Excommunication without the consent of the State was no doubt a breach of an ancient and almost obso- lete statute, but it is a statute almost as foolish and unbecoming to a State which sanctions many Churches and leaves them their ecclesiastical liberty, as it would be for the British Government to prevent Mr. Spurgeon's Church from expelling an unfaithful member without its sanction. No doubt there is just this difference, that the Roman Catholic Church in Germany receives some State-aid, and we quite admit that if it publishes sentences of excommunication with- out State sanction, it is fairly at the discretion of the State to withdraw that aid, i.e., to disestablish and disendow it. But further than this, without evidence repeatedly produced in Court and established by legal forms that the Church is a hotbed of political conspiracy, we utterly deny the right of Germany, on any principles which a decent Liberal can justify, to go. The simple truth is that the names "Jesuit" and "Infallibilist " are just at present as disturbing to the political equanimity of Germany as red rags are supposed to be to the optic equanimity bf a bull. There is no logic or judgment, nothing but almgst, Gallic "emotion," in the anti- Catholic furor of Imperial Germany, and its apologists in this country seem to us to betray a little of the same wildness of aim in fence on its behalf. As for the Bishop of Erme- land, disestablishment he may deserve, but nothing worse. As for the Jesuits, their crimes should have prosecuted and the common-law penalties proved inadequate, before this absurd crusade against the Society as a centre of political danger to Germany had been undertaken. Both in Ireland and Germany, Roman Catholicism would be less dangerous if it were treated with a little more of the fearless dignity of equal-handed justice.
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