We perceive that pilgrimages in Austria, as well as Italy,
have been forbidden by authority this year. If this step has been taken for sanitary reasons, it may be wise, as pilgrims un- doubtedly, when not travelling comfortably by train, do diffuse disease ; but if it has been taken for religious or political motives, it is clearly tyranny. The people have a right to join in such ceremonials, if they please, so long as the risk is con- fined strictly to themselves. The Indian Government manages much better. It lets everybody go to Mecca, or Benares, or Juggernaut, as he pleases, when he pleases, and how he pleases, merely increasing the staff of doctors near the temples, doing its utmost to keep down plunder, and carefully abstaining from gazetting, censuring, praising, or in any other way making a fuss about the holy acts. As European pilgrimages are mere baby-play compared with those of Asia, this forbearance is the more notable, and may be recommended to the 'Southern Catholic Governments, who seem frightened to death whenever their subjects like to pray out of doors instead of inside a church. They should leave the thing alone, hinting to the papers not to report it.
Previous page
