7 FEBRUARY 1874, Page 3

Archbishop Ledochowski has been sent to prison at Ostromo, in-

Posen, for his disobedience to the Prussian ecclesiastical laws, and refusal to pay his fines under those laws,— the first of the Bishops to suffer, but by no means the first of the priests and ministers, of whom a large number, some Roman Catholics and some Lutherans, are in prison for the same cause. Prince Bismarck's strongest supporters appear to be getting nervous as to the issue of their master's vigorous campaign in favour of the autocracy of the Prussian State in matters eccle- siastical. Henry VIII. made himself his own Pope, but then he was logical enough to insist on uniformity of worship as welL King William is to be both a Roman Catholic Pope and a Pro- testant Pope all in one ;—and that is a position so eccentric that even the most fanatical of the German Erastians begin to feel qualms about its feasibility. There is something to us at once astonishing and humiliating in the delight with which journals calling themselves Liberal find excuses, without the ghost of a reason in them, for approving the Prussian persecution of the Lutherans and Roman Catholics.