Geneva is either more anti-Catholic even than Prussia, or the
authorities of the Canton have made a blunder from want_of knowledge of the Papal system. Monsignor Mermillod, bishop- in partibus, who had been acting as coadjutor to the Bishop of Lausanne and Geneva, and who, as the Genevans asserted, had been made Bishop of Geneva by an act of Papal authority, was last Sunday proclaimed by a papal brief read in aU the Churches, not Bishop of Geneva, but Vicar-Apostolic of Geneva, —a concession on the part of Rome, for before the "papal aggression" the Roman Catholic system in England was wholly conducted by Vicars Apostolic. The Canton, however, either chose to regard the brief as an insult instead of a concession to the State, or in ignorance really did so regard it, and it was pro- posed in the Cantonal Council to arrest him, a proposal which has been debated apparently all the week, but not decided on. It would be a very silly thing to do. The policy of State bribes, and even of State persecutions of an ignoble kind,—those which affect the pocket rather than the person,—may succeed ; and the policy of extermination has not seldom succeeded ; but the policy of serious but not bloody persecutions, persecutions serious enough to dignify the victims and not cruel enough to scare and_ silence, has, we believe, never succeeded.
Previous page
