SOME BOOKS OF THE WEEK.
[Under this heading we notice such Books of the week as have not bees reserved for review in other forms.] The Cardinal Democrat : Henry Edward Manning. By I. A. Taylor. (Kegan Paul, Trench, and Co. 5s.)—There can be no doubt that this is a very able and interesting study of a groat man. In some parts, as in the story of the Labour troubles of 1889, the author rises to a really remarkable height. That Manning was a democrat—to use that word in its best sense—we cannot allow. That he wished to win the love of the democracy we readily concede; but lie wished to do so that his Church might dominate it. No man possessed with true democratic convictions could have desired to restore the temporal power of the Papacy,—is it possible to imagine the Pope ruling as a Constitutional Monarch, or conceding liberty of worship, popular control of education, or even liberty of conscience ? Nor could such a man have acted as Cardinal Manning did in the matter of establishing a Roman Catholic Hall at Oxford. It was easy enough to champion the cause of Labour. All the Cardinal's sympathies went that way; nor did he forget that he was dealing what might be a fatal blow at Anglicanism with its strongly pronounced conservative tendency. It was easy, again, to speak sympathetically of such activities as those of the Salvation Army. A man may do these things without any appre- hension as long as lie is in a miuority,—thus Members of Parliament will vote for destructive proposals so long as they are sure that they will be outvoted. But if Manning had been put into a position of power he would have been just as much and just as little of a democrat as Gregory VII. or Innocent III.
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