When the Cardinal Archbishop of Bordeaux Mid before the Emperor
Napoleon the present aspiration of the French clergy, couched in its most modest and submissive form, the Emperor vouchsafed a reply proportionately considerate in its form of utterance, but substantially distinct and positive. The ether Prelates of France have not been quite so measured in the lan- guage which they have employed to advocate the present policy and purpose of the Antonelli Government at Rome ; and the Imperial Government of France, not wishing to impose any re- straint upon the clergy within their own proper walls, has never- theless placed a curb on their action by " inviting " the journals of France not to discuss the episcopal mandates touching the settle- ment of Italian affairs. The Emperor Napoleon refuses to be at war with the Church, but he equally refuses to let the hierarchy trespass on his forbearance.
The Roman clergy are putting their most faithful patrons in the severest straits all round. The Morning Herald discloses the most recent instance. A subordinate religious minister in a rising Spanish coast town has, by a ridiculous parallel of the Mortara case, drawn upon Spain the dignified inquiries of our own Government ; the object of spiritual rapacity in this case being, not the living child of a Jew who had been acci- dentally baptised, but the deceased child of a Protestant, a Christian, and an Englishman, in whose behalf the clergy of Valencia, from the Bishop downwards, proposed to play the part of resurrection-men, in order to disturb the remains of the poor child and carry it from its unrecognized burial in Protestant ground to the orthodox enclosure. The Imperial Government of Austria has not been permitted to cancel its ten years' oppression of Protestants in Bohemia and Hungary. .0n the 1st of September the Government conde- scended to issue a new patent, making certain concessions to the Protestant Church. We then expressed our doubt whether this act, partially retracting the Count Leo de Thun's encroachment, truly replaced the Protestants of Austria in their old and legal po- sition. Legal, we say, because, in regard to Hungary especially, the " Emperor of Austria" had no right to usurp the functions of the " Sing" and to change the fundamental laws of the kingdom. Our doubt is confirmed by a protest which the Cal- vinists of Hungary have issued, in sequel to a protest of their Lutheran brethren, showing that while the new patent affects to remove the oppression, it establishes a new encroachment, by claiming to make offices of the Lutheran Church a matter of Crown nomination. Those who are arousing themselves in Italy against the temporal Government of the spiritual power will perceive that the once formidable Emperor of Austria has plenty of employment on the other side in satisfying his Lutheran sub- jects of Hungary and Bohemia.
