Our special correspondent in Rome confirms in his letter the
account given in various other correspondences, that the Chaldee Patriarch of Babylon having supported Monseigneur Strossmayer in the Council, and spoken against the official Roman views, was sent for to a private audience by the Pope, and threatened that if he did not at once sign a retractation of the views expressed in his speech, certain privileges of independence highly valued by the Chaldee Church should be taken away. We trust the story is either inaccurate, or that something has been omitted which alters its moral complexion, as, if true, it would be certainly a gross act of tyranny and violence. In the first place, it would be tempting a man to sign what would be to him a lie,—i.e., if his first speech were the expression of honest conviction, as we can- not but assume ; and to tempt a man to sin is not precisely the proper function of the head of any Church. In the next place, it would be a gross interference with the free deliberations of the Council to use that sort of pressure in order to detach supporters from the Opposition. We sincerely hope that the occurrence may be either disproved or explained. We should have no pleasure in thinking Pio Nono the mere diplomatic intriguer and unscru- pulous wire-puller which the common opinion of Protestant journals represents him to be. We see as yet no allusion to the occurrence in our Roman Catholic contemporaries.
