NEWS OF THE WEEK.
MR. GLADS.'ONE is to publish on Monday a somewhat bulky pamphlet, which will probably exert no inconsiderable Influence over the minds both of his Irish supporters and of his Conservative detractors. It is called, "The Vatican Decrees, in their bearing on Civil Allegiance, a Political Argument and Expostulation"; and its drift is, we believe, first to show that the Vatican decrees were the policy of a party in the Church anxious -to impose a stronger tie on the consciences of Catholics than any they owned before 1870, in case of a European combination to re-establish the temporal power of the Pope ; and next, that in that event there must be a keener struggle between orthodoxy and civil loyalty in the minds of Roman Catholics, than there would have been before the proclamation of the Vatican decrees. Notwithstanding his attack upon those decrees and the party which carried them, Mr. Gladstone goes on to declare,—herein virtually condemning the Bismarckian mode of meeting what Mr. Glad- stone nevertheless terms the "aggression of the Church,"— that the change ought not to cause, and in him does not cause, the slightest feeling of regret for the successful effort which the Liberal party has made to give perfect equality to the Catholic faith with other faiths in the Empire, and that whatever little there may yet remain to be done in the execution of the same task, he will endeavour to do as earnestly and as effectually as ever. Mr. Gladstone also, we believe, explicitly asserts his belief that, in matter of fact, though no longer theoretically, the Roman Catho- lics of this country remain as good. and loyal citizens as himself.
