But we are far from wishing to propound any one particular scheme, any 'Morison's Pill' as a panacea. In what we have written we have striven merely to contribute our mite of labour towards cleansing the Augean stable of ignorance, indifference, and misrepresentation, which is choking the approaches to this weighty question. Without dogmatism, the importance may be insisted upon of always having at the head of the Colonial Office a Minister with special knowledge of his department, and opportunity to devote himself exclusively to it. We must protest, too, against the principle of appointing to the most important Governorships political partisans wholly destitute of the requisite experience, to the exclusion of men of tried qualifications. The empire is in danger of crumbling to fragments from sheer neglect and indifference. Surely some effort will be made to save it before it is too late. Two at least among leading statesmen-Lord Grey and Lord Carnarvon-have given indications that they appreciate the gravity of the occasion. In contrast with the partial and one-sided views taken on the two opposite sides of the New Zealand question, it is refreshing to note the accuracy and breadth of Lord Carnarvon's treatment of it in his letter of 5th of November. Avoiding unavailing criticism of measures which cannot be rescinded, he has addressed himself simply to what is still practicable. We know of no summary of the present aspect of the New Zealand question which in our opinion is so succinct, so true, and so judicially impartial as this. Lord Grey and Lord Carnarvon in some measure represent sections of political parties nearly allied in opinion, whose concerted action would be most natural, and whose pressure upon the present Government would be a valuable counterpoise to that of the more destructive section of ministerial adherents. In their hands the question could not be degraded into a handle to be used for factious purposes. Indeed it could scarcely be made such, for, from Mr. Adderley's pamphlet, it would appear that the late Government's colonial policy was as destructive as that of their opponents. From more than one quarter are arising complaints, remonstrances, and pleadings. They are, indeed, confused, incoherent, and discordant; but there is a solid substratum of real meaning in them. The time is past for answering: 'Gentlemen, till you are agreed among yourselves as to what you want, we, the Government, will do nothing. We are here to float on the wave of public opinion, not to move save whither it carries us. We can destroy, if that is what you want, there is but one way of doing that; but to sustain, to build up-that is a hard business, and there are many ways.' Against any such shrinking from Vol. 128.-No. 255. responsibility, M responsibility, any such degrading conception of the functions of Government, we strenuously and earnestly protest. To lead, and not to be driven; to give form and expression to right and genuine impulses, not to ignore them or to drift amongst them to discern and seize the latent elements of union, not of disunion; is the true ambition of a statesman. ; ART. VII.-1. The Temporal Mission of the Holy Ghost. By 2. The Reunion of Christendom. 1866. 3. The Centenary of St. Peter and the General Council. By the same. London, 1867. . 4. The Authority of Doctrinal Decisions which are not Definitions of Faith. By W. G. Ward, D.Ph. London, 1866. 5. When does the Church speak Infallibly? By T. F. Knox, of the Oratory. London, 1867. 6. Idealism in Theology. London, 1867. By H. I. Ryder, of the Oratory. 7. Peace through the Truth. By Rev. T. Harper, S.J. London, 1866. 8. The Pope and the Church. By Rev. P. Bottalla, S.J. London. 1868. 9. Pope Honorius. By the same. 1868. 10. The Apostolical and Infallible Authority of the Pope. By F. X. Weninger, D.D., Missionary of the Society of Jesus. New York, 1868. 11. De Unitate Romanâ Commentarius. By Clement Schrader, S.J. 2 Vols. Vienna, 1866. 12. Tractatus de Ecclesia Christi. Auctore P. Murray in Coll. S. Patric. ap. Maynooth Professore, &c. 3 Vols., each in two parts. Dublin, 1866. 13. The Pope and the Council. By Janus (translated from the German). London, 1869. 14. The Ecumenical Council. By Archbishop Manning. London, 1869. 15. Is the Western Church under Anathema? By Edmund S. Ffoulkes, B.D. London, 1869. WHAT HAT is the Infallibility of the Pope? Who are the advocates of the dogma? Why has the present time been chosen for defining it by a formal act of the Church-in other words, for declaring it an article of faith to be professed by all all Christians, under pain of damnation? These are questions which for many reasons require a definite answer. The writers, who have been foremost in advocating the Infallibility of the Pope, and whose works are placed at the head of the present article, are all, with one exception, Jesuits or neoCatholics, and some both. The episcopate is represented by a neo-Catholic: the laity by a neo-Catholic: the religious orders that are not Jesuits by two neo-Catholics of the Oratory (we class them together in spite of their gentle disclaimers, as not really discordant): the Jesuits themselves are particoloured, their order having been largely recruited from the neo-Catholic section. Dr. Murray, finally, who prides himself on having adhered to the method of the schools-in which every argument is mercilessly squeezed into syllogistic form, and met with an eternal distinguo majorem,' or 'nego minorem,' whenever it hits hard, may be described as having been specially retained to moderate between old and new Catholicism, and to put new wine into old bottles in a way to preserve both. 6 These nine therefore-four Jesuits and five not: five neoCatholics and four not: eight learners, and one teacher, by his own confession a teacher of heresy not many years since-claim to anticipate the mind of the Church, the Catholic Church of all ages and land sin their estimate, and to influence and precipitate its decision on a point which neither Pope nor Council ever has been impressed with the wisdom of propounding dogmatically till now but which according to them Christ in reality revealed as of faith to His disciples in founding His Church. Of course these writers will not allow that they stand alone. We do not assert it. They have their surroundings: and they have their organs; but when both are analysed, it is not more certain that oxygen and hydrogen blended together in their respective proportions form water, than that neo-Catholics and Jesuits are the joint constituents of the Ultramontane school represented by these writers. The wire-pullers of the Dublin Review' and 'Tablet' as now published in England, of the 'Univers' in France, of the Laacher Stimmen' in Austria, the 'Katholik' at Mayence, and the Civilta Cattolica' in Rome, rather court notoriety than preserve their incognito; and the earliest of them started into existence within memory. No catechism, no theological manual of the last generation, avows their opinions. Their opinions have been growing into shape separately for years; but it was not till recently that they found expression in a collective form. There were 2500 Jesuits in 1838; they have more than trebled since then: multitudes of those now constituting the 'ecclesia docens' have been trained in their schools; 6 as a general rule, their schools, their churches, and their retreats, are the best organised and most frequented of all; and of all works on self-discipline from a Roman Catholic point of view, the spiritual exercises of St. Ignatius, their founder, are the most widely used. There has been plenty of time and opportunity therefore for a process of assimilation to have been established in the religious world towards their principles. But a distinction must be drawn between the Jesuits at head-quarters, that is at Rome, and in the provinces. The Jesuits in the provinces are mostly occupied with the cure of souls, discharging the duties of missionaries, spiritual guides, or schoolmasters. These avocations necessarily absorb much of their time, and consequently they are prevented becoming as learned as they used to be; but then, having less to do with politics than they ever had, they can devote themselves more undividedly to their religious duties than at any former time, and thus have become more spiritual. Political opinions they naturally cannot avoid forming, as intelligent observers, wherever they are; but they seem free to form them ad libitum'; nor is it essential for the Jesuits of Ireland, England, and France to be of the same mind on each political question of the day in their respective provinces. Woe betide them only, should they take upon themselves to differ from their brethren at head-quarters on any question that concerns them there! The absolutism against which Mariana protested so vehemently in his curious and scarce work on the defects in the government in his Order has become a habit of 300 years' standing: and these are not days in which religious bodies that have any care for their own continuance can afford to split upon fundamental principles. The society never existed but with its head-quarters in Rome: and the General of the Jesuits anywhere else than in Rome would be to the Society, what the Pope anywhere else than in Rome would be to the Roman Catholic Church. The Jesuits in the provinces are therefore bound hand and foot to the Jesuits of Rome-who, besides, constitute the pick of the whole body; and the Jesuits of Rome to the exigencies of their position there. They are well assured that the preservation of their entire property depends on the maintenance of things as they are: and therefore though no part of the 'Curia' themselves, and without any love lost Des grands défauts qui sont en la forme du gouvernement des Jésuites,' printed at Paris in 1625, but with the place suppressed in the title-page; then in vol. ii. of the Mercure Jésuitique.' The Jesuits got it condemned in 1631, but not as being the work of a Jesuit. In the Spanish edition of 1768 are some reluctant witnesses from the Jesuits themselves, both to its authorship and its positions in general. between between them and the Cardinal Secretary, nevertheless to the outsider they must always appear animated by the same principles; professors of such unmixed and uncompromising Toryism as was unknown in England even under the Stuarts. The question of the temporal power of the Pope they can no longer afford to see treated as an open question, they must battle for it with their lives; all that they have in the world would not be worth a day's purchase when that is gone. Hence they have come to regard it as a dogma which it would be heresy to deny : as such they have pressed it, wherever their influence extends; as such it has been accepted by the new school. Papal infallibility, for the fulness with which it is professed in the same school, is not indebted half so much to the Jesuits as to the neoCatholics. Those who for the best part of their lives had been accustomed to think and speak of the Pope as the Man of Sin, on discovering their mistake fell on their knees before him as the vice-gerent of God: those who had come to consider themselves the most miserable of all men for having in early life taken their stand on the principle of private judgment, and upheld reason as a safe guide in matters of faith, said, 'What a magnificent thing it would be for mankind in these latter days to have a teacher on earth, easy of access and patent to all, who can never err' and they had hardly said this, before their enthusiasm exclaimed in the same breath, Why, there he sits enthroned in the Vatican!' 6 Such, then, is the school with which we are concerned. Its political development is due to the Jesuits of Rome; its religious or ecclesiastical to the neo-Catholics of the last thirty years. The two events that had most to do with its formation were De Rossi's assassination and Dr. Newman's secession, One part of its history begins with the return of the Pope from Gaeta: and whether it has already culminated, or has yet to culminate in the Council now sitting, remains to be seen. One after another, the horizon is studded with writers in defence of the Syllabus and Encyclic, all writing S.J. after their names. Nobody suspects the Pope of having composed these documents; it has taken years to educate him into accepting them: had De Rossi lived to complete his task, they would never have been written at all. Even now his Holiness allows two different interpretations of them to be current, and will not say which he prefers himself. Will they be accepted at all by the Council in any sense; will they be accepted in the sense designed by their authors? The extent of their acceptance their authors are well aware must depend upon the extent to which papal infallibility can be probabilised by the neo-Catholics; and the neo-Catholics, on |