THE YEAR OF OUR LORD 1876.
The year has been one of grave anxiety to all the world. It opened in shadow; it closes in gloom. Among nations as among individuals there prevails a feeling of uneasiness, of dread at a something impending. Here at home we are happily removed from the dangers that the European nations have for centuries invited. We have no national crimes to answer for. We have not persecuted God’s church. We have not martyred his confessors. We have not sealed our Constitution with heresy. We have not betrayed a faith committed to our keeping. And these are things worth priding ourselves on, worth confirming ourselves in, in the centennial year of our Republic. They are the brightest jewels in the nation’s crown, and may they shine there for ever!
Of course we have had our faults—abundance of them. We have made mistakes, and in the course of human events will probably make many more, for nations never become great without suffering and sacrifice; they can no more hope to escape these fiery proofs than individuals. But at least we have, as a nation, been guiltless of the graver sins against God, his church, and humanity. And it is on this fact above all that men who believe in a God ruling over this world found their hopes for the future.
It is not our purpose here even to glance at our history in the past hundred years. Our present business is with the year just closing. Looking at the plain, level facts before us, we confess that they wear an ugly aspect. It is painful to be compelled to acknowledge that the dawn of the hundredth year of our national existence might have been far brighter. Unhappily, the legacy of many years of mistakes, misgovernment, and—let it be confessed with pain—of malfeasance in high places, both in State and national offices, has accumulated to fall upon this year of all others. One good, at least, has come from it. The nation, in American fashion, injured as it was, has at length faced the evil, which is in itself and due to no extraneous influence at all. The year opened with investigations.
Indeed, it has been pre-eminently a year of investigations; and much matter there was to inquire into. The result showed a wide-spread corruption in the national administration. This corruption was probably one of the results of the war; but it was none the less corruption on that account. The Rebellion had been crushed, heroic deeds had been done. Væ victis! There was an army of political heroes waiting for their reward. There are more ways than one of sacking a city. In these days we sack nations—as witness Germany and France—and arrange the terms of the sacking in peaceful convention. There are insects that thrive and grow fat on corruption. Some of these set on the carcase of the dead South. Others settled on the offices of national, State, and municipal government. They have been eating their way into the body politic for sixteen years. There is only a rotten shell left, and this year that shell fell to pieces.
In treating of the last Presidential election in our annual review of four years back, we wrote: “General Grant was re-elected. The opposition arrayed against him … utterly broke down. General Grant’s is undoubtedly a national election; we trust, therefore, that his future term may correspond with the confidence placed in his rule by the nation; may be productive of all the good which we expect of it for the nation at large; may heal up old wounds still sore; and may lead the country wisely into a new era of prosperity and peace.”
It is plain that we bore no ill-will to the President. What shall we say of his administration to-day? What need we say in face of the action of the country regarding the administration?
The heart sickens at going over the record of the year. It is only the culmination of the preceding years of ill-government which have been duly noted in this review, and which there is no special reason now to enumerate. We would not undertake to say that the government under President Grant has, as a whole, been a failure; but in great part it undoubtedly has been. We use a studiously
mild term in describing it as eminently unsatisfactory, and the verdict of the nation, as given in the recent Presidential elections, endorses our opinion. Whoever may be seated in the President’s chair for the next four years, President Grant and his party have been condemned by the feeling and vote of the county, not because he was so foolish as to aspire to a third term on the strength of an administration that fell to pieces of its own rottenness and on a proposed anti-Catholic ticket, but simply because the country was sick of it. The disgrace and fall of the Secretary of War, the recall of the American Minister at the English court, the disclosures of corruption and inexcusable expenditure in the civil service, the plain traces of corruption in every department of the public service down to the most obscure, such as the peddling in post-traderships by the brother of the President—all of which came to a head within the present year; the stanch support given by the President to men whom he had appointed to office, many of whose dealings were shown to be of a most doubtful character, so much so that some of them just escaped the fate of thieves by technicalities of the law that in themselves were moral condemnation—all this was only the rotten ripeness of a growth diseased from the beginning.
But if the year, notwithstanding gloomy forebodings, to which we had grown accustomed, has been one of disgrace and disaster where pride and glory ought to have had place, it has not been without its bright side. The Presidential elections have been a series of surprises. Late in last year, as we noted at the time, President Grant made what not only we but all the world regarded as a bold and infamous bid for a third term in his speech at Des Moines. He aimed at riding into power on that favorite, and too often successful, hobby of a hard-pressed politician—an anti-Catholic ticket. This, in politics in these days, we take to be the last resource of an ignoble mind. Nevertheless, the bid was undoubtedly well timed. All the world is up in arms against the Catholic Church. No government dare hold out a hand to help her and hope to live. It is only recently that the President of Ecuador did so, and what was the result? He fell at the hand of an assassin, as De Rossi fell before him. The sentiment
of English speaking peoples had been appealed to with all the force and violence of which such a man as Mr. Gladstone is capable, and his words were widely read in this country, being multiplied and confirmed by the secular and sectarian press. The President saw this opportunity, and took it at its flood-tide in a speech that was as ingenious as it was malignant. A Methodist bishop, in a large and important conclave of Methodist ministers, took up the cry, and, amid the acclamations of his brethren, nominated General Grant for a third term. Then came out from the holes and corners those imps of mischief, who are always at hand to do evil work at a time when the minds of men are excited—secret societies—and tendered their services and votes to President Grant. An adroit bidder for the Presidency bade higher and went further even than the President on the same ticket. He looked the winning man, and the secret societies transferred their allegiance to him.
This was undoubtedly a clever diversion for the Republican party. Dark clouds hovered over them, but there stood the Pope. He was their old ally in difficulties, and, if only they held him up to execration, the bull they were goading would turn aside from the lancers who were drawing his life-blood, and charge only on the red rag. How miserably they misread the people of this country has been seen.
The real issue was between a corrupt and an incorrupt government. No “making of demonstrations” could conceal this fact from an outraged people. To use homely but expressive language, “the pious dodge would not work,” especially in the hands of men like Grant and Blaine. The Pope was not the author of the rings, small and great, throughout the country; he had nothing to do with post-traderships; he had not stolen a penny from the civil service; Kellogg and Chamberlain were ruling in the South, and not he; Schenck was not his Minister to London, Babcock his private secretary, Belknap his Secretary of War, Robeson his Secretary of the Navy, Pierrepont and Williams his legal advisers, Shepherd his trusted confidant, and Chandler his pet minister. The time had gone by to fight with shadows when there were such glaring realities before the people. The corruption was homespun, unfortunately.
It was of native growth. It had aggravated and increased the financial depression, in which foreign countries had a hand to some extent. It had fostered a lavish display and gilded vulgarity which were not only unbecoming republicans but rational beings of any class or kind. It had laid the road open to constitutional dangers, and honest citizens had good reason to dread a prolongation of the term of a man who had too military a way of looking at civil affairs, and regarded lawful opposition somewhat in the light of military insubordination. These things were before the people, and they laughed at the idea of dragging the Pope in.
General Grant was thrown aside; Blaine was thrown aside. A man whose record seems to be stainless was named in his place—Mr. Hayes, the Governor of Ohio. A far abler man was set up as the Democratic candidate—Mr. Tilden, the Governor of New York. The election was probably the most stubbornly contested ever known, and the day after showed Mr. Tilden with 184 electoral votes and his opponent with 166. Three States remained doubtful—three Southern States where the negro vote predominated, and two at least of which, by the confessions of both Republicans and Democrats, had been vilely misgoverned since the war. The country had to wait, as we still wait, for the returns from those States. At the very utmost they could only give the Republican candidate a majority of one in the Electoral College, while, whatever way they went, the votes of a vast majority of the people were undoubtedly given to the Democratic candidate. The fact was undeniable: the voice of the American people was for a total change.
Then ensued a scene unexampled, perhaps, in history, certainly in the history of this country. The administration came out in all its force. State rights were invaded by the military in South Carolina—as in the opening of the year they had been invaded in Louisiana for the purpose of sustaining the Republican candidates, right or wrong—while a nation looked sullenly on.
The country has undoubtedly been on the verge of danger; but we cannot despair of the Republic while so magnificent an exhibition is given by the people of calmness, forbearance, and good sense through days and weeks fraught with every incentive to exasperation and
violence. We cannot foretell who will be the next President, but the will of the people is manifest and unmistakable. Politicians high and low have received a bitter lesson, which the nation has indeed dearly bought. Let us continue to be jealous of those whom we elect, of our own wills, to carry on the business of this great country, and we will force honesty even from the dishonest.
We have not space to deal with national topics of lesser moment, though of great interest and importance. With the centennial year came our first International Exhibition. It brought the eyes of friendly nations upon us, and, while the exhibition of the products of other and older peoples was a lesson to ourselves, a still greater lesson to them was the exhibition of our own industry and productiveness. The advance in the art and industry of the United States attracted the admiration of competent critics from all civilized nations. A more significant sign even than this is the alarm in England at the rapid growth of our iron trade, while our grain floods English markets. Ten years ago forty-four per cent. of the grain sent to England came from Russia, fourteen per cent. from the United States. Now forty four per cent. is sent from this country, and twenty-one per cent. from Russia; this, too, at a time when business generally at home was never duller—a dulness that the Presidential crisis has confirmed. Yet even at our present condition we are, as a people, more prosperous than most of the European nations. The money that people generally squandered, and that was allowed to be squandered in the national, State, and municipal governments, has at least not been spent in the forging of cannon and the mustering of dread armaments of war, in which so keen a rivalry is exhibited by the European monarchs. Such comfort, at least, as this consideration affords is fairly open to us.
THE PRESENT CONDITION OF EUROPE.
And now we turn to Europe. It would take the eye of a prophet to read the future, the pen of a Jeremias to paint the present, of the continent to which God, through his church, gave the leadership of the world. The European crisis that all men saw coming seems come at last. Four years ago we closed
our review by saying: “War looms on the European horizon, gathers in silent thunder-clouds all around. A flash is enough to kindle the combustion and make the thunder speak. Who shall say when or whence it comes? Europe is arming, and we have good authority for saying that ‘the next war will rage over half a century’—Bismarck himself. For the church we foresee an increase of bitter and severe trials.…”
Well, the thunder-clouds have gathered and are now impending. During the greater part of the year the world has waited with bated breath to see them burst and the bolts that smite nations fall. The hand of Providence is in it. The sins of three centuries seem to be gathering to a head at last. There is no nation in Europe that can call the other friend. There is no such thing as the comity of nations. The big battalions alone take right and wrong into their hands. Treaties most solemnly and formally ratified within a quarter of a century are torn to pieces as waste paper. Such alliances as are patched up between the Powers are rather personal than national—the alliances of savage chieftains against some rival, to be broken as occasion requires when the allies may fly in turn at each other’s throats. France and Germany are sworn foes; Russia and England hate each other; Austria trembles between Germany and Russia; Turkey is doomed, but seems resolved to sell its life dearly, and draw all Europe in to witness and operate at the death. Italy seems ready to follow the beck of Germany, and Spain is consumed with her own troubles. Add to this that each nation is disorganized within itself. The war, as will be shown later on, has proved a curse to Prussia, and, through Prussia, to all Germany. The empire is far from consolidated; the Catholics have been alienated from the government; the socialists, who are now in the ascendant, have been denounced by Prince Bismarck; the Protestants have lost what unity they ever possessed, and have shown an example of weak subserviency to infamous laws that has won for them the contempt of the world. In Russia the emperor himself dreads the future. The long-pent up elements of discord are bursting through at last, and even his immense power cannot restrain the nation from a war which, it is generally believed, his mind and heart condemn. Austria
has its Hungary, and its persecution like to that of Germany; England its Ireland and a people that, with all its wealth, it cannot find employment for or feed. It has its India, also, with Russia for a neighbor. France has its Imperialists, its Legitimists, its Socialists of the fiercest kind; Italy its secret societies, its persecutions, its people that groan under an incompetent government and scandalous monarch. What a picture! And in the background millions of armed men, millions of starving people, bankrupt treasuries, general disaffection, a thousand conflicting passions of race, of religion, of social and moral theories, and the pale ghosts of murdered kings vainly warning the handful of monarchs who are riding over the old ruts red with so many an awful disaster! Such is Europe in the year of our Lord 1876. Why is Europe not united? why is it not at rest? why is it ever on the verge of war? why is its surface being constantly changed? why are its governments so diverse? why is it the stronghold of the foes of all government? why is it bristling with armies and weighed down by armaments? why, wherever the eye turns, is it faced by cannon?
That the Reformation divided Europe into two hostile camps is a fact acknowledged by all students of history. We do not say that previous to the Reformation there were no wars among the Catholic European nations. There were—bloody, long sustained sometimes, and bitter. But they were wars of dynasties rather than of nations, for which the feudal system, that in its essence and construction was a pagan system, was chiefly accountable. The people hated not each other. They were one in faith, one in religion, one in their worship, one in their hopes of a hereafter and the means to attain it, one in their recognition of one supreme head of the church in which all believed. While they were just as much Germans, French, Italians, English, Irish, as they are to-day, they all worshipped one God in one manner. English saints were revered in Ireland, Irish saints in England, German saints in France, French saints in Italy. While Charlemagne was battling with pagan hordes and Moslem infidels, Irish missionaries went forth and spread themselves along the borders of the Rhine, diffusing the light of faith and knowledge in their path. They were welcomed as angels, not looked upon as
aliens and foes, as are the missionaries of Protestant societies to-day in Catholic lands, who only stir up strife wherever they set their foot. Thus there existed something stronger, broader, more universal than nationalism, which destroyed not nationality, but taught all men that they were brethren, and that geographical lines were blotted out in the sight of God and in the common home of faith. Then was exemplified the sacred words of Scripture: “This is the victory which overcometh the world, your faith.” It was this faith that out of barbarism drew and moulded the mighty nations of Europe. It was this faith alone that saved Europe from being overrun by the Moslem as it already had been by the pagan North. Just at the moment when the Moslem power was about to receive its last check and overthrow came the Protestant Reformation, which was not only a religious revolt, but a disruption of Christendom. To that we owe the presence of the Turk in Europe and all the fatal consequences that have flowed from it, now at their ripest, when the moribund carcase that the faithless kings and nations allowed to lie there and rot threatens, in its final dissolution, their descendants with ruin. To that movement also we owe the bitterly hostile lines that have been set up between nations that once were brethren. To it we owe the persecutions and the cruelties that have resulted on either side from the day when a man’s religion assumed a political and geographical character. To it we owe something worse than all this—the substitution of doubt for faith, and the questioning of all authority, both human and divine. To the impious setting up of the monarch as the great high-priest of the nation we owe the absolutism which has crushed peoples, been overthrown and crushed in turn by them, and risen again only to repeat the old story of devastation.
Ever since that fatal outbreak Europe has been steadily drifting back into the old paganism to which such civilization as letters give is only a thin veneer; and paganism, at its highest, is only a step removed from barbarism. What is called progress would have come without Protestantism, and been estimated at its true value—as a means to a higher life for all the world; not as an end, not as the all in all in this life. Mere worshippers of progress make this world their
heaven and self their god. This is the growing feeling in nations to-day, and the Reformation it was that, however unconsciously at the beginning, formulated it into a religion.
It seems to us that the present state of Europe is the logical and plain outcome of the great religious revolt in these last days. What nation to-day has a religion? Has Russia? Has England? Has Germany? Has France? They each have religions—fragments of religions or no religion—as apart from one another as the poles. At the very least this depriving men of a unity in their highest beliefs is fraught with interminable discord. And never were the minds of men more disturbed than they are to-day. Protestantism has almost run its course, and, by its own confession, disbelief in Catholicity is resolving itself more and more into disbelief in all things spiritual and necessary bowing to brute force in the material and moral order. Men look around blankly and ask, Where do we stand? And the answer is, Nowhere. Men are born and live, they eat and sleep, they sin and die in their sin, passing through life in a sort of dumb wonder that life should be. Life is a hopeless mystery to those from whose eyes heaven has been shut out. Then all those hard social problems become unanswerable. Why, they cry out in despair, should kings have our blood and sustenance? Why should we kill each other to make them great or small? Why should they live and we die? Why should our lives be spent in drill, portioned out by the corporal, and our means be dragged from us to buy cannon? These thoughts are boiling and seething in the hearts of the masses, and kings know it. They and those they favored have destroyed faith and religious unity. They have in its place what is called socialism, which means revolt against all things that be. The name of priest was made hateful by the calumnies of false teachers with the sanction of kings; and now the name of king is coupled with that of priest in the mouths of the irreligious masses. The first French Revolution was but the awful flash of a fire that smouldered and still smoulders under the thrones of Europe. It has set kings up and set them down like toys with which a child is pleased and then breaks, and then takes others to make its sport and break again. The history of Europe from the Reformation
down is a continuous conflict between despotism and revolution. The fullest liberty is the only safeguard against it; but the fullest liberty may no longer be allowed to the peoples, for the Christian spirit and the Christian guiding hand have been withdrawn; deprived of which, liberty of the masses means license and lawlessness, government either absolutism or a strong tendency thereto.
SOCIALISM.
Let it not be thought that we are drawing a fancy picture. “Socialistic journals,” said Prince Bismarck in a speech delivered early in the year, “had recently done much harm, and had done so without let or hindrance. The poor people who subscribed for socialistic papers read but one journal, and were perverted by that one. They had an indistinct idea that they were badly off, which was no doubt true, and they therefore were ever ready to believe the insane promises held out by the socialistic journals. The result was that the German operative no longer worked as much and as well as did the English and French, and that German manufactories could no more compete in the great markets of the world. A nation that had been industrious and steady to a proverb had, by the incessant agitation of the socialistic press, been brought to this sad pass.”
Prince Bismarck cannot well complain. The only press he could not tolerate was the Catholic. The publication of a letter of the Pope was the signal for suppression of the paper, and fine and imprisonment of the publisher. He used the socialist press to inflame the hatred of the people against the Catholics, and now finds that in the unlawful use of dangerous weapons he has only cut his own fingers. In a debate in the Prussian Parliament Count Eulenburg, the Minister of the Interior, was compelled by a Catholic deputy to admit that “the government did tolerate the excesses of the socialist papers and societies for awhile, although the existing legislation enabled them to interfere.”
“I have always been Intransigente,” said Garibaldi last February. “Brought up with republican principles, through having served the Republic in America, I could not change my opinions, only I thought in the past that it was necessary to suppress our republican sentiments,
because, in order to unite Italy, the monarchy was necessary. But not for this have we renounced our republican principles. As republican principles are the principles of honest people, there cannot be an honest government which is not republican. However, we are obliged to get on by compromises, which the force of circumstances demands. I do not tell you to-day to make a revolution. We must adapt ourselves to the times. Nevertheless, vindicate progress to the last gap. Keep yourselves in the path of progress. Do not let yourselves be weakened to-day; the country groans under depredations, the unjust acts of the government. When we compromised with the monarchy, we might have expected from it that the country would be well governed; but it is not. The monarchy must also complete its course; but the Guizots and the Polignacs of to-day do nothing but accelerate its fall.”
“In conducting the government of the world,” said Mr. Disraeli in his speech at Aylesbury in August last, “there are not only sovereigns and ministers, but secret societies, to be considered, which have agents everywhere—reckless agents, who countenance assassination, and, if necessary, can produce a massacre.” “I think,” he said, in speaking of the negotiations for adjusting matters in the East and staving off a little longer the fatal hour, “that in the spring of the present year the negotiations might have resulted in peace on principles which would have been approved by every good man; but unexpectedly Servia—that is to say, secret societies of Europe, acting through Servia—declared war on Turkey.”
On the eve of the German elections the Provinzial Correspondenz warns Germany against the socialists in this solemn fashion: “As for the aim of socialism, we can have no doubt whatever about it. For on all occasions the members of the party make known this aim more or less openly. It is the utter overthrow of all order established in the state and in society, the destruction of all social culture, which has found its expression in religion and morality, in the family and in property, in art and science, in industry and commerce; and all this for the erection of a chimerical workingmen’s state, wherein would fall all the power of government and all the enjoyments of life to the pretended proletarians, or men who possess nothing.”
The invincible opposition of the Catholic Church to secret societies of every kind, the frequent warnings of the Holy Father and of the Catholic episcopate, clergy, and press throughout the world, have generally been laughed at as a clerical bugaboo, set up to frighten women and children. Well, we have not quoted from a single Catholic so far, and certainly the threats coming from so many different quarters, and from men whose words are not idle, are sufficiently strong.
THE COURSE OF EVENTS IN EUROPE.
Leaving this, the general and gravest aspect of European affairs, we proceed to touch on more specific topics of public interest which have arisen during the year. Many must necessarily be omitted.
Not even the gravity of the Eastern complications has been able to withdraw the eyes of the world from France. The story, repeated in these columns year after year, of the country’s wonderful advance in material prosperity is happily confirmed. We wish that the prospects of a satisfactory government were on a par with this material advance. There exists still a feeling of great unrest in France. The various political parties are as far apart as they ever were, and it seems impossible to bring them together so as to carry on the business of the country in that healthy constitutional fashion where opposition is a spur rather than a material hindrance to the government, where the government has not to deal constantly with a strong body of irreconcilables, and where cabinet crises need not be expected at any moment on what to outsiders often look like trivial points—as, for instance, the one of which we hear as we write: the concession by a Catholic nation of military honors at their burial to men who have lived and died unbelievers, and whose funerals, by their own expressed desire or the will of their relatives and friends, are devoid of all religious ceremony and a renunciation of the Catholic religion. Now, it seems to us that such a question as that should not be permitted to necessitate the resignation of a ministry and the consequent throwing out of gear of the chief government machinery.
For difficulties like this those who arrogate to themselves the exclusive title
of republicans in France—the party that regards M. Gambetta as its leader and Victor Hugo as its prophet—is chiefly responsible. It has taken a distinctly anti-Catholic basis in what undoubtedly is a Catholic country. The name for it is “anti-clerical,” which is a distinction without a difference. It palliates the excesses of the Commune, while it opposes freedom of education.
There seems, unfortunately, to have been too much truth in what Mgr. Dupanloup said early in the year when speaking of the university question: “To make us love the republic, the first thing done is to identify it with a war against religion.” And the venerable prelate’s words received strong confirmation from so decidedly un-Catholic a writer as the Paris correspondent of the London Times, who wrote to that journal while the Chamber was still fresh from the elections: “On observing the attitude of the Chamber it is evident that the religious controversy is the great motive of all its passions. In the last Assembly, at least in its early days, every speaker courting applause had only to attack the Empire. In the present, as yet, the most frantic plaudits are reserved for whoever attacks not only the clergy, but any creed whatever. This is a fresh discord about to be added to so many old ones.”
If there is any truth in the report of Prince Bismarck’s views of the French elections as given in the letter of a German diplomatist, extracts from which appeared in a Rouen newspaper, the prince-chancellor agrees with both of these views. The report in question at least smacks of the man.
“The chancellor,” says the German diplomatist, “does not appear to be affected in any particular way by the result of the elections. In a conversation I had with him a few hours ago he remarked: ‘I doubt if the French Radicals will get into power; but should they, I am sure they will begin eating the priests before they tackle the Germans; the task is so much easier, and I have no desire to balk their appetite in that direction.’”
On December 31, 1875, the French National Assembly was dissolved, though its actual dissolution only took place in March, 1876, at the meeting of the new Chambers. The elections followed, and the voice of the people was certainly for a republic. The question of education
immediately became a great subject of debate. In July, 1875, was passed a law allowing mixed juries, composed half of examiners appointed by the state and half of their own professors, to question the candidates for degrees, and decide whether or not to grant the degrees. Not a very monstrous concession, surely, yet on the strength of it the Catholic University of Paris was founded and inaugurated on January 10, 1876. This was too much for republicans of the Gambetta and Victor Hugo stamp. Accordingly, to M. Waddington, “an Englishman by birth and education, and moreover a stanch Protestant,” as the Paris correspondent of the London Times triumphantly announced to that journal, was confided the Ministry of Education. It seems that M. Waddington was actually born in France, his father being an Englishman who was there naturalized, but the rest of the description is accurate enough. Of course M. Waddington’s stanch Protestant conscience could not allow of this concession to Catholics, whatever his English education might have done. He moved immediately to repeal clauses 13 and 14 of the law of July, 1875, which embodied the concessions above mentioned.
Now, what is this system of state monopoly of education in France against which the Catholic conscience rebelled? It owes its origin to the despotic genius of the first Napoleon, and we cannot do better than describe it in the words of a critic who will, in the eyes of non-Catholics at least, be above suspicion: “He [Napoleon I.] formed one great university,” says the London Times, “which was only the state acting as an autocratic teacher. The chief dignitary of that university was the Minister of Public Instruction, and all the officials, from the highest to the lowest, were servants of the government. The state appointed all the professors in the Sorbonne, the College de France, the law schools, the Polytechnic School, the Military College, and the crowd of Lycées throughout the country. Indeed, the state does so still.” It will be seen how open was such a system to abuse, particularly when the “state” in France has changed hands half a dozen times since Napoleon organized his system. “The state alone could grant degrees in Medicine, Law, and even Theology. The system was completed
by the stipulation that no one could open even the pettiest of infant schools or the greatest of colleges without ministerial authority. Thus the state could despotically decide what books should be studied by every scholar in France, by whom and how each should be taught, what moral or political ideas should be spread through every school or college, and what amount or kind of knowledge should be exacted from every candidate for the practice of medicine or the bar. No more rigid system of intellectual despotism was ever fashioned by the wit of man.”
After a prolonged, fierce, and bitter debate, M. Waddington carried his motion through the Chamber of Deputies, but it was happily thrown out in the Senate; and there the matter stands.
If French republicanism is made to assume a distinctly anti-Catholic character on the part of those who look upon themselves as the only true republicans in France, then France cannot hope for a good government from it. It remains for the Catholics to show and prove themselves the veritable republicans by devoting themselves absolutely to the country and the government as they stand. They have the game in their own hands. The French nation seems to be profoundly and reasonably mistrustful of kings and emperors. Yet a republic in which Victor Hugo, Gambetta, and the apologists and leaders of the Commune are to be the chief actors would be worse than the Empire. France would have had revolution ere this only for the strong, wise, and just man who holds the reins of power with so firm a grasp, and swerves not an inch either to the “Right” or to the “Left.” What a contrast between Marshal MacMahon and our own soldier-President! We can only continue to hope for the best from all parties. Time may teach them to coalesce and deal fairly with all. Could they only do this, the mightiest bulwark would be raised up on the continent of Europe against the threatened encroachments of absolutism on the one hand and the madness of socialism on the other, and in this France would attain to a height of power and true greatness that no king or emperor ever brought to her.
Germany goes on its way resolutely. The persecution of the Catholics, which is now an old story, has not been abated a
jot. To it is added, as has already been indicated, an attempted persecution of the socialists. But the socialists, besides being too strong, are hard to catch. The recent elections for the Prussian Chamber of Deputies show an immense gain for the party of National Liberals, who represent every wing of socialism from its highest to its lowest aspects. The Catholics remain much the same as before. The result is not favorable to Prince Bismarck, who seems to be growing more querulous than ever. An arrangement has been brought about by which the Prussian railways have been transferred to state control, and an attempt was made to extend it to all Germany, which has thus far proved unsuccessful. Still the military hand everywhere, and here is a result of it on which we have often dwelt, but which grows more sadly manifest every year. The Berlin correspondent of the London Times, writing of the accounts of Prussia for 1874 and the estimates for 1875, after struggling manfully but hopelessly to make the figures wear a favorable aspect, finally confesses: “These figures point a moral. Comparatively easy as it may be to balance the Budget in 1876, the present is the last year in which this can be done. Next year there will be few, if any, surpluses to draw upon. On the most favorable assumption the Prussian needs may be covered without having recourse to fresh imposts; but how about the wants of the Empire in 1877?[145] The Empire in the current year lives upon its usual income of custom, excise, and a modicum of state contributions, patching up its deficit by consuming the remnant of accumulated funds left. A year hence realities both in Prussia and in the Empire will have to be faced with empty pockets. If industry has revived by that time, the taxes will be augmented; if not, the only alternative will lie between a loan and the reduction of military expenditure. In any circumstances the situation in which Germany is placed by the military preparations all round will then be acutely felt.”
Such is the cost of military glory and power in these days. What doth it profit the people? We have seen Prince
Bismarck’s views on the German workingmen, who, instead of becoming the strength and support of the Empire, are becoming its terror. How could it be otherwise with the means taken to educate them? No picture could be sadder than that drawn by the chancellor of the present condition of the German working classes. Industry cannot thrive on bayonets and cannon. Social order cannot prevail where the minds of men have been debauched for a purpose by the free dissemination of evil doctrines, and when they have ever before their eyes the steady persecution of the best citizens. He has outlawed the church of God. He cannot wonder at the devil stepping in and claiming his prey.
A still greater shock was given to German feeling by the report of Prof. Reuleaux, their chief commissioner at our Centennial Exhibition. His conclusions, in brief, were: 1. That the main object of the German manufacturers is to produce an article which shall be cheap and nasty. 2. That German manufacturers find it easy to succeed in this line, considering that the men they employ are deficient in skill and taste. 3. That judging by the German display at the Exhibition, the German nation seem to be steeped in utter servility, so great is the number of Bismarck statues, Red Princes, and other heroes of the war, in every conceivable material, from gilt bronze down to common soap.
“For the real cause of the decline [in prosperity] in Prussia,” says the London Times, “we must look to the military system of Germany. That system, as we have often pointed out, is the most costly in the world. By sending to the drill-ground for years all her best and most promising youth—by taking her most accomplished young men from the university, from the learned professions, from the factory or the laboratory, to fill the ranks of her army—she causes a greater interruption of trade, and lays a heavier burden on the nation, than that which the cost of the war has imposed on France.… In Germany all other interests are sacrificed to the needs of the greatest army ever supported by any state. The intellect of the nation is set to do military work with such rigor that civil pursuits are sensibly suffering. Trade is sacrificed in order that the country may be covered with troops drilled to the precision of machines.
Military railways are made without regard to commercial necessities. So crushing is the blood-tax that crowds of the most stalwart peasantry and the most skilful artisans are crossing the Atlantic in spite of the depression of trade in America; and so soon as prosperity shall return to the United States the emigration from Germany may be multiplied two or three fold. Such is the price at which Germany bought the military dictatorship of Europe.”
Italy seems to be going from very bad to worse. The people groan under their burdens, and the successive ministries seem utterly incapable of coping with the difficulties by which they are beset on all sides. The telegram announcing the opening of the Italian Parliament on Nov. 20 tells us that in his speech from the throne Victor Emanuel, referring to the relations between church and state, said: “The extensive liberties granted the church ought not to impair public liberties. The government would therefore propose bills for rendering efficient the reservation in the laws respecting the Papal See.”
Here is an instance of the “extensive liberties” of the church. A report, dated March 14, informs us that “the fifty-sixth birthday of king Victor Emanuel, and the thirty-second of his eldest son, has been signalized in Rome by a ceremony of great interest. A new public library, which has been added to the Collegió Romano, and which has received the name of the king, was formally opened by the Minister of Public Instruction.” (We wonder if in the portfolio of the present Italian Minister of Public Instruction the good old commandment, “Thou shalt not steal,” is written.) “He explained that on the very site of the new building the Jesuits had striven for the triumph of principles against which King Victor Emanuel’s career has been an unceasing battle.” (This statement is crushingly true.) “The library is also the monument of a victory in another respect, for it contains 650,000 volumes which belonged to the suppressed monasteries.”
What a victory! “The opening of such a building,” said the London Times, with unconscious irony, “appropriately marked the birthday of a king whose name will forever be connected with the greatest of all changes in the political fortunes of the Papacy.” It notices with keen regret
in the same article that there is a lamentable tendency among Italians “to forget how much they owe to this king.” “Her [Italy’s] people cannot speak too gratefully of the king whose rare combination of courage and political sagacity has helped to give them back their self-respect as well as their nationality.”
Well, when Englishmen worship a Garibaldi and cherish a Mazzini, we may expect their leading journal to speak in this strain of a Victor Emanuel. The Mantegazza affair will be too fresh in the memory of our readers to need our using it as one of many instances showing the kind of man this model king is, and how likely the Italians are to remember “how much they owe” him. One of the things they owe him is the suppression of monasteries and convents. It must be rather bad when a journal like the London Saturday Review considers it as on the whole rather a useless measure in its results. A strong effort is undoubtedly being made by the Italian government to destroy the Papacy and dam up the Catholic religion at every vent. Only do this, it says to its subjects: Kill off these religious societies from the face of the earth; and, as for yourselves, join what devil’s societies you please—for this is liberal Italy.
In assuming charge of the religious properties, however, the Italian government assumed also the liabilities attached, and it met with many strange mishaps. Wonderful to read are the accounts of some of those bills presented by worthy citizens to the government officials. The Dominicans for instance, are certainly not famed as being great eaters of flesh either in Italy or anywhere else. Yet here are the worthy Dominicans of Sta. Maria sopra Minerva, whose property was seized, charged by a modest butcher with a “little bill” of 20,000 fr. for butcher’s meat! This is only one of many such that were presented.
The first report of the Commission of Vigilance charged with the ecclesiastical property seized was presented early in the year. It showed that, according to the schedule laid before Parliament in the spring of 1873, there were then in Rome 126 monasteries occupied by 2,375 monks, and 90 convents occupied by 2,183 nuns—in all, 216 religious houses with 4,558 inmates, exclusive of hospitals and pensions under monastic
supervision or direction, the colleges and the houses of the generals. Of these 216 houses 119 were seized and 44 others declared exempt from the operation of the law. The property that thus passed into the hands of the Commission was disposed of as property usually is—put up at auction for the most part; 250 lots were put up at 13,042,629 fr., and knocked down at 16,142,697 fr. The total value of the property thus seized is estimated at 61,161,300 fr. To complete the pleasing picture it only remains to add that the receipts of the Commission from July 22, 1873, when it began its operations, up to the end of 1875, were 11,116,376 fr., while the expenditure was 11,570,428 fr.
Meanwhile, the dispossessed monks were left at liberty to run about the world and seek for a living wherever they could find it, while the Commission of Vigilance manipulated their property. As for the nuns, provision was made that all of them who within three months after the publication of the law made express and individual requests to remain in the houses they occupied should be permitted to do so until the number in each house should be mercifully reduced by death to six, when the government might concentrate them elsewhere. Signor Nicotera, however, seems resolved to root them out altogether.
Such is Catholic Italy. The readers of The Catholic World have seen in a recent article[146] the tendency of the ecclesiastical policy of the Italian government. In this alone is it resolute. The country at large is as ill-governed as ever. The police are corrupt. In many districts life is still at the mercy of brigands, some of whom, as was recently shown, have their allies among those moving in the best circles of society. Scandals thicken around throne and government. As for the new government, that steadfast friend of young Italy, the London Times, wrote thus as long ago as May 4: “The new Italian ministry came into power just a month ago, and it has already had to declare the impossibility of its own former programme, and to adopt both the measures and the practice of the government it overthrew and supplanted. It deals with public meetings, with the press, and with the telegraphic office as conservatives,
and even the Pope, had done before; and, what is more, it finds that if it is to save Italian finance from a downward career, it has no choice but to adopt the Grist-tax, which was the one particular crime of its predecessors.… The Left is disappointed and sullen. The populace of the country towns is furious. For some years the owners, the occupiers, and the tillers of land have found that ‘unification’ and representation are costly privileges. The fact is now brought home to them; and when all classes in an agricultural district are of one mind, they are apt to express themselves roughly.”
Like all petty persecutors, Switzerland shows itself the most virulent in its attack on the rights of conscience. Great Powers try to devise some pretext at least for their persecutions. Switzerland is troubled by no such scruples as this. The laws are strained to the utmost to punish Catholics, and, when they will not precisely fit the case, they are made to fit as speedily as possible. Indeed, law there has become a farce. The correspondent of the Journal des Débats, which is noted for its solid opposition to the Catholic Church, draws a lively picture of the proceedings at the “election” of an “Old Catholic” pastor; and as it is characteristic of a thousand things that are constantly occurring in Switzerland, we give it at length. The letter is dated Sept. 20: “The confessional contest continues at Geneva. I won’t trouble you with the details of the skirmishes which occur every day. That would be monotonous. As a résumé, here is what passes from month to month: A Catholic commune has a church, a curé, a parish, and one hundred electors. Fifteen or twenty of these declare themselves liberal Catholics. They demand a curé who shall be elected by the parishioners, as the law requires. But the party chiefs do not always find a liberal clergyman to order. Plenty present themselves, it is true, but for the most part they are more liberal than Catholic, and more libertine than liberal. The Superior Council wishes for honest men only, who shall not be too ignorant, who are good speakers, with a conscience, if possible, and capable of making a good show. But this is a combination of qualities hard to find in those who go out from the Roman fold. As soon as they have found one whose recommendations are
of the best, they write to the twenty electors: ‘We have found your man; vote away to-morrow.’ They vote; the eighty Roman Catholics go not to the ballot-box, therein obeying the stupid order received from Rome, and the curé is elected. From that out the church and the parish are his. All he has to do is to take possession. The keys are demanded from the mayor. The mayor refuses to give them up. He is recalled; the gates are forced, and liberal Catholicism is duly installed in the holy place, where nothing is left but the four walls. So clean has been the picking that the new-comers cannot even find a bell. Whereupon the eighty Roman Catholics, with their wives, children, and friends, gather together in a barn around their curé, now become a martyr, while the official priest, installed in the church of the commune, preaches to a congregation of two—the gendarme and the rural guard. He has not even the benches to preach to, for they have all been taken away. In addition, he is pestered by the zealots of the opposite party, who insult him in the street, steal his vegetables, and eat his rabbits. To console himself he marries, which at least brings him a female parishioner.
“Behold what passes from month to month. But to be serious: It is in this way that three-fourths of the revolutions begin. The liberal electors are for the most part infidels; but they have children whom they send to catechism. There were more than nine hundred of these this year. Behold a future flock detached from Rome. Moreover, there are foreigners who second the movement. A fairly large number of young girls have already made their First Communion in the liberal churches. Many marriages have taken place there.”
In Spain the Carlists were utterly defeated by overwhelming numbers and faithlessness on the part of many of their chieftains early in the year. Don Carlos escaped, and the insurrection was at an end. While Spain was shifting from hand to hand, and presenting to the world a hopeless picture of internal disorder, we supported the cause of a resolute man who had certainly a strong and brave following, not all confined to the North; whose views of government were far more liberal than they were represented to be by his foes; who knew the meaning of morality; who displayed great
capacity in welding into a formidable army a set of undisciplined hordes whose personal character was above suspicion; who, as kings’ claims go, had a strong claim to the Spanish crown, supported to this day by a formidable party in Spain; and who, had he once grasped the power of the throne, would not have been a likely man to relinquish it. What Spain wants to-day is a ruler, and we believe Don Carlos would have ruled the country wisely and well. We were always open, however, to just such a solution of the Spanish difficulty as has actually taken place. In our review of the year 1872, while saying that we did “not expect to find Amadeo’s name at the head of the Spanish government that day twelvemonth,” we added: “a good regent, not Montpensier, might bring about the restoration of Don. Alfonso; but where is such a regent?” Pavia did the work, and if the young king can only be surrounded by good advisers he need dread no domestic foe. He is undoubtedly the lawful king of the nation, and, as such, all good men are bound to support him. But Spain is still so uncertain that it is open to almost any surprise. Its debt is enormous. When Queen Isabella was driven from the throne, the capital of the debt was $1,250,000,000. To-day it is about $3,500,000,000 which represents in startling fashion what a country gains by revolution and the clash of dynasties.
Space does not allow of entering more largely into the internal affairs of Europe, or even of glancing at the disturbed condition of affairs in the states of South America, which is only a reflex of European life in its general and worst phases. With a brief mention of a few of the memorable dead, we pass on to consider the question which is uppermost in men’s minds to-day.
For the Catholic, during the past year, one name overshadows all—that of Cardinal Antonelli, whose official life in the service of his Holiness was a long and severe battle against overwhelming odds. The wonder is, not that he failed in the end but that he stood so long. He, together with his illustrious chief, was a true friend of liberty, but not of that liberty which means disorder. This he was to the end of his days, as is shown by his admiration for our own Republic and his rejoicing at the victory of the Union. His life was spent in storms;
and in days when physical force takes all things into its hands, his was the gigantic task to beat back the flood, as he succeeded in doing for almost a quarter of a century. His name will be memorable not only in Catholic annals but in European history, and his example for steadfast courage, unwavering faith, and unswerving devotion to the chair of Peter one of the most conspicuous in all time. Another holy and venerable man, renowned in a different way—Cardinal Patrizzi—followed him close. Another man who has graven his name on the century, and who was, perhaps, the brightest intellectual light that the New World has yet given to the faith—Dr. Brownson—went out with the year. As his career and work have been treated at length in The Catholic World, we need say no more of him here. His bright and promising daughter, Sarah (Mrs. Tenney), the author of the Life of Prince Gallitzin and other works, followed him recently. The name of Francis Deák stands alone among the list of secular statesmen. His life teaches the value of patience against hope, and of persistent but lawful agitation for the rights and liberties of peoples. He went to his grave amid the tears of a nation and the sorrow of a world, a patriot of patriots and a Catholic of Catholics.
THE EASTERN QUESTION.
Russia, Austria, and England have been almost completely wrapped up in the Eastern difficulty, which we do not pretend to be able to solve, and which we doubt if any man could solve, however read in the secrets of European cabinets. Never was a question more shifting in its character, more unexpected in its surprises, more delicate to touch, more difficult to adjust. Time was when short work might have been made of it. Here are the facts: A nation steeped in corruption, foreign in every sense to Europe, which has steadfastly refused to enter European life and thought and action, occupying one of the fairest regions only to pollute the very dust where heroes trod, and which the ashes of saints once consecrated. Christian principalities and peoples are subject and made to pay tribute to this power, which has only strength enough to be cruel, and energy enough to sin. It is needless to point
out what would be the action of Europe were Europe only one in faith. Its very faith would have revolted against such a people in such a place, and beyond doubt the Turks would have had the alternative of becoming subject to Christian rule or of leaving Christian shores.
But these thoughts enter not into the calculations of governments which are themselves no longer Christian. They approach the subject like robbers before whom is spread out a rich booty, and the question is, Who shall have the biggest share? Russia is resolved to have it; Austria trembles for her frontier; England sees all that she fought for in the Crimea slipping from her grasp, and is left without courage to fight and without a friend to help her.
It would take a volume to follow out all the intricacies of this affair, and at the end we should only be left at the very starting-point. If we may hazard an opinion, we believe that there will be no war, at least this winter. As for the alarm at the anticipated occupation of Constantinople by Russia—while, if the Russian Empire be not dissolved before the close of the present century, by one of the most terrific social and political convulsions that has ever yet come to pass, that occupation seems to lie very much in the order of possibilities—we doubt much whether it will occur so soon as people think. England is not the only rival of Russia. The alliance of the emperors is nothing more than an alliance de convenance which would snap at any moment. Russia herself has recently given notable example of what value she sets on troublesome treaties, when she has the power to throw them aside. It would seem to us difficult for Russia to occupy Constantinople without first mastering and garrisoning Turkey; and Turkey is an empire of many millions, whom fanaticism can still rouse to something like heroic, as well as to the most cruel and repulsive, deeds. These millions, even if they would, could not well be transported to Asia at a moment’s notice. But even granting all this, granting Russia the governing power—and it will have that or nothing—in what now is Turkey, how would its more immediate neighbors, Austria and Germany, regard so enormous an accession of power to an empire that already grasps the East and West in its hands, that is brave, enterprising, aggressive, daily growing in intelligence,[147]
as a nation one in religion, and subject to the will of one man, whose presumptive heir is the bitter foe of Germany? The religion of Russia is opposed to that of all Europe, with the exception of Greece. Russia is greedy, strong, poor, and cruel. So cold a nation, that has not yet quite thrown off the shell of barbarism, drifting down into one of the fairest European provinces, would take a century, at least, to thaw into civilization. Indeed, the possibilities that would arise from such a movement are beyond foreshadowing. Yet people who talk so glibly of Russia seizing Constantinople never seem to regard them. We may be very sure, however, that they are regarded by powers who, in such an event, would be neighbors and necessary rivals of Russia; and that they, while they are in a position, as to-day Germany is, to forbid trespass, will be very careful how far they allow a people to advance who, given an inch, take a country. Germany, it is believed by many, wants Austria. With Austria as part of Germany, Germany might well defy Russia, and the ambition of founding a consolidated empire extending from the borders of France to the borders of Russia, from the North Sea to the confines of Italy, seems to us worthy of the mind of Prince Bismarck. And it might have been, were he safer at home; but it needs something more powerful than blood and iron to frame and consolidate such an empire. It needs peace, unity of sentiment, unity of interests, unity of faith, the assurance of liberty, none of which Germany possesses to-day. Indeed, the chancellor himself has disavowed such designs, fearing that the welding of Austria into Germany would give the Catholics the preponderance in the empire which they now lack. Certain it is that some agreement has been made between the emperors which has imparted an ominous neutrality to Germany, and under which
troubled and enfeebled Austria is in the eyes of all observers restive. But under all these combinations of the great European Powers there frowns the spectre of socialism, with allies wherever men are aggrieved, and which will not down for all the artillery of empires. From it an outburst may be expected at any moment, in the quarter most unexpected, and in situations the most critical. Its power cannot be weighed, measured, or calculated upon. It works in the dark, yet universally. It is as strong in the Southern States of America as in Europe. Its excesses shock all men for a time, but it feeds on discontent; and discontent to-day possesses the world. It can only be met and conquered by the Christian conscience, but it has long been the effort of kings to destroy that conscience, to deprive it of light, and render it a passive agent in the hands of force. Thus are empires for ever digging their own graves.
And what is the outlook? Bleak indeed to the eye of the world, but bright to the eye of faith. Throughout the pontificate of our Holy Father, Pope Pius IX., the church has been treading the weary way of the Cross. The world is only to be won to Christ by suffering and sacrifice. Christ himself no longer suffers in the flesh, but in his mystical spouse, the church. “When I shall be lifted up,” he said, “then will I draw all men to me.” It is the same with his spouse. She has had her hour of earthly triumph; she has had her agony; she has felt the kiss of many a Judas on her cheek; Sadducee and Pharisee alike hate her; she has been betrayed by her own into the hands of her enemies; she has been led before the rulers of this world, and they have pronounced, each in his way, sentence upon her, and the sentence is death. She has been delivered up to the hands of the rabble, mocked, derided, bruised, crowned with thorns, forced to bear her own cross. She has mounted to the very height of Calvary. Her garments have been stripped from her, and, naked, she stands before the world. The consummation is at hand. Despoiled of all things, and lifted up between earth and heaven, a spectacle to God, to angels, and to men, she draws all eyes to her, while the executioners, under the very shadow of the Cross, gamble for her garments. Free from all the trappings of this world, deserted, abandoned of men,
it is then that the divinity within her shines forth with naught to dim its brightness. When Christ yielded up his spirit into the hands of his Heavenly Father, darkness covered the earth, the veil of the Temple was rent, the dead walked the streets of Jerusalem, and an earthquake shook the world. Nature was all confusion, and from that very hour began the victory of the Cross. Is not a like scene before us to-day? The darkest hour is on us; the future is God’s.
[145] This letter was written on January 19, 1876, consequently previous to the complications which have since arisen in Eastern Europe, and which, if war break out, would of necessity considerably add to “the wants of the Empire in 1877.”
[146] “How Rome stands To-day,” Catholic World, November, 1876.
[147] The Report of the Russian Education Department for 1875 showed, excluding Finland, the Caucasus, and Central Asia, 22,768 elementary schools, with 754,431 males and 185,056 females, and 1 school to 3,924 inhabitants. In the German provinces, there is 1 school to 2,044 persons, 1 scholar to 15 males and 24 females. In the Gymnasia, where the pupils have the option of learning French or German, 11,382 prefer German and 8,508 French, the preponderance for German being almost entirely furnished by the pupils who entered during the two years preceding. This latter fact we take to be a sign of the times.