A still more powerful reason precluded our sympathy with the Republican movement in Portugal, namely, that the republic as exhibited in our national history was not the republic imagined by speculative sociologists. It is Republicans who make a republic, and who were these in Portugal? With few very rare exceptions they were the declared enemies of religion, either avowed unbelievers, or at best wholly indifferent to all beyond politics. Could we, without being false to our most cherished principles, affect sympathy with such a party?
They themselves undertook to show by their actions that we were not wrong; just as the last government under the monarchy clearly showed by its action that we were not mistaken in its regard.
I must, however, acknowledge that for all my dread of the revolutionary intolerance of these advocates of liberty, my simplicity was at fault, since I never dreamed of what we are witnessing today.
6. REACTIONARY INFLUENCE.
As it seems to me, I have replied to all the pretexts alleged to justify all the arbitrary tyranny, the spoliations and outrages against liberty of which my religious brethren and myself have been the victims. It remains only to speak of what is proclaimed as the final motive of the laws enacted against us, that our influence is reactionary.
Well! our enemies are right! If this reactionary spirit signifies fidelity and love for the Catholic Church, self-renunciation for Christ's sake, earnest endeavor that no jot or tittle of His law be neglected; if it means that we have striven to produce in Portugal a body of active and fearless Catholics, who will not confine themselves to prayers, but will labor by word and deed to renew all things in Christ; that to this end we employ every means within our reach, the pulpit, the confessional, lectureships, the press, in order thus to promote the glory of God and salvation of souls—then in truth we are reactionaries, and guilty of the offense laid to our charge.
Strange offense indeed, in a country where on every hand we hear our enemies proclaiming liberty of conscience, of speech, of the press! Strange offense of which to be accused by men who denounced the monarchy for suppressing freedom, while in the columns of their newspapers and the rhetoric of their meetings they were violently attacking authority and its representatives; an offense to be punished by those who were never weary of declaring that every man must be allowed to propagate and fight for his own ideas. Yet what else did we do? Were we ever known to enforce the agreement of others or to avenge ourselves for their disagreement by inflicting upon them what we have ourselves endured—arrest, imprisonment, confiscation, banishment? No, it cannot be said that such conduct was ever ours; it is peculiar to those false prophets of liberty who, instead of responding with reason and argument, seek to reduce us forcibly to silence, or to crush us with insult and declamation.
FOOTNOTE:
[1] Memoires of King Joseph.