As for the issue of the council, Acton, having Mr. Odo Russell in agreement with him, from the first conveyed to Mr. Gladstone his opinion that the pope would prevail.
The only hope in my mind, said Mr. Gladstone in reply, is that there may be a real minority, and that it may speak plainly. A few bold men would easily insure themselves a noble immortality. But will any have the courage? The Italian government have one and only one method in their hands of fighting the pope: and that is to run, against nomination from Rome, the old and more popular methods of choosing bishops by clerical election, with the approbation of the flock.[316] Unless they resort to this they can do nothing.
All the accounts from Rome, he tells Lacaita (Jan. 2, 1870), are as bad as possible. For the first time in my life, I shall now be obliged to talk about popery; for it would be a scandal to call the religion they are manufacturing at Rome by the same name as that of Pascal, or of Bossuet, or of Ganganelli. The truth is that ultramontanism is an anti-social power, and never has it more undisguisedly assumed that character than in the Syllabus.
Issue Of The Council
The French government wrote despatches of mild protest but said nothing of withdrawing their garrison. Mr. Gladstone and Lord Clarendon were for informing the Roman court that they were cognizant of the French despatches, and approved of their tenour. The Queen and the cabinet, however, were entirely averse to meddling with the council, [pg 511] and nothing was done officially. This did not prevent Mr. Gladstone from telling Archbishop Manning what impediments would be placed in the way of Irish legislation by the state of English feeling as to the Syllabus and other papal proceedings. “My feelings and convictions,” he says (April 16), “are as you well know decidedly with your ‘opposition,’ which I believe to be contending for the religious and civil interests of mankind against influences highly disastrous and menacing to both. But the prevailing opinion is that it is better to let those influences take their course, and work out the damage which they will naturally and surely entail upon the see of Rome and upon what is bound to it.” In parliament there was an utter aversion to the Roman policy, and he gives instances, noting even a change of opinion about the Irish land bill. “What I have described is no matter of speculation. I know it by actual and daily touch. I am glad you have moved me to state it in some detail. It is to me matter of profound grief, especially as regards land in Ireland.”
To Lord Acton:—
Of all the prelates at Rome, none have a finer opportunity, to none is a more crucial test now applied, than to those of the United States. For if there, where there is nothing of covenant, of restraint, or of equivalent between the church and the state, the propositions of the Syllabus are still to have the countenance of the episcopate, it becomes really a little difficult to maintain in argument the civil rights of such persons to toleration, however conclusive be the argument of policy in favour of granting it. I can hardly bring myself to speculate or care on what particular day the foregone conclusion is to be finally adopted. My grief is sincere and deep, but it is at the whole thing, so ruinous in its consequences as they concern faith. In my view, the size of the minority, though important, is not nearly so important as the question whether there will be a minority at all.
There was a minority. In a division taken at a late stage, 451 composed the majority, 88 resisted, and 62 were for a new examination. Then the minority turned their backs on Rome; and on July 18 the definition of infallibility [pg 512] was acclaimed in St. Peter's in presence of the pope by 533 against 2.
Mr. Gladstone is very glad when Clarendon instructs Mr. Russell to turn his back on the festivities at Rome. “The whole proceeding has been monstrous, and it will hereafter become one of the laughing-stocks of history. The fanaticism of the middle ages is really sober compared with that of the nineteenth century.” “The proclamation of Infallibility,” he said to Bishop Moriarty, “I must own I look upon as the most portentous (taking them singly), of all events in the history of the Christian church.”