One third of the population of Prussia is Catholic, and a larger proportion will be if she, as is likely, absorbs Southern Germany. Not much reliance is to be placed on Prussia as a Protestant power. The future belongs to the Anglo-Saxon race—England and the United States—to be disputed only by schismatic Russia and the new schismatic Greek empire in the process of formation. This relieves the gloom of the picture a little.
But while we agree with the author that Britain and our own country are the principal supports of Protestantism and of Protestant politics, unless we except France, usually reckoned as a Catholic power, we do not believe that even the United States and Britain, acting in concert, are so formidable, in an anti-Catholic sense, as he represents them. The British crown has more Catholic than Protestant subjects, and its Catholic subjects are for the most part enfranchised, and beginning to exert a powerful and constantly increasing influence on the policy of the government. England is obliged to count with Ireland, not only as to Irish interests in Ireland, but, to some extent, as to Catholic interests throughout the empire. The Catholic population in the United States is rapidly growing in numbers, education, wealth, and influence, and is already too large to be oppressed with impunity, and large enough, when not misled by foreign passions and interests, to prevent the government from adopting a decidedly anti-Catholic policy either at home or abroad. Were the United States even to absorb the Catholic states on this continent, it would be advantageous, not detrimental, to Catholic interests. Mexican and Cuban, as well as Central and South American Catholics would gain much by being annexed to the Union, and brought under the direct action of the ecclesiastical authority, as are the Catholics of the United States. We see nothing reassuring, we own, to the so-called Latin races in the growth and preponderance of the Anglo-Saxon nations, but not much that is promising to Protestantism; for we cannot believe that Christianity has failed, or that the future of society belongs to paganism.
The abbé does not attribute the decline of the Latin races to any religious cause, but finds its explanation—1. In the law of growth and decay, to which nations as individuals are subjected; 2. In climate—the southern climate tends to soften and enervate, the northern to harden and invigorate; 3. In geographical position; 4. In difference of temperaments; 5. Political constitutions; and 6. In accidental or providential causes, not to be foreseen and guarded against—the presence or absence of a great man, the defeat of a well-devised, or the success of a blundering policy, the gain of a battle that should have been lost, or the loss of a battle that should have been gained, etc. (Pp. 497-508.)
Most of these causes we examined and disposed of, some time ago, in a review of Professor Draper's works. The first and second we do not count. We do not believe that nations, like individuals, are subject to the law of growth, maturity, old age, and death. There are no facts or analogies from which such a law can be adduced, and a Catholic nation, if truly Catholic, has in its religion a fountain of perennial youth. Whatever disasters befall a Catholic nation, if not absorbed by another, it has always in itself a recuperative power. We believe just as little in the influence of climate as one of the causes of the decline of the Latin nations. The climate under which they have declined is the same under which they grew up and became the preponderating races. The extreme heat within the tropics is less unfavorable to mind or body than the extreme cold of the Arctic regions. The Latin races have lived both in their growth and in their decline under the finest, mildest, and healthiest climate within the temperate zone. The ablest men, as scholars, artists, statesmen, and generals, of France have belonged to her southern departments; and we found in our recent civil war that the men from the extreme Southern States, in their physical qualities, bravery, activity and vigor of body, and power of endurance, were not at all inferior to the men of the more Northern States. In fact, they could bear more fatigue, and suffer more privations, with less demoralization than the Northern man. We make just as little account of difference of temperament. The southern nations, with the same temperament, were once the preponderating nations of Europe, and the French are in no respect inferior to the English, and in many things superior. Spain in the sixteenth century not only surpassed what England then was, but even what she now is; and there was a time when it was said of Portugal, the sun never sets on her empire. We do not believe much in differences of race; for God hath made all nations of one blood.
Geographical position counts for something. The nations that have ports only on the Mediterranean, or access to the ocean only through that sea, have been unfavorably affected by the discovery of the passage to India by the Cape of Good Hope, and of this western continent in the fifteenth century. These maritime discoveries, which have changed the routes of commerce as well as the character of commerce itself, have given the advantage to the nations that open on the Atlantic, and sufficiently account for the decline of the Italian republics. The canal across the Isthmus of Suez, just opened, will do something, no doubt, to revive the commerce of the Mediterranean, but cannot restore it, because the Indian trade is not now of the same relative importance that it was formerly. The American trade comes in for its share, rivals and even exceeds it, and this trade, whether a ship-canal be or be not opened across the Isthmus of Darien, will be chiefly in the hands of the United States and the western nations of Europe, for their geographical position enables them to command it. The insular position of Great Britain has also given her some advantages.
Political constitutions also count for something; but in the beginning of the seventeenth century, the political constitutions of the several European states, except the Italian republics, the Swiss Cantons, and the United Netherlands, were essentially the same, that is, Roman monarchy engrafted on feudalism. Monarchy was as absolute in England under the Tudors and the Stuarts as it ever was in France or Spain, and the other estates counted for no more in her than in them. The Protestant states of Germany were not more popular in their constitution than the Catholic states, and Austria has never been so despotic as Prussia. We cannot, however, attribute much to this cause; for why have the Latin states been less successful in developing and ameliorating their political constitution than the Anglo-Saxon, if we assume that they have not been?
The accidental or providential causes, in the author's sense, being measurable by no rule and subject to no known law, cannot be very well discussed, and we are not inclined to attach much importance to them. A nation is already declining, or passed its zenith, if the loss of a single battle can ruin it; and on its ascending course, if the winning of one can secure it a permanent ascendency. Napoleon won many important battles, and yet he died a prisoner on the barren rock of St. Helena. A victory by Pompey at Pharsalia, or by Brutus and Cassius at Philippi, could not have restored the patrician republic or changed the fate of Rome. The republic was lost before Cæsar crossed the Rubicon. Great men play an important part, no doubt; but a nation that can be saved by the presence of a great man is in no serious danger, or that could be lost by his absence cannot be saved by his presence. Individuals count for less than hero-worshippers commonly imagine. The race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong.
Except in the loss of the commercial supremacy of the Italian republics by the maritime discoveries of the fifteenth century, we regard, though not in the sense of Protestants, the chief causes of the decline of the Latin nations as religious, and the ascendency of Protestant nations as, in the main, the counterpart of the decline of Catholic nations. The Catholic nations have declined, not because they have been Catholic, but because they and their governments have not been truly Catholic. Something, indeed, is due to the fact that England completed her revolution a hundred years before that of the Latin nations began. She had passed through her principal internal struggles, established the basis of her constitution, settled her dynasty, and was in a position when the Latin revolutions broke out to turn them to her own advantage. She used the madness of French Jacobinism, and the o'er-vaulting ambition of the first Napoleon. Being earlier too, the English revolution was less democratic than that of the Latin nations, and did not so essentially weaken the nation by eliminating the aristocratic element. England is only just now entering upon the fearful struggle between aristocracy and democracy, and it is very possible that she will lose her ascendency before she gets through it. Still we find the principal cause of the deterioration of Catholic nations connected, at least, with religion.
Both the nations that became Protestant and those that remained Catholic were affected by the revival of Greek and Roman paganism in the fifteenth century. The northern nations, adopting it in politics, speedily conformed their religion to it, subjected the spiritual to the secular, abandoned the church, made themselves Protestant, and harmonized their interior national life. The southern nations adhered to the church, for there were in them too many enlightened, earnest-minded, and devout Catholics to permit them to break wholly with the successor of Peter; but their governments, statesmen, and scholars, artists and upper classes, adopted pagan politics, literature, art, and manners, and thus created an antagonism between their religion and their whole secular life, which greatly impaired the influence of the church, and led to a fearful corruption of politics, manners, and morals. The cause of the deterioration of these nations is precisely in this antagonism, intensified by the so-called Renaissance, and which has continued, down to the present time, and will, most likely, continue yet longer.
The Council of Trent did something to check the evil, but could not eradicate it; for its cause was not in the church, nor in the abuses of ecclesiastical discipline or administration, but in the secular order, in which the secular powers would suffer no radical reforms either in facts or principles. They were willing the church should reform her own administration, but would not conform their own to the principles of which she was the appointed guardian. They would protect her against heretical powers; but only on their own terms, and only so far as she would consent to be made or they could use her as an instrument of their ambition. Charles V. would protect her only so far as he could without losing in his military projects the support of the Protestant princes of the empire; and when he wished to force the pope to his terms, he let loose his fanatical troops under the Constable Bourbon against Rome, who imprisoned him and spoiled and sacked the city for nine months; Philip II. would also serve the church and make a war of extermination on heretics in the Low Countries, but only in the hope of using her as an instrument in attaining to the universal monarchy at which he aimed. Louis XIV., and after him Napoleon I., attempted the same. They all thought they could use her to further their own ambition; but they failed—and failed miserably, shamefully. He to whom it belongs to give victory or defeat, who demands disinterested services, and who will not suffer his church to be used as an instrument of earthly ambition, touched them with his finger, and their strength failed, they withered as grass, and all their plans miscarried. It was better that her avowed enemies should triumph for a season than that she should be enslaved by her protectors, or smothered in the embraces of her friends. God is a jealous God, and his glory he will not give to another.