But since 1859 law or treaties no longer seem to bind. There seems to be nothing fixed in the public law of Europe. All is whim; might instead of right, sentiment instead of principle. Powers can no longer unite, for they cannot trust each other. Instead of all being united to protect the individual state, now all are hostile to each other. Italy insists on unification in spite of law and right, and to gain her purpose depends to-day on Prussia; yesterday, it was on France. She hates Austria, and Austria acts as if she did not perceive the hatred, and will not interfere lest she might offend the liberals. Vienna is in dread of Berlin and St. Petersburg; St. Petersburg is in dread of Berlin. England looks jealously at Russia, who, meanwhile, is arming in grim silence, and with occasional manifestations of her old predilections. France counts now for nothing. Prussia, which fifteen years ago was allowed merely by the favor of Austria to sit in the congress of the great powers, is now the only great military power in Europe. We say military, for it is not the real, the hidden power. As in the Greek mythology grim, inexorable fate ruled above all the gods, so the head lodge of the secret societies makes of the Prussian leaders its blind tools; Italy obeys it; Napoleon was its slave; Austria, its sacrifice; and now Prussia also must bend the knee. Such is Europe ten years after the Franco-Austrian war: the Europe of Metternich, Nesselrode, and Wellington.
V.
THE INTERNAL POLICY OF THE EUROPEAN STATES SINCE 1789.
The revolution has changed the internal policy of states as well as their external relations. Forty years ago, Donoso Cortes remarked that England was endeavoring to introduce its constitution into the Continent; and that the Continent would try to introduce its different governmental systems into England. We are now witnesses of the truth of this observation. Democratic ideas are gaining ground in Great Britain; and bureaucracy, with its centralizing tendencies, is replacing the English theory of self-government. Military conscriptions, along with universal suffrage, will come next. Owing to the extension of the franchise, the House of Commons is losing its aristocratic character, and the House of Lords its influence. England will go the way of France.
We see what the liberal system begotten of the revolution has caused in France. An enervated, un-self-reliant, disunited generation, without traditions, organization, consistency, faith, or true patriotism, is its result. The decrees of the Code Napoléon concerning inheritances have broken up families; the departmental system has destroyed the provincial peculiarities in which lies the people's strength; the system of common lodging-houses for the laboring classes has destroyed respect for authority, and afforded ready material for the purposes of despotism or secret societies.
In Italy and Spain, we see the same spectacle. The French, led into Italy by the first Napoleon, brought thither the principle of centralization and a revolutionary code. After Napoleon's downfall, the restored princes allowed too much of his system to remain. This arose from a want of judgment. The ancient municipalities were destroyed, even to some extent in the States of the Church; Piedmont receiving most of the poison, and thus becoming the hearth of the revolution. Constitutionalism, anarchy, and military governments in Spain prove the working of revolutionary doctrines. The old freedom of that Catholic country, the growth of centuries, gives way before a nominal liberty, but a real despotism.
In Germany, too, centralization carries the day. This country had the good fortune to be composed of several independent states, without any great central power, and the provincial spirit consequently remained strong. But now two un-German words, "unification" and "uniformity," expressing un-German tendencies, are carrying the Germans into despotism. Germany will be Prussianized, and Prussia Germanized, say the unificators; but all will, in the end, be compelled to give way before the republicans and socialists. The high schools of Germany are all infected with the revolutionary doctrines and Masonic ideas.
What shall we say of Austria? Thanks to "liberalism," it has disappeared, and is now a dualism in its government and tri-parliamentary in its system.
The licentiousness of the press helps to destroy everything stable in governments. Journals without principle, honor, or religion, filled with scandals, edited by adventurers, whose only object is to make money and serve faithfully their owners, issue their thousands of copies daily to corrupt the public mind. Evil spreads more rapidly than good, and consequently the influence of the religious press is weak compared to that of the revolutionary papers, subsidized by the agents of secret societies or by the unprincipled men of wealth, who readily purchase the aid of corrupted minds to help on their ambition.
VI.
THE POSITION OF THE CHURCH UNDER THE LIBERAL SYSTEM.
Governments have therefore ceased to be Christian, and have become "liberal," that is, infidel. According to liberalism, religion is the private affair of each individual. Civil society should recognize no dogma, no worship, no God. We know well that this principle, from its very intrinsic absurdity, cannot be practically carried out. For instance, God will be recognized when it is necessary to swear fidelity to a constitution, and the external forms of religion will be invoked at the opening of a new railroad or a session of parliament. But in principle the liberal state ignores all positive religious belief. Its only dogma is that a law passed by a majority of voters remains a law until the next majority abrogates it. This system is called "separation of church and state," or "a free church in a free state." Then follow broken concordats—in France and Bavaria, broken by organic articles; in Baden, Piedmont, Austria, and Spain, destroyed by the will of the prince and cabinet ministers. Then follows a usurped educational system, in which the rights of the family and church are disregarded. In all of these states, more or less, there is a public persecution of the church; a repression of her rights; enthrallment of her ministers; invasion of her privileges. God is in heaven, consequently the church should confine herself to the sanctuary; that is to say, God does not trouble himself about the conduct of nations, politics, legislation, or science. These are all neutral affairs, over which his authority does not extend, and therefore the church has nothing to do with public life. So say the liberals. They take from God and give it to Cæsar, the modern civil divinity, all that is his, except one thing which it is impossible for them to take from him, and that is conscience. They endeavor to estrange conscience from God more and more by education, by the press, and by public opinion manufactured by the leaders of the secret societies. Hence all the talk about "liberty of conscience." For the same end, they talk of toleration, but they mean simply indifference, which hence becomes the shibboleth of the party which the church unceasingly opposes.