The mission of Sir Bartle Frere from the British government to the interior of Africa, with a view to the putting a stop to the barbarities of the slave-trade, promises, in connection with the expedition under Sir Samuel Baker, to open up a road to European intercourse with the natives of the interior. Some German scientists in Berlin also set on foot during the past year an association for the promotion of the exploration of Africa.
In the states of South America the same strife that we have witnessed in Europe is being waged, which, under the name of church and state, really means the absolutism of the state. The members of the Society of Jesus and of other societies and orders have been expelled from Mexico and several other states. Mexico has decreed civil marriage, as has also Brazil, whose Masonic premier and cabinet are entering on a persecution of the bishops for excommunicating members of secret societies. During the year, the city of San Salvador was utterly destroyed by an earthquake. The political order in these South American states corresponds very closely with their natural order. They exist in a chronic state of revolution and eruption.
In the natural order there have been furious storms, fraught with disaster to life and property; although lives lost in this manner have been insignificant in number compared with loss resulting from wrecks owing mainly to neglect, as in the case of the Northfleet and the Atlantic, and several railroad disasters on a large scale. Boston was again visited by fire, but escaped with a loss less severe than before. The flooding of the Po once more brought disaster upon Italy, as did our own annual freshets upon us in the spring. With the exception of the threatened famine in Bengal, the seasons have been propitious, and the want which threatens the United States particularly during the coming year is due mainly to financial panics and strikes.
Within the past year, Berlin, Vienna, and New York have known panics, all seemingly resulting from the same immediate cause—the failure of one or two great houses; while the markets of the world have been threatened in consequence. Failures of one or two great houses could not possibly affect in so terrible a manner all kinds of business were it not that there was something radically wrong at the bottom—an evil leaven that has spread to the whole commercial mass. It would probably be a puzzle, even to a financier, to lay before the world the secrets of these periodical panics, resulting in ruin to so many outside of the comparative few immediately concerned. It looks as though, in this money-getting age, and among our own money-getting people particularly—on which subject the Holy Father this year addressed to us a special warning—the mass of men were animated by the principle, "Get money at all costs; never mind the means." Even the greatest houses live on a system of puff. In private life the man who lives beyond his means must sooner or later come to grief, and face ruin or roguery. In business the same rule must hold good. Vast establishments are conducted on a system vitally unsound. Probably there exists scarcely a house to-day that, if called on at any one moment to pay all its outstanding debts, could do so. But when the majority of houses are conducted on principles that on a limited capital base a business involving an outlay of perhaps twenty times its amount, we must be prepared for these periodical disasters. The evil is that this essentially dishonest system has become the only recognized style of conducting business in these days; so that commerce has come to be a game of speculation, where the cleverest and most daring rogue generally wins—a game fostered by the excessive issue of paper money.
Among events that attracted some attention during the year was the still lingering trial of the Tichborne claimant, which was not thrown into the shade by the trial of Marshal Bazaine. There have been meetings of the internationalists and other societies. New York was entertained or bored, as may be, for a week, by a meeting of Protestant gentlemen, mostly clericals, of all shades of belief, who called themselves an Evangelical Alliance. They were not quite agreed as to the particular object of their meeting, from which nothing resulted.
Several Catholic nations and numerous dioceses have been solemnly dedicated to the Sacred Heart of Our Lord Jesus Christ during the past year, the province of New York among the number, on the feast of the Immaculate Conception, December 8. Dr. Corrigan was consecrated Bishop of Newark, and F. Gross of Savannah.
The last point has come: the mention of the dead. The Emperor Napoleon was the first of note to go; his empire went with him, for from first to last it was essentially a personal government. As his will, drawn up in his still palmy days, said, "Power is a heavy burden." He forced himself upon a nation of 30,000,000 of human souls; he voluntarily assumed the responsibility of the absolute guidance of that mighty multitude. He never had a fixed principle to guide him. He never dared honestly say, "This is right," "This is wrong." The power which he voluntarily assumed and kept to himself so long—one solitary man the ruler of 30,000,000—ended in disaster for that mighty multitude and himself.
This death dwarfs all the others. Nevertheless, many a man was laid in his grave last year whose name will live after him. The church has lost Mgr. Losanna, Bishop of Biela, the oldest Italian bishop; F. de Smet, the apostolic missionary among the Indians; and here, in New York, Vicar-General Starrs. Literature has suffered in Manzoni, whose death the Italians rightly viewed as a national calamity. Edward Bulwer, Lord Lytton, a man of many and great gifts, has at last gone to tell "what could he do with them." History will not soon find again an Amedée Thierry. Col. James F. Meline, a frequent and very able contributor to The Catholic World, is a loss to American Catholic literature. The Anglican Bishop of Winchester, a gifted orator, but a churchman of no very fixed opinions, was killed by a fall from his horse. On the same day died Lord Westbury, a man of a singularly acute and powerful intellect, who has left his mark on English legislation. Our Chief-Justice Chase is gone, and it will be difficult to find his equal. Rattazzi, the Italian minister, is gone to his place. John Stuart Mill, who could not well be dismissed in a sentence, is dead. He was a singular mixture of philosophical acumen and practical stupidity. Art has lost Landseer; science, Maury and Liebig, the chemist; while medicine laments Nelaton. The American, French, and English stage mourns respectively Forrest and Macready, the once rival tragedians, and Lafont, a prince of comedians. Royalty has lost the Empress Dowager of Austria, a very holy woman; the Empress Dowager of Brazil; the King of Saxony, a scholar and a Christian, and the Duke of Brunswick, who was famed for anything but holiness. General Paez, who once was famous, is dead. The death of Captain Hall adds another to the list of brave, adventurous spirits who so far have wasted their lives in the endeavor to discover the North Pole. His death involved the failure of the Polaris expedition, which was fitted out by the American government. The story of the rescue of the Polaris crew belongs to the romance of history.
Bernstorff and Olozaga, the ambassadors respectively of Germany and Spain, have dropped from diplomatic circles into that circle where the finest diplomacy cannot cover the slightest delinquency.
There is little to add. Another year has happily passed over our heads without a serious war, but the future threatens to make ample and speedy atonement for this lamentable deficiency. Last year The Catholic World closed its review by saying that "Europe was arming." This year it may say Europe is armed. Prussia, Russia, France, Austria, Italy—what are they? Nations of warriors. Had the Persian king asked the meaning of these armed nations, he would probably have been answered, with a grim jocularity, that civilized powers found such the only method of keeping the peace and preserving that imaginary thing—equilibrium. The Russian expedition into and capture of Khiva, the defeat of the Dutch by the Atchinese in the Island of Sumatra, the English war with Ashantee, make the three ruptures of international peace during the year. England seems particularly choice in her selection of foes: Abyssinia, the Looshai tribes, and now—Ashantee. She is jealous of her turbulent neighbors, and must vindicate her ancient prestige.