“We do not anticipate any retrogression in the development of Prussia, but it seems inevitable that there should be some check in the progress of change, some slackening in the audacity of legislation, some disposition to rest and be thankful.”
Of the same measure the Prussian correspondent of the London Times wrote:
“The Catholic dignitaries are not the only ecclesiastics opposed to the bill. The new measures applying not only to the Catholic Church, but to all religious communities recognized by the state, the Ober-Kirchenrath, or Supreme Consistory of the Protestant Church in the old provinces, has also thought fit to caution the crown against the enactment of these sweeping innovations.”
“The official papers openly accuse the Protestant clergy of becoming the allies of the Ultramontanes,” says the Pall Mall Gazette (April 12, 1873). “Herr Von Gerlach no longer stands alone as a Protestant opponent of the chancellor’s policy.”
“This rough-and-ready method of expelling Ultramontane influences ‘by a fork’ can hardly fail to suggest to a looker-on the probability that, like similar methods of expelling nature, it may lead to a reaction. Downright persecution of this sort (we are speaking now simply of the Jesuit law), unless it is very thorough indeed—more thorough than is well possible in the nineteenth century—usually defeats itself,” says the Saturday Review.
But why multiply quotations? Surely those given are enough to show that the leading organs of English opinion, representing every stripe of thought, are quite agreed as to what name should be given to what Mr. Froude calls the “liberty, spiritual and political,” in Germany. We leave the case confidently in their hands; and Mr. Froude apparently thinks the verdict has gone against him. He deplores the fact that “free England and free America ... affect to think that the Jesuits are an injured body, and clamor against Prince Bismarck’s tyranny. Truly, we are an enlightened generation” (p. 136).
What is here true of Germany is true also of Russia, Austria (in great measure), Italy, Switzerland, and other lands. So that if Catholicity is really reviving, as Mr. Froude alleges, it is reviving under the very shadow of death, and in face of the combined opposition of the most powerful governments. A revival under such circumstances ought to extort the admiration of Mr. Froude, who is as true a hero-worshipper as Carlyle, even if he be about equally happy in his selection of heroes. In the “Preliminary” to The English in Ireland Mr. Froude propounds his theories of might and right:
“A natural right to liberty, irrespective of the ability to defend it, exists in nations as much as, and no more than, it exists in individuals.... In a world in which we are made to depend so largely for our well-being on the conduct of our neighbors, and yet are created infinitely unequal in ability and worthiness of character, the superior part has a natural right to govern; the inferior part has a natural right to be governed; and a rude but adequate test of superiority and inferiority is provided in the relative strength of the different orders of human beings. Among wild beasts and savages might constitutes right. Among reasonable beings right is for ever tending to create might” (vol. i. pp. 1, 2).
As we are not now examining Mr. Froude’s theories on government, we only call attention to the very hazy nature of the views here expressed on a subject which of all things should be clear and definite. He uses the word right without telling us what he means by it, whether or not it has an absolute meaning and force. He speaks of “the superior part” and “the inferior part” without informing us in what sense the terms are used. Superior in what? Inferior in what? To any rational mind it is plain that, just because of the inequality of human beings “in ability and worthiness of character,” there must, under a divine dispensation, which Mr. Froude does not deny, be absolute rules of right and wrong for all alike, a moral code which shall extend to and determine all rights, natural or acquired. If not this, right and wrong become convertible terms, and right and might of course follow suit, which is really the outcome of Mr. Froude’s theory—a doctrine that impregnates and inspires all his writings.
“There neither is nor can be an inherent privilege in any person or set of persons to live unworthily at their own wills, when they can be led or driven into more honorable courses; and the rights of man—if such rights there be—are not to liberty, but to wise direction and control” (p. 2).