had undertaken to provide for the peace and tranquillity of the Churches, and were therefore bound to watch with anxiety, and to investigate, wherever there was known to be any matter of disturbance. In the reign of our lionhearted Richard, it was thought a sufficient justification of the archbishop of Canterbury for his absence from his see, that he was occupied in making peace between his sovereign and the king of France. If peace was made at Runnimede between the king and barons, it was due to Archbishop Langton's intervention there. Hubert Walter, archbishop of Canterbury in king Richard's days, deserved to be styled "a bridle unto the king and obstacle of tyranny, and the peace and comfort of his people." When St. Hugh, bishop of Lincoln, was sent ambassador to treat of peace with Phillip Augustus, he astonished the most skilful diplomatists of the time with his talent in negociation. He had learned, in the solitude of the cloister, the noble art, which now enabled him to make peace between the kings. He died in London, in the midst of his labours to reconcile England with France, and procure peace, for the people of those countries. The battle of Tenchebrai would not have been fought, could the voice of the monks have found listeners. The hermit Vital, more ardent than the rest (saya Orderic,) boldly forbade king Henry to come to extremities with his brother, duke Robert, "lest one should see revived the hateful crime of the sons of Edipus." St. Lawrence, archbishop of Dublin, was more fortunate with one of that king's successors. The tributary king of Ireland had offended Henry the Second, and the archbishop hastened to London, to effect a peace. Henry rejecting his prayer, sailed for Normandy, whither the holy prelate followed him, to renew his intercessions. Mollified at length, the king consented. Returning from this mission of peace, the Saint had reached Eu, when he was seized with a mortal sickness, and he finished his glorious career in the convent of Our Lady in that city. During the wars of the English in France, the endeavours of the Sovereign Pontiff and his legates to bring the competitors to an accommodation, were incessant. Chateaubriand has beautifully observed, "How lovely it is to see those men of mercy following everwhere the men of blood, endeavouring to make them lay down their arms, imploring before the battle, weeping after it,-always rejected, never weary, doves of peace, wandering from battle-field to battle-field with vultures."* The Cardinal de Perigord, the Papal legate, heroically but fruitlessly exerted himself to stop the battle of Poitiers. The truce that followed the battle of Cressi was due to the direct interference of the Pope himself. Afterwards, at two separate periods, the Cardinals d'Estouteville and Ursini were commissioned by the Holy See to make peace between the same parties: and the character of these legates agreed well with their office. The Mores Catholici abounds with such examples. Those who presided over the earthly destinies of the Church, knew well their mission, and were true to it. From

Discours Hist. iv. 60.

the moment when, under St. Gregory the VII., the commonwealth of Christendom became consolidated, Europe, with rare exceptions, could, in each succeeding pontiff, point out a zealous peacemaker. "Albeit unworthy, we hold the place of Him on earth," said Innocent III, "who hateth discord." "We are chosen," said Nicholas I, in 861, "to that See, which is known to be a lover of justice, and kindness, and peace." "The Father of the World to come," said Martin I to the Sicilian king, "the Prince of Peace, who by His inscrutable condescension hath granted the vicarial office unto our humility, hath inspired us with the wish to diffuse with our whole strength, amongst the children of our Holy Mother the Church, the good of peace." Filled with the spirit of that mission, the pontiffs left no means untried, that promised its accomplishment. If the timid were encouraged, or the weak assisted, the obdurate were coerced by the two-edged sword of Peter,-that those whom their rebellion had scandalised might in their turn be edified by the rigour of the Church's justice.

How these holy pontiffs dealt with the transgressors and the violent, who delighted in unjust warfare, and would none of their reproof, we may learn from the rescript which pope Adrian addressed to the counts, and other faithful men, in the kingdoms of Charles and Lothaire: "Since, by a contention of this kind, it often happens, that there is shedding of blood, we judge it right to provide, lest such a wickedness should arrive in our times. Therefore, wishing peace, and not war,-for the Psalmist says to the Lord, Dissipa gentes quæ bella volunt,'-do you, if possible, make peace between them; but if you cannot, at least refrain from war :-dissipate battles. Otherwise, if any of you move against Carolomann, and by your means there should follow a shedding of the blood of the faithful, let him know, that not only shall he be bound with the ties of excommunication, but also consigned to associate with Satan in the chains of anathema." There was little chance of moving some princes to peaceful counsels, unless stunned by the distant thunders of the "I am going to the king, after my fatiguing journey," said Peter of Blois in his letter to the bishop of Rochester, "and I have anything but rest to expect from him." But the frowns of the earthly sovereign had no terrors for this subject of the King of kings. A remarkable instance is mentioned by Cæsar of Heisterbach. An English bishop was recommended in his last hours to confess. On being urged a good deal about it, he at last said to his advisers, "You foolish men, do you think that I have deferred confession to this moment?" Being probably imbued, in part, with the impression that is now-adays paramount, that religion has nothing to do with politics, they replied, "But your lordship was always occupied in the king's council." "But in no other sense," answered the holy man, "than as Christ himself appeared before Pilate." And, in fact, he had been in the habit of confessing daily. Happy those sovereigns who gave ear to such counsellors! Happy they who, with Henry VII of Germany, could call God to witness, in the presence of their

curse.

"If

camps, that no glory of the worldly lust had led them forth to warfare ! I look upwards," that sovereign might truly say, "I see my teacher, God; if downwards, his vicegerent, the Pope. By these guides I am led ;-who is against me ?" The times have not improved, since these guides were given up, and in their place the balance of power, and the adjustments of nationality, and egotism, were substituted. There was a legatine ordinance, which England, Scotland, and Ireland, once thought it no shame to put in practice. Every year, on the day after the octave of Pentecost, there was throughout those three realms a great and solemn procession of the faithful, in which GoD was thanked for the return of tranquillity and comfort, and besought to make those blessings permanent amongst us. Have the times mended since those processions were laid aside?

These are times of isolation and mutual distrust. Political diplomacy, abandoning those grounds of peace which were laid by the hands of love in the Ages of Faith, have sought for them where they are not-in cupidity and self-interest. The pretended equilibrium of population and territory is the only adjustment of which the sovereigns of modern Europe,-those arpenteurs de terre, as the Comte de Mèrode most happily termed them,-seem to consider themselves capable. They watch one another, says Mr. Digby, with a jealous eye, having that kind of mutual esteem and confidence which exist among the lesser potentates, who upon the highway carry on a species of warfare, inferior perhaps to their own, but every whit as legitimate. To the old Catholic arguments in behalf of the interests of peace, humanity, and justice, their standing answer might be given in the words of Northumberland: "That were some love, but little policy." And why is this? It is because the bond of union which made of the nations of Europe one commonwealth, one Christendom, is no more! Religion has given way,-sectarianism has supplanted her. The moderns have embraced the old heathen doctrine of the nationality of creeds and rituals. Their so-called patriotism, says Mr. Digby, derives strength from their so-called religion, and the latter becomes as exclusive as the former. Hence the social state, which the ages of faith viewed only as the means of life, becomes to the moderns what it was to the Gentiles,-the end and aim thereof. The limits of territory are again, as in heathen times, the limits of religious obligation.† And, because the vernacular tongues of the northern races refused to sanction the revived imposture, a heathen nomenclature was imported along with it, to obtain a reception for it in the bewildered minds of the hearers. Thus, as Mr. Urquhart has remarked, the introduction into modern languages of the ambiguous Greek word "politics," is contemporaneous with the adoption of the ensnaring position that "churchmen have nothing to do with them." At the same time, the sense attached to it was the very reverse of the true value of the word in its original Greek.

• Mores Catholici, book ix. pp. 378-403.

Ibid. pp. 274-8.

The error, at its commencement, sought and found a foreign term to misapply. it, and upon that misapplication it has continued hitherto to live. If by "politician" be meant citizen, and by "politics" the knowledge of public affairs, the position is heretical and untrue. But, if we are to understand the words in their received interpretation, as importing the sin of factiousness, then the position becomes a most ludicrous truism! "We thus give to ourselves a common term for right and wrong,-for duty and for sin,-and thereby extinguish sense." This indeed has been the generic vice of the Reformation from first to last.

Would England unravel the meshes of her entanglements? Let her undo that Reformation! Let her put away from her the delusion which she calls her Church, and once more entrust herself to the guides in whom the emperor Henry has been heard to place his confidence,-GOD in heaven, and His chief pontiff here below. So long as she denies the competence of either tribunal to adjudicate against her, it were idle for her to expect their interference in her favour. So long as she remains without the circle of Christendom, forcing by her example, or by the force of gravitation, so many other powers of lesser magnitude and note to do the same, she cannot, with any semblance of justice, demand participation in the sweet influences which Christendom has to bestow. She cannot make outlaws of our religious at one moment, and ask a blessing for them at the next. If she would purchase Rome's protection, she must begin by recognising in Rome the right to protect. Let her unthread the rude eye of her long rebellion, if she would entitle herself to the renewal of that maternal care, with which the Holy See once blessed her infancy. Let her welcome home again her holy faith, too long, alas! discarded; and, with it, peace and happiness will hasten to her in company, to share that salutation. Let her, in the fervour of her contrition, seek out the Church she has so long persecuted, and fall before her feet, and restore her to the throne, whence heresy and tyranny combined to chase her. And, when that is done,--when that wholesome though tardy atonement is made for wrongs, of which the whole nation alike is now culpable before GoD and man,--the darkness which besets her destinies will have passed away for ever. Whatever the perils that await her, the restored Church of England, unlike the poor usurper of her greatness, that dares to assume her once glorious name, will not "stand by at the altar, at once spectator and sacrifice; without an eye to penetrate the mystery of events, and to dispel the gloom of coming night." As she was in the beginning, and will be evermore, such is the Church Catholic to-day. When England has the ears to hear, she has "the tongue to utter truths which shall breathe life again into this perishing empire." (p. 26.)

From the U. S. Catholic Magazine.

THE PHILADELPHIA ANTI-CATHOLIC RIOTS.*

Our readers will readily appreciate the feelings of mingled indignation, shame, and sorrow, which the topic before us, of necessity, awakens. Living in the American Union, in the middle of the nineteenth century, we cannot yield ourselves, without some bitterness and sadness of spirit, to theconv iction that we are to be thrown back upon the darkest days of heathenism, or the tender mercies of the Hun and Vandal. The Catholic population of this country have had some little experience, heretofore, in the matter of persecution. They have been accustomed to taunt, reproach, and insult, from those who make a trade of such things. They have learned to know how easily the most comprehensive schemes of Christian charity, can be made compatible with hatred and uncharitableness towards them and theirs. They have been shown that to despise a "Papist" is held by many, as equivalent to half the "armour of righteousness." They have been taught that patience, and tolerance and peace, upon their part, can give them no security for the enjoyment of their worship and faith unmolested. Hitherto, however, the demonstrations against them have been, for the most part, confined to windy denunciation, which has had, in some degree, the property of correcting itself. Now and then they have had a nunnery threatened or destroyed, in a moment of blind rage, or hasty fanaticism-but the spirit of religious heroism which prompted such achievements, has generally spent itself in a brief orgasm, and the sudden violence of mobs has yielded place to the deliberate injustice of legislatures. We confess, therefore, that the news of the Philadelphia riots came upon us like a sudden earthquake. In spite of the lesson which may still be read, upon the blackened walls of Mount Benedict, we had thought, that under the guaranties of the American constitution, even a Catholic might worship God without being shot for it, and build a church, without danger of its being burned, because of the sacrifice at its altar. We had believed that in the second city of the Union, populous, wealthy and educated-there was a civil government, with laws protecting life and property-with officers and means to render such protection sure. We had deemed it an impossible thing for a band of ruffians, during three days, to trample under foot things sacred to God and holy amongst men, with a population of two hundred and fifty thousand American freemen looking on, in silence or encouragement. It has been our fate, however, to learn from our new experience, the folly of our confidence and hope. We have lived to see persecution for opinion's sake triumph, with red hands, over the moral sense, and the physical force of a proud and

"This communication," says the Editor of the U. S. Catholic Magazine, "is from a gentleman of high standing at the Baltimore bar, who, though not a member of the Catholic Church, has witnessed the recent violation of the laws with those mingled sentiments of sorrow and indignation which must have arisen in the breast of every true American."