admirer would venture to warn him of the risks he was running. Thus, in the summer of 1825, the chief luminary of the French bar, Berryer, having listened at La Chênaie to a most eloquent exposition of some of those audacious theories which the master afterward developed in his " Outlines of a Philosophy," felt that he was captivated; but he cried: "My friend, you frighten me. You will become a sectarian; and I foresee that you will lose the empire which you now exercise over me." Lamennais replied: "Sooner than do that, would that I could return to the womb of my mother.""

The works which Lamennais produced during the years of his separation from the Church were worthy of the author of the "Words of a Believer." In 1835 appeared a collection of extracts from those articles in the "Avenir" and the "Mémorial Catholique," which had entailed his condemnation; and in his preface he excuses his changes of opinion, both religious and political, by a law of progress in the human mind, the effects of which he has experienced. For the reader must know that during the early years of the Restoration our publicist had been more royalist than the king. When he became proprietor and editor of the "Conservateur" and of the "Drapeau Blanc," he seemed to have but one idea, namely, that there was safety for France and for the king in absolute monarchy alone. In the orthodox portion of his career he gloried in being a prophet raised by God to purge the French Church of Gallicanism. But even before he published the "Words of a Believer," he had deserted the ranks of the ultramontane theologians, and had enrolled himself among such of the Gallican jurisconsults as were really hostile to the independence of the Church, and who were condemned by the saner portion of the Gallican publicists. As an excuse for this change of attitude, Lamennais pleaded: "In the war which I once waged against you I was too much of the soldier; I perceived only one side of the question. Your parliaments have been reproached for their many great resistances against ecclesiastical jurisdiction, but they have rendered great services to society, and without their barrier against Roman usurpations, Rome would have seized on everything, and the priest would have become a king." Well did Boyer say that Lamennais, during his later career, condemned as nonsense every truth which he had once affirmed to be an axiom and a principle. In 1836 the "Affairs of Rome" appeared; in 1838 the "Book of the People"; in 1840 an "Outline of a Philosophy"; in 1846 a "Translation of the Gospels," with democratic and irreligious

1 After his return to Paris, Berryer narrated this episode to Laurentie. See the articles on "The Abbé de Lamennais," by Laurentie, in the Paris Union for March, 1854. Also the Mélanges, by Laurentie, vol. ii., p. 714.

commentaries. In the "Outline," Lamennais tried to reconcile Christianity and pantheism. Like all pantheists, he rejected the Christian idea of creation; but he contended that God indeed created, though out of His own substance. According to this aberration, the divine intelligence at first conceived all the types of creation; and then, when God wished to actuate these types as created forces, He placed a limit to His infinite power, and the created forces came into being. Created spirits were actuated by God's placing a limit to His infinite intelligence. In fine, God placed a limit to His own infinite life, and thus completed what we see as life; He did this by attraction in the physical, and by love in the superior order. Every force in the universe, therefore, is the divine force and power-God the Father, with limitation. Every intelligence is the divine-the Son, with limitation. All life, all love, is the very life of God, with limitation. The force which is in us is really and substantially the force of God; our intelligence, which tries to find truth, is substantially God's own; our will, weak and vacillating as it is, is substantially God's will. Of course, Lamennais affected to modify what was an absolute deification of the universe. Although maintaining the idea of unity of substance, he held that the infinite substance, precisely because of the limitation which it receives on becoming finite, is essentially different from what it was in its infinite state. Thus he affected to preserve an essential difference between God and creat

ures.

The entire theory of the "Outline" rests on this distinction of a difference between God and the universe, which is not substantial but essential. Substantially, they are identical; essentially, they are different; although substantially identical with the infinite, the finite is nevertheless essentially distinct from the infinite. And when Lamennais is asked for a reason for this distinction between a substantial and an essential difference, he replies that it is a mystery. "It is the mystery of creation; and it would be absurd to try to penetrate it, since we know that substance is radically incomprehensible to finite beings." The reader shall judge whether the subtleties of Lamennais save him from pantheism. REUBEN PARSONS, D.D.

IT

THE NEW POLITICAL ISSUE IN IRELAND.

T had long been a truism that Ireland's discontent over the Act of Union was founded upon no sentimental ground of grievance. The substantial reasons which underlay that dangerous feeling have long been apparent to those who are conversant with her financial and economic condition as a result of that arrangement. They had often been lucidly exposed by such adepts in complicated questions as the late Mr. O'Neill Daunt, Sir Joseph Neill McKenna, Mr. Mitchell-Henry, and other capable authorities. But it is only within the past few months that they have received the public attention which their vast importance demands. Now they have assumed the dimensions of a great international issue, and have challenged the attention of the whole world. The discussion has already changed the entire face of the long political struggle in Ireland, and introduced new and unexpected elements into the situation. Many readers may desire some light upon this exceedingly interesting development in Irish affairs, and if they have patience to follow this brief exposition it will help to clear the field.

For the first time since the Union passed from the stage of controversy into law, representatives of the aristocratic caste in Ireland have taken a public part with representatives of the electors in demanding redress of grievances which both classes feel to be intolerable for freemen. This is nothing short of a phenomenon. Apathetic regarding all other questions which the masses of the people considered to be of a national character, the landed nobility and gentry have at last awakened to the fact that they have interests of a substantial kind at stake in the incidence of imperial taxation, and some of them have shown that they are ready to defend those interests by vigorous action. It is not germane to the purpose of this paper to consider the wide field of Irish politics generally, or the hopes and speculations which the advent of these unexpected allies has quickened in the recognized political champions in Ireland. It is enough to say that the dawning of a better day is already confidently looked for, and if prudence and good sense prevail with all classes, this sanguine hope may soon be a thing of reality.

At the period when the Act of Union was arranged, the economic conditions as between Great Britain and Ireland differed widely from those which now obtain. The respective populations

of the two countries did not display the enormous disparity which they exhibit to-day. They might be taken, roughly speaking, as showing a ratio of about one to two. But the disproportion in comparative wealth bore no analogy to this ratio. The loose. figures which were used as a basis for the assessment of the respective shares of imperial taxation showed that the revenue of Great Britain was about ten times as large as that of Ireland, yet the original proposal of Mr. Pitt was that Ireland's contribution to the general taxation should be in the ratio of two to fifteen. Mr. Grattan challenged the data upon which this estimate was founded. It was given to that great man to possess the keenest analytical power in statistical matters, together with the faculty of treating far-reaching proposals from the loftiest standpoints, and reasoning from particles to great principles. He maintained that the financial estimates of the minister were built upon a dishonest foundation. The revenue of Ireland, he showed in a series of masterly speeches, was overstated, while that of Great Britain was not fairly acknowledged.

One needs but little statistical discernment to perceive that this objection was well taken. Two years before that period there had been a formidable rebellion in Ireland. The cost of overcoming this had been added to the Irish public debt. Before the rebellion that debt amounted to four million pounds, and, after its close, by this seemingly plausible device, it had been raised to nearly twenty-seven millions. But the injustice of the proceeding was palpable. It was patent to all that the rebellion was a part of the whole scheme of Union, deliberately planned and carried out. Its cost was entirely saddled upon Ireland, and it was arranged that the entire Irish debt was to remain separate from that of Great Britain until such period as the effect of the respective taxation of the two countries had made an amalgamation of the two exchequers feasible. By an artful manipulation of the accounts this merging was effected in the year 1817. Mr. O'Neill Daunt, in the course of one of his lucid papers on the subject, exhibited the gross results of this system of cooking the accounts in the following succinct statement:

How this enormous change in the financial condition of the country was brought about within so brief a period as seventeen years requires some explanation. The process may be fitly described as a gigantic feat in state legerdemain. While drawing away from Ireland the wealth which had previously kept her in

dustrial resources going and paid her public demands, a burden of taxation was placed upon her shoulders which it was impossible for the people to meet. Of this the ministry had been solemnly warned, but they treated the monition with contempt. The close of the first fiscal year under the new system showed, as had been anticipated, a great deficit, but this, instead of being written off as uncollectable, was carried over to the following year's account on the debtor side. The next year showed a similar result: another deficit and another addition to the national debt. This process went on, until the Irish debt was made to bear such a proportion to the English debt as fulfilled the condition laid down in the Act of Union for the amalgamation of the two exchequers. During the brief period of seventeen years the national debt of Ireland, which stood in the year of Union in the ratio of one to sixteen and a half, had been piled up till it stood in the proportion of one to seven and a half. Two years before the Union Ireland had, practically speaking, no public debt; seventeen years' connection with wealthy England loaded her with a liability of nearly six hundred million dollars, and made her a partner in England's leviathan national debt, whose foundations have apparently been laid to last forever.

It is not in the power of these bare statistics to convey any just image of what lies behind their passionless record. To comprehend the significance of the disastrous change which those few years of Union rule wrought in Ireland, it is necessary to examine the subject from a broader standpoint than that of the mere statistician. We must survey the social and industrial position of Ireland before and after the great change by the light of the records which have come down to us, and mark the effects which the pauperization of a people have upon their moral temperament as well as upon their immediate material condition. To-day we see a peasantry and a working population languid, listless and destitute of hope of betterment; and a business community devoid of enterprise save in one part of the island, where the loyalty of the people to the English interest has gained the favor of the ruling classes and some support for the industry of the population. Outside of Ulster there is little but agriculture to engage the energies of the working-classes. A few large breweries and distilleries and bacon-curing establishments, with here and there a woollen factory, form the chief relics of the once extensive trade of the country. At the period of the Union there was a flourishing paper trade in the country, with a great output of books and periodicals. Forty paper mills stood on the banks of the Liffey; to-day there is not one. In a couple of years after the removal of the seat of the legislature to London, half the shopkeepers of Dublin had