'f>n:£AD Pops. 25 question of faith or morals does not depend on his personal sinlessness. It is not given to him for his own sake, or as any reward for his conduct ; it is given that he may rightly instruct his people. I am not asking my readers to accept the doctrine of Papal infallibility ; I am only asking them to understand what it is and what it is not. In our days there are large numbers of men and women who refuse to believe in any guidance of man from a higher warld, or, indeed, in any higher world from which he could be guided. I do not, of course, expect such men and women to accept the principle of Papal infallibility. But I should certainly expect even them to try to understand what the principle actually is. I have read and listened to scores and scores of arguments against Papal infallibility, which were complacently founded on the belief that the Pope professed to be infallible in every word he spoke on any subject what- ever. Therefore I have felt it necessary to make this slight deviation into theology. I return now to the course of my narrative. CHAPTER II. THE NEW POPE. The birth and parentage of the new Pope — His career as a student — Received into the priesthood — Apostolic delegate at Benevento — How he dealt with brigandage — Nuncio to Brussels — Appointed Archbishop in Perugia— His return to Rome. VINCENZO GIOACCHINO PECCI was born on the second of March, 1810, at Carpineto, in the diocese of Anagni, in the State of the Church. He was the son of the Count Ludovico Pecci, and his wife Anna Prosperi. The Pecci family originally came from Sienna. Anna Prosperi, the mother of the Pope, was a descendant of the celebrated Cola di Rienzi, " the last of the Roman tribunes," whom the first Lord Lytton set us all raving and rhapsodizing about when we were young, and when the whole world was younger than it is now. When Vincenzo was eight years old he was sent, along with his elder brother Giuseppe, to the Jesuit college at Viterbo. On the death of his mother in 1824 he was brought to Rome, and put under the charge of an uncle, and entered the schools of the Roman College then restored to the rule of the Jesuits. Whatever differences of opinion there may be as to the teaching of the Jesuits, no one can possibly deny that they were, and that they are, singularly 26 THE NEW POPE. 27 gifted with the faculty of bringing out all that is most acute and most profound in the intellectual quaUties of a scholar. We need not linger over the gradual training of the young Pecci. It is enough to say that he took the highest honours his teachers could bestow in philosophy, in mathematical science, and in chemistry. He was a marvellously precocious student. He wrote Latin, prose, and poetry, at the age of twelve, and to science he turned with the avidity and the success of another Pascal. Indeed, there is much about those early student days of his which may remind many a reader of the early years and the early exercises of the young Pascal. As Pecci grew up there was much of the practical and the governing quality about him which did not belong to the purely intellectual and critical order of the great mind of Pascal. Pascal was above all things a critic and a reasoner with a certain commingling of the dreamer — of one skilled to study and analyze the mind of man, but hardly gifted for the active and definite work of man's government. Young Pecci shewed himself almost from the very first as one to whom the management of men came by nature. He kept on writing poems in Latin and in Italian — some of the Latin poems decidedly pretty and original — but his turn, the unconscious bent of his mind, was for an active part in the great career of the world. He was received into the priesthood on the twenty-third of December, 1837. Gregory the Sixteenth put him at once into active work. He appointed him Apostolic Delegate at Bene- vento, and afterwards at Perugia and Spoleto. In these positions the young Pecci — for he was still very young — shewed a remarkable capacity for practical government. 28 POPE LEO XITI. He was at once enterprising and prudent. He proved that he could take in new ideas, and that the mere antiquity of an evil or an abuse had no spell to repress his reforming energy. Benevento, up to the time when he came to undertake its government, had long been infested by that curse of so many Italian communities — brigandage. Now brigan- dage has been in every instance, as well in Italy as in Greece, nourished and, encouraged as much by the timid, " let-alone " policy of the local authorities, as by the craven cowardice of one section of the population, and the sneaking sympathy of another. Pecci would hold no terms with brigandage. He would not favour any measures of cruelty, or even of needless severity. He did not believe in hunting people to death. But he would not have any brigandage in the regions over which he was placed in rule. To use the popular modern phrase, he " put his foot down " against brigandage. It was not, however, the brigands of the lower class, the working brigands, if we may use such an expression, that gave the new delegate his greatest trouble. The chiefs, more or less hidden, were the trouble. I am not speaking of the recognized and professional brigand chiefs, but of the more highly placed and semi-secret patrons of brigandage. There were powerful nobles and great landlords who countenanced brigandage, and made their profit out of it. The bandit gladly paid them blackmail for the protection they lent to his trade. There were broken-down nobles and decaying landlords who still had great local influence, which they were only too happy to put to the help of the brigands for a substantial consideration. The brigand THE NEW POPE. 29 was regarded at that time in Benevento, and in almost all parts of Italy, very much as Rob Roy in his own days was regarded in the Highlands of Scotland. The poorer classes looked up to him, and many of the nobles, for their own advantage, patronized him. This was the condition of things with which the young delegate had to deal. He dealt with it firmly, unflinchingly, justly. He soon made it clear that with him rank and supposed privilege counted for absolutely nothing. Many interesting stories are told of his quiet deter- mination in dealing with these audacious claims of high-born men to put themselves outside of and above the law. One of these stories may well be brought in here. A great noble of the province once stormed in upon the young delegate, and furiously complained that the delegate's agents, and the delegate's police, had interfered with and overridden his seignorial rights, and made arrests within the limits of his own domain. The delegate answered blandly that offenders against the law must be arrested wherever they could be found. The noble — he was a marquis — declared that the law did not apply to his territory. Pecci blandly observed that he did not know how in these days of civilization any man, however high his position, could put himself above the law, or even outside the law. Then the wrath of the noble marquis boiled over, and he declared that he would go off at once to Rome, and would return with an order from the Pope for the dismissal of the delegate. "Go, by all means," said the imperturbable delegate; "but please to remember that in order to get to the Vatican you will have to pass the Castle of St. Angelo." 30 POPE LEO XIII. The reply of Pecci contained a distinct threat. The Castle of St. Angelo holds a famous prison. The words of the delegate made it clear enough to the noble marquis that the delegate knew him to have made himself responsible for acts more distinctly criminal than a claim to exercise exclusive rights within his own domains. The marquis did not go to Rome. The delegate soon after got evidence which warranted him in having the castle of the Marquis broken into and captured by the Pontifical troops, and the band of brigands who had sheltered themselves there given over to trial and justice. The delegate was not so successful with the camorra, or with the other secret societies. It was all but impossible to convict, or indeed to get evidence on which a conviction could be claimed. But so far as the region of Benevento was concerned, he had dealt successfully with brigandage. Pecci's example was not followed in his own country with as much vigour and energy as might have been expected. Even at this day there are parts of Italy, and in particular of Sicily, where brigandage still drives a roaring trade. But Pecci had at least shewed how the suppression of brigandage might have been accomplished, and within half a century from the days when Fra Diavolo was still a power in the land. Pecci was recalled to Rome by Pope Gregory in 1841, and was sent to Spoleto — this being a promotion — and thence, shortly after, to Perugia, a higher promotion still. He was destined, later on, to be Bishop of Perugia. In the meanwhile he was appointed to a position of all but the very highest importance — he was made Nuncio to Brussels ; and, to qualify him for the post. Archbishop THE :\E\V POPE. 31 of Damietta, in pariibus infidelium. Belgium was then a country of rising account, in all questions that related to religion, politics, and industry. The whole condition of things there was full of interest. The kingdom was the youngest in Europe; it had broken away from Holland, and from the diplomatic re-arrangements of the allied States, only some dozen years before. Its first sovereign, Leopold of Coburg, was making himself thoroughly popular with his»new people. There was then, as there has been since, a keen struggle going on between the Liberal party and the Church, on the subject of National Education. The Liberal party claimed to be the State, more or less, and insisted that the State must not allow the business of education to get too much into the hands of the Church. We are familiar with the controversy in later days, and in other countries as well as in Belgium. It is no business of ours to go into such a controversy here ; and, indeed, its existence is only mentioned to show that the fact of such a question being uppermost in Belgium must have made his appointment to Brussels deeply interesting to the young Nuncio. Pecci was received on the most cordial and friendly terms by the King and Queen, and had, on the whole, a very pleasant time during his stay in Belgium. The climate perplexed him a good deal, and made him uncomfortable, and did not agree with his health. " During June and July," he wrote to some friends in 1843, "we have had weather as cold and depressing as that of the worst November in Rome." The Nuncio made many acquaintances in Brussels, who were then famous, or who afterwards became famous. 32 POPE LEO Xni. Among the latter group was the young Belgian noble- man, Count Frederic de Merode, who afterwards became known to Europe and the world generally as Monsignor de Merode, War Minister to Pope Pius the Ninth. The celebrated Count de Montalembert, brother-in-law of young de Mdrode, was very anxious that he should join the army. Count Felix de Mdrode, the father, was doubtful about his son's vocation for a military life, and was not much inclined, in any case, for his adoption of a soldier's career. The advice of the Papal Nuncio was asked. Pecci was naturally a man of peace, but he was not in any sense a fanatic ; and while he deprecated and deplored war, he did not believe that the time had come — if it ever would come — when men could cease to engage in the business of war. He therefore strongly advised the father to give way to the son's inclinations and to the advice of Count de Montalembert, and allow the youth to join the army. His advice was taken, and Frederic de Mdrode became a soldier. He served well in his profession, and was highly esteemed ; but later on he gave up the army and entered the Church, and when the struggles began in Italy, he became War Minister to Pope Pius, and did much by his military experience and military capacity to resist the attacks which were made upon the temporal sovereignty of the Pontiff. The Nuncio was greatly interested in the development of the railway system of Belgium. King Leopold's king- dom had railway systems in good working order long before anything of the kind had been established in Italy, or in most other of the Continental countries. THE NEW POPE. 33 He accompanied the King and the Queen on some expeditions, made on the occasion of the opening of this or that railway, and observed that nothing could be more delightful than those excursions, in which they travelled at the rate of more than twenty miles an hour. The Nuncio was also greatly concerned in the progress of the plans for lighting the city by gas — still a novelty in most parts of the Continent, although long before that time established in England. Pecci had a receptive mind, and was able to appreciate the peculiar beauties of the Belgian landscape for all its flatness, and what might have seemed, to less artistic eyes, its monotony. Accustomed as he was to regions of mountain and valley and rushing river, he yet could feel and appreciate the charm that varying shades of colour can bestow upon a mere plain. He could see the beauty which mere moisture of climate can give to a region, and could feel for himself that there is a natural loveliness which does not depend for its fascination on the continuous en- lightenment of a blue sky and a glowing sun. Pecci seemed, in every way, to have made the best of his life in Belgium. The ancient colleges and schools and foundations were a perpetual study and a constant delight to him. Perhaps those years in Belgium were not the least happy of his life. The biographers tell of the Nuncio to Brussels that when he first received his appointment he knew hardly anything of French. He was a man of thoroughly practical purpose, and great strength of will. He set himself at once to study French. He made his whole journey to Brussels a study of French. Journeys in thosQ c 34 POPE LEO XIII. days were very different things from journeys in ours — a very Mezzofanti could not now learn French in travelling from Rome to Brussels. A lucky delay — a delay, lucky at least in that sense, although it was caused by illness — kept the Nuncio immured for a fortnight at Nimes, and he resolutely gave up every possible hour to lessons in French. By the time he reached Brussels he was able to understand the language, and to make himself under- stood. He was becoming more and more interested in the condition of things in Belgium, when he received from the Pope an announcement that he was to be sent to Perugia, as its Bishop. It would seem that the Peru- gian people had forwarded petitions to the Pope, praying that whenever a vacancy should occur, Pecci, their old friend, should be made their Bishop. On the first oppor- tunity the Pope yielded to the appeal. To many it might have seemed hardly a promotion. To turn a Nuncio into a working Bishop would appear to cut off the Nuncio from a diplomatic career, and Pecci had un- doubtedly given great promise of a successful future in diplomacy. The Pope, however, wrote a letter to Pecci, in which he explained all the conditions of the new arrangement, and assured him that it was meant to be a promotion, and nothing but a promotion. In any case Pecci was well satisfied. He loved Perugia, and had the most delightful memories of the time when he worked there. He left Brussels amid the regret of all ranks and classes, from the King and the Royal family down to the poorest of the poor. Before setting out for Italy, he went to England, and spent about a month in London, where he was received by Queen Victoria— none the less THE NEW POPE. 35 cordially received, we may be sure, because he had the recommendation of King Leopold of Belgium. From London he went on to Paris, and passed some weeks there, and was welcomed by King Louis Philippe, who little knew at that hour how soon his reign was destined to come to an end. Pecci only arrived in Rome in time to hear of the death of his kind friend and patron, Pope Gregory, and to know that Cardinal Mastai Ferretti was raised to the Papal chair, under the title of Pius the Ninth. The new Pope received him with the most cordial welcome, and said kindly and gracious words about his services to the Church, and to the Papal State. Then Pecci passed on to his Bishopric in Perugia, where he remained for more than two and thirty years. He was styled Archbishop, in recognitiori of the position which he had held as Nuncio at Brussels. He laboured in Perugia with indomitable energy, in the promotion of every good work which con- cerned religion, education, and the practical welfare of his people. He established colleges, schools, hospitals, and all manner of charitable associations. He had a soul for art and artistic decoration, and he contrived to add new beauties to the picturesqueness of one of the most picturesque of Italian cities. He cultivated the muses a little, and was especially fond of classic studies, and wrote many Latin verses. One of his shorter poems made the eulogy of the photographic art. It seems strange to think of a poem in good Latin to praise that craft which belongs to the latest developments of the world's art, which many painters will hardly yet admit to a place in art's consecrated ground. Probably the little poem of 36 POPE LEO XTIL Cardinal Pecci — for he had been made a Cardinal by this time — was rather what the poet saw in his mind's eye as the final growth and possible perfection of photography. The great troubles, meanwhile, to which we have already made allusion, swept over Italy, and especi- ally over the States of the Church ; and Perugia itself was more than once the scene of fierce and blood-stained struggle. In 1877 Cardinal Pecci was nominated by Pope Pius to the dignified and commanding office of Cardinal Camerlingo, of the Roman Church, and it was in that capacity that, on the death of Pope Pius, he was called upon to act as head of the Church for temporal and momentary purposes, and he superintended the arrangements for the Conclave, which ended in his elevation to the Papal throne. There is "a strange and striking ceremonial," as one biographer of the present Pope calls it, by which the Cardinal Chamberlain assures himself, and the Vatican, and the outer world, that the late Pope is actually dead — that "gone is gone, and dead is dead," to quote the words of Jean Paul Richter. The Cardinal Chamberlain approaches the bed of the dead Pontiff, and bears in his hand a little hammer of silver. The Cardinal Chamber- lain prostrates himself before the bed, and calls the dead man three times — not by his name as Pope, but by the name which was given him at his baptism— and three times touches him lightly on the forehead with the silver hammer. The silence which follows this appeal by voice and by touch is final proof that he who makes no answer to it is beyond its reach, and the Cardinal Chamberlain announces officially to the waiting priests that the Pope THE NEW POPE. yj has ceased to live. This was the sad ceremony which Cardinal Pecci had to perform, and he three times touched the forehead of the venerable Pontiff, who lay there with a face still beautiful, as the same biographer says, in the marble of death. Pope Pius did not answer to the sad, unhoping call, and then Cardinal Pecci formally announced that Pius the Ninth was dead. Yet a little, and Leo the Thirteenth was proclaimed Pope in the pladfe of Pius the Ninth. A whole era closed with the death of the late Pope, and Leo the Thirteenth had what might almost be called the materials of a new world under his control, free to construct and reconstruct as his statesmanship, and his principles, and his religion might guide him. For there could be little doubt that the anti-papal passion of Italian radicalism had spent most of its force, and the outer world, in general, was well inclined to be reconciled with the Papacy. On the other hand, the new Pope was a diplomatist, and an experienced administrator. He was not a man to waste any time in trying to fight against inevitable conditions. He accepted the conditions, and set himself to make the best he could out of them for his cause and for his Church. The Papacy, it must be owned, had been somewhat uncivilly treated by the English public in the days when the enthusiasm for Garibaldi was at its height. But times had changed, even already, and some of the bitterest opponents of the Papacy were prepared to live and let live. Pope Leo seemed quite determined to follow out, in one sense, the political course laid down by his predecessor. Like Pius the Ninth, he refused to have 38 POPE LEO XIII. anything to do with the Italian Government. He refused to recognise the law of guarantees, or to accept the allowance voted to him, as to Pius, by the Italian Parliament. He kept to his palace in the Vatican, and although he did not make public proclamation that he regarded himself as a prisoner there, he quietly imprisoned himself in his own little domain, much shrunken even from that which was once known as the Leonine City. Perhaps he had some consolation for missing the mere streets of Rome. From some of the windows of his palace he could look across to the broken line of hills, of which Horace's Sorade is an ornament. Pope Leo seems to have made the best of the situation in every sense of the word. He could not recognise and sanction the new condition of things that had arisen in Rome. He could not recognise and sanction the new principles of government that had come up. The one great and abiding outcome of the third Napoleonic empire was the doctrine of nationalities — the doctrine that each nationality ought to govern itself. The Third Empire did not, indeed, invent or even first set up the doctrine of nationalities. But it hammered the doctrine, if I may use such an expression, into the head of Conti- nental Europe. The doctrine had nothing to do with any question of Monarchy or Republic. It only recog- nised the nationality as the definition of the nation. It was proclaimed at Solferino; it was adopted by the Treaty of Berlin. It was the final revolt against the principles of the old Treaty of Vienna. Under no other conceivable principle could the troops of King Victor Emanuel have found any excuse for occupying the city of THE NEW POPE. 3$ Rome All the recent events of Continental history have been modified, where they have not been actually domineered, by that principle. The Emperor Louis Napoleon probably never knew what he was about to do when, under the inspiration of his cousin. Prince Napoleon, he promulgated the doctrine. This was the principle which imprisoned the closing days of Pius the Ninth, and which confronted his successor when he came to be the occupant of the Papal throne. CHAPTER III. A POLICY OF CONCILIATION. Leo adopts a policy of general conciliation — But cannot accept the terms of the Italian government — Publishes a Bull re-establishing the Roman Catholic Hierarchy in Scotland — His first Encyclical Letter — His personal appearance and manners. LEO the Thirteenth was, however, a very different J man from Pius the Ninth. Leo understood the world as it is. He was a scientific man : he thought much ; he was accustomed to analyse the dispositions of people and of races ; he well knew that he had to work by wit and not by witchcraft. Therefore while he maintained irrevocably the position taken up by Pius the Ninth, and refused to give any sanction to the new political conditions, he did not thrust himself into prominent struggle against them. There was a great deal of the practical about him, in the higher sense. The time of protest, he seems to have thought, has passed away. The protest was for the hour when the deed was about to be done or had just been done. Now the only thing to do is to hold to the principle of non-recognition, but not to make too much of a work about it, and in the meantime to get all the good that cait be got out of the existing conditions, such as they are. Pope Leo appears to have 40 A POLICY OP CONCILIATION. 41 made up his mind that for the present, at least, there was no human chance of breaking through the new con- ditions, and, therefore, to have set himself to see whether the life of a Pope might not still be a great influence for good under them or in spite of them. To the average Englishman at the time, the whole matter seemed a very easy business. The Italians have a right to Italy, and the right to Italy includes, of course, a right to Rome as the capital. Which nobody can deny ! For England had taken fast hold of the doctrine of nationalities in those days — except, of course, where Ireland was concerned. But Ireland, as everybody must see, was quite another matter. As regarded Italy, the minds of men here in England were quite clear. She had a right to her capital, and after all, what was the Pope but only a priest, and what was his duty but to become a good citizen and accept the revenue voted to him, and the place to which Providence had been pleased to call him, and act as chaplain of the new Italian Monarchy, and High -Priest of the Roman Catholic Church? Now, I am not going to enter into all that question in my narrative. Personally, I always have been of opinion that it would be better for Italy to be one united homo- geneous State, and to be free of Austrian Governors and Bourbon Kings. But I always have recognised the immense, and indeed, inappreciable, advantage which Italy would have if such a revolution could be effected in harmony with the head of the Roman Catholic Church. I only bring in my own opinions in order to make it clear that I am not treating this question from any anti-Italian 42 POPE LEO XIII. point of view. But I am anxious to impress on the minds of English Protestant readers that we could hardly expect a Pope of Rome to accept in full or in form the new situation which surrounded him. The doctrine of nation- alities could hardly settle everything for a spiritual ruler whose subjects belong to almost every nationality on earth. It may be a great doctrine and a great principle, as the world goes — it is, I firmly believe, a great doctrine and a great principle — but to the Pope of -Rome it came in the form of the soldiers of King Victor Emanuel occupying the Papal City. Pope Leo, however, raised no thunderous protests — no pathetic protests even : he simply tried to hold his own course, and do all the good he could in his own way and under the new conditions. He did not withdraw from European politics. He put more faith in diplomacy than Pius the Ninth had ever done. He made it apparent that he was quite willing to enter into friendly understandings and arrangements with all the great powers of Europe, and, indeed, with all the States of the world. From a very early period of his Pontificate he made it plain that he fully understood the importance of the most friendly relations with the great American Republic. In a vague, yet quickening, sort of way, the world began to understand that there was a new and fresh intellectual activity at work in the councils of the Vatican. Papal Rome had grown out of the hermit days of Pius the Ninth. An influence was quietly, but very perceptibly, stirring everywhere. It was felt all over the Continent. It was felt in England, where John Henry Newman was soon made a Cardinal — almost immediately, in fact, after the new Pope's accession to the throne. Everyone felt A POLICY OF CONCILIATION. 43 that Leo was a man of tenacious purpose, with a recon- structive power. We must remember that Pope Leo had succeeded to what many people all over the world — even people who had no ingrained horror and hatred of the Papacy — regarded as a thoroughly hopeless inheritance. I am not, of course, speaking of Catholics, but of really unpreju- diced lookers-on from the domains of other faiths — men who watched with "not unfriendly interest the career of the new Pope, as they might, at a later time, have watched the career of the young German Emperor. To most people in this frame of mood there was a note of strength and of success about that first encyclical letter, which seemed to concern itself in no wise with the conflicting political movements of the day, but simply proclaimed, as from a higher and serener atmosphere, the eternal lesson that "sin maketh nations miserable." Just think of it! When a kingly ruler feels himself in a dangerous position, his royal proclamations announce his danger and call upon those who love him and are devoted to him to rally round his throne. Every imperial or royal restora- tion is heralded by some exultation over the danger past, and some appeal to subjects to put themselves between the throne and danger in the future. But the first letter of Leo the Thirteenth might have been issued after generations of uninterrupted safety and solidity to the temporal throne of the Papacy. Leo the Thirteenth said nothing about the temporal difficulties of the near past and the ominous future — ominous, as it was supposed to be, outlook for the future — but merely took account of the great cause of morality and religion. I can well 44 POPE LEO XIII. remember the impression produced upon the world by that encyclical letter— the feeling, at first, of disappoint- ment, because of its lack of the element of controversy, and its deliberate putting aside of any of the supposed questions of danger that threatened the Papal throne; and then of surprise at its tone of security. The Italian troops were occupying Rome. The common impression of Europe was that the Pope would have to fly the Eternal City. And meanwhile the Pope sat down and issued an appeal against the sinful ways of modern society — an appeal which seemed to be, and doubtless was, absolutely absorbed in its subject. The very first action of any international interest or importance performed by the new Pope after his enthrone- ment brought him into a certain relationship with the people of Great Britain. On the 4th March, 1878 — one day after his coronation, fifteen days after his election — he published a bull re-establishing the Roman Catholic hier- archy in Scotland. This was indeed but a carrying on of the policy of his predecessor. Pius IX. had re-established the Catholic hierarchy in England, and we all know what a fury of popular passion it created in this country, and how the hierarchical titles taken from English cities and districts were declared illegal by an Act specially passed for the purpose ; and how the titles were used all the same ; and how Mr. Gladstone protested against the whole principle of legislation ; and how Mr. Disraeli half- mockingly supported it; and how the agitation against the ecclesiastical titles quickly went out like a fire of straw, and how the Act was at length quietly repealed. Times had changed when Leo XIII. came to the Papal A POLICY OF CONCILIATION. 45 throne. Pius IX. had been preparing for long before his death to re-organize the Catholic hierarchy in Scotland, and all that Leo had to do was to promulgate the decree. The people of this island took it on the whole without any display of emotion. There was indeed a great popular demonstration on Glasgow Green, and the Pope's letter was melodramatically burned in the presence of excited thousands. There was great fear of disturbance at the time, as there is a large population of Catholic working men, chiefly Irish, in Glasgow. The troops were kept under arms for some hours in readiness for any out- break of force. But nothing came of it, and there was no disturbance in any other part of the country. The Pope's letter was not in any way calculated to arouse heat of temper in the mind of the most sensitive Protestant. It spoke of the devotion which many of the Highland clans had displayed to the Church of Rome, in despite of past persecution, and paid a special tribute of praise to England for the liberty of religion which in our days she had accorded to the members of that Church. Thus the Pope began his reign in a spirit of the most genuine conciliation. The same temper was shewn in the advances which he made at once to Germany, Russia, and Switzerland. During great part of the life of Pius IX. there had been something like a quarrel between the Vatican and these countries, because of the manner in which the Pope considered the rights of Catholics to be invaded by the ruling system. Pius IX. had broken off all diplomatic relationship with the Court of Russia. Pope Leo may be said to have inaugurated his reign by an appeal to th^ 46 POPE LEO Xin. three States to re-consider their mode of dealing with the claims of their Catholic populations. The Pope in fact issued an invitation in the friendliest way to Russia, Germany, and Switzerland to come to an amicable under- standing with him on the subject. At first it was thought by many people that this was in fact a climb-down on the part of the Papacy; that Leo XIII. was deliberately aban- doning the claims of Pius IX. It was nothing of the kind, as the result clearly proved. But the Pope was rightly of opinion that the opening of a new reign might be regarded as the opening of a new era, and that it was an appro- priate occasion on which to ask for a suspension of hostilities. Having thus made up. his mind, Leo also determined that it would be becoming in him to make the advance. He held out his hand to the three States, and invited them to come to a friendly understanding with him. Much came of this movement in the end, as we shall presently see. It is somewhat curious, mean- while, to note that the only reply which could possibly be considered offensive came from the little Republic of Switzerland. It is necessary to direct especial attention to this step taken by the Pope, for in fact it gives a key to the whole meaning and purpose of his foreign policy. His idea was not to withdraw from friendly communion with any Power, but to endeavour, by an appeal to the common cause of justice and equity, to obtain all reasonable con- cessions from every Power. We shall see later on that in the case of England at least some of the most devoted worshippers in the Church of Rome were of ooinion that Leo XIII, leaned towards England in top A POLICY OF CONCILIATION. 47 favouring an attitude. The plain truth was that the Pope's clear and practical intellect led him to understand that since the short-lived frenzy of the Ecclesiastical Titles' Act, the Catholic Church had greater freedom in England than in many a professedly Catholic State, and that he was willing to put his conviction into words. The first encyclical letter of the Pope was issued on the 2ist of April, 1878. It had been eagerly expected by all the Catholic wofld, and indeed by the Christian world in general. It caused a certain disappointment at first — perhaps because of its very nature, and because of the fact that it dealt only with admitted evils. The subject of the encyclical was the evils affecting modern society — their cause and remedy. People had expected something more in the nature of a polemic — something controversial — something self-assertive — perhaps even something in the form of a defiance and a challenge to the new move- ments that were going on. The Pope, it was fully ex- pected, would take up the cause of the Papacy against the Italian Government, and against the rulers and the populations who favoured and applauded the Italian Government. The Pope did nothing of the kind. For that reason alone his encyclical letter was a direct disap- pointment to many. Here in England it came at a time when men's attention was drawn away by one of the periodical alarms about war with Russia. At the moment the alarm seemed only too well founded, and the danger very close at hand. It was, indeed, for an excited period, a matter of " touch-and-go " whether England was or was not to make war on Russia. Therefore it was only natural that most people in this country should pay but little 48 POPE LEO XIII. attention to the Pope's letter, the more especially as there was hardly anything in it to give a chance to controversy. No one could deny the existence of the evils which the Pope pointed out and deplored. No one could deny that in religion and morality the only genuine cure for them could be found. Not many would strive to gainsay the principle asserted by the Pope, that morality is and must be founded on religion. Only when Leo declared that the great cause of all the evils was the disregard of the authority of the Church of Rome, could the most ardent Protestant lift up his voice in dispute. Even with that assertion on the part of the Pope, there was a general feeling among English Protestants that the Pope must be expected, and must be allowed, to proclaim the authority of his Church. Furthermore, it would be hardly possible to deny that if the authority of the Church of Rome, or of any other Christian Church, were recognised and obeyed by all those who professed to be subject to such religious rule, the evils which the Pope pictured only too accurately could not possibly exist in such communities. "Sin maketh nations miserable " — the words which Leo quotes from the Proverbs— are indeed the key-note of the whole letter. It was written, we may presume, without a thought as to the effect which it might produce on literary criticism. But if it had been astutely planned for such a purpose, its result could not have been more successful. The very disappointment which we have already described was indeed a part of its success. For the first utterance of the new Pope to the world in general was no furious attack on any of the political movements of the day, but A POLICY OF CONCILIATION. 49 simply an appeal to the virtue of the whole human race to bring about a remedy for the evils which the whole human race admitted and deplored. The Pope had claimed to be the high-priest of Christendom, and invited Christendom to co-operate with him in a great Christian work of mercy to mankind. The appeal to the world was inspired by the very same purpose which had led Pope Leo to make the first advance to Germany, to Russia, and to Switzerland.* Impartial men in all countries were found ready, when the first feeling of vague disappoint- ment had passed away, to declare that the rule of the new Pontiff could not have been more wisely and graciously inaugurated, than by such an utterance as that which had just been offered to the understanding and the conscience of the civilized world. Pope Leo the Thirteenth is a man of a singularly graceful and imposing presence. He is generally described as very tall, but his slender form gives him the appearance of being much taller than he really is. He is a man not much above the middle height, but very slight and stately. His face is as bloodless as that of a marble statue. He dresses in white, and the white of his robes is only of a different tone from the pallor of his face. Many a visitor to Rome has been reminded when seeing him, of the late Cardinal Manning, whom we all knew, and whom everybody who really knew respected, revered, and loved. Even now, despite his advanced years, the Pope moves with a quick and easy tread, which has no suggestion of creeping old age about it. His feet glide easily along the floor, and lift easily from the floor. He enters readily and simply into conversation, and has D 50 POPE LEO XIII. the native-born sympathy which enables him to come at once into a cordial and thorough understanding with his visitors. It can hardly be necessary to say that he is brought into constant communication with men and women from all parts of the world; and I have never heard of any one who did not go away impressed with his geniality and his graciousness. Among the many commanding figures in the Europe of our days his is one of the most commanding. I have seen a good many great men in my time. I have been acquainted with Gladstone, and I have talked with Bismarck, and with Cardinal Newman ; and I can recall to memory the presence of the Emperor Nicholas of Russia, and I knew Charles Sumner, the great American orator and abolitionist, and I have often seen and heard M. Berryer, and the late Prince Consort. But no picture has im- pressed me more than that of Pope Leo the Thirteenth. I remember well a conversation I had with the late Cardinal Manning, many years ago, and before I had the privilege of being able to call him my friend, when he looked back upon the early days of England, and talked in his sweet, regretful, and dreamy way of the time "when saints yet trod the soil of England." I do not expect any English Protestant to accept the views of Cardinal Manning, but an English Protestant may yet feel touched to reverence even by views which he does not accept as his own. I always think of Leo the Thirteenth as one of those figures which must have been more often seen in the days when saints walked the earth — as, indeed, some saints do walk the earth even now. Cardinal Gibbons, the eminent American Catholic A POLICY OF CONCILIATION. 51 ecclesiastic, has given quite lately a description of Leo the Thirteenth, as he saw him last year in the Vatican : " Represent to yourself," the Cardinal says, " a man in his eighty-sixth year, pale and emaciated, with the pallor almost of death upon him, and this pallor intensified by the white cassock and zuchetto which he habitually wears. His body is also more bent than it was eight or ten years ago, but his eye is bright and penetrating, his voice is strong and sonorous, his intellect is remarkably clear and luminous, and his memory is tenacious, enabling him to recall events accurately which occurred eight years ago. " He has also an astonishing power of physical en- durance, which enables him to hold audiences for several consecutive hours, treating on important subjects with cardinals and foreign representatives, as well as with private individuals, and passing with ease and elasticity of mind from one subject to another. He is remarkably familiar with the public events of the day." Cardinal Gibbons turns naturally to the Pope's interest in the condition of things in the great American Republic. He goes on to say that — "The Holy Father naturally rejoices at the religious progress of the United States, and takes a deep interest in our political and social institutions. He admires our republic, in which we have authority without despotism, and liberty without license, and where our strength lies in the intelligence and patriotism of the people. "For eighteen years the Pope has lived within the walls of the Vatican, except when he takes some recrea- tion in the Vatican gardens. He sometimes retires to these gardens and resides in the summer-house during the heated term." Later still is the description given by my friend Mr. Beatty-Kingston, the distinguished journalist and special correspondent. In his book recendy published, Mr. 52 POPE LEO XIII. Beatty-Kingston thus records his impressions about the appearance and the manner of the Pope : "Leo the Thirteenth," he says, "is slightly built, fragile-looking, exceeding grave in manner, and dignified of bearing. His features are strongly marked, but finely proportioned; his cheeks and lofty brow are almost colourless — 'sicklied o'er by the pale cast of thought.' When his face is in absolute repose, its expression seems to betoken that he is reflecting profoundly, but mourn- fully. When lighted up by one of his peculiarly fascinating smiles, however, it beams with gentle bene- volence and tender loving - kindness. Altogether, it is one of the most interesting, attractive, and memorable physiognomies I have ever yet contemplated. That Leo the Thirteenth is one of the most amiable as well as intellectual of living potentates, no one who has seen him smile and heard him speak can doubt. But conscious- ness of power and strength of will are no less manifest in the glance of his bright eye and the tone of his clear voice than is geniality of temperament." Urban Rattazzi was one of the foremost and the most adroit workers in the cause of Italian unity with Rome for its capital. He was more than once Prime Minister of the new kingdom under Victor Emanuel. He is not likely to have been blindly prejudiced in favour of the Pope who was succeeding to Pius the Ninth. He put his opinion on record at a time when the world in general knew but little of Leo the Thirteenth, and I give it a place in these pages. " This Pecci," says Rattazzi, " is a man of indisputable worth, of great force of will, of rare severity in the exercise of his functions : with all this he has the most agreeable manners. During his sojourn at Benevento he displayed great capacity, together with decisive and inflexible character. A POLICY OF CONCILIATION. 53 "On various occasions I have spoken of him with King Leopold, who has the perspicacity of no other King in Europe, and who had studied and appreciated him proportionately when he was Nuncio in Belgium. "We discussed his infinite prudence, his incorrupti- bility, and his dignity, which inspires an insurmountable awe of his person in our Government officials. " His devotion to the Holy See is unlimited, his prin- ciples are most energetic : his inflexible, almost obstinate, firmness permits no suspicion of faltering. One cannot help recognising iim as a priest to be esteemed and admired, a man of great political foresight, and of still greater science." The Pope's first Secretary of State, or Prime Minister, was Cardinal Franchi, who had been Nuncio at the Court of Spain. Cardinal Franchi died suddenly a few months after, and Leo appointed Cardinal Nina to his place ; but the Pope was his own Prime Minister and Foreign Secretary. CHAPTER IV. THE KULTUR-KAMPF. The Falk laws — The endeavour to put the administration of the Roman Catholic Church in Prussia wholly under the control of the State — The passive resistance — The imprisonment of arch- bishops, bishops, and priests — The policy of Bismarck at first resolute and defiant — His famous phrase, " Whatever we do, we shall not go to Canossa'' — The doubt of the Emperor, and his strong leaning towards religious teaching in all churches — The Pope disappoints Bismarck by not proclaiming the principle of "No Compromise." THE first great struggle which Pope Leo had to take up was the battle he had to fight against Prince Bismarck — the battle which is famous, and will long be famous, in the modern history of the world as the Kultur- kampf — in other words, the struggle about the education of Catholics within the dominion of the German Empire. Pope Leo had to encounter in this struggle the greatest Continental Empire of our times, and the most powerful statesman Continental Europe has known since the days of the first Napoleon. The war began in the time of Pius the Ninth, and it was brought to a close at an early part of the Papacy of Leo the Thirteenth. I may come to the point at once, and say that it ended in the surrender of Bismarck and in the triumph of Leo the Thirteenth. 54 THE KULTUR-KAMPF. 55 What was the Kultur-kampf? It was the struggle, familiar to all modern peoples, between the State and the Church — some church — on the subject of religious education. In this particular case it happened to be a struggle between the state of the new German Empire and the Church established during many centuries at Rome. The German Empire was new, and it had to take careful account of its position. The theory of Prince Bismarck 'was that the worst enemies of the Empire were found in the Papal Court. Prince Bis- marck started with the impression that the war against Prussia had been set up by the Vatican. The explana- tion of this theory, rightly or wrongly, is to be found in the very prevalent belief that the war had, on the French side, been greatly urged by the Empress of the French. There was a further impression that the Empress of the French had been spirited on by the authorities of the Vatican. It is likely enough — it has been said over and over again, and that it has been so said is really all we know about the matter — that the Empress Eugenie was greatly in favour of the war, and the deduction was that she must have acted under the inspiration of the Vatican. I have made some study of the history of that time, through the whole of which I have lived a watchful looker-on, and I find no evidence that the war against Prussia, which at once became a war against Germany, was inspired by any other feeling than the desperate ambition of the gamester's last stake. The Mexican expedition and its ghastly failure had exposed the weakness of the whole system on which the Second Empire rested. The Mexican expedition came to ruin S6 POPE LEO XIII. the moment when the American Civil War was brought to an end. Then the Government of the United States -told Louis Napoleon that he must withdraw his troops from Mexico, or worse would come of it. The Emperor withdrew his troops — he had no possible alternative — the Unites States forces were already massing on the Rio Grande — and the unhappy Maximilian was put to death, his own proteg^, whom he was no longer able to protect. I wrote at the time that Mexico would be the Moscow of the Second Empire. So it proved to be in the end ; but I allowed more time for the final catastrophe than the actual events warranted. For the Second Empire some- thing had to be done. It was, as I have said, the time for the gambler's last throw. That last desperate throw came in the policy of the war against Prussia. How that war ended we all know. The Second Empire was in the dust, and the King of Prussia was proclaimed German Emperor at Versailles. It was not unnatural, or even unreasonable, that the real maker of the German §pipire. Prince Bismarck, should believe the Vatican to have been an inspiriting influence in the war against Prussia. We know now that the Vatican had nothing whatever to do with the fomentation of the war. But when things had settled down a little, the German government made up its mind to protect the Empire against the supposed encroachments of the Vatican. The great central idea was to get the education of Catholics in Germany under the control of the State and not of the Vatican. At this time, it must be remembered, Austria was no longer a constituent part of Germany. Austria had fought THE KULTUR-KAMPF. 57 her seven weeks' war to be still a part of Germany, and had been, to use a phrase of Mr. Froude's, "beaten to her knees." The German Catholic States, which the war against France had brought into union under what we may call, although I dislike the pedantic word, the hegemony of Prussia, were but weak, and would not count for much in a struggle against the Vatican. Therefore, it seemed to Bismarck that the time had come to strengthen the new Empire by a policy of legislation which should protect it against the dangerous influence of the Pope, and his court, and his councillors. There was inspired in the German national parliament a sort of crusade against the educational influence of the Church of Rome. The idea was to make the State supreme over every form of religious teaching in Germany. I shall presently describe the precise enact-' ments by which it was proposed to accomplish this result. But looking rapidly over the whole field, I may say, at the beginning, that it was only the repetition of an efibrt which has been made over and over again in modern history, and which has always ended in failure. We have had a Kultur-kampf in every European State in late days. We have a Kultur-kampf going on at the present moment within the domain of Great Britain. There is no conclusion to it, and there can be none, other than that which was seen when Prince Bismarck stood up to the fight, and brought all his gigantic power to the front. There has not been in the later part of this century a statesman in Europe half so strong as Bismarck was when the Kultur-kampf began. No one will ever again have a chance in a Uke struggle such 58 POPE LEO XIII. as he had then. He failed — for the simple reason that he had undertaken an impossible task. He had gone in for the suppression of individual conscience; and the man, the statesman, or the empire, that now goes in for the suppression of individual conscience undertakes a task in which Julius Caesar, or Charlemagne, or the first Napoleon, would be foredoomed to failure. Some time we shall recognize this as an axiom in politics. Perhaps Prince Bismarck's failure will have helped us beyond all other things to this wholesome and this only conclusion. The struggle against the Roman Church began with a series of proscriptions against the Jesuits. The Jesuits have for many centuries always been the proscribed order among Catholic organisations. Even in purely Catholic States the Jesuits have been made the victims of pro- scription. Protestant States cannot fairly be accused of having in this particular matter a monopoly of intoler- ance. Many a Protestant statesman before Bismarck's time, and after it, has reasonably contended that in his proscription of the Jesuits he was but following the example of statesmen who recognised the Jesuits as their co-religionists. Perhaps it may be owned that for the public opinion of his generation, and of many generations afterwards, Pascal created the Jesuit. It has been said of Burke, and not unreasonably said, that he created for the public opinion of the time a Marie Antoinette all his own — a Marie Antoinette, "like the morning star," "full of life and splendour and joy" — a pure, exalted, and sinless being. Pascal certainly performed an office quite in the opposite sense for the Jesuit. Never in literature THE KULTVR-KAMPF. 59 was there known a satire more piercing, more destroying, more deadly, than that of Pascal. He brought to his work an unmeasured and an uncontrolled hatred — hatred purposely let loose to do its business — and a literary capacity which has hardly ever been surpassed. It is not too much to say that in every community since the time of Pascal the Jesuit has stood at a disadvantage. In June, 1872, an Act of Parliament in Prussia put the Society of Jesuits, and every one of its members, under the ban of the law. The order and its afifiliated organiza- tions, whatever they might be, were excluded from the territory of the new Empire. Their foreign members were condemned to be absolutely expelled from the country. The German members were ordered to be confined to certain marked-out places in Germany, from which, too, they were liable to be expelled. The con- stitution of 1850 had given to the churches of all kinds the full and free right to manage their own affairs so far as religion and religious administration were concerned. In April, 1873, an act was promulgated which abolished the articles of the old code giving to the Catholic Church in Prussia its right to self-government, and investing the State with a supreme control over the internal manage- ment of every ecclesiastical institution which professed to accept the spiritual guidance of the Vatican. The new law prohibited the mere giving-out in Catholic Churches of any encyclical letter, or other admonition, from Rome, which might seem to the Prussian authorities to be dangerous to the interests of public order. It is to be noted that in all the acts which had to do not merely with the religious orders of the Roman Catholic Church, 6o POPE LEO XIII. such as the Jesuits, for example, the legislation professed to apply to churches in general. But the Protestant Church was the State ChurcTi, and the new legislation could not possibly apply to any but the Church of Rome. The April legislation was the prelude to a much bolder and more comprehensive movement onward. The State, in fact, declared war against the Church of Rome. Prince Bismarck seems to have been inspired by the old Homeric words — " Either I must overthrow you, or you - will overthrow me." In that spirit he certainly went to work, and the common impression of English lookers-on in general was that he, and not the Vatican, would give the final fall. On the other hand, of course, there were not wanting many devoted Roman Catholics who firmly believed that the Pope had only to uplift his voice, and that the struggle would come to an end. Meanwhile, Bismarck went steadily along the way that he had marked out for himself. The debates in the Prussian Parliament attracted very soon the attention of the whole civilized, world. Falk, the Minister of Public Worship, and the nominal author of what are even still known as the Falk laws, was a strong man, but there were strong men, too, on the other side. Windhorst, the leader of the Roman Catholic party in the Prussian Representative Chamber, of which he had been a member since 1867, was one of the ablest debaters in any European Parlia- ment. His abilities in Parliamentary battle were freely acknowledged by Bismarck himself But Bismarck was the master of the legions, and it mattered little for the hour whether he had or had not the better in the mere debate. THE KULTUR-KAMPF. 6i The legislation of 1850, giving the Churches a right to manage their own internal affairs, was abolished, and abolished with a vengeance. There were several acts of legislation in that spring and summer. It is only necessary now to describe their general effect. Every young man in the kingdom of Prussia who desired to become a member of the Roman Catholic priesthood, was compelled to follow the course of a German University, according to a system of teachihg established by the State. The students of theology were prevented, during their univer- sity course, from joining any ecclesiastical seminary. Every institution designed for the education of the Catholic clergy was placed under the control of the State. All the nominations to parochial functions had to be announced in advance to the authorities of each province in which the nominations were made, and these author- ities had the right to forbid the nominations, if the candidates, in their judgment, seemed to be persons likely to interfere with the proper working of the State laws, and by consequence with public order. Another act gave the power to the Government of deposing any minister of the Catholic Church, whose acts or whose sermons seemed dangerous to the preservation of estab- lished laws. A special tribunal was created for dealing with ecclesiastical affairs, and to this tribunal was given the power of deposing bishops, or other priests, a con- tinuation of whose functions might seem to the court a danger to public order. The acts absolutely suppressed the ecclesiastical authority of the Vatican in Prussia. At least, to put it more correctly, the acts declared the Papal authority suppressed in Prussia. The Ecclesiastical 62 POPE LEO XIII. Titles Act had declared the same thing in England; and we have seen what came of it. So far as declared legislation could do the work, there was a new penal code established against Catholicism in Prussia. The first disappointment to Bismarck and his frierids arose from the courts of law. "There are Judges in Berlin," is a famous historical reply to an arbitrary King. There were Judges in Berlin during the years of the Culture struggle. Some of these Judges declared and maintained that certain sections of the new acts were absolutely incompatible with the fundamental principles of the Prussian Constitution. But the passion for putting the Catholic Church in order was then in its full flood, and the articles in the Constitution which would not work in with the new legislation were abolished or modified. The Minister of Public Worship, Dr. Falk, a strong- willed, able, dogmatic man, carried out faithfully and fearlessly the policy of Prince Bismarck. Prince Bis- marck afterwards found it convenient to drop his own policy and Dr. Falk at the same time. "Whatever we do,'' said Bismarck of himself and his Sovereign, "we shall not go to Canossa." Canossa was the castle in Modena where the German Emperor, Henry the Fourth, was compelled to make humiliating submission to Pope Gregory the Seventh. No expression could have been better calculated to appeal to all the national feeling and passion of Protestant Germany. No man of our- time has ever had the art of uttering striking phrases to such a degree of appropriateness and artistic perfection as Bismarck. Some of his sayings will never be forgotten. The Canossa saying was magnificent. But we shall THE KULTUR-KAAfPF. 63 presently hear what came of it. " The Guard dies, but never surrenders ! " is supposed to be the saying of Cambronne, who did, nevertheless, very promptly and very reasonably surrender, and lived many years to tell the tale. Neither the Emperor nor the Minister went to Canossa — in the penitent sense of the story to which Bismarck made such telling allusion. There was no humiliation ; unless it be humiliation to acknowledge that one has mad^ a mistake. There never was, or could be, a great statesman who was not sometimes willing to acknowledge that he had made a mistake. I am sure there is every reason to believe that the German Emperor himself went, from the first, in a half-hearted spirit into the Kultur-Kampf. He was undoubtedly a man of a deeply religious and almost a pietistic order of mind, and it went against the grain with him to do anything which seemed to interfere with the religious worship of any order of men. But he had great faith, and very naturally, in the political wisdom of his Prime Minister, and when Bismarck said there was danger to the new German Empire from the Pope and the Vatican, the Emperor was willing to take advice from the man who was supposed to know. But it is quite certain that the Emperor was anxious for a settlement all through, and that when Leo the Thirteenth suggested a settlement, he went half-way and more than half-way to meet it. Emperor William was a man of greater qualities on the whole than the world has given him credit for. There were many long years when he was the most unpopular man in his country. As the Prince in succession to the 64 POPE LEO XIII. throne he was positively hated. The part he took in stamping out the popular insurrections in Germany during the troublous times of 1848 and 1849, made him detested of all the Liberals of Europe. Yet, somehow, no one questioned his honesty or his courage. When in due course of time he succeeded to the throne, he again made himself unpopular with many of his subjects by insisting on a thorough restoration of some of the mediseval ceremonials which belonged to a coronation of any ruler, small or great, in Prussia. He insisted, for example, on putting the crown upon his own head, to signify that his crowning came by the authority of Heaven, and not by that of any earthly parliament or power whatever — and in the same spirit he put her crown upon the head of his wife. Heaven had crowned him — he crowned her. I remember the occasion well. It was in the old castle church of Konigsberg, in 186 1. I was one of the specta- tors in that historic scene. I only mention it now because it throws a certain light on the character of the Emperor William, and may help to explain how it was that he, even before his great minister, had come to the conclusion that terms must be made with the Pope and with William's Catholic subjects. The Emperor William was certainly not a statesman. He was in many ways a dogged and narrow-minded opponent of all forward movement in politics, or in anything else. But he was essentially a man with a conscience, and he did not believe in any progress which had not the sanction of what he considered to be religious teaching. There were three difficulties in the way which even the genius and the foresight of the great minister did not THE KULTUR-KAMPF. 65 count upon. These were the indomitable passive resis- tance of the Prussian archbishops and bishops and priests; the attitude of the new Pope; and the feelings of the German Emperor himself. The archbishops and bishops stood by their cause to the last. They could not accept the new legislation, and they went to prison for their principles. The Archbishop of Posen, Monsignor Ledowchowski, was actually in prison when he was declared by the law 'courts to be deprived of his position as archbishop. The Archbishop of Cologne was con- demned to six months of incarceration, and on his release received a certificate which might have seemed to be given in irony, that he had conducted himself well while in his prison cell — as if it were likely that he would have resisted his gaolers, or tried to set fire to his bedding, or torn up his clothes, or made an effort at self-destruction. The Bishop of Treves endured 299 days of prison discipline. The Bishop of Paderborn was kept in durance for one hundred days and was then transferred to the prison fortress of Wesel. The auxiliary Bishop of Posen was a prisoner for twenty-one months. One of the biographers of Leo the Thirteenth observes that it would be impossible for him to publish a list of all the cur^s, vicars, and other priests, who accepted imprisonment rather than be false to their principles, for he says the mere list of their names would take a volume all to itself — a very blue-book record of incarcerations. The effect of all this soon began to tell even upon Roman Catholics who, up to that time, had been apathetic and cold-blooded about the whole move- ment. Even among many of the determined opponents of the Catholic Church there began to grow up a sort 66 POPE LEO XIII. of doubt as to the bearing of the whole movement. Where was it all to end ? such men were coming to ask of themselves. Can you lock up a whole priesthood in prison and keep the priests always there ? And even if that could be done, what was to come of it ? Would the laity be brought into submissiveness by the operation of such a penal code, enforced against their pastors and the heads of their Church ? Then there was the attitude of the Pope himself. It cannot be doing any serious wrong to Prince Bismarck, to assume that he expected and wished for a declaration of Non Possumus. "No, the Vatican can enter into no terms with a Protestant Power — the Vatican must have its own way, or it will not play in the game at all." Then Bismarck would have found an effective opportunity for declaring that the Pope was setting up as a rival and a superior authority to the King of Prussia in the King's own dominions, and over the King's own subjects ; and the great Chancellor would have proclaimed that it was a struggle to the death between Berlin and Rome — that is to say, the Rome of the Pope and the Vatican. Bismarck had a happy art of Shaksperian quotation, and the world would probably have heard from him in the words of King John — " No Italian priest Shall tithe or toll in our dominions ; But as we under Heaven are supreme head. So under Him that great supremacy, Where we do reign we will alone uphold, Without the assistance of a mortal hand. So tell the Pope — all reverence set apart To him and his usurped authority," THE KULTUR-KAMPF. 67 All that sort of thing would have suited Prince Bismarck. Nor can it be doubted that a policy of non possumus would then have played into his hands, and given him an immense advantage. It has to be remembered that it was not a controversy into which the question of papal infallibility could well be supposed to enter ; but Bismarck, nevertheless, seems to have got it into his head that Pope Leo would surely proclaim a sort of spiritual war against the German Emperor and the Government of Prussia, and this was precisely what Bismarck wanted and wished him to do. The Pope disappointed Bismarck's expectations and frustrated his wishes. Leo wrote a letter to the German Emperor, in which he expressed his great regret, that the happy and friendly relations which had up to late years existed between the Holy See and the Sovereigns of Prussia, should be now interrupted. "We appeal to your Majesty's magnanimity in the hope of obtaining a restoration of peace and repose of con- science for a great number of your subjects — and the Catholic subjects of your Majesty will never fail to shew themselves, as the faith which they profess ordains that they should do, with the most conscientious devotion, respectful and faithful towards your Majesty. Fully convinced of the sentiments of justice which belong to your Majesty, we invoke the Divine Being that He may accord to you the fullness of His heavenly gifts, and we beseech Him that He may unite your Majesty and us in the bonds of the most perfect Christian love." This was assuredly not by any means the sort of letter for which Prince Bismarck was wishing or looking out. The answer sent by the German Emperor was evidently Bismarck's answer. It was very clever, ingenious, and 68 POPE LEO XIII. plausible. We cannot believe it to have been the unaided inspiration of Emperor William ; one can quite imagine Prince Bismarck composing it " with a smile round both his ears " — if we may apply to such a subject the words of Mr. Rudyard Kipling. The letter sent on the part of the Emperor spoke of the Christian concord, loyalty, and respect for the Sovereignty which the populations of Germany had always manifested in past times. "The cordial words of Your Holiness," the Emperor, according to the text, went on to say, " lead me to hope that you will be disposed to put in operation the powerful influence that the constitution of your Church gives you over its ministers, in order that those among them who have refused to follow the example of the population confided to their care may submit themselves to the laws of the country which they inhabit." The ingenuity of this answer is plain. It could only have come from Bismarck himself. Its implication — indeed its direct meaning — was that the lay Catholics of Prussia would have been perfectly content with the new laws, if only the archbishops and bishops and priests would just let them alone and not try to stir them up to agitation. It is the old — the too old story — the imme- morial story — the story which probably will be told for ever, so long as there is any grievance existing for which a remedy is demanded. There is no real grievance — no — none whatever. Only a few agitators are maddening the hitherto peaceful and happy populations, and setting them on to disturb the commonwealth by their absurd demands. The letter of the Emperor was countersigned by Prince Bismarck, as Prime Minister of Prussia. The Emperor probably had never heard of any complaints THE KULTUR-KAMPF. 69 going on among his Catholic subjects. The whole thing, as it was submitted to him, was an affair of archbishops and bishops. The clergy of the lower ranks cared nothing about it; the laity were totally indifferent. It was therefore obviously the work of the Vatican — and, indeed, perhaps the work of France. A patriot-king must listen to no such designing representations. The Pope replied in a letter, dated from the Vatican the seventeenth ^f April, 1878. I find the text of the letter in a Life of Leo the Thirteenth, published last year by an eminent ecclesiastic, Monsignor de T'Serclaes, President of the Belgian College at Rome, and one of the domestic prelates of the Pope. The book appears to have been published with the full approval of the Vatican. I only mention that fact to shew that the documents it contains, and which are declared, some of them, to be published for the first time, may be taken to be authentic. I do not expect my readers to adopt the Papal side of the controversy between the Vatican and the German Emperor, simply because the Pope and the Vatican say "this is so." But I observe that the reply of the Pope to the Emperor, to which I am now about to refer, is described by Monsignor de T'Serclaes as published for the first time in his book. I presume we may all take it for granted, therefore, that the copy of the reply which his work contains is an authenticated and a genuine document. The letter is not long, but it marks an era in the history of the Kultur-Kampf, and it is characteristic of the statesman- priest from whom it came. I therefore think it well to reproduce it in its full form : 70 POPE LEO Xni. " The letter by which it has pleased your Imperial and Royal Majesty to reply to the announcement of our elevation to the Supreme Pontificate, calling upon us as it does to offer you the assurance of our sincerest grati- tude for the gracious expressions employed by you towards us, and for the hopes which you have been graciously pleased to express for the prosperous government of the Church, necessitates at the same time our calling your royal and benevolent attention to a subject which affects to the highest degree the happiness of the Catholics under • your sway. "Recalling a happy past, in which the good sense of the German people enabled them faithfully to preserve the peace in the State, and obedience towards its supreme authority, and deploring the attitude now observed by ministers of the Church, your Majesty requests the inter- vention of our authority to bring back the enjoyment of such precious possessions, thanks to the submission of all Catholics to the laws of the country in which they live. " We, in our turn, pray your Majesty graciously to consider that if a notable difference exist between the conduct of your Catholic subjects in the past and that which you call attention to to-day, it should be exclusively attributed to the change that has come about in civil legislation, which, altering in certain ways the divine constitution of the Church, and causing in others a disagreement between the legal requirements — civil and canonical — has been the origin of an inevitable agitation in the consciences of Catholics, who have thus found themselves, in spite of themselves, between the sad alternative of refusing obedience to the new laws, or of failing in the sacred duties imposed on them by the law of God — the Church. " Thus your Majesty will easily understand the tendency of the prayer We addressed to you in Our first letter, that you would be graciously pleased to render to so great a number of your subjects, peace, and tranquillity of conscience. " It had no other aim than to conjure you to remove the obstacle which prevented Catholics from reconciling THE KULTUR-KAMPF. 71 the obedience due to the laws of the Church with submission to the requirements of the civil law, for it is an incontestable maxim of Our Holy Religion that the most exact fulfilment of religious duties unites itself, when no obstacle opposes, with the obedience and respect due to the authorities and laws of the State. " May your Majesty, then, look propitiously upon this melancholy situation, and, without detracting from your sovereign authority, command that the ministers of God and the Catholic people be left free in the observance of the laws and precepts of their Church. And since the new civil legislation has its origin in the suppression of the fundamental articles of the State, which sanctioned and guaranteed the complete independence of the Catholic religion in its vast domains, may your Majesty deign, in your magnanimity, to secure the revival of a state of things which has been as conducive to the tranquillity of conscience as it was profitable to the interests of the State, and your Majesty may rest assured that We, on Our side, shall not fail to see that the peace, re-established between the two supreme authorities, is preserved with care and increased. " Such is the hope that We are pleased to place in the justice of your Majesty, who has, in past times, given manifest proof of your respect for the apostolic chair. And if it please you to accede to Our wishes. We willingly offer to assist, as far as lies in Our power, towards hasten- ing, with God's help, the end of the present religious dissensions. "Praying the Lord, in the meanwhile, to preserve for many years the life of Your Imperial and Royal Majesty, we also supplicate Him to unite Your Majesty to Us in the bonds of perfect charity. "Given at the Vatican the 17th April, 1878. "To His Imperial and Royal Majesty William I., "The German Emperor." Not many days had passed after the Pope had written his letter to the German Emperor, before an attempt was 72 POPE LEO XIII. made on the Emperor's life. The letter, as we have seen, was dated the 17th of April, 1878, and the attempt at assassination was made on the nth of May. As the Emperor was returning from a drive, a young tinsmith, named Hoedel, took his stand in the street Unter den Linden, in Berlin, and fired two shots from a revolver at him. The shots happily missed the Emperor. The only harm done was that the alarm of the occasion threw the Grand Duchess of Baden, the Emperor's daughter, who was driving with him, into a fainting fit. The would-be assassin turned out to be a half-crazy young Socialist. He was executed at, Berlin on the i6th of August. Worse was to come, however. On the 2nd of June a much more serious attempt was made on the stout old Emperor's life. It was again in Unter den Linden — the great street where twelve years before an attempt had been made to kill Bismarck himself, by an exalte young student, who came up close behind the gigantic statesman and fired two shots at him, and both times missed his aim. The second attempt to assassinate the German Emperor was more mischievous than the first. William was wounded in the face, the arms, and the hands — the man who attempted to take his life used small shot and not bullets. This would-be murderer was a Dr. Nobiling, a man of education, but a wild anti-monarchist fanatic. Like the youth who made the attempt on Bismarck, he contrived to commit suicide. I go back on those historical facts just now, only to shew that the effect the attempts of the assassins pro- duced on the Emperor was probably the very reverse of that which the men who made them would have THE KULTUR-KAMPF. 73 desired. William was not in the least degree daunted. Nothing ever daunted him. But he spoke some memor- able words to those who came to offer him their congratulations on his having so wonderfully escaped with his life each time. "This only shews us," he said, "how we must take care that the people shall not lose their religious principles." When Leo the Thirteenth heard of the words, he must have felt in his heart that the worst of the*Kultur-kampf was already over. For one thing, the words of the Emperor proved his devotion to religion in its broadest sense. For another thing, they shewed that William saw that there were enemies to be combated, more hostile to him and to his dynasty than the Court of Rome. The struggle against the Socialists was destined to supersede, for a time, the struggle against the followers of Pope Leo. CHAPTER V. THE FAILURE OF DR. FALK. The effect of the Pope's letter — Reply of the German Prince Imperial — Unsuccessful advances made privately by Bismarck — Anxiety of the German Emperor for peace — Diplomatic negociation opened without apparently any knowledge on the part of Dr. Falk — Letter of the Pope to Cardinal Nina, his Secretary of State— Sudden defeat of the Falk Ministry. I DO not think that there can be any question as to the sincerity of the anti-Papal movement in Germany. That is to say, I do not think it can be doubted that there was all over the country a certain shuddering fear as to the possibility of what might be done, if any European movement could be incited to disturb the work, or to undo the work, which the Emperor William had accomplished at so much risk, and after so much struggle. The one great predominant thought in the mind of Germany then was to save and to maintain the United Germany. This was Bismarck's motive, naturally, and it was also the motive of the Emperor William. But the Emperor was more apt than the Minister to look at earthly difficulties from the religious point of view. It was, therefore, only natural that the Emperor should earlier pay attention to the religious scruples of his Roman Catholic subjects than the Minister 74 THE FAILURE OF DR. FALK. 73 would be likely to do. Bismarck, for a man of the world, was not a mere cynic; was not altogether want- ing in religious devotion. He was, so far as regarded all that side of human existence, about on a level with Palmerston or Thiers. But with the Emperor, religion was an inborn feeling, and his notion of religion governed his every action. Now his notion sent him right, and now it sent him wrong. But the impulse was always the same — to do what a religious man ought to do. For this reason, he was the better fitted to deal with the troubles which Bismarck had raised. Bismarck, it is needless to say, was a man of intellectual power far beyond anything to which his Sovereign could make the remotest pretension. Bismarck was a man of genius — a statesman to rank with the very highest. But where the religious side of life came to be dealt with, he was not qualified to be so successful an intermediary as the narrow-minded and half-educated Emperor William. It was significant that the first movement towards a reconsideration of the whole proposition should have come from Pope Leo. As we have seen already, the fixed policy of the Pope was to consider that the new Papacy offered a chance for a new arrangement of things and that it was his duty and his work to make the tender of peaceful terms himself. The public of Berlin, like Bismarck, were a little disappointed. Berlin people would, in the temper of that hour, have preferred to deal with a Pope who refused any compromise, and would listen to no reason. When the Pope's letter reached the Court at Berlin, the Emperor was quite unable to attend to any public work, owing to the wounds he had received; 76 POPE LEO XIII. and the duty of sending an answer fell upon his son, the Prince Imperial, Frederick, who had, much against his own will, been compelled to act as Regent during his father's illness. The answer of Frederick was courteous, of course — it could not have been otherwise, coming from such a man ; but it did not seem to hold out much hope of any compromise. The letter threw cold water on the suggestions of the Pope. No King of Prussia, it explained, was able to promise such an arrangement as a modification of the acts of Parliament in such a sense as to satisfy the desires of the Pope and the Catholic Church. The independence of the monarchy would be weakened, if the free movement of its legislation were to be made subordinate to an influence acting from outside its own domain. The close of the letter was conciliatory enough. " If it is not in my power,'' wrote the Prince Imperial, " nor perhaps in that of your Holiness, to bring peace to the struggle of principles which has been going on making itself manifest for a thousand years in the history of Germany more than in that of any other country, I am ready meanwhile to deal with the difficulties coming from that conflict which our ancestors have transmitted to us, in the spirit of peace and of conciliation which the Christian faith inspires. Convinced that I shall find the same disposition in your Holiness, I shall never renounce the hope that even where an agreement on principles is not possible, the sentiments of conciliation which animate both parties to the dispute may open to Prussia the way of peace which has never been closed to other States." The letter was countersigned by Bismarck, and was in all probability the handiwork, or, at all events, the inspiration of the Minister. The reference to the THE FAILURE OF DR. FALK. 77 thousand years of struggle seems particularly in Bis- marck's own style, and after his own heart. It shews a desire to connect the traditions of the Prussian monarchy with those of the Holy Roman Empire, a claim which could hardly be set up with absolute his- torical fairness for the kingdom of Frederick the Great. But the important fact about the letter was that it did not altogether shut out hope of compromise and recon- ciliation. The Emperor William recovered, and the meaning of his words about the people and their religion soon began to impress itself upon the country, and per- haps, above all, on the officials. It was plain that nothing that had happened had shaken the conviction of the Emperor that the basis of all authority must be religion, and that he would much rather have good Catholics than bad Catholics, contented Catholics than discontented Catholics, among his subjects. The certain fact is that the administration of the Falk laws, as we may call them, began to be gradually relaxed, and even the watch kept up on the Roman Catholic clergy was found to grow less and less vigilant. Then the strength of the Catholic party in what we may call the Imperial Parliament was increased somewhat in the general election of July, 1878. The Emperor desired a confidential communication with Rome. Bismarck in- vited the Papal Nuncio at Munich to come to Berlin. The Nuncio refused. Another effort was made. The Nuncio still declined. In the condition of things which existed, he said — considering the relations of the Prussian Monarchy and the Holy See — he could not promise to go to Berlin. Of course, it was quite clear to a man of 78 POPE LEO XIII. Pope Leo's experience and observation that if he were to send his Munich Nuncio to Berlin, the news would go all over the world that the Holy See was sueing for peace with Prussia. Then Bismarck tried to bring about what might, for public purposes, be called a chance meeting between himself and the Nuncio at Kissingen, where Bismarck went every year for his rest and "cure." The meeting came off — two or three meetings came off. At first it seemed as if the meetings were likely to lead to nothing — at all events, as if it would be difficult to find any stable basis of arrangement. Still, Leo felt well pleased with the accomplished fact that the Emperor and his government had given some proof of their anxiety to come to terms. But the terms at which Prince Bismarck hinted up to this time were not by any means, to use a modern colloquialism, "good enough." Bismarck's idea was that the diplomatic relations which had been broken off between the Vatican and Berlin might be renewed, on condition that the Pope would order the Catholic Bishops of Germany to submit to the obligation of allowing the German Government a veto on the nomination of candidates for ecclesiastical posts under the Catholic Church. This was indeed very much like the Veto proposal against which O'Connell fought so vigorously in Ireland. The Pope could not possibly accept any such arrangement, and therefore, for the time, the negotiations seemed likely to be broken off. The Pope, however, had no intention to allow them to be broken off, and neither, as Leo now came to understand, had the Emperor William. When two high contracting parties have thus one principle in THE FAILURE OF DR. FALK. 79 common, and that principle is that a basis of reconcilia- tion ought to be found, it cannot for long be very difficult to find the basis. The tendencies of Leo and of the Emperor, so widely different in other ways, had at least one common direction, and that was towards the government of the world on the basis of religion. As soon as the Pope came to understand clearly that that was the principle to which the German Emperor held, there was but little difficulty about diplomatic arrangements. The Pope, meantime, continued to write letters of approval and encouragement to all the archbishops and bishops in Germany who suffered from the rigors of the Falk laws. He bade them to stand firm to their principles, and to be of good cheer. He had not the slightest idea of giving way on any question of principle — he could not possibly give way on such a point ; but he felt a strong and almost an assured hope that the battle would soon be won in Germany. He wrote to his Secretary of State, Cardinal Nina, a letter on the general subject, which is of great political interest, and which illustrates very effectively his condition of mind about this period of the interrupted negociations. The most important passages of the letter I think it well to re- produce here : "You are well aware, my lord Cardinal, that, in obedience to the impulses of our heart, we addressed ourselves to the powerful Emperor of the noble German people, who demand all our solicitude on account of the difficult situation in which the Catholics of that country find themselves. " Our words, inspired only by the desire to see religious concord restored to Germany, have been favourably received by the illustrious Emperor, and have had the 8o POPE LEO XIII. happy effect of bringing about amicable negotiations which we in no way intend shall result in a simple armistice, merely, preparing as it would the way to fresh conflicts. " We desire, the obstacles being removed, to establish true peace, as solid as it shall be durable. "The extreme importance of this end, justly appre- ciated as it has been by those who control the destinies of that empire, will, we are confident, impel them to stretch out a friendly hand to assist us in its achievement. "The Church would, without doubt, view with happi- ness the re-establishment of religious concord in the bosom of that noble nation ; but the Empire would have no less occasion to be satisfied, in the certainty of count- ing as before, among the sons of the Catholic Church, its most faithful and most generous subjects." In the meantime there was growing up in the mind of German statesmen and German public men and German journalists, especially in Berlin, the idea that the Pope was seriously inclined, not for religious war, but for religious peace. No one, of course, among those who had upheld the policy of Bismarck, would listen to any suggestion of a complete giving in to the Pope, but the cry of war against the Vatican was seldom heard, and a good many leading men in Prussia were getting rather tired of the futile Kultur-Kampf. The moment was opportune, not for a final arrangement, but for the beginning of an arrangement, and beyond all question the policy of the Pope had done its work so far. All the diplomatic negociation, it is positively asserted, was carried on without the knowledge of Dr. Falk, the Minister who was beyond any other concerned in the struggle against the Vatican. Of course he came to know the whole story before long, and he began to see THE FAILURE OF DR. FALK. 8i clearly enough that the business he had undertaken was already a failure, and that his power was at an end. The ground was slipping from under his feet, and he knew it well. Falk tendered his resignation, but the Emperor declined to accept it. Things, however, had come to that pass that his staunchest supporters in the struggle against the Pope were to be found among the free-thinkers and the openly-avowed and proclaimed unbelievers in revealed religion, who had leats in the Parliament of the kingdom, or of the Empire. As it happened, the resignation of Dr. Falk, and two of his colleagues, took place on a question of economic and not of religious policy. In July, 1879, Falk gave in his resignation, which was accepted. All the world knew that the resignation was the inevitable result of the discouragement which had come over his policy in the strife with the Vatican. " Pallas te hoc vulnere — Pallas Immolat." Bismarck himself conveyed as much in a speech which he made in the Imperial Parliament. " It is the part of a brave man," he said, " to fight on when the conditions demand it ; but no real statesman desires to make combat a permanent institution.'' So ended the first and most exciting chapter in the struggle between the policy of Bismarck and the principles of Leo the Thirteenth. The struggle was not by any means over — we shall hear of it again — but the possibility of a satisfactory arrangement was becoming more and more apparent to the minds of all CHAPTER VI. THE EMPIRE OF THE POPE. Essential difference between the Empire of the Pope and that of all other Empires — No limits to the right of appeal to the Pope and the moral influence of the Pope^— Leo, above all things, o, philan- thropic Pope — " A passion of philanthropy." I SHOULD like to ask my readers to consider for a few moments what is really the Empire of the Pope. I wish them to consider this question in an impartial mind, and altogether aloof from any argument as to what the Empire of the Pope ought to be. Let us look at hard and undeniable facts. There are those, perhaps, who still regard the Pope as anti-Christ. I do not in the least care to stickle about phrases. Let us assume for the moment that the Pope is anti-Christ — and let us go on to consider what the Empire of anti-Christ is. The importance of the study will be all the same, whether it be Pope or anti-Christ — or, indeed, more properly speak- ing, the study will have all the greater importance and portentousness if we placidly assume that the Pope is anti-Christ. We talk of great Empires — of England, with her drum- taps following each other round the orb of the earth. We talk of Russia; of Germany; of France. May I 83 THE EMPIRE OF THE POPE. 83 point out to my readers that the Empire of the Papacy is much greater than any of these? What hold has the English Sovereign over Russia or over Germany? What hold has the German Emperor over England ? What hold has the Czar, except for occasional political alliances and fantasias, over France? What hold has any of these Powers — what hold have all of them combined— over the great republic of America ? Except as a matter of news in the daily papers, the people of the United States do not care, and have no need to care, three straws about what England and France and Germany and Russia are doing. But the Papacy is an influence everywhere, and it has to look after everything. Its dominion is seated in the consciences of men — of its followers to be sure, but then, its followers are everywhere. With many others, I was myself invited the other day to appeal to the influence of the Papacy, in favour of certain Protestant denomina- tions who believed themselves oppressed by the system of marriage laws existing in one or two of the South American republics. The answer from the Papal Court was that the South American republics could, of course, make their own laws, and that nobody could prevent them; but that so far as the influence of the Pope could go it should be exerted in favour of absolute religious equality in all nations. I mention this fact merely as a matter of illustration. No one would think of appealing to the German Emperor to interfere with his influence on behalf of certain populations, not German, in some of the republics of South America. The influence of the German Emperor is exerted merely on behalf of his own emigrant subjects, or his own 84 POPE LEO XIII. fellow-countrymen in some foreign and distant State. It would be regarded as sheer impertinence and folly, if he were to interfere between the rulers of a South American republic and any native body or section of the subjects of such a republic. But nothing could possibly seem more natural than to appeal in such conditions for the interven- tion and the influence of the Pope. The Pope is understood to have an influence and a right of intervention, so far as advice goes, in every country in the world. There is not a parish priest appointed in Ireland without the knowledge and authority of the Pope. There is not a Catholic Bishop named in any country in the world, civilised or uncivilised, without his authority and his approval. He nominates the men who are to risk their lives in preaching the Gospel in China, and the men who are, as missionaries, to brave the terrors of death in spreading the light of Christianity over countries still less civilised, and far more barbarous, than China. The Vatican is compelled to have its eye and its intellect and its heart fixed on every nook and corner in the world. There is no administrative system on earth which has anything like the same widespread and watchful and necessary superintendence. The net- work of the Papal authority has a mesh wherever men are living. The Vatican is, in this sense, the centre of the earth. I am well aware that a great many of my readers may think this a deplorable fact. I am not concerned to argue the question. My present purpose is fully satisfied if I can persuade them to admit that, whether deplorable or not, it is still the fact. Civilization has to reckon with that vast all-pervading influence. The THE EMPIRE OF THE POPE. 85 innermost glooms of uncivilization cannot withdraw them- selves from some gleams of its light. The empire of the Pope is not merely greater than any other empire. It folds in all the empires and all the monarchies and all the republics in the world. From this point of view, even if we were to regard it from none other, it will be seen what a vast jurisdiction is that which it falls to the lot of a Pope to administer. The Pope must take account of every movement in modern thought and modern society. He must compare the conflicting forces ; he must have a keen eye for the new struggles which are breaking out every day in the civilized world. Pope Leo the Thirteenth has been careful, beyond almost any of his predecessors, not to let anything escape him which concerns the interests of human beings all over the earth. There is a fine phrase of Mr. Gladstone's, which came from him once when conversing with the writer of this book, about Daniel O'Connell, the great Irish national leader, whom Mr. Gladstone had known well in his younger parliamentary days. Being asked what he considered O'Connell's most striking characteristic, Mr. Gladstone paused for a moment, and then said — " His most striking charac- teristic seemed to me to be a passion of philanthropy." A passion of philanthropy ! The words would apply with absolute accuracy to Pope Leo the Thirteenth. Philanthropy, indeed, appears to be with him a passion. There have been political Popes and theological Popes, but Leo the Thirteenth is above all things a philanthropic Pope. Some of the great social movements which came up during his time might well have intimidated a less 86 POPE LEO XIII. heroic spirit. Some men in any position at all resembling that of Leo might have turned away in mere affright from certain of the developments of Socialism which we have all seen during these later years. The Pope had no fear. He looked boldly and searchingly into each new phe- nomenon, and calmly endeavoured to understand its actual significance. He seems to have brought to bear no prejudices, no unalterable pre-conceived opinions, to the task of examination. He had, apparently, made up his mind to the recognition of the fact that where there is an impassioned demand, there is also a claim which has a right to a hearing. It is only just to Leo the Thirteenth to say that no cry of a wounded soul ever reached him which did not arouse his compassion, and his best efforts to give relief Leo had, undoubtedly, a much better chance for such passion of philanthropy than his predecessor, Pius the Ninth, could have had. Leo's lot was cast in quieter days. Serious troubles, no doubt, there were every now and then — sometimes very serious troubles — but there never came even one such crisis as had arisen several times in the days of Pope Pius. Therefore Leo was enabled to develope more freely than his predecessor could have done, all the resources of the Papacy for the old-time redressing of grievances, and the righting of wrong. All the whole field of that empire, limited only by the extent of the earth, was free to him to use. We shall see a little later on how the influence and the voice of Leo made themselves felt and heard even among savage races, and how human misery of every kind, from that of the slave to that of the leper, was thought of, and thb empire of the pope. 87 looked after, and cared for by the Pope. All this belongs to the empire of the Pope — when the Pope is a man who, like Leo the Thirteenth, is able to use his opportunities, and, I may add, is reigning at a time which allows him to make free use of his opportunities. I do not know how the world, civilized or uncivilized, could do without the beneficent influence of the Papacy. Therefore I, for myself, regret that the Papacy should be mixed up in any manner of political controversy. Even the controversies of that kind which have come in the reign of Pope Leo have only served to distract his attention, and of necessity to distract it, now and then, from what I am sure he must have felt to be the true and the most imperative duties of his position, as the light and leading of so many hundred millions of human beings. There has lately been much talk about the possible removal of the Papal seat to Avignon. Such an event might happen, as it happened before. The Papacy has found a refuge in Avignon and in Gaeta. A Pope has been in prison. There has, for one reason or another, been a long gap many times between the death of one Pope and the appointment of his successor. But the Papacy has gone on just the same. No matter where the Pope exercises the papal authority, that authority will be acknowledged by faithful followers all over the earth. I am pointing to these facts only to call the attention of my Protestant readers in general to the existence and the reality of the facts. What can be said without the slightest exaggeration of the Papal dynasty, can be said of no other dynasty whatever. Who now has the faintest faith in the possibility of a restoration for the house 88 POPE LEO XIII. of Stuart ? Where are the serious and practical politicians who think there is any likelihood of a recall of the Bourbon family to rule in France ? Does anybody in Italy look out for the return of the Spanish Bourbons to Naples and Sicily? We have controversy in England about the propriety of erecting a national monument to Cromwell, somewhere within the precincts of the houses of Parliament — I have taken part in such controversy myself But those who most strenuously advocate the erection of the statue, do not indulge in any fond and futile hopes about the resuscitation of the Protectorate. There was an advertisement issued some thirty years ago for a descendant of the last — or the last known — Palaeologus, whom some dreamers thought of putting forward as a candidate for what used to be called the " Empire of the East,'' in the event of the Ottoman power in Europe utterly breaking, and big Russia and little Greece disputing about the succession. I believe that no claimant answered the advertisement. No one, so far as I have heard, even thought of advertising for a descendant of the Cromwell family, with a view to setting up a candidate for the restoration of the Protectorate. I do not know whether there is any serious hope entertained by any considerable number of persons that there may be once again a Bourbon-Braganza-Hapsburg Empire in Brazil. But nobody in his senses could have any idea that the removal of the Papal seat to Avignon, or to Gaeta, or to the obscurest part of the earth, would have the slightest effect on the succession to the Papal dynasty, or the spiritual influence of the succeeding Popes. This, therefore, is another palpable and no longer disputed THE EMPIRE OF THE POPE. 89 difference between the Empire of the Pope and the empire of the layman. The empire, or the rule, or the reign, or whatever it may be called, went on with Leo the Thirteenth during the next few years just as if he had been a Pope of the middle ages. He had to do with religious questions in France, in Italy, m Belgium, in Spain, and in Russia, and in various other countries besides. There are many regions, and there* are many disturbing questions, with which a layman ruler may fairly and justly declare that he has nothing whatever to do. But the ruler over consciences, and not over defined nationalities, or what we may call registered subjects, cannot get so easily out of difficulties. There is absolutely no limit to the right of appeal to the Pope. An ordinary sovereignty is limited, and justly and naturally limited, by the claim on its suzerainty which this supplicant or that has upon its right of intervention. But no such limitation binds those who choose to make an appeal to the Pope. His subjects are all those who believe in his authority, nor would he even be warranted in turning a deaf ear to those who do not profess to be guided or governed by his authority. In Pope Leo's time there had arisen many serious questions which would not have been so serious for his recent predecessors. The immense Irish immigration into the United States and Canada and Australasia, which had begun, indeed, during the time of Pius the Ninth, had risen to flood- tide during the earlier years of the reign of Leo the Thirteenth. Leo had had his attention early drawn to the influence which the Roman Catholics in the 9<5 POPE LEO Pilil. American Republic, in Canada, and in Australasia must inevitably exert over the power of the Papacy in English- speaking countries. It was pointed out to him by some of his advisers that the English language, being also the language of Americans and of Australians, was bidding fair to be the leading language of Christendom. Of course, the most remarkable leap forward in modern days had been made by the great American Republic. The predictions which Edmund Burke had made of the progress of the American States during a given time, seemed extravagant fantasies even to his sympathetic contemporaries. They seem now to fall almost absurdly below the measure of the reality. Therefore a great part of the time of Pope Leo was taken up with the arrangement of controversies, con- cerning which it is hardly necessary that I should endeavour to engage the attention of my readers. There were religious questions to be dealt with in Russia, in Poland, in Belgium, in Italy, in France, in England, in the United States and Canada, in South America, in China, in Japan, in every region to which the develop- ment of energy and of commerce was carrying the members of any Catholic population. The Pope brought to bear on every controversy that temper and tone of calm reason which was one of his chief characteristics. He despaired of nothing ; he gave every one a chance. He appealed always to that which is better in the heart of man. His persuasive voice began to be listened to everywhere — outside the extreme anti-Papal parties in Italy itself — and it has to be remembered that Italy was still in the convulsions of a great political revolution. THE EMPIRE OF THE POPE:. gt All over Europe, however, outside Italy— or outside a certain Italian party — it began to be recognised that the power of the Pope as a ruler of men, apart from any 'question of temporal sovereignty, had come up in the world again. The influence of the Papacy — that influence which its bitterest opponents might acknow- ledge to be legitimate — was asserting itself everywhere, and was beginning to be willingly recognised everywhere. All civilized governments and peoples found that, in every great effort for the improvement of the condition of human beings, the Pope was at their side or in their front. There were still, as there are even now, great questions of human slavery distressing the consciences of nations. We shall see how true the Pope proved to his own principles and those of his Church, whenever he came in contact with what Brougham called "the wild and guilty phantasy that man could hold property in CHAPTER VII. THE RELIGIOUS ORDERS. Encyclical Letter s^ainst Socialism, Communism, and Nihilism — The Education Question in Belgium and in France— Letter of the Pope to President Grevy — The Reply. ON the 28th of December, 1878, the Pope issued an encyclical letter concerning modern errors — Socialism, Communism, and Nihilism. Nihilism was, of course, the most modern among all the errors which the Pope denounced with unfaltering eloquence. Socialism and Communism the world had had with it for a long time, but Nihilism in its defined expression was a creature of much later birth. In this really most interesting manifesto, if I may so call it, the Pope seems to set forth the practical difficulties which the statesman must sometimes feel when endeavouring to reconcile his duties with the principles of the ecclesiastic. Naturally and necessarily, the Pope ascribes all the evils of those modern errors to the fact that so much of modern society has " cast away the supernatural truths of faith as being contrary to reason." "After having consigned to oblivion the rewards and punishments of a future and never-ending existence, the keen longing after happiness has been narrowed down to the range of the present life. 92 THE RELIGIOUS ORDERS. 93 With such doctrines spread far and wide, and such license in thought and action, it is no wonder that men of the most lowly condition, heart-sick of a humble home, or poor workshop, should fix eager eyes on the abodes and fortunes of the wealthy ; no wonder that tranquillity no longer prevails in public or private life, or that the human race has been hurried onward to well nigh the verge of ruin." But the Pope'took good care to point out that if the teachings of the doctrines of Socialism and Nihilism could only have been effective where men had abandoned the principles of religion, the same could be said too of the misuse of wealth, of extravagant luxury, of selfish millionaires, of capitalists caring for nothing but the accumulation of money. About all such the Pope takes care to explain that the same story has to be told. The Encyclical, of course, speaks out strongly and sternly against the principles and the practices which would bring into disregard and into contempt the sanctity of the marriage relation. As I have said of the Pope's first Encyclical, I may say also of this, that there is nothing to which any member of any non-Catholic religious de- nomination could object, except the Pope's assumption that the Church of Rome is the inspired teacher of morals and of religion. But again, as I said before, everyone must expect that the head of the Catholic Church would start with the assumption of this principle. For the rest, the Pope in this Encyclical proclaims doctrines and precepts with which educated and reason- able men all over the world are likely to agree ; he insists upon the necessity of all who are in authority, and all 94 POPE LEO XIII. who are rich, doing everything in their power to mitigate the sufferings of the poor, to see that the labourer shall have his hire, and, in the words of Goethe, to "lighten the load of the heavy laden." "Who then," asks the Pope, "does not perceive that herein lies the best means of appeasing the undying conflicts between the rich and the poor? For, as the evidence of things and facts clearly demonstrates, if such conclusion be disallowed and made lighter of, it must come about either that the vast majority of mankind will fall back into that most abject condition of bondage, which through a long lapse of time obtained amongst pagan nations, or else that human society will be agitated by constant outbreaks, and ravaged by plunder and rapine such as even of late years we have had occasion to deplore.'' Thus it will be seen that while Leo condemns, without qualification, the avowed principles of the Communists and the Nihilists, he always maintains that there are two sides to the social question. He insists that the remedy against the pest of socialism is not to be found "in the strong hand of the civil power, or in military force." We must " lighten the load of the heavy laden," and re- establish the principles of morality and religion. There is little of the mystic about this appeal to the nations of the world. It is the appeal of the head of the Roman Catholic Church, but it is also the pronouncement of a statesman and a philanthropist, and of one who had made the social questions of the day a study, and whose heart went out in sympathy with the sufferings of his fellow-men. It is not necessary to describe at any length the con- THE RELIGIOUS ORDERS. 95 troversy between the Pope and the Belgian Government, on the subject of public education. The object of the liberal government of Belgium was the complete seculari- sation of the system of primary teaching. At one time this dispute led to a severance of diplomatic relations between the Vatican and the Belgian Government. There was also serious trouble in France after the fall of Marshal MacMahon, in January, 1879, and the election of Monsieur Grdvy to the Presidentship of the Republic. Several measures were introduced, having for their avowed object the deposition of the Catholic Church from its control over popular education. One of those schemes proscribed the J^.uits ; another obliged all religious congregations of men and women to obtain, within three months, the authority of the State for their existence, or else to come under the same proscription as that assigned to the Jesuits. The decree against the Jesuits was applied in the most inflexible manner. The sensation created all through France was something almost unparalleled. Many of the courts of law to which the Jesuits made appeal gave judgment in their favour. Many magistrates resigned rather than enforce the proscriptions. Monsieur de Freycinet, the President of the Council, an able and a clear-headed man, became alarmed at the strength of the opposition to the new schemes, and he made an effort at compromise with regard to the other religious associations. He suggested a measure of arrangement. He made it known to the Vatican, that if the heads of these congregations would be willing to sign a declaration that they were not hostile to the political institutions established in France, the 96 POPE LEO XIII. Government would oe ready to deal considerately with them. The Pope, always inclined to make the best of things, where no essential principle of right and wrong was con- cerned, showed himself willing to accept the compromise. He could not indeed agree to all the terms proposed by Monsieur da Freycinet. He could not, for instance, accept the suggestion that the religious orders should pledge themselves to ask the authority of the State for their existence. That would have seemed like an abandonment and a repudiation of the Jesuits, who were already victims of the new legislation. But the Pope was quite willing that the heads of the various orders should sign the declaration of loyalty to the State, which M. de Freycinet had called for. The declarations were signed as a matter of fact, but, unfortunately, the compromise which the Pope and the French Minister alike desired was not established. Mons. de Freycinet's Ministerial colleagues threw him over, and he gave in his resigna- tion. Mons. Jules Ferry succeeded to the position M. de Freycinet had given up, and the Government proceeded by " decrees." The decrees against the various religious orders went on in full force. Then the Pope, in March, 1883, addressed himself directly to the President of the Republic, Mons. Grdvy. The letter is published in full, and, as it would appear, published in full for the first time, in a life of the Pope to which I have more than once made reference already. It may be observed that before the Pope took this step, there were many Catholics all over Europe who thoujht that Leo ought to have made some loud and decided THE RELIGIOUS ORDERS. 97 protest against the new system of legislation in France. The Pope, however, was a practical man and a statesman, and so long as there was any chance of a reasonable arrangement by the ordinary ways of diplomacy, and on the lines of the Concordat, he did not feel inclined to depart from the regular methods of intercourse between the rulers of States. But when Mons. de Freycinet's resignation had made it plain that the French Ministers were determined to go their way, he then felt that the time had come for an appeal to the President himself. The appeal, in fact, was intended for France, and the whole world, rather than for the President alone. The Pope knew, of course, that the President of the French Repub- lic was not a dictator, but he knew full well the influence which the President must have; and in any case, as I have said, his was an appeal to the world, an appeal to be lodged in history. I give the most important passages of a document which is too long to be published, word for word, in this small volume. " Mr. President, — The events which have been occur- ring for some time past in France with regard to religious matters, and those events which threaten in the future, cause Us serious apprehension and deep concern." His Holiness then goes on to say that he has repeatedly called the attention of the French Government to the rigorous measures adopted against certain members of the episcopacy and clergy of France. He expresses his gratification at the re-assuring nature of the letter received on the 20th of the past May, by the French Ambassador to the Holy See from the Minister of Foreign Affairs. He recalls his special predilection for the French nation, in 98 POPE LEO XIII. virtue of its services rendered to the Church since time immemorial, and reminds the President that the Holy See has never hesitated to support the French Government in its schemes for the welfare and advancement of France. He insists that the uniform moderation and delicacy of the ApostoUc See in preferring its complaints to the Government, has served as a model of conduct to the French episcopacy and clergy of France, justifying the expectation of friendly conduct towards the Catholic Church on the part of the Republic; which hope had not been realised. He points out that the expulsion of the religious orders deprived the secular clergy of powerful assistance in preaching and teaching; that the religious orders were invaluable in the hospitals and charitable institutions, and on the battle-field itself, and in the spread of the faith and even of French influence abroad, and especially in the East. Hoping to avert such a misfortune the Holy See had accepted the proposition offered, in virtue of which the religious orders could avoid the appli- cation of the decrees of the 2gth March, by a documentary declaration, that they were foreign to all political move- ment, and to all party spirit. Such acquiescence had, however, proved ineffectual, the decrees having been nevertheless carried out. Referring to the law excluding religious education from the schools, the Pope says — " In vain did the whole episcopacy of France make its cry heard; in vain did fathers of famiUes demand on legal grounds the preservation of their rights; in vain was it pointed out to the Government by disinterested men belonging openly to the Republican party, amongst them political personages and men of lofty intelligence, THE RELIGIOUS ORDERS. 99 how fatal for a nation of 32,000,000 Catholics would be a law banishing from its schools religious education, which inspires man with the most generous impulses and supplies the most perfect rules for encountering the diffi- culties of existence, for respecting the laws of authority and justice, and for securing the virtues indispensable to life, whether domestic, political, or civil. "No consideration was powerful enough to arrest the determination taken, and the law was promulgated and executed throughout the territory of France." The Pope goes on to point out how, not content with this, the enemies of religion have demanded the proscription of all religious elements from the hospitals and colleges, from the army, and from the charitable and other institutions of the State, and calls attention to the continual efforts made in recent years to diminish the material resources in the lawful possession of the Church. He protests further against the proposed laws to facilitate divorce, and to enforce military service upon the clergy. He dwells at length upon the action of the Government in the matter of the school-manuals of negative morality condemned by the Index, the use of which having been forbidden by the episcopacy and clergy of France, the Government had responded by the suspension of salaries and allowances, endeavour- ing to justify its action by the lack of moderation in the language of the pastoral letters of the bishops, and by the necessity, in the interests of civil authority, of arming itself with a weapon of defence against the ex- aggerations of certain of the clergy. He deplores the taking of so grave a step without any previous con- sultation with the Apostolic See, pointing out that the loo POPE LEO XIII. explanation of certain acts and expressions of the clergy may be found in the bitter sorrow caused them by the suppression of religious education, augmented by the reading of books declared by the sole competent authority to be hostile to the sacred principles of religion; and this, in spite of the promises made by the Government that nothing should be taught contrary to religion, promises which he feels it his duty to say have not been kept. "This summary," he says, "of the injuries suffered by the Catholic religion in France, and those which threaten it in the future, seems to justify the opinion expressed by many who follow attentively and dispassion- ately the progress of public affairs in that country, that an endeavour is being made to put into gradual execu- tion, on the plea of the pretended exigencies of the time, the plan conceived by those hostile to the Church, who, openly denouncing her as an enemy, seek to withdraw from her beneficent influence all civil and social institutions." In conclusion His Holiness writes : " We recall with pleasure, Mr. President, the wise and noble words addressed by you to Our Nuncio, when the latter had the honour of presenting to you his credentials, and, in consequence. We cherish full confidence that, by means of your potent influence, the precious advantages of religious peace will be preserved to France. "In this hope, praying for your prosperity and that of the illustrious French nation, We accord with all the affection of Our heart Our Apostolic blessing ta yourself, to your family, and to all Catholic France. " Leo XIIL, Pope. "The Vatican, "\^th May, 1883." THE RELIGIOUS ORDERS. loi The President, in his letter of reply in June, admits the justice of the Pope's appeal against the anti-religious feeling in France, but attributes its origin to the hostile attitude of a part of the clergy towards the Republic, from its foundation to the present day, and points out that the remedy rests with the Pope rather than with himself, were His Holiness to insist upon an attitude of political neutrality amongst the clergy. In his position as President, he is able only to advise his Ministers, which he does not fail to do ; they on their part, in the matters of laws and Parliamentary resolutions, having to reckon with the majorities in the two Chambers. Nevertheless, President Grdvy continues, he is not without hope of a peaceful termination of these disputes should His Holiness persevere in his present attitude, and the hostile clergy lay down their arms. He begs His Holiness's permission not to follow in detail certain points touched upon in His letter, the President's position not allowing him to enter personally upon a discussion which belongs by right to the responsible Ministers, to whom he has communicated the Pope's letter, in the assurance that they will do all in their power to give expression to the wishes it contains. He acknowledges, in conclusion, his gratitude for the esteem and confidence shown him in being personally addressed by the Pope, and for the Apostolic blessing bestowed on France, his family, and himself. It must be owned that there is some dignity and much fairness in President Grdvy's reply to the Pope's com- manding, and yet pathetic appeal. President Grdvy seems to have been touched, and to have wished that 102 POPE LEO Xllt. things could be ordered otherwise — that he could order them otherwise. But, of course, he was bound by the conditions of his constitutional office; and then there was undoubtedly some truth in his observation, that certain of the religious orders had set themselves against the republican principle and the whole tendency of republican government in France. The Pope, on the other hand, had many a just ground for remonstrance, complaint, and protest. The policy pursued towards the religious orders must be hateful to every mind trained in the principles of constitutional society. Only the most clearly established accusations, and, even then, only the most desperate necessity to save, at any cost, the existence of the Republic, could have justified some of the measures which were relentlessly enforced. But the truth is that many Frenchmen, even reasonable and thoughtful Frenchmen, firmly believed that the whole existence of the Republic was imperilled and at stake. There were the Legitimist and Buonaparte pretenders to the throne of France; there were the Ultramontanes ; and, of course, there were the Germans. There was, until his death at the close of 1882, the tremendous and dominant influence of Gambetta, who was always thundering forth his declarations that the State was in utter danger. Under conditions such as these it was, perhaps, hardly possible to expect a general calmness of temperament and considerateness of purpose on the part of the majority of the French republicans. I do not dream of defending such legislation in any country as that which Pope Leo denounced; I am only endeavouring to explain after some reasonable fashion THE RELIGIOUS ORDERS. 103 how it ever came in the nature of things to be adopted by a civilized State. Probably for future generations, perhaps for a very near generation, the letter of the Pope will be held to settle the whole question. There is the long and solid indictment prepared with care, and brought forward with no undue vehemence. President Grdvy does not deny the main allegations, he only laments that such things should be, that such things should have to 6e, and pleads that there are faults on both sides, as, indeed, no doubt there were. Thomas Carlyle said concerning the alleged opening of Mazzini's letters in London, "When some new Gunpowder Plot may be in the wind, some double-dyed high treason, or imminent national wreck not avoidable otherwise, then let us open letters ; not till then." I am inclined to say much the same about certain of the decrees which the Pope so justly denounced. When it can be proved that the national wreck and ruin of France by traitorous enemies can thus be averted, and thus only be averted, then, and not until then, let a civiUzed country be excused for putting such measures into operation. The controversy is one of the most intense interest. While everyone must admire the spirit in which the Pope conducted his part of it, I am glad to believe that the national dignity and interests of France did not suffer by the pleading of her President. CHAPTER VIII. IRELAND. Political and Agrarian Agitation in Ireland — The Parnell Tribute — Tiie Pope's Intervention. THE condition of Ireland began to occupy much of the Pope's attention. The condition of Ireland was, indeed, beginning to command the attention of the whole civilized world; and it need hardly be said that the sympathy between the Papacy and the Irish Catholics had been close and constant for generations and for centuries. There were two great agitations going on in Ireland — one political, and one agrarian — but the two working together, and forming between them a complete national movement. The political movement was for Home Rule ; the agrarian movement was, roughly speaking, for the abolition of despotic landlordism, and the creation of a peasant proprietary all over Ireland. There is no need to tell the story again ; most of us are familiar with it. What we have to deal with here is the part which the principal advisers of Leo the Thirteenth induced him to perform in the way of inter- vention. The Pope did at last intervene — not directly, and not by way of any Papal fulmination; but the 104 IRELAND. los Vatican decidedly issued an opinion and a warning to the Irish people on the national movement, the political and the agrarian; and the intervention was received with a chorus of applause from the landlord class, and the Conservatives, and the anti-Nationalists of Ireland. The counsellors of the Pope naturally relied a good deal upon the representations and the advice of the English Catholics. Now the English Catholics belong almost always to'the higher classes in social life. They belong for the most part to the landlord order, and their sympathies would naturally go with the claims of their own order. Then, again, the English Catholics, as a rule, have no sympathy with the Irish national cause — the cause of Home Rule. I do not mean to say that this is true of all the English Catholics. I know far too well for that. I know that the sympathies of men like Lord Ripon, and Lord Acton, and Lord Ashburnham, and many of the most distinguished of the English Catholic priesthood, are cordially with the principle of national self-government for Ireland. But, as a rule, neither the cause of the political reforms which Ireland claims, nor that of the agrarian reforms which Ireland has so long needed, can be said to have the sympathy of the English Catholics. Now it is in the very nature of things that a good deal of the ideas of the English Catholics must have made a way into the councils of those who advised Pope Leo. For a long time, too, the Archbishopric of Dublin had been in the hands of men like Cardinal Cullen and Cardinal MacCabe — good men, pious men, learned men; but men who shrank in alarm from any agitation that seemed lo6 POPE LEO XIII. likely to be troublesome, and who were apt to hear the first thunder of approaching revolution in every rising sound of popular agitation. It must be owned that Ireland was passing through something very like a national revolution. The Home Rule movement had recovered, under Mr. Parnell, all the strength and all the command that it had lost since the death of Daniel O'Connell. Mr. Parnell, a Protestant, had the Catholic population of Ireland at his back. No doubt some wild things were said on national platforms, and in the terrible death-struggle between the landlords and the tenants some wild deeds were done on both sides. If the tenants had no just claim in what they demanded, then it has to be pointed out that every recent Government, Liberal or Tory, has abetted them since in their unjust demands; for every Government has yielded more and more to their claim, and has proclaimed that each subsequent concession was a concession to the cause of justice and of order. The truth had at last begun to be officially recognised, which John Stuart Mill preached in vain thirty years before, when he insisted that the Irish land-tenure system was entirely exceptional and apart, and such as no civilized legislation, except that of England, would tolerate. But we are now going back from the days of recent legislation to the earlier days when the Land League was formed, under the auspices of Mr. Parnell, Mr. Davitt, Mr. Dillon, and Mr. William O'Brien. The whole agrarian movement was then new in that shape ; it was new in the mere fact that it had taken any shape, and was acting on any system. IRELAND. 107 There had always been an agrarian agitation in modern Ireland; but up to the formation of the Land League it was crude, unorganised, sporadic, spasmodic — each locality, each group of tenantry, acting for itself, upon its own impulse, and by its own ways. The effort and the purpose of the Land League was to consolidate all the agrarian agitation of Ireland into one system, acting under directions from head-quarters. Such a movement, under the guidance of men like those who directed it, might be trusted to be a check on disorder and crime : not a stimulant to disorder and crime. But it is easy to understand that, to observers at a distance, it may have seemed at first — as it did seem indeed to some observers close at hand — the methodizing and embattling of all the forces of agrarian revolution. It was in reality a strike of the tenantry against an intolerable system. To the counsellors of the Vatican it seemed, as at one time it seemed to Mr. Gladstone, a rebellion against the most sacred principles of social law. The Vatican intervened, and Mr. Gladstone also intervened. The Land League was condemned, morally and socially, by the Vatican, and was suppressed by Mr. Gladstone's Administration. Mr. Parnell, Mr. Davitt, Mr. Dillon, Mr. Sexton, and other members of the Irish party, were thrown into prison. To the advisers of the Pope it undoubtedly appeared that they were only uttering a much needed appeal in favour of law and order, social and moral. To the majority of the Irish Nationalists it seemed that the Vatican had come to the help of Mr. Gladstone and of the English Government in the effort to stamp out a great national and patriotic agitation. At that time io8 POPE LEO XIII. Mr. Gladstone had not become fully acquainted with the realities of Ireland's condition and of Ireland's needs. No one can doubt — no calm observer among Irish Nationalists ever did doubt — the absolute good faith and sympathy of the advice which the Vatican gave to Ireland. To the authorities in the Papal Court nothing that could happen to Ireland seemed so terrible as that Ireland should commit crime. The sincerest affection for Ireland inspired, beyond question, the condemnation, such as it was, of the Land League. But the inter- vention was a mistake all the same, for it was founded on imperfect knowledge and a mis-appreciation of the whole conditions of the political and social struggle in Ireland. So strongly did public feeling in Ireland go that many men began to talk — some with complacency, some with wild alarm, according as they were Protestant or Catholic — of the possibility of a religious schism between Ireland and the Roman Church. There never was, according to my view, the slightest chance of any such schism taking place I have already given one reason for this convic- tion. The poorest Irish peasant thoroughly understands the difference between the Pope as a spiritual authority and the Pope as a political adviser. Some account, per- haps, ought to be taken of the fact that the declaration against the Parnell tribute was not issued in the Pope's own name. But this did not really reckon for very much. The Irish Catholics saw that many of their Archbishops and Bishops remained faithful and devoted to the national cause, and the cause of the Irish tenant. Therefore it IRELAND. 109 was clear that it was not a question on which the Pope claimed a right to decide as Head of the Church, When Cardinal MacCabe died, and the names of three eligible men for the Catholic Archbishopric of Dublin were submitted in the usual way to the Pope, Leo the Thirteenth selected Dr. Walsh, the present Archbishop, who had identified himself from the first with the Home Rule cause, and with the effort to obtain justice for the Irish peasant. The fact certainly was that the intervention of the Vatican gave a fresh and sudden impulse to the collection for the Parnell tribute. For one cause or another — the chief cause being the poverty that so widely prevailed throughout the very classes in Ireland who would most gladly have helped in the movement — the contributions had been lagging. But the idea that some Roman Cardinals had been trying to turn the Catholicism of Ireland to account, as against the Nationalism of Ireland, was too much for Irish Nationalists. Something like the same feeling had been manifested once, at least, during the leadership of O'Connell, when it was proclaimed by him that Irishmen would take their religion from Rome, but not their politics. The Parnell contribution went up by leaps and bounds. It amounted, before all was done, to some forty thousand pounds; and among the con- tributors were many of the most devoted Catholics Ireland had ever nurtured. Some people in England are in the habit of regarding Irish Catholics as a population of religious bigots and fanatics. Home Rule, it has often been dogmatically declared, would mean Rome Rule. We need hardly, perhaps, point attention to the no POPE LEO XIII. fact that Mr. Parnell, on whose behalf the Irish people thus stood up against the councils of the Vatican, was a thorough Protestant, and came from a long line of English Protestant ancestors. The mission, as it was sometimes called, of Sir George Errington, then Mr. Errington, to Rome, was a ridiculous incident in a serious story. Mr. Errington was then a member of the House of Commons, and of that group of Irish representatives whom Mr. Gladstone, with unin- tentional humour, once called "the nominal Home Rulers." He was a man of position and of education, but he certainly was not a striking political figure. He was more a Liberal than a Nationalist. He was well liked in society, but had made no mark whatever in the House of Commons. Somehow or other the late Lord Granville allowed himself to be persuaded for a moment that Mr. Errington had great influence with the Vatican ; and that it would be a good thing to make use of that influence in order to secure for the EngUsh Government the help of the Pope in the struggle against the Irish national agitation. The facts of the whole story never came fully out, although many attempts in and out of Parliament were made to get the full tale told. Mr. Errington undoubtedly was under the impression that he had a formal authority from Lord Granville. Lord Granville was under the impression that he had nothing of the kind. It was admitted that a letter of recom- mendation had been conceded to Mr. Errington, but it was denied that the letter imposed on him, or entrusted to him, any manner of diplomatic authority or function. There was a great deal of question and answer, state- IRELAND. Ill ment and counter-statement, denial and qualification, until at last the English public began to get tired of it. Finally, a letter of Mr. Errington's, never intended for publication, found its way somehow into the newspapers, and proved that Mr. Errington himself had not taken his mission very seriously. Then the whole subject soon passed, in England at least, away from the attention of the public. In Ireland, however, the national feeling still remained for a time unsatisfied and excited. There was a good deal of anger among the Nationalists because of the manner in which Mr. Gladstone and Lord Granville were supposed to have acted. It was firmly believed by many persons, for a time, that the English Government had insidiously endeavoured to bring influence to bear upon the Vatican, in order that the Pope might be prevailed upon to censure the Nationalist movement in Ireland. Assuredly nothing could have been more unwise on the part of any English Government than to make such an attempt; but Pope Leo was the last man in the world likely to allow himself to be drawn into such a piece of diplomatic artifice. Let it be added that Mr. Gladstone was the last man in the world likely to make such an attempt. I am satisfied that on the side of the Vatican, and on the side of the English Government, there was absolute good faith and high purpose. The one mistake made by the Government was in paying any attention whatever to Mr. Errington, or in allowing him or anybody else to suppose for a moment that he had been entrusted with any diplomatic mission. There is every reason to believe that as tlie Pope 112 POPE LEO XIII. became more closely acquainted with the realities of the Irish struggle, he came to take a more liberal view of the objects which inspired it, and of the men who guided it. The sympathies of the Pope with the Irish Nationalist cause grew and grew as that cause more and more justified itself. Only the other day, the Pope sent his blessing to Mr. Dillon, on the wedding morning of the man who had taken so prominent a part in the political and the agrarian agitation throughout Ireland. CHAPTER IX. THE P^SONER OF THE VATICAN. The Anti-Papal demonstration on the removal of the remains of Pope Pius — Outbreak of fanatical fury — Pope Leo justifies his resolve not at present to come out of the Vatican. THE seclusion of the Pope in the Vatican and the Vatican gardens has been the subject of much comment and criticism in this country. The comment and the criticism have usually been of an unfavourable character. The idea, apparently, has been that the Pope was performing for his own purposes a sort of melo- dramatic part ; that he was making himself a voluntary martyr where no real occasion of martyrdom existed ; and that he was doing all this in order, if possible, to bring discredit on the national movement and on the Italian administration. But it has to be remembered that many things happened which, if fairly considered, would, even in the opinion of professedly hostile critics, offer some substantial explanation of the course of action pursued by Leo the Thirteenth. No man in our times had less tendency or taste for the melodramatic, or for the exhibition of himself as an imprisoned martyr. We have already seen how Leo made it his duty to be the first in offering terms of peace to all the rulers of the Continental H 113 114 POPE LEO XIII. States with whom Fate had forced him into a condition of antagonism. But he naturally avoided exposing him- self, and the Church over which he presided, to the turbulent and ferocious demonstrations of irreconcileable anti-Papal passion. Nothing could have been gained for the prospects of peace and reconciliation by his encounter- ing any risk of such an outbreak. Let us remember what happened in July, 1881, when arrangements were made for the removal of the last remains of Pope Pius the Ninth from St. Peter's to the church of St. Lawrence, outside the walls, which the late Pontiff had chosen for his final resting-place. One might have thought that any class of Italians, any order of citizens, any sect of Christians, would have regarded such a ceremonial with sympathy and with respect. The late Pope had borne his faculties very meekly. He had not been an oppressor; he had not been a self-seeker; he had not enriched himself or any of his family at the expense of the State ; he had not shown himself to be what, in melodramatic phraseology, is called " a haughty Pontiff." He had been, up to a certain crisis, in full sympathy with the national movement. Yet his very bones were not allowed to be borne in peace to their last resting-place. The melancholy, solemn, and touching occasion was made the opportunity for a demonstration of anti-Papal fury, which amounted to a riot and a scandal. It was intended that the removal should be effected as quietly and unostentatiously as possible. Such was the wish of the Italian Government, and such was the wish of Pope Leo himself. Some Catholic writers have condemned the Italian Government for THE PRISONER OF THE VATICAN. 115 desiring that midnight and darkness should enshroud the ceremonial. But there seems no reason to believe that the King's Ministers were not acting in perfect good faith, and out of an anxiety to save the city of Rome from the unseemly and even outrageous demonstrations which, after all, actually did take place. Of course, the proposed removal could not be kept a secret. The preparations for it could not be conducted in absolute mystery. It got to be known among those who were devoted to the memory of Pius the Ninth that there was to be a midnight procession; and if these came to know of it, nobody can wonder that the enemies of the late Pope contrived to get to know of it as well. An unpretentious bier and a few carriages constituted the whole substance of the funeral procession. But there were thousands of friends in the streets prepared in accompany the bier of Pius the Ninth. There were hundreds of enemies, too. AVindows were lighted, and mourning-wreaths were showered down upon the cofifin. A crowd of infuriated anti-Papalists gathered along the way, and accompanied the procession with hootings, and bowlings, and curses, and even with ferocious threats that the body of the dead Pope would be taken from the coffin, and flung into the Tiber. It is a long way from St. Peter's to St. Lawrence's church, and the whole way was made a scene of barbaric outcry, clamour, and denunciation. No doubt the numbers of those who carried on this loathsome form of anti-Papal demon- stration were few, indeed, when compared with the numbers of the reverential and mournful pilgrims who followed in silence and in sorrow. Those who formed ii6 POPE LEO XIII. the procession shewed great self-control, and kept admir- able order, although many of them were wounded with sticks and stones. Thus what might have become a serious and a sanguinary riot was kept within the limits of a mere unprovoked and wanton disturbance. Of course, the vast and overwhelming majority of the people of Rome, and the people of Italy everywhere, utterly condemned the conduct of the disturbers. De- putations and addresses of homage and sympathy poured in upon the Pope from all parts of Italy, and from abroad as well as from at home. As might naturally be expected, the cause of the Pope gained much more than it lost by the turbulent and indecent display made around the coffin of his predecessor. Still it must be owned that such a scene was not calculated to invite Pope Leo to come out of his retirement, and mingle freely with the people in the streets. Rome, like every other great city, had its residuum of ruffianism — a crowd of Atheists, Communists, Nihilists, Dynamiters, the avowed enemies of all law and order, and, in especial, the avowed enemies of the Pope and the Church. No one could tell what occasion might be taken of any appearance of the Pope in the public streets to make some coarse demonstration of hostility against him, even if nothing worse were to be done or attempted. A man of the Pope's age and dignity could hardly be expected to put himself in the way of any such attack. It could be nothing but a horror to him to hear shrieks of blasphemy ringing in his ears; and what he probably thought far more of than any outrage upon his own feelings, or peril to his own person, was the scandal which all such doings must THE PRISONER OF THE VATICAN. 117 throw upon Italy in the eyes of the world. So he kept for the time within the shelter of his own enclosure, and waited for better days. For the time? Yes. The Pope had made no sullen resolve to keep himself for his lifetime within the pre- cincts of the Vatican. No doubt he had hope that even in his own lifetime a day of reconciliation would come. " Let the Catholic world," said Pope Leo, as though with a marked * emphasis on the words — " Let the Catholic world see by what has happened what security is left for Us in the Eternal City. The world will better understand by what it has seen that we cannot at present remain in Rome except as prisoner in the Vatican." These words appear in his Allocution on the whole subject; and, as I read them, they clearly indicate that the Pope was limiting his resolve to the actual condition of things — to the condition of things when anti-Papal hatred swelled so high in the hearts of a certain small but unrestrainable body of fanatic enemies, as to compel him, for the sake of the Church's dignity, and for the sake of the very men who would have wished to outrage it, to keep himself within the bounds of his own domain, and offer no temptation to anti-Papal and anti-Christian fury. Not long before the disturbances on the July midnight of 1 88 1, Pope Leo had given a thoroughly characteristic piece of advice to a number of deputations which waited on him. The advice was that Roman Catholics all over the country should exercise their voting power, to the best of their ability, in the communal and provincial elections — " the only field which, for reasons of order, of ii8 POPE LEO XIII. a very elevated kind, is at present open to the Catholics of Italy." The truth is that Pope Leo always stretched out his hands to the modern world, while he was a loving student of its older history. He endeavoured to find out whatever was good in any new doctrine or scheme or system that claimed the attention of human beings. He did not reject without investigation. He has not decreed without research. He has shewn a leaning towards views and schools having to do with social subjects which would, a few years ago, have been denounced by most of the State Bishops in this country as anarchic, and undeserving, except as such, any manner of serious consideration. Leo has been called the Socialist Pontiff. The truth is that there are many questions concerning social life which he could not consider as having been absolutely and for ever settled by the narrow dogmatisings of a certain school of political economy, which has already closed its doors and prac- tically ceased to teach, for the good reason that no scholars would come any more to listen and to be taught. In this country we have seen the most remarkable changes of this kind. We are distinctly coming back to that " odious thing," as Macaulay described it, which he called a paternal government. The "laissez faire" principle has few believers at the present moment. No one can tell what may not come up the day after to- morrow. But it is certain that much of the agitation which was at one time regarded as wild and senseless, where social questions are concerned, is now accepted as having its kernel of truth, its spark of light and leading ; and it may be added, without fear or even possibility of THE PRISONER OF THE VATICAN. I19 contradiction, that Pope Leo the Thirteenth gave a welcome to the best of the doctrines that the new con- ditions of things were offering to the consideration of thoughtful men. He was always encouraging further study and fresh research in every department of know- ledge. Although shut up within his own home, he was thoroughly a man of the world in the best and noblest sense of the words, and he let nothing escape him which was worth the puhuit. Therefore, it is absurd to repre- sent him, or to think of him, as a self-immured prisoner, letting the world go by as it would. He had, as we have seen, very practical reasons for the retirement which he imposed upon himself; and he was not a hermit, but a statesman and a busy priest. CHAPTER X. CLOSE OF THE KULTUR-KAMPF. Further Negotiations — Visit of the German Prince Imperial to the Pope — Death of Emperor William, and soon after of Emperor Frederick — Visit of New Emperor to the Vatican — Fall of Bis- marck — Death of Windhorst. THE Struggle between the Vatican and Berlin was showing every day better and better signs of an approaching reconciliation. The Pope remained firm to his old policy of conciliation and concession, where con- ciliation and concession did not mean an abandonment of principle. The difficulty with Prince Bismarck seemed mainly to lie in the fact that he could not quite see where the question of principle came in. He was, probably, in his heart, sincerely inclined to bring the whole con- troversy, and the whole strife, to an end. It was becoming a serious trouble in a State, one-third of whose population was made up of Roman Catholics. It was causing much comment, and even scandal, in Austria, and it was under- stood that Austrian statesmen were offering advice both to the Vatican and to BerHn. But Bismarck appeared, up to a certain time, to be under the impression that if the Pope conceded one or two points he would concede every point, provided only that he were pressed far enough. CLOSE OF THE KULTUR-KAMPF. 121 Thus the Pope's own liberality and desire for reconciliation had the effect sometimes of making his great antagonist believe that the Vatican really had no firm ground of resist- ance whatever. It is interesting, it is curious, it is some- times almost amusing, as one follows the story of the struggle, to find how often Bismarck is simply amazed when the Pope, having given way on this point and that, suddenly becomes inflexible as adamant, if he is asked to give way on some other point which to the Prussian Minister does not seem to have any greater proportionate importance than any of those on which Leo had yielded. Of course, in a discussion of that kind, the Pope had the inestimable advantage of knowing exactly what he could do, and what he could not do. Bismarck's limits were only considerations of political prudence and safety. The Pope had to think of a faith and a church, and of the Catholic cause all over the world. As I have said before, his empire knew no limits. There is no need to go very minutely into the long nego- tiations that took place. The Pope was quite willing to agree that the names of young men called to the priesthood by the bishops should be communicated to the govern- ment, before the canonical institution took place. But the Pope made it a condition that the exiled ecclesiastics should be allowed to return under a full amnesty. The Pope also demanded that the government should under- take to have the laws of May revised, in some manner which should reconcile them to the principles of the Church, and should give back to the Church the direction of the religious education in its schools. The Prussian Government professed to recognise the conciliatory in- 122 POPE LEO XIll. tentions, but declared that the government were bound by the laws already in existence, and could not enter into the undertaking suggested by the Pope. Meanwhile the discretionary powers created by the act of July, 1880, expired on January ist, 1882. A new measure, introduced in the following March, renewed the powers given to the government, but added to them the right to recall the bishops banished from their places, and to dispense new priests from the State examination. The government, after some demur, ac- cepted the measure, which was limited in its duration to one year. In November, 1882, the Emperor expressed, in his speech from the throne, the gratification which it gave him to find diplomatic relations re-established be-, tween the Vatican and Berlin. The Pope wrote to the Emperor, on December 3rd, thanking him for the goodwill and the conciliatory purpose made manifest in his speech, and merely adding a hope that the new legislation in Prussia might be so far modified as to allow the Catholic religion to do its work unhindered in Germany. The Emperor made a courteous reply on December 22nd, 1882, suggesting that if the Vatican would agree to submit to the government the names of the new clergymen before these were actually installed in the priesthood, the govern- ment would be quite willing to meet the Pope halfway by various modifications or mitigations in the ecclesiastical laws. On the 30th of January, 1883, the Pope replied to the Emperor, and assured him of the willingness of the Vatican to allow the bishops to submit to the government the names of candidates for the priesthood. CLOSE OF THE KULTUR-KAMPP. 123 Some of the Prussian Ultramontanes were greatly dis- satisfied with the concessions made by the Pope, and went so far as to call Leo's action a policy of unconditional surrender. On the other hand, it need hardly be said that some of the Prussian Liberals were equally angry with their government, on the ground that, as they asserted, everything had been given up to the Pope. The truth is that the Pope and Prince Bismarck were states- men, and the maffiontents on both sides were not. A bill was introduced into the Prussian Parliament which went farther in the way of concession than any outsider might have expected. I cannot describe this measure more clearly and succinctly than I find it described in the accurate, impartial, and colourless record of the Annual Register for 1883. "Under this Bill the obligation of notifying appoint- ments was limited to permanent appointments bestowed upon ordained priests, and the faculty of exercising spiritual functions was extended to all the sees in the kingdom ; while questions relating to ecclesiastical offices, the appoint- ment of teachers in ecclesiastical training colleges, and the exercise of episcopal rights in vacant sees were transferred from the Ecclesiastical Courts to the Minister of Public Worship, whose interest it is to cultivate the goodwill of the hierarchy." The Bill was passed with some modifications, mainly on the suggestion of the Vatican, in July, 1883. During the debates on the measure, Herr Windhorst, the leader of the Catholic party, declared that his friends and he could not undertake to abandon their effort for a complete revision of the May legislation, and that they accepted the present measure only as a step towards the full 124 POPE LEO Kill. accomplishment of their purpose. In fact, the Kultur- Kampf was not quite over even yet. About the middle of December the German Prince Imperial paid a visit, at once formal and friendly, to the Pope. It came about in this way. The Prince was in Rome on a visit to the King of Italy. He was naturally very anxious to see the Pope, and to promote still further the good understanding that was growing up between the Vatican and his father's Government. But there was a difficulty and a peculiarity in the whole situation. The Prince, being the guest of King Humbert, did not think it would be possible, according to any conceivable code of etiquette, to drive from the King's palace, and in one of the King's carriages, to visit the Pope at the Vatican. The Prince therefore returned to the Prussian Embassy, and set out from that undoubtedly German territory in a private carriage to pay his homage to the Pope. We shall have to take account later on of a difficulty of the same kind, ending in a less satisfactory manner, when the Sovereign of Portugal had to choose between Pope and King in Rome. Of course, the condition of things was outside all ordinary experience and calculation, and the best-intentioned and most astute diplomacy could not always count on meeting its many difficulties. The visit of the Prince Imperial lasted, it is recorded, for more than an hour. It is not likely that a single word was said about the Kultur-Kampf, but it may be taken for granted that the interview between the Pope and the Prince led to expressions on both sides of a feeling of goodwill, which had much to do with the final settlement of the whole controversy. CLOSE OF THE KULTUR-KAMPF. 125 To the outer political world the visit conveyed clear assurance of the desire of the Emperor to stand well with the Pope, and of the willingness of the Pope to come to a satisfactory arrangement with the Emperor. Some of the Prussian Radicals were mightily displeased with the visit, and proclaimed loudly that it was only a second pilgrimage to Canossa. But by this time Prince Bismarck's famous phrase had spent its force, and most men of any comrflon-sense in Germany were weary of the whole controversy, and were not at all prepared to admit that a reasonable settlement of grievances, the existence of which they themselves for the most part admitted, could possibly be regarded as anything like a Canossa humiliation. In truth, the Pope's patience, firmness, and moderation had thus far won the day. The relations between the Vatican and Berlin were suddenly brought closer in a curious and unexpected sort of way. Germany had taken possession, in the year 1885, of certain of the Caroline Islands, in the South Pacific, which Spain claimed as her own. The action of Germany caused a wild excitement in Spain. The state of things threatened to become grave and full of danger. The Cabinet of Berlin proposed, to the astonishment of the whole world, to submit the entire question to the arbitrament of Leo the Thirteenth. On the 2nd of October the Pope received from the Emperor a letter which offered to him the position of arbitrator in the dispute. The Pope did not see his way to accept the position of arbitrator, but he declared his willingness to act as mediator between Germany and Spain. His offer was accepted by both States, and, after a long 126 rOPE LEO xin. consideration of the whole question, the Pope proposed a plan of settlement. This was an agreement which recognised the prior right of Spain, while at the same time securing to the German subjects a full protection and certain commercial concessions to which they had made a reasonable claim The act of agreement was signed on the 13th of December, in the Vatican, by the German and Spanish plenipotentiaries. The whole business was got through with a commendable ex- pedition not often to be read of m the history of diplomacy. There was an interchange of courtesies, of orders, and of gifts. The Emperor presented the Pope with a magnificent pectoral cross, accompanied by an autograph letter. Cardinal Jacobini received the Order of the Black Eagle, while Leo sent to Prince Bismarck the insignia of the Order of Christ, and addressed to him a long and most cordial letter — "We desire," said the Pope, "to testify to you our gratitude for the manner in which you have so powerfully contributed to offer to us an occasion most favourable for the exercise of our influence in the interests of peace. , Your political sagacity has certainly, as the whole world recognises, contributed much to the creation of the great and powerful German Empire, and it is natural that the solidity and the prosperity of that Empire should be the first object of your efforts. But it cannot possibly have escaped a perspicacity like yours that there are limitless means by which the power with which We are clothed can act for the maintenance of political and social order, especially if that power can enjoy, without restriction, its full liberty of action. Permit Us, then, to anticipate in spirit coming events, and regard what has been done as a pledge of what the future is to bring about. In order CLOSE OF THE fCULTUR-KA.UPF. 127 that you may possess from the present the testimony of our sentiments, we name you Chevalier of the Order of Christ, of which the insignia shall be sent to you with this letter." The Pope's circular made good use of its opportunity, when Leo blandly pointed out to Bismarck, who had sought the help of his mediation, that such help could best be given, at all times, when the authority of the Vatican was left most free to 'exercise its spiritual influence. It was noticed with much curiosity and interest throughout Europe, during the course of the correspondence on the subject of the Caroline Islands, that Prince Bismarck had frequently given to the Pope the title of Sire, the title only given to a ruling prince. Many of the opponents of the Pope's claims to such a position were made very angry by Prince Bismarck's apparent recognition of the temporal power. Undoubtedly, the relationship which was established between Rome and Berlin, on the subject of the Caroline Islands, had a good deal to do with helping forward the re-action against the anti-Papal legislation. Prince Bis- marck, apparently, was even still under the impression that he could induce the Pope to use his influence over the Catholic clergy in favour of Bismarck's political action. The Pope held firmly to his own ground. The Church must be perfectly free in its spiritual influence, and in the discharge of its ecclesiastical functions. The May laws still remained in all their rigidness. The Catholic Church was still, in the legal sense, absolutely at the mercy of the Prussian Government. The Pope made it quite clear, that until the May laws were fundamentally altered, there 128 POPE LEO XIII. could be no thorough cordiality of action between the "Vatican and Berlin. On the 6th of January, 1886 — we pass over years somewhat rapidly in order to bring this whole chapter of history to a close — the Pope addressed a letter to the Catholic bishops of Prussia. In this letter he once again set forth the principles on which alone such a form of relationship could be established between the Emperor and himself. These principles were, it is need- less to say, the repeal of all legislation which interfered with the free exercise of a priest's ministration, and the liberty of the bishops in the management of their churches and in the education of the younger clergy. The Pope paid a high tribute to the constancy of the clergy in their devotion to the Church. "That virtue," he went on to say, "is so much the more worthy of praise, because in their energetic defence of the Church they have never lost sight of the fidelity due to the majesty of the sovereign, nor of the love due to the native land. . . . We have never been negligent in declaring to all rulers, that our intention was to show our- selves favourable to their requirements in every measure compatible with the divine laws and the duty of conscience. For while we are thoroughly animated by a sincere desire for peace, it is not lawful for us to undertake any- thing against the orders established by God; for which, if the necessity of defending them should exact it, we should not hesitate to follow the example of our pre- decessors, and to bear the last extremities of the struggle." There, then, was the crisis of the whole dispute. The Pope, to use the modern colloquial expression, had put his foot down. He was not prepared to take it up again. He had made it plain how far he would go, and how far he would not go, in the way of compromise. The next CLOSE OF THE KULTUR-KAMPF. 129 move was obviously for the Emperor and his Government, if any progress was to be made towards reconcihation. The Emperor himself took a step, not without a serious significance, towards that end. He called up to the Chamber of Peers the Catholic bishop of Fulda, after- wards Archbishop of Breslau and Cardinal. The Govern- ment, at the same time, brought in a new measure in which the discretionary powers, so ardently defended and so rigorously put into operation, were practically given up. The year 1888, the sacerdotal jubilee year of Leo the Thirteenth, was made memorable by many momentous events. The stout old Emperor William the First died. He went down into the tomb, to use the happy and picturesque expression of Monsignor de T'Serclaes, " like to some giant in the Niebelungen Lied, and entered at the same moment into legend, his brow cinctured with an aureole of military grandeur." In his latest days he had shown an ever-increasing desire to be on friendly terms with the Pope and the Vatican. Then followed the short reign of Frederick the Third. It was merely the few months of a dying man. All Europe may be said to have watched with intense anxiety beside that death-bed. Much had been expected from the new Emperor, because of his enlightened mind and his exalted character. Many hopes were disappointed by his death. His son. Prince William, succeeded to the throne. I remember as if it were but yesterday having seen Frederick holding up his infant son in his arms, to show him to a vast crowd assembled under the windows of the palace in Berlin. I30 POPE LEO XIII. Much doubt and anxiety was felt as to what the new Emperor might turn out to be — doubt and anxiety which are not even yet by any means settled and set at rest. The first step taken by the new Emperor was distinctly favour- able to the hopes of those who surrounded Pope Leo. The Emperor took care that the announcement of his succession to the throne should be brought to the Pope by a special envoy, who should arrive in Rome at the same time as the envoy who brought the same message to the King of Italy. At the opening of the Prussian Parliament he spoke up for religious toleration, and for the closing of the Kultur-Kampf. He declared that he had seen with especial pleasure that recent legislation had modified the relations between the State and the spiritual head of the Catholic Church, in a manner acceptable to both, and he pledged himself to maintain a religious peace in the countries over which he had come to rule. Soon after, he announced his intention to visit the Pope and the King of Italy, at Rome. The young Emperor took great pains to make his visit acceptable to the Pope as well as to the King. He acted as his father had done not long before, and agreed to visit the Pope not from the Quirinal, where he was the guest of the King, but from the Prussian Embassy. The visit was made in great state, and the Emperor was received by the Pope with every form of welcome, and with the most genuine demonstrations of cordiality. The Pope invited the Emperor into his private apart ments, and asked him to be seated, after which they were left alone ; the Pope and the Emperor. A conver- sation began. It was curiously and inopportunely inter- CLOSE OF THE KULTUR-KAMPF. 131 rupted by an unexpected and somewhat theatric incident, which gave Europe at the time much subject for comment and surprise. I may take the account of this incident from the authentic statement supplied to the Civilth Cattolica : "The Holy Father proposed entering upon various reflections upon the general condition of Europe, the danger with which it was menaced by the increasing audacity of the* anarchical parties, and the absolute necessity of opposing their advance. Hardly, however, had the Holy Father broached this subject, when the interview was abruptly broken in upon by the unexpected entrance of Prince Henry, the Emperor's brother. This regrettable incident naturally gave a fresh turn to the conversation, and prevented the Holy Father from con- tinuing the subject. Nevertheless, before the interview came to an end. His Holiness wished to say a word about religious affairs in Germany. He recalled the satisfactory results obtained in favour of Catholics on a basis of mutual understanding, and pressed for the full accomplishment of their demands by pursuing to the end the work of religious reconciliation. His Majesty received these demands very graciously, revealing, in his reply, the nobility of his nature as well as his goodwill towards his Catholic subjects." It is needless to say that this incident was the subject of comment in all the newspapers of Europe. The general idea seemed to be that the intrusion was due to the advice and the insistence of Count Herbert Bismarck, who accompanied the Emperor and the Prince to the Vatican. Count Herbert Bismarck was the son of the great statesman. He had none of his father's genius, but he inherited his occasional brusqueness of manner, which he further adorned by a brusquenes? 132 POPE LEO XIIL all his own. There was nothing known then, and there is nothing known now, about the temper and the manners of Count Herbert which made it seem in the least unlikely that he should have insisted on the uncere- monious introduction of Prince Henry to the private apartments of the Pope. In the confusion caused by this unlooked-for incident the Emperor forgot all about the arrangements made between the Pope and him for his return to the Prussian Embassy. This mistake, combined with Prince Henry's intrusion, made a very discouraging impression on those who were around the Pope. The fear prevailed amongst them that the Emperor really wished to mark a difference between the Pope and the King of Italy. Nothing, however, in the subsequent demeanour of the young Emperor gave any reason for such a suspicion. Again and again he spoke, in reply to various addresses, of the necessity of respecting the faith of those who differ from us in religion, and of the widest tolerance for the creed of others. Perhaps with that incident the Kultur-Kampf may be said to have closed. The struggle was over, and it only remained for the Prussian Government to make restitution for some of the privations imposed upon the bishops and priests of Prussia. The restitution was made after some delay, and after a sharp little struggle, led by Windhorst, against certain of the conditions which accompanied the proposed restoration. But in the end the Vatican carried the day. In the meantime Prince Bismarck had been dismissed from his place, for this wqs what it actually came to. The pilot had been CLOSE OF THE KULTUR-KAMPF. 133 dropped, and General Caprivi had become the Emperor's Prime Minister. The principal author in the triumph of the Vatican, so far as the Parliamentary field was con- cerned, had not the happiness to look on the full success of his efforts. Windhorst died before the formal close of the struggle. His genius and his sincerity were then fully recognised by his most extreme opponents. During his last hours the Emperor went in person to Windhorst's unpretentious home, to enquire after the condition of the man who, not long before, had been denounced as the enemy of the empire. After Windhorst's death, the Emperor sent a wreath of flowers to be laid upon his coffin. CHAPTER XI. "OH, MUCH DESIRED PRIZE, SWEET LIBERTY!" The Pope's Encyclical Letter on Liberty — The Encyclical on the principal duties of Christian citizens — Death of the Pope's brother, Cardinal Pecci. IN the June of 1888 appeared an encyclical letter from the Pope, having for its subject the question of human liberty. Twenty years before the same subject had been treated of by John Stuart Mill, in an essay which made a distinct mark upon its time, and the influence of which has not yet wholly passed away from English thought. It is curious to notice the difference of the point of view from which the question of human liberty is regarded by the Encyclical and by the Essay. Mr. Mill explains that the object of the Essay is "to assert one very simple principle, as entitled to govern absolutely the dealings of society with the individual in the way of compulsion and control, whether the means used be physical force in the form of legal penalties, or the moral coercion of public opinion. . . That principle is," he goes on to say, "that the sole end for which mankind are warranted, individually or collectively, in interfering with the liberty of action of any of their number is self- protection." Mill contends, and even insists, that "the 134 "SWEET LIBERTY" 135 only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilised community against his will, is to prevent harm to others. . . " His own good, either physical or moral, is not a sufficient warrant. He cannot rightfully be compelled to do or forbear, because it will be better for him to do so, because it will make him happier, because, in the opinions of others, to do so would be wise or even right. These are good reasons for remonstrating with him, or reasoning with him, or p'^rsuading him, or entreating him, but not for compelling him or visiting him with any evil in case he do otherwise. To justify that, the conduct from which it is desired to deter him must be calculated to produce evil to someone else. The only part of the conduct of anyone for which he is amenable to society, is that which concerns others. In the part which merely concerns himself, his independence is, of right, absolute. Over himself, over his own body and mind, the individual is sovereign." According to this principle, very clearly expressed, society would have no right to prevent a man from committing suicide or drinking himself to death, provided only that the man had no family whose means and comfort were dependent upon his continuing to live. I am not concerned to argue the question just now; I am only anxious to show that the Pope naturally approached the whole subject from a totally different point of view. Conscience guided by religion is, according to Pope Leo, the only inspiration which can direct mankind along the way to liberty. " Human liberty," the Pope says, " neces- sarily stands in need of light and strength to direct its actions to good, and to restrain them from evil. Without this the freedom of our will would be our ruin. First of 136 POPE LEO XIII. all, there must be law ; that is, a fixed rule of teaching what is to be done and what is to be left undone. . In man's free will, therefore, or in the moral necessity of our voluntary acts being in accordance with reason, lies the very root of the necessity of law." I may perhaps appropriately call attention to the saying of Goethe, that "only in law can the spirit of man find freedom." "Nothing more foolish," says the Pope, " can be uttered or conceived than the notion that, because man is free by nature he is therefore exempt from law. Were this the case, it would follow that to become free we must be deprived of reason, whereas the truth is that we are bound to submit to law precisely because we are free by our very nature. "All prescriptions of human nature can have force of law only inasmuch as they are the voice and the inter- preters of some higher power, on which our reason and liberty necessarily depend. For, since the force of law consists in the imposing of obligations and the granting of rights, authority is the one and only foundation of all law, the power, that is, of fixing duties and defining rights, as also of assigning the necessary sanctions of reward and punishment to each and all of its commands. But all this, clearly, cannot be found in man, if, as his own supreme legislator, he is to be the rule of his own actions. It follows, therefore, that the law of nature is the same thing as the eternal law, implanted in rational creatures and inclining them to their right action, and can be nothing else than the eternal reason of God, the Creator and Ruler of all the world." Mill, it will be seen, was merely providing for the civil management of society, assuming it to be wholly left to itself. Even on that assumption his definition of the right of an individual seems to me to be unsatisfactory. "SWEET liberty:' 137 I cannot admit that a man ought to be allowed the right of drinking himself to death, if society could put him under such a restraint as might compel him to live, and give him a chance of turning his mind to better things. But it is quite clear than any form of Christian faith must accept the Pope's definition of man's individual right, and of the right of society towards him, with much more cordial acquiescence than can be given to the theory of Mr. ^11. Goethe's principle comes far nearer to a general definition of the place of the individual in • society than that of Stuart Mill. I say this as one who has the highest reverence for the memory of Stuart Mill, as one who knew him, as one who experienced kindness from him, and who regarded him as a man of virtue as well as of genius. " The true liberty of human society does not consist," the Pope declares, " in every man doing what he pleases, for that would simply end in turmoil and confusion, and bring on the overthrow of the State ; but rather in this, that through the injunctions of the civil law, all may more easily conform to the prescriptions of the eternal law. . . . The binding force of human laws is in this, that they are to be regarded as applications of the eternal law,' and incapable of sanctioning anything which is not contained in the eternal law, as in the principle of all law. . , . Therefore," the Pope urges, "the nature of human liberty, however it be considered, whether in individuals or in society, whether in those who command or in those who obey, supposes the necessity of obedience to some supreme and eternal law, which is no other than . the authority of God commanding good and forbidding evil. And so far from this most just authority of God over men destroying, or even diminishing their liberty, it protects and perfects it ; for the real perfection of all creatures is found in the prosecution and attainment of 138 POPE LEO XIII. their respective ends ; but the supreme end to which human liberty must aspire is God." There, then, we have the fundamental, the essential, difference between the views of the Pope and those of Stuart Mill on human liberty. I have dwelt thus much on Mill's Essay, because I am of opinion that from his own point of view he made the clearest, the sincerest, and the most logical exposition of his principles that has been set out for our generation. It is a theory based on the conception of a lonely humanity, perishable, and even sure to perish, and only bound in the meanwhile, during what Jean Paul Richter, speaking of the materialist's view of life, calls "the clown's jump through the ring of eternity," to protect its domestic interests as well as it can, and give to every man as much freedom of action as is consistent with the personal security of all his neighbours. You must not set fire to Ucalegon's house; but if Ucalegon be all alone, having neither wife nor child, kith nor kin, he ought to be free to burn his own house, and himself in it, should he be that way inclined. " The highest duty," says the Pope, " is to respect authority, and obediently to submit to just law, and by this the members of a com- munity are effectually protected from the wrong-doing of evil men." But the Pope admits that there are limits to human authority. " Where a law is enacted contrary to reason, or to the eternal law, or to some ordinance of God, obedience is unlawful, lest, while obeying man we become disobedient to God. Thus, an effectual barrier being opposed to tyranny, the authority m the State will not have all its own way, but the interests and "SWEET LIBERTY.*' 139 rights of all will be protected— the rights of individuals, of domestic society, and of all the members of the common- wealth, all being free to live according to law and right reason, and in this, as we have shown, true liberty really consists." Of course, the whole superstructure of the Pope's argument rests on the basis of a religious code of teaching and directing men. That, as we have already said, is an assumption common to all creeds and all denominations of Christians, and not even of Christians only. Those who deny all guidance of man from above will naturally not admit the force of the Pope's argument. I do not go into what may be called the controversial passages of this remarkable Encyclical. Neither, as I am not writing for theologians, do I enter into any questions of theology. The Pope altogether denies that unconditional freedom of thought, of speech, of writing, or of worship, are so many rights given by Nature to man. Liberty, he says, is to be regarded as legitimate in so far only as it affords greater facility for doing good, but no farther. Wherever there exists, or there is reason to fear, an unjust oppression of the people, on the one hand, or a deprivation of the liberty of the Church, on the other, it is lawful to seek for such a change of government as will bring about due liberty of action. "Of the various forms of government the Church does not reject any that are to secure the welfare of the subject; she wishes only, and this Nature itself requires, that they should be constituted without involving wrong to anyone, and especially without violating the rights of the Church." The Pope points out that "unless it be otherwise determined, by reason of some I40 POPE LEO XIII. exceptional condition of things, it is expedient that men should take part in the administration of public affairs. . . The Church approves of everyone devoting his services to the public good, and doing all that he can for the defence, preservation, and prosperity of his country. , , Neither does the Church condemn those who, if it can be done without violation of justice, wish to make their country independent of any foreign or despotic power. . . . The Church has always most faithfully fostered civil liberty, and this was seen especially in Italy, in the municipal prosperity and wealth and glory which were obtained at a time when the salutary power of the Church had spread without opposition to all parts of the State. . . . The Church, while not conceding any right to anything save what is true and honest, does not forbid public authority to tolerate what is at variance with truth and justice, for the sake of avoiding some greater evil, or of obtaining or preserving some greater good." The Pope reminds the world of the service which the Church had done at various times in bringing about the abolition of slavery. The sum of the whole document, apart from its purely theological or ecclesiastical passages, is to assert that there is and must be a higher guidance and authority for the government of human society, than can be found in any convenient compromise adopted by statesmanship as the result of its own intuitions and its own observation. It is easy to see that this doctrine would not be likely to find acceptance among those who do not believe that there is any divine guidance or any future world. But to those who do admit that there is something beyond and above "SWEET LIBERTY." 141 physical nature, I think the general teaching of the Pope in this Encyclical must appeal for sympathy. The Protestant indeed may complain that the Pope claims for his own Church the right to teach the world, but, of course, it is the faith and duty of the Pope to make such a claim. Apart, however, from this, I think the Encyclical is one which can be read with approval by every member of a Christian denomination. All Christians agree that there is a law above any code that can be schemed out by men, a higher law which ought to guide and inform and inspire all the legislation devised by and imposed upon human beings. This I understand to be the teaching of the Pope in the Encyclical which I have been summarising, and if this be bigotry, then it is a bigotry which is a fundamental part of the whole Christian faith. In the early days of 1890, the Pope had to bear a heavy loss in the death of his brother. Cardinal Pecci. Joseph Pecci, the Cardinal, had been nominated by Pius the Ninth Professor of Philosophy in the Roman University. After the entrance of the Italian troops into Rome, Joseph Pecci refused to take the oath of allegiance exacted by the Royal Government from men holding such a position as his, and he quietly gave in his resignation of the post he held. He continued to teach his lessons of philosophy in a new institution established by Pope Pius to supply the place of the Roman university, which had then become simply an official institution. The most tender affection existed between the Pope and his brother. The two had risen in the Church, it might be said, side by side. The Cardinal was the elder of the two. He was 142 POPE LEO XIII. born some three years before his brother, but their places became in a manner reversed. Joachim, by virtue of his position, stood as the head of the house, and Joseph looked up to him with veneration as well as with affection. The Pope has devoted to the memory of his brother some Latin verses, which might charm the scholar by their classical grace as they would charm any one, who could barely read the lines, by their touching and pathetic simplicity, by their resignation, and by their hope. CHAPTER XII. THE POPE AND THE SLAVE. The new outbreak of the slave-trade — The attitude of the Pope towards slavery and the slave-trade — The encyclical letter to the Brazilian Bishops — The opening up of Africa — The Berlin Con- ference prohibiting the slave-trade — The failure of the agreement — The anti-slave-trade crusade of Cardinal Lavigerie. THE Church of Rome has always stood out against the slave-trade, and against slavery in any form. I have already mentioned, in a passing way, that Pope Leo followed faithfully and devotedly in the footsteps of his predecessors. During the worst and darkest of the plantation days in the Southern States of the American Republic, the Catholic Church lent no countenance to slavery. Of course, the Church did not encourage re- bellion, or the rising of slaves against the masters, because the authorities of the Church were always well assured that the growth of enlightenment would cure the evil in time, and that the outbreak of scattered and sporadic resistance would only tend to increase its horrors. At all times, in the Southern States, the altars of the Catholic Church were open to negro communicants, when the negro who owned any other faith was required — and com- pelled — to keep himself to himself, in a church provide^ '43 144 POPE LEO XIII. for the black man, and the black man alone. When at last the long foreseen and inevitable conflict broke out in the American Republic, the root of the quarrel being the question of slave or no slave, the Government of Pius the Ninth was one of the very first to express its sympathy with the side of the Northern States, on the frankly- declared ground that the triumph of the North would be the downfall of slavery. In Pope Leo's time — I mean the time of his papacy — the question of purely domestic slavery had ceased to give much trouble to civilised peoples. It was kept up by Turkey, of course, as it is kept up to this day ; and it still existed in Brazil. But Russia had abolished her serfdom, and the Southern slaves in America were free. There remained, however, in parts of Asia, and in many parts of Africa — especially equatorial Africa — the odious existence of the slave-trade. Civilisation had professedly set its face against the traffic ; but civilisation sometimes allowed strange things to be done behind its back. It so happened that the spread of what was called civilisation had the effect, now and then, of encouraging and foster- ing the odious trade. A new and peculiar outbreak of the slave-trade began to engross the attention of Europe, and more especially to engross the attention of Leo the Thirteenth. The great Powers of Europe, and some of the smaller Powers as well, began to meet in Africa, and the meeting at first seemed only too likely to give a new impulse to the slave- trade. The enterprise of many explorers had drawn the attention of Europe to the vast tracts of land, and the mines of wealth, which were lying idle and barren in this THE POPE AND THE SLAVE. 145 or that region of Africa. Consequently, the European States swooped down upon Africa, as if by common consent. The English, the French, the Germans, the Italians, the Portuguese, the Belgians, all set to work to establish a foothold in that which used to be called the Dark Continent. One would have supposed that the settlement of so many civilized powers must have a direct and immediate influence towards the suppression of the slave-trade in Africa. But the influence at first was not direct, and it certainly was not immediate. On the contrary, its earliest effect was to encourage the in- vasion of Africa by shoals of adventurers and traders and traffickers of all kinds, who only cared about Africa as a place in which money was to be made, and who were as willing to make it, indirectly, at least, out of the slave-trade as out of any other business. Such men, therefore, encouraged and stimulated the Arab slave- trade, because they were able themselves to make a profit out of it. Then, there were international jealousies, misunderstandings, and quarrels ; there were religious distrusts and dissensions among the missionaries from Europe, and, indeed, among the pioneers of European civilization of all kinds. All this tended, undoubtedly, to make the work of the Arab slave-traders more easy and more profitable than it would otherwise have been. It is likely that if any one European Power alone had been put into possession of all the African regions which were occupied, or coveted, by so many European Powers, the slave-trade would have been to that extent, quickly, although gradually, suppressed. But the controversies and the disputations 146 POPE LEO XIIT. prevented for a long time any possibility of united, or even of uniform, action. Cardinal Lavigerie was the first to call the attention of Europe to the menacing danger in Central Africa. With sincerity, with passion, and with power, he preached a new crusade against slavery. There had been a Con- ference held in Berlin, in 1884 and 1885, for the purpose of coming to some understanding and settle- ment amongst the States, European and other, which were interested in the affairs of West Africa. The States represented at the Conference were England, France, Germany, Spain, Portugal, Holland, Belgium, Turkey, and the American RepubUc. In January, 1885, the Conference agreed upon the prohibition of the slave-trade in Africa. The attention of Leo the Thirteenth had been for a long time directed to the new condition of things which was brought about by what people called the "opening up" of the African Continent. Cardinal Lavigerie appealed to the Pope for an authority which might enable him to address himself to all the nations of the earth, in order to obtain a common declaration against the slave-trade. Leo gave him the authority. The Pope expressed, in the letter which he sent to the Cardinal, his confidence still in the promises of the States which, at the Berlin Conference, had pledged themselves to the suppression of the slave-trade in the regions over which their in- fluence extended. The Pope declared that he had especial hope from the intervention of England, "which had so well, and for so long a time, proved her interest in the cause of the negroes. , . , We do not exhort THE POPE AND THE SLAVE. 147 you," the Pope said to the Cardinal, "for a virtue so active as yours has no need of exhortation, but we rather congratulate you on the fact that you continue with such a courage, and such a constancy, to carry out your projects under the auspices of God. Your episcopal charity could not find a better employment anywhere on earth." The Pope accompanied his letter with a gift of 300,000 francs, taken from the presents which he had received on the occasion of his sacerdotal jubilee. The 300,000 francs were, of course, to be devoted to the purposes of the anti- slavery crusade. The Pope, it may be pointed out, had long before this made many a struggle against slavery. More lately he had addressed an Encyclical to the Archbishops and Bishops of what was then the Empire of Brazil, in- voking their assistance in the complete extirpation of the horrors of domestic slavery. In that Encyclical the Pope had borne a willing testimony to the general desire of the Brazilian people, and of their Sovereign, that there should be no slavery within that great and rising State. On the 24th of May, 1888, the Pope received in audience a great deputation of those who were interested in the suppression of the slave trade. Cardinal Lavigerie, then Archbishop of Carthage and Primate of Africa, was at the head of the deputation. There were twelve missionaries from Algeria and twelve negro slaves, or, at least, negroes who had been slaves, and were ransomed by missionaries in Central Africa. Cardinal Lavigerie addressed the Pope on behalf of the deputation. He made, naturally, an allusion to the Encyclical which the 148 POPE LEO XIII. Pope had just addressed to the archbishops and bishops of Brazil, urging them to work for the abohtion of slavery in the South American empire. I may say incidentally that the question in Brazil had come to be merely a question between gradual and immediate abolition ; there were still about a million of domestic slaves there. The effort of the Pope had undoubtedly much to do with the bringing about of the policy of immediate abohtion. Cardinal Lavigerie pointed out in his address that the condition of the African negroes sold into slavery was far worse than the worst state of the domestic slaves in Brazil. "This is the first time," he said, "that Christian negroes come from the very centre of Africa have appeared before the Vicar of Christ." The Pope replied in eloquent and touching words — "Since," he said, "Africa is the principal theatre of this trafific, and the land appropriated by the slave trade, we recommend to all missionaries who preach the Holy Gospel there to consecrate their strength, and even their lives, to that sublime work of redemption. We recom- mend them also to ransom as many slaves as it may be possible for them to do, or at least to obtain for the slaves all the solace of the most tender charity. But it is upon you, above all, my Lord Cardinal, that we count for the success of the work and the missions of Africa. We know your active and intelligent zeal ; we know all that you have done up to this day, and we have full confidence that you will not rest until you have brought your great enterprise to a happy end." Cardinal Lavigerie went to work with characteristic energy on his new crusade. He preached it himself in England, in France, in Italy, in Holland, and in Belgium. The King of the Belgians, Leopold the Second, gave THE POPE AND THE SLAVE. 149 every countenance and help to the Cardinal's mission. The power of the Arab slave-traders was soon in the way to be completely broken in Africa. Cardinal Lavigerie did not live to see much of the success of his work. He died on the 22 nd of November, 1892. The whole civilised world joined in paying tribute to his sincerity, his energy, and his devotion to the great cause which he had made his own. The Monitor of Rome said with truth, that " history will not name the Cardinal without naming the Pope; the two will live together in the memory of men; that alliance honours them both. They understood each other, and in uniting they conceived and executed works to which are attached the redemption of a continent and the uplifting of a people. From the first, in fact, Leo the Thirteenth had divined the Cardinal as one of the men who best deserved of humanity. The constant thought of the Pope was to counsel him, to encourage him, and to sustain him ; to make use of him for their common purposes was his most noble ambition." Both the Pope and the Cardinal thought very highly of the effect produced by the conference of Brussels, called together at the invitation of Leopold the Second, and which had for its avowed object to take under the protection of the European sovereigns the cause of the African negroes, and to adopt measures to put down the slave trade. Cardinal Lavigerie spoke of that agreement as the charter of Africa's freedom. But, as I have already shewn with regard to the conference of Berlin, the immediate effect was not very great. The rivalries of national interests and ambitions, and the recklessness of certain commercial enterprises, spoilt for some time the ISO POPE LEO XIII. undoubtedly sincere efforts of the European sovereigns. Still, it was something that the great principle which condemned the slave trade should have thus again and again been proclaimed by the assent of the European powers. It needed, however, an enthusiasm which is not in diplomacy to put the work into genuine movement. No two men in the world could have been better fitted for such a task than Leo the Thirteenth and Cardinal Lavigerie. The work has yet to be accomplished. The selfish interests which combine to keep up and to profit by the slave trade in Africa are not by any means reduced thus far to impotence. But the great Christian enterprise which seeks to baffle and to destroy them is fairly afoot. The conscience of civilization has been aroused and made active, and time may be trusted to do the rest. It will be remembered that William Pitt, in the close of a great speech which he delivered in the House of Commons on the subject of slavery and the slave trade, made a happy allusion to the fact that a morning sunlight was just beginning to stream into the windows of the House, and turned the occasion into a happy augury for the future enlightenment and redemption of the great African continent. He went even further, and he indulged in the hope that some day or other Africa, the latest call to civilization, would repay by her intelligence and her virtues the debt due by her to other continents, for their efforts on behalf of her redemption. Certainly, if such a day should ever come, its acceleration will be due in large measure to the efforts and the inspiration of Cardinal Lavigerie and Leo the Thirteenth. CHAPTER XIII. THE ORGANIZATION OF LABOUR. « The Pope's efforts towards a system of international agreement with regard to the whole conditions of Labour — The efforts of the German Emperor — The question of the Knights of Labour in America and Canada — The deputations from French working-men to the Pope — The Encyclical on Capital and Labour. IN the mediaeval days, the Pope and the Emperor were either rival powers, or powers in co-operation and in alliance. In our times the Pope and the Emperor, who had been antagonistic powers for a season while the Kultur- Kampf was going on, became allied powers on the great subject of the organization of labour. The labour question had grown to be one of the greatest and most momentous subjects which could agitate modern society. It had come to this, that Capital and Labour began to regard themselves as forces inevitably hostile. The capitalist too often regarded the labourer only as a money- making machine. In some of the worst cases the capitalist seemed to act on the principle proclaimed by the slave-driver in Mrs. Stowe's novel, " Use them up, and Buy More." Undoubtedly, men of that odious kind were the exception; but it was too often thundered into the ears of the working-man that all capitalists were alike, and that they were, by the very nature of their position, and 151 152 POPE LEO Xin. the laws of their being, the enemies of the labouring- class. In every country of the world, it might be said, there were agitators preaching to working-men the doctrine that the capitalist was their born and implacable foe. The very name of capitalist began to be pronounced and regarded by many working-men, as if it were the synonym of slave-owner, or slave-driver. No doubt, much of this came as part of a natural reaction against the easy-going and, at the same time, narrow-minded political economy of a former day — the political economy of which the central maxim was laissez- faire ; which assured us that everything must be for the best in this best of all possible worlds, if only things were left alone to manage themselves — the political economy which taught that unchecked competition was the central beneficent force in social life. That sort of political economy had not merely worn itself out, but had created a strong revulsion of feeling against its doctrine and against its influence. Within our own time England was in advance of all other countries in admitting the failure of the old ideas. The whole course of our factory legislation was a practical recognition of the truth that arrangements of men with men, in regard to work and hire, can no more be left outside the domain of law than any other social arrangements. Freedom of contract became an unmeaning or an utterly misleading phrase, when it was applied to a bargain between a man with plenty of money, and a man who had not in his pocket coin enough to supply him with a meal of victuals. The Pope had long applied his mind to all questions that concerned the labourer and his hire, and he had long THE ORGANIZATION OF LABOUR. 153 been convinced that legislation must deal with this labour question, as it has to deal with other subjects which concern the welfare of human society. But he was also convinced that by no possible intervention of mere State legislation could the reconciliation of capital and labour be accomplished. Pope Leo was satisfied that a great moral and religious influence must also be brought to bear, if the question were to have a satisfactory and a complete settlement. He was often — indeed, incessantly — called on to act as adviser or as arbiter in cases where trouble arose between the forces of capital and labour. In one remark- able instance, he was invited to express an opinion as to the claims and the course of action adopted by an associ- ation formed in the United States and in Canada, which took the name of "the Knights of Labour." This was really a great association of working-men, having for its object the support of the labourer, where necessary, against the capitalist. It was a working-man's Trades Union, just like the Trades Unions with which we are all familiar in this country, Men, of course, will always find some allurement in the mysterious, and the Knights of Labour, at first, put on certain of the forms and fashions of the secret society, and of the Masonic lodge. This, however, was afterwards altered by the American order, in deference mainly to the objections of the Irish Catholics, who counted for much in the ranks of the Knights of Labour. The Grand Master of the order, Mr. Powderley, was an able, moderate, and sensible man, and he was willing that the rules of the organization should be modified in such a manner as to remove all cause of objection and distrust on the part of the Catholic Bishops throughout 154 POPE LEO XIII. the American Republic. In Canada, however, the con- dition of things was not quite the same ; and the Arch- bishop of Quebec, upheld, indeed, by all the Canadian bishops, condemned the Association because of its mystery and its secrecy and its possibly dangerous tendencies. The Archbishop appealed to Rome, and obtained from Rome an expression of disapproval as regarded the form and the rules of the Canadian Asso- ciation, which, be it observed, had not undergone the revision suggested and applied by Mr. Powderley to the Association in the United States. On the other hand, the Archbishops and Bishops of the United States sent to the Pope a clear and very interesting memorial, drawn up by Cardinal Gibbons, Archbishop of Baltimore, who has already been mentioned in this volume. The order of the Knights of Labour in the United States numbered nearly three-quarters of a million of men. Cardinal Gibbons explained, in his letter, that a Council of Archbishops and Bishops had examined the rules of the Association, and that only two out of twelve of the bishops were in favour of its condemnation. No oath was exacted by the Society, Cardinal Gibbons pointed out ; no obligation of secrecy was imposed ; no blind obedience to the chiefs of the order was exacted from its members. There was no indication of hostility towards civil authority or the Church. Cardinal Gibbons went, at some length, into the subject of the grievances against which the Association protested, and against which, as he explained, the Association only claimed a legal remedy. He spoke of the monopolies set up by individuals and by corporations, and the efforts of the monopolists to adapt. THE ORGANIZATION OF LABOUR. 155 not without much success, the legislation of the country to their own profit and advantage. The greed of some of the monopolists, he went on to say, bore down mercilessly on the working-men in many branches of trade, and still more upon the women and the children. No one, he insisted, could deny the existence of the evil, and the necessity of a remedy. But then came the question, whether the methods employed by the Knights of Labour were lawful in themselves ? On this point the Cardinal was very distinct. To obtain any public object, he said, the association and organization of multitudes interested in a reform must be the most effective means to the end — a means at once natural and just. Such a method he declared to be especially in conformity with the genius of the American Republic, and of its essentially popular social state ; and, indeed, almost the only means of commanding public attention, and of giving power to the most legitimate resistance, and weight to the most reasonable demand. Cardinal Gibbons submitted that the strikes, in which, undoubtedly and unhappily, acts of violence sometimes occurred, were by no means the invention of the Knights of Labour, but were the rough-and-ready methods by which, in every country, and in all times, the employed protest against injustice on the part of the employers. The rules and the leaders of the Knights of Labour endeavoured, as far as possible, to discourage violence, and to keep the whole movement within the limits of good order and lawful action. Cardinal Gibbons admitted that amongst the Knights of Labour, as in every move- ment where working-men are grouped in thousands and 156 POPE LEO XIII. hundreds of thousands, there must be wild, or even criminal, men, who commit violence, and urge their fellows to the same 'course. But he protested earnestly against the tendency to attribute those evils to the organization itself. He urged that the Church had a strong interest in not setting itself against so great a social movement. The condemnation of the Knights of Labour would cause a keen irritation in the United States, and would excite many Catholics to a rebellious temperament. It must be recognized, he said, that in this age, and especially in America, obedience cannot be absolutely blind. The Catholic working-men in the United States believed sincerely that they were seeking nothing but justice, and by the most legitimate ways. A condemnation of their movement from Rome would be regarded as unjust, and would perhaps not be accepted. Cardinal Gibbons admitted that the condition of things might be different in Canada, especially in Lower Canada, where the population might be said to be altogether Catholic. He did not fail to point out, also, that the Canadian Bishops had criticised the constitution of the Knights of Labour, before the recent modifications which the interest of Mr. Powderley had been able to introduce into the rules of the American order. I have thought it well to give this somewhat lengthened summary of the memorandum of Cardinal Gibbons. It seems to me to be a clear and practical, and quite states- manlike, document. From some knowledge of the United States and of Canada, I think I may venture to say that it put before the Pope and his councillors an exposition of facts, feelings, and conditions in America, which no THE ORGANIZATION OF LABOUR. 157 well-informed person could possibly dispute. The Pope referred the whole question to the Sacred Congregation of Rome. The Sacred Congregation does not seem to have quite entered into the spirit of Cardinal Gibbons's recommendations. The Congregation abstained from condemning the movement of the Knights of Labour, but only extended to it a certain conditional toleration. It is not unreasonable to suppose that Leo the Thirteenth was, for himself, much more sympathetic with the purposes of the labour organization all over the world. He had more than one opportunity of expressing his sentiments in person. Several pilgrimages of French working-men — one of them organized and introduced by the Count de Mun — waited on him, during the time of his sacerdotal jubilee. One of these pilgrimages contained nearly two thousand members ; another was much larger still. To all of these deputations the Pope spoke with sympathy, with encouragement, and with affection. He warned them against the danger of expecting too much ; he told them that the solution of the whole question would be impossible, except on a basis of mutual charity, of morality, and of religion. But he recognised and accepted their movement; he welcomed them for such as they were — the delegates of a great trades' union organization. In the language of diplomacy, " he recog- nised their existence," and he made it impossible for any one, thereafter, to say that the Pope had pronounced against the movement for the organization of labour. That, in itself, made one of the great events of the time. The young German Emperor was at the same moment deeply interested in the labour question. He was, un- 158 POPE LEO XIII. doubtedly, animated with the best intentions. Like his grandfather, he was much impressed with the danger that threatened the State from the sudden and increasing spread of SociaHsm. His thought and his hope were to combat this evil by well-divined efforts for the improve- ment of the condition of the working-man. He had dreams of a system of international legislation to deal w^ith the whole question of capital and labour in all civilized countries. He proposed to consult England, France, Belgium, and Switzerland, to begin with, as to the possibility of their taking part in some international agreement which might bring about a reconciliation between capital and labour. If these States could see their way to accept his basis of arrangement, then he proposed to invite all the civilized governments of the world to an international conference. In a letter which he addressed to his Minister of Commerce, he declared his desire to protect the working class, as necessarily the weakest portion of the population, by the development of insurance societies, and laws for industrial regulation. "We must start," he said, "on the principle that it is the duty of a Government to regulate the conditions and the hours of labour in such sort that the health of the workers, their moral interests, their material wants, their equality before the law shall be secured." I need not go at any length into an exposition of the ideas of the young Emperor. Many of them had already been put into legislative action in England. Others are sure to be reaUzed as time goes on. The Emperor addressed himself directly to the Pope on the subject. On the 6th of February, 1890, he wrote a letter to Leo, in which he said THE ORGANIZATION OF LABOUR. 159 that "the noble manifestations by which your Holiness has always made your influence prevail in favour of the poor and the neglected of human society, lead me to hope that the international conference, which on my invitation will meet at Berlin on the 15th of the month, may attract the attention of your Holiness, and that you will follow with sympathy the progress of the delibera- tions which have for their object the improvement of the condition of the working populations. I believe it to be my duty to make known to your Holiness the programme which is to serve as the basis for the labours of the con- ference, the success of which will be singularly facilitated if your Holiness would lend to the humanitarian work which I have in my mind your beneficent support." The Pope replied in a letter of the most cordial sympathy. He congratulated the Emperor on having taken so much to heart a cause so worthy of a sovereign's attention, and which must interest the whole human race. Leo made a passing allusion towards his own efforts in a somewhat similar direction, and added that there could be no doubt that the combined actions of civilized govern- ments must contribute powerfully to obtain the objects so much desired by all. " The conformity of views and of legislation, so far at least as the different conditions of places and countries will allow, must have an immense influence on the progress of the question towards an equitable solution. We cannot, therefore, but encourage in the strongest way all the deliberations of the Conference which may tend to improve the conditions of the working populations, such, for instance, as a distribution of labour better proportioned to the strength, to the age, to the sex i6o POPE LEO XHI. of each worker, the rest upon our Lord's Day, and, in general, all that may prevent the working man from being used merely as a vile instrument, without regard for his dignity as a human being, for his morality, and for his domestic hearth." The Pope, naturally, dwelt upon the absolute necessity for the assistance of the Church in such a movement as that which the German Emperor had taken up. "The gospel," he said, "is the only code in which are found the principles of true justice, the maxims of that mutual charity which ought to unite all men as the sons of one father, and the members of the same family. Religion will teach the employer to respect the human dignity in his workman, and to treat him with justice and equity. On the other hand, the same religion will inculcate on the conscience of the working-man the sentiment of duty and of fidelity ; it will render him moral, sober, and honest. It is because Society has lost sight of, neglected, and mistaken the religious principles, that it sees itself now shaken to its very foundation. To restore those principles, and to give them back their strength of influence over the human race, is the only means of re-estabhshing Society on a sound basis, and of guaranteeing peace, order, and prosperity. It is the mission of the Church to preach and to spread these principles and these doctrines throughout the whole world." One can easily read a good deal between the lines of the Pope's letter. Leo was willing to give every help and countenance to the German Emperor's well- meant project. But he, probably, had little faith in any great comprehensive and abiding result to come from the sittings of a diplomatic conference. The roots of the THE ORGANIZATION OF LABOUR. i6i struggle between capital and labour he possibly thought had struck down too deep into modern society to give much hope for any satisfactory arrangement of the con- troversy by a conference of statesmen, many of whom, or most of whom, could only have a second-hand know- ledge of the tremendous difficulties in which the whole question was involved. The conference of Berlin was held, and it brought to light many interesting facts, and supplied many valuable memoranda for future consulta- tions among men, but no great immediate and practical result came of the assemblage. It was not found possible to scheme out any project of uniform national arrangement with regard to the conditions of labour. An international code, if I may put it so, could not as yet be agreed upon and brought into practice. General principles were adopted, but the agreements to these will yet have to be reduced to actual practice. At the same time, we may take it for granted that the Conference, like every other free inter- change of ideas among intelligent men seeking anxiously for some plan of reform, will sooner or later bring forth its fruits. On the general principles of reform in the con- ditions of labour, there was a more complete concurrence of opinion than might have been expected. I may say, in passing, that one of those who represented England at the Conference told me that he was surprised and delighted by the advanced and enlightened expressions of opinion which came from the German delegates. On the 15th of May, 1891, the Pope issued his famous Encyclical on the condition of the working classes. " It is no easy matter," said the Pope, " to define the 1 62 POPE LEO XIII. relative rights and duties of the rich and of thepoor, of capital and of labour. . . . But all agree, and there can indeed be no question whatever about it, that some remedy must be found, and found quickly, for the misery and wretchedness pressing so heavily and so unjustly, even at this moment, on the vast majority of the working classes. . . . The custom of working by contract, and the concentration of so many branches of trade in the hands of a few individuals, have brought about a condition of things, by means of which a small number of very rich men have been able to lay upon the masses of the labouring poor a yoke little better than that of slavery itself" These words of the Pope, I may observe, do not apply merely to the old countries of Europe. They apply just as well to the struggle between capital and labour in America and in Australia. But, now, what is to be done ? What is the solution of the problem? The Pope examines this question with great care and at much length. I can only profess to give in this volume the merest summary of his letter. Leo deals first of all with the pet remedy of the Socialist, the abolition of private property, and the principle that individual possessions should come into the common ownership of all, to be administered by the State or by the municipality. Leo the Thirteenth puts aside these propositions as so clearly powerless to end the con- troversy, that were they carried into effect, the working man himself would be amongst the first to suffer. Pri- vate property, the Pope lays down, is the natural right of man. " When a man engages in remunerative labour, the impelling reason and motive of his work is to obtain THE ORGANIZATION OF LABOUR. 163 property, and thereafter to hold it as his very own." All this, the Pope contends, is not wrong, but is right. " To affirm that God has given the earth for the use and enjoyment of the whole human race, is not to deny that private property is lawful. The earth has been granted to mankind in general, not in the sense that all, without distinction, can deal with it as they like, but rather that no part of it has been assigned for ever to any one in particular, an(f that the limits of private possession have been left to be fixed by man's own industry and by the laws of individual races. . . . The soil, which is tilled and cultivated with toil and skill, utterly changes its con- dition. It was wild before, now it is fruitful ; was barren, but now brings forth in abundance. That which has thus altered and improved the land becomes so truly part of itself as to be in great measure indistinguishable and inseparable from it. Is it just that the fruit of man's own sweat and labour should be possessed and enjoyed by anyone else? As effects follow their cause, so is it just and right that the results of labour should belong to those who have bestowed the labour." I may be excused if I here interject the remark that the words of the Pope cover the whole case of the Irish cottier tenant. In the old days, and before Irish agitation compelled the Legislature to intervene, the Irish tenant reclaimed his land by his own labour and that of his family, and turned it from a shaking bog into a profitable farm ; and then the landlord came in and said, " Either you must pay me a much higher rent, or you shall be turned out of the farm.'' The Pope holds it to be clear that the main tenet of i64 POPE LEO XIII. Socialism — community of goods — must be utterly rejected, since it only injures those whom it would seem meant to benefit, is directly contrary to the natural rights of man- kind, and would introduce confusion and disorder into the common weal. It is impossible, the Pope says, to reduce civil society to one dead level. Socialists may do their utmost to that end, but all such striving against Nature is in vain. There naturally exists among mankind manifold differences of the most important order. People differ in capacity, skill, health, strength; and unequal fortune is a necessary result of unequal conditions. All this, the Pope goes on to explain, is part of the lot of humanity, and has to be accepted as such. No strength and no artifice will ever succeed in wholly banishing from human life some of the ills and inequalities which beset it. The Pope utterly condemns the notion that class is naturally hostile to class, and that the capitalist and the labourer are intended by nature to live in conflict. Capital cannot do without labour, or labour without capital. In the precepts of religion, the Pope declares, is to be found the guidance of each class with regard to its duties towards the others. Religion teaches the labouring man to carry out honestly and fairly all equitable agreements freely entered into ; never to injure the property, or to attack the person, of an employer; never to resort to violence, or to engage in riot or disorder. Religion teaches the wealthy owner and the employer that their workpeople are not to be accounted their bondsmen, and that it is shameful and inhuman to treat men like chattels to make money by, or to look upon them merely as so much muscle or physical power. The employer must THE ORGANIZATION OF LABOUR. 165 never tax his workpeople beyond their strength, or employ them in work unsuited to their age or sex. All masters of labour "should be mindful of this, that to exercise pressure upon the indigent and destitute for the sake of gain, and to gather one's profit out of the need of another, is condemned by all laws human and divine." Then the Pope asks whether, if these precepts were care- fully obeyed and followed out, they would not be enough, of themselves* to keep down all strife, and all the causes of strife. Undoubtedly they would. Nobody could possibly deny that, if such precepts were faithfully obeyed, there would be an end of trouble between master and workmen, between capital and labour. But, then, we all know very well that a great number of men, especially worldly and ambitious men, live only in the present and in themselves, and that the desire for gain to-day makes little account of a wrong-doing or an injustice, the punish- ment of which, if they admit that it is likely to come at all, is only to come in some undefined future. So far, therefore, the Pope's EncycUcal is only a great sermon delivered from the world-commanding pulpit of the Vatican. A great sermon, however, is often a great valid and historical fact, inspiring a great turn in human affairs. But the Pope, as I have said more than once, is a thoroughly practical man, and he by no means meant to be satisfied with giving forth to the world a sermon on morals and religion in general, without adding some direct and immediate suggestions for the practical application of the divine and eternal laws to the conditions and the exigencies of the immediate crisis. Therefore the Pope 1 66 POPE LEO XIII. proceeds to offer his own views as to the manner in which the State ought to deal with the controversies between capital and labour. "When workpeople," he says, " have recourse to a strike, it is frequently because the hours of labour are too long, or the work too hard, or the wages insufficient. The grave inconvenience of this not uncommon occurrence should be obviated by public remedial measures, for such paralysing of labour not only affects the masters and their workpeople alike, but is extremely injurious to trade, and to the general interest of the public." Moreover, as the Pope points out — and he must have had some recent evidences fresh in his memory — " on such occasions violence and dis- order are generally not far distant ; and thus it frequently happens that the public peace is seriously imperilled." The Pope insists that every State should endeavour to pass laws which could forestall and prevent such troubles, by lending their influence and authority to the removal, in good time, of the causes which lead to conflicts between employers and employed. In all agreements between masters and workpeople there is always the condition, expressed or understood, that there should be allowed proper rest for soul and body. This is the condition which the Pope declares it the duty of the State to enforce. "We now," Pope Leo declares, "approach a subject of great and urgent importance, and one in respect of which, if extremes are to be avoided, right principles are absolutely necessary." The Pope is approaching the subject of the working-man's wages. " Wages, as we are told," he says, " are regulated by free consent ; and, THE ORGANIZATION OF LABOUR. 167 therefore, the employer, when he pays what was agreed upon, has done his part, and seemingly is not called upon to do anything beyond." But this mode of reasoning by no means satisfies Pope Leo. It cannot, he says, be convincing to any fair-minded man ; for there are im- portant considerations which it leaves altogether out of account. " Let it be taken for granted that workman and employer should, as a rule, make free agreements, and, in particular, should agree as to the wages, nevertheless there underlies a dictate of nature more imperious and more ancient than any bargain between man and man — namely, that the remuneration must be sufficient to support the wage-earner in reasonable and frugal comfort. If, through necessity, or fear of a worse evil, the workmen accept harder conditions, because an employer or con- tractor will afford him no better, he is simply the victim of force and injustice." But the Pope evidently has no great faith in the adoption or the working of any inter- national or universal code for the regulation of human labour. In regard to the question of wages, he says, and similar questions, "such as, for example, the hours of labour in different trades, and the sanitary precautions to be observed in factories and workshops, it is advisable, in order to supersede undue interference on the part of the State — especially as circumstances, times, and locali- ties differ so widely — that recourse should be had to societies or boards, such as We shall mention presently, or to some other mode of guarding the interests of wage- earners, the State being appealed to, should circumstances require, for its sanction and protection. Employers and workmen can, of themselves, effect much by means of 1 68 POPE LEO XIII. such associations and organizations as afford timely aid to those who are in distress.'' Such associations, the Pope remarks, in passing, would, amongst all other benefits, bring with them the great advantage of drawing the two classes more closely together. Most important of all, according to the Pope, are working-men's unions ; for these virtually include all the rest. The Pope refers to the excellent results which history testifies to have been brought about by the artificers' guilds of olden times. Those guilds were the means of affording not only many advantages to the workmen, but, in no small degree, of promoting the advancement of Art. Such unions should, of course, be suited to the requirements of the present age — an age of wider education, of different habits, and of far more numerous requirements in daily life. "It is gratifying to know that there are actually in existence not a few associations of this nature, consisting even of workmen alone, or of workmen and employers together. But it were greatly to be desired that they should become more numerous and more efficient. . . . Let the State watch over these societies of citizens, banded together for the exercise of their rights, but let it not thrust itself into their peculiar concerns and their organisations ; for things that move and live by the spirit inspiring them, may be killed by the rough grasp of a hand from without." As I understand, the idea of the Pope is that the State should encourage the formation of working-men's unions, and, still more, of unions made up of employers and working-men, for the regulation of all subjects of differ- ence between capital and labour, and for the timely help THE ORGANIZATION OF LABOUR. 169 to all workers in genuine distress. The State is not to intervene in the actual arrangements made by such associations ; but it is, if necessary, and where possible, to enforce the decisions of the representative majority. Until a comparatively-recent period in our own history, all organizations of working-men were held to be, in themselves, objectionable and dangerous societies, and outside the protection of the civil law. Of late years we have, happily, changed all this ; and a trades'-union is now as much under the protection of the civil law as a banking company. What we understand Pope Leo to desire is that the principles which we have estabUshed here in England should be established everywhere, and should also be extended here, and everywhere else. Where an association of masters and men, founded with the consent of the State — and therefore founded, it is to be assumed, on sound and reasonable principles — comes to a difference of opinion, with a large majority on the one side, and a small minority on the other, there does not seem any reason in public policy why the State should not, as a last resort, take care that the decision of the majority is carried out. The general principle of the Pope's Encyclical, apart from its religious and moral precepts, is that the employer and the workmen should band together in association for the arrangement of the conditions of labour, and that the State should give them every encouragement, should protect them in their free discussions, and should even, if needs be, bring its authority to the support of that which is the deliberately- formed opinion of the majority. CHAPTER XIV. THE ECHOES OF THE ENCYCLICAL. What speakers and writers who were not Catholic — English and other observers, Socialists and Communists among the rest — said of the Pope's Encyclical — The Pope's influence in the United States. IT is quite worth while to pause, in the course of the actual narrative, with the object of giving some idea as to the reception which was accorded to the Pope's Encyclical by politicians, preachers, and writers who did not belong to the Catholic Church. In England the Times newspaper declared that the Encyclical abounded in observations worthy of universal attention, and breathed the spirit of Christian charity, and a goodwill which, if it were imitated and shared widely, would go far to resolve all the industrial questions of the epoch. The Times described the Encyclical as clear, logical, and written with all the knowledge of a statesman. The St. James's Gazette, representing the opinions of the Tory Party, thanked the Pope for the courageous words in which he had enforced the necessity of keeping the multitudes within the limits of duty, in our days of un- bridled cupidities. It bluntly asked the question. How many of our politicians at home, who have votes to keep or to win, would have ventured to express such a senti- 170 THE ECHOES OF THE ENCYCLICAL. 171 ment in a form so intrepid ? But the St. James's Gazette hastened to say that it would be a serious injustice to the Pope if his Encyclical were to be treated as a declara- tion on the side of the capitalists. Every paragraph in the document, the St. James's Gazette declared, breathed a love for the working people, and many passages of it were inflamed with an eloquent anger against the inhuman abuses which too often made their way into industries and commerce. The' Guardian, which represents the High Church Party in England, spoke in the warmest terms of the whole tone and purpose of the Encyclical. The effects of Pope Leo's manifesto could not fail, the Guardian said, to be important. In all questions which concern labour, the Catholic Church put itself readily on the side of the working populations. The Pope's Ency- clical had done this in a wise and moderate spirit, and with the constant care to distinguish legitimate claims from those which are extravagant, and are set up on chance, in the pretended interest of the working people. The Pope, it says, spoke as a prudent friend, not as a blind and impassioned advocate. The effect of the Encyclical, the Guardian predicted, would be of immense importance in the development of the social question, and it would be so also without doubt for the future of the Catholic Church. The Bishop of Manchester de- clared at a public meeting that the Encyclical revealed a spirit very vast, a great depth of knowledge, and a fore- sight most sagacious. The Pope, he said, had put his finger on the sore part of our social system, and his word must be listened to, or otherwise the world would have to expiate its neglect by some terrible calamities. 172 POPE LEO XIII. In France the Encyclical naturally created a great sensation. Some writers, decidedly anti-Catholic, were earnest in its praise. Monsieur Maurice Barrfes, a Socialist member of the Chamber of Deputies, declared that the Pope, in recognising the right of the weak in the social question, had cut the cord which linked the Papacy with the political dead. "Only give some years," he said, "to efface existing mistrusts, and the democracy would no longer see an enemy in the priest." One of the leaders of the old school of pohtical economy. Monsieur Anatole Leroy-Beaulieu, pubUshed in a volume called Papacy, Socialism, and Democracy a. close study of the Papal Encyclical. "Apparently," said Monsieur Leroy-Beaulieu, "we are looking on at the return to the stage of one of the great actors in history. On that old theatre from which some people believed it for ever banished, the Papacy beholds a new personage of its own order, indeed, but very different from those whom during a thousand years the world has seen. The Papacy shows that it has the spirit of its age, and, without lingering over useless dissertations, it goes straight to the democracy, and of what does it speak ? Of that which comes closest to the heart of the people — the social question." Monsieur Emile OUivier, who was certainly not a very devoted admirer of the Pope, declared that, in the Ency- clical, Leo the Thirteenth had surpassed himself. He had never before been so much the Pope of the light, and of harmonious serenity. " His pages are a marvel of elevation, of justice, of measure, of eloquent and strong language, of delicate and firm resolve to balance contradictory ideas and interests. In all passages of the Encyclical is found an incomparable THE ECHOES OF THE ENCYCLICAL. 173 circumspection and an imperturbable equilibrium, owing to which the fundamental question of the State's inter- vention has been resolved, without injuring any other principle equally fundamental." Then Monsieur Ollivier replies to some political critics, who gave to the Pope the highest tribute of their admira- tion, but chiefly on the ground that he had broken with the past history of the Papacy, and taken a new departure. " Up to this time,** said one such critic, " the Church had been in the camp of the rich ; now it passes into that of the poor." Monsieur OlUvier declares that the Pope does not merit that sort of phrase, in which there is mingled something of irony and still more of distrust. "It is not necessary," he adds, "that the Church should change its camp in order to find itself with the poor. When has it not been with the poor ? When has it ever failed to spread over them its maternal wings ? The poor have been always the children of its especial love. Where and when have the poor had such servants as Francis D' Assise and Vincent de Paul ? What land does not bear the testimony of the inexhaustible fruitfulness of the Church's charitable action ? " One of the leading organs of German Socialism, the Vorwdrts, declared that, by virtue of his functions and in the plenitude of his power, the Pope had gone in advance of all princes and all governments of civilised states, and had resolved the social question. "Yes," the Vorwdrts added emphatically, "he has, without any doubt, resolved the social question, so far as it is given to any existing power to resolve it." The Breslau Zeitung gave its full applause to the declarations of the Pope. It described the EncycUcal as the manifesto of a wise 174 POPE LEO XHI. and generous man, who had studied with perspicacity the whole economical and social condition of our epoch. The Pope meanwhile had not been confining his sympathy with the working-class and the poor to the utterance of counsels however enlightened, and of hope however exalted, for the future. He had started in Rome itself a number of new schools, orphan asylums, and charitable institutions of all kinds. He expanded and improved in many ways the institution of what we may call cheap kitchens, in which thousands of working- men out of employment during a great financial crisis could get a comfortable meal at the very smallest pos- sible charge. The night asylums, too, at which a decent bed could be had for little more than a nominal sum, were improved and increased by his patronage, guid- ance, and help. There was, and is, an institution in Rome called "The Primary, Artistic, and Operative Association of Reciprocal Charity," which, established by Pius the Ninth, received a splendid development under Leo the Thirteenth. The Primary, Artistic, and Operative Association is a benefit society — a society of mutual help — and numbers some four or five thousand members, divided into several sections, all sections having their delegates on the directing council. It is a democratic and representative institution in the truest sense. Painters, sculptors, jewellers, printers, and workers of every kind, are admitted to membership. Pope Leo, in 1888, made a present to the Association of a piece of ground for its home, which cost five hundred thousand francs. One of the sections especially concerned with working-men and the smaller employers of labour, has in its charge THE ECHOES OF THE ENCYCLICAL. 175 the making of allowances to its associates in case of sickness or want of employment. The funds of this section are obtained by subscriptions from its members, and by voluntary contributions from the public outside. This section also gives, without charge, the medicines necessary for its members who are out of health and are poor. It has created savings banks on a small scale, which have done much to encourage a spirit of economy and of^ foresight among the poorer class. In fact, the whole Association forms a centre of economy and of self-help, around which various similar institu- tions have grouped themselves of late years. It is not too much to say that Leo, as Pope, more than fulfilled the expectations which had been formed of him when he was Bishop of Perugia. Pope Pius the Ninth undoubtedly was a man who had done great things for education, for charity, for mutual succour, and for self-help, in the institutions of Rome. But Pope Leo, while entering upon the political and social business of the world at large in a way which his predecessor had not done — had not, indeed, been allowed any oppor- tunity of doing — never left any charitable work un- developed at home, added new efficacy to every institution which Pope Pius had founded or sustained, and created new institutions of his own, proper to the growth and movement of the times. If a living example given could, in addition to wise and noble exhortation, have settled the controversy between capital and labour, the exhortation and the example of Leo the Thirteenth might have accomplished the great work. It will be accomplished, it will have to be accomplished, some day ; 176 POPE LEO XIII. and the world, too fast forgetful of past benefits as it is, will hardly fail to set down Pope Leo's name among the names of the great benefactors of the worker and the poor. We have already spoken of the interest which the Pope took in the growth and development of the Catholic Church in the great American Republic. It may sur- prise some readers to hear that the religious sentiment has a far deeper hold on the native American populations than it has on the general population of Great Britain. Religion enters more deeply into American life, outside the bounds of three or four great cosmopolitan cities, than it does into the life of this country; but, of course, it is almost needless to say that the great bulk of the native population is not Catholic. It is Episcopal or Evangelical, or what we should call in this country Nonconformist. Among the most intellectual and highly- cultured of the Nonconformists — the word is not appro- priate to America, but I know no better way of expressing what I mean — are the Unitarians and those who call themselves Universalists. Catholicism is, for the most part, an imported religion. Of course, there are Ameri- can states, such as Maryland, for example, which have been inspired from their very origin by the Catholic faith. But the spread and growth of the Catholic Church in America is undoubtedly due to the immigrants from foreign countries and their descendants. The vast majority of the Irish population all over the States are Catholics, and very devoted Catholics too. There is a great Italian population, all, or nearly all, of whom are Catholic in name, but some of whom are strongly anti- THE ECHOES OF THE ENCYCLICAL. 177 clerical, and carry with them into America the anti-Papal traditions of 1848 and 1870. Still the Italians must, on the whole, be regarded as a Catholic population. Then there are Spaniards and Portuguese. There are many French Catholics, although not in anything Uke the same proportion to the general population as the Catholics of Canada. The Catholics of the United States are, for the most part, a very thriving, active, and energetic people. The Irish in particular have made good use of their opportunities to support and to help, in the United States, the Church of their fathers and of themselves. They have made them- selves a power in political and municipal Ufe, and ambitious politicians, whether Republican or Demo- cratic — I am now using these words in their American sense — have felt bound to seek their suffrage and to pay court to them. The Irish Catholics have, therefore, been enabled to obtain concessions for their churches and for their schools, such as they could not easily have got in this country. Some of the finest sites in many cities of the States have been secured for Catholic churches, convents, and seminaries. The sites, of course, have all had to be paid for, but there are Protestant countries in which they could hardly have been obtained on any terms by Catholics. The growth of the Catholic Church in America is, therefore, from time to time, always evoking some sort of complaint or remonstrance from the members of other religious denominations. There is an occasional outburst, if one may use so strong a phrase, of anti-foreigner and anti-Catholic feeling in America. It M 178 POPE LEO XIII. makes a commotion for a time, and then quietly subsides, and goes to sleep. Many years ago, when the writer of this book was first in America, there was a great sensation created throughout the States by an article, which appeared in one of the New York magazines, entitled, "Our Established Church in America." The established church was, of course, the Catholic Church, and the argument of the writer was, that owing to the influence of the Irish among politicians, concessions were made to Catholicism which would not have been made to any other form of faith. The article led to much controversy at the time, and stirred up in the minds of many Americans a certain jealousy and ill-feeling towards the Catholics in the States. The jealousy and the ill- feeling did not last. In a country like America, where there is really no privileged class, such feelings could not be of long endurance. People soon came to see that the Irish Catholics had only their votes like everybody else, and that they formed, after all, but a small minority of voters. Still for a time the excitement and the bad feeling were there. Years before that time there had been the " Know-Nothing " movement, as it was called, which had for its direct and avowed object the withdrawal of all political power from immigrants in the States of the Republic. Much more lately still, there was an attempt to get up an anti-Catholic society called by the specious name of the "American Protective Association," the object being to set up everywhere an opposition to the spread of Catholicism. Wild rumours even went abroad about secret pledges and solemn oaths adopted by the members of this society. Nothing in particular came THE ECHOES OF THE ENCYCLICAL. 179 of this association any more than of its predecessors, and the Catholics continued to go on and prosper in the United States. It is not even certain that the feeling displayed from time to time was wholly an anti-Catholic feeling. It was rather an outcry against the too-successful progress of the foreigner in the United States. It was an expression of trade jealousy, of labour jealousy. An interesting illustration of the good feeling which prevails between the Pope and the government of the United States, was offered on the occasion of Pope Leo's sacerdotal jubilee. President Cleveland sent to the Pope a magnificently bound copy of the American Constitu- tion. He sent it through Cardinal Gibbons, and begged the Cardinal to have it forwarded to the Pope with the expression of the personal sentiments of regard and homage felt towards the head of the Catholic Church by the chief magistrate of the United States. The offering of Mr. Cleveland, and the letter of Cardinal Gibbons, were handed to the Pope by an American deputation. The Pope said some graceful and touching words in reply. " In your country," he observed, " men enjoy liberty in the true sense of the word, guaranteed, as it is, by that Constitution of which you have given me a copy. In your country religion is free to extend every day more and more the empire of Christianity, and the Church is free to develope its beneficent action. Your country has before it a future full of hope, your government is strong, and the character of your President arouses my most genuine admiration." It should be mentioned, that on the same occasion, Queen Victoria sent the Duke of Norfolk, as her Envoy Extraordinary to Pope Leo, to i8o POPE LEO XIII. present him with a costly gift, and to accompany it with the earnest assurances of her good will and best wishes. Yet another illustration of the reciprocal good feeling may be given. The American bishops were very anxious to found a Catholic university, which should be the intellectual training school for those who intended to become priests and teachers of religion. Pope Leo welcomed and encouraged the idea. " I desire," he wrote to Monsignor Keane, afterwards Rector of the University of Washington, " that the university should be founded by American resources and directed by American intelligence, and if, for the moment, you have to ask for your faculties the help of foreign professors, it must be done with the intention of developing the national talent, and of training up professors capable of forming, by degrees, native faculties worthy of the name that is borne by your university." The bishops opened a subscription- list for the creation of a fund necessary to institute and endow the university. In their circular they announce that their intention was not to appeal to the poor, or to those whose means of giving were already absorbed by the necessities of local charity, but rather to address their appeal to the rich, and to those who might, at all events, be considered relatively rich. Especially appeal was made for the contributions of the priests. " Would it be too much," the circular asked, "to expect from each priest, for so noble a purpose, a contribution of one hundred dollars?" The Catholic priest in the United States is in almost every case a poorly paid man, who has incessant demands made on his benevolence. One hun- dred dollars — twenty pounds sterling — is a considerable THE ECHOES OF THE ENCYCLICAL. i8i subscription to ask of such a donor. But the money of the priests flowed in, and the CathoHc populations were generous, and the fund necessary for the university was found without much delay. In March, 1889, the Pope gave canonical authority to the new university. The formal opening of this theological institution took place in November, 1889, and fell in with the celebration of the centenary of the Catholic Hierarchy in America. Presi- dent Harrison* and the Pope's delegate to the United States, Monsignor SatoUi, were present at the celebration. There was some trouble in the States, as there is almost everywhere, on the subject of popular education. There, as here, the authorities of the Church of Rome declared that education merely secular tends by its very nature to become irreligious. Therefore a great movement was made, under the inspiration of Pope Leo, to start parochial schools for the teaching of Catholics all over the Republic. We need not go into the story of these troubles. The difficulty there, as here, was that in some parts of the country the Catholic population had not the means of maintaining all the schools that were necessary for the teaching of their children, and that a sort of compromise was made in some cases with the School Boards. Many of the bishops and priests were against any manner of compromise. Leo the Thirteenth showed himself in this, as in everything else, wise and practical, and admitted that cases might arise in which it would be necessary to make a temporary compromise in the arrangements of the schools. Yet another instance of the good feeling between the Vatican and the Republic, is found in the fact that the great exhibition at Chicago was 1 82 POPE LEO XIII. opened by a religious ceremony, which was conducted by Cardinal Gibbons. Seeing the great spread of Catholicism in the United States, the Pope thought it necessary to bring the American Catholic Church into close and direct relationship with Rome, by establishing an apostolic delegation in America. Monsignor Satolli was the first head of the delegation, which was created in the early part of 1893. The delegation, of course, is purely religious and ecclesiastical, and has nothing to do with diplomacy or politics. In a letter addressed to Cardinal Gibbons, the Pope declared that one object of the delegation was " to render in some sort Our presence perpetual in your midst, by the creation of an apostolic delegation permanent at Washington. Thus We have solemnly declared, not only that your nation is as dear to us as other nations, the most flourishing, to which it is our custom to send representa- tives of our authority, but also that We desire to see those bonds of mutual union which attach you and your faithful to Our person, consolidate themselves more and more from day to day.'' For the Protestants of the northern and western states of America, it may be safe to assume that they never forgot the attitude taken by the papal government of that day, on the outbreak of their civil war. Most other European governments were cold, critical, and carping. The Imperial Government of France was all but openly hostile. The government of the Pope gave its full sympathy to President Lincoln and his cause, and wished for its full success. CHAPTER XV. THE RECOGNITION OF THE FRENCH REPUBLIC. Catholic Parties in France — Count de Mun tries to form a new Coalition — Cardinal Lavigerie speaks and writes — The Pope recognises the Republic. THE condition of France brought up a question as grave as any that had arisen during the pontificate of Leo the Thirteenth. Once again the Pope proved himself a foreseeing and a practical statesman. The question simply was, whether to recognise, or not to recognise, the established system of government in France. Was the Vatican to insist that the interests of religion were bound up with the principle of monarchy in France? Or, on the other hand, were the Catholics to be advised and enjoined to make the best use they could of the existing system — a system which, so far as human foresight could go, did not seem likely to be soon abolished for the sake of a monarchical restoration. A large number of the French Catholics, especially of the higher ranks, still persisted in identi- fying monarchy with religion. They maintained that without monarchy there could be no protection or security for the Catholic faith in France. They therefore were determined to have nothing to do with the Republic 183 1 84 POPE LEO XIII. and, if necessary, to abstain from using their votes as citizens, on one side or the other of any political question arising under the shadow of the Republic. The brilliant, devoted, far-descended Count de Mun took a course not quite so extreme. He was not inclined to abandon the electoral or the political struggle. He proposed to form a great Catholic party which should occupy itself, on the one hand, in reclaiming for CathoUcs full freedom for their religion and for their children's education, and on the other hand, the reforms in the social organization which should hold up to France the Catholic Church as its natural and secular teacher, offering to the people repose, concord, and stabiUty in legislation, informed by its spirit, and in morals governed by its doctrine and by the example of the highest classes of the nation. This Catholic party was, according to Count de Mun's idea, to desert " the pettinesses of politics " in order to give full support to the interests that were threatened by successive social tempests. The Church, he said, was not founded for an epoch, for a people, or for a form of government. He renounced none of his convictions or of his hopes with regard to the Royalist form of government, but he de- clared that the Catholic Church would always have good reason for its existence, whether it were merely to wring from the government de facto as much reform as possible, or to support in its work of reparation a government truly national and Christian. This plan of organization was from the first received with much favour by those to whom it was principally addressed. The general elec- tions followed soon after, and there can be no doubt that RECOGNITION OF FRENCH REPUBLIC. 185 the Conservatives, as we may fairly call those who were leagued with Count de Mun, won a distinct success. But the programme of the Count de Mun did not by any means satisfy all the Catholic Monarchists of France. There was no necessity, many of them contended, to form a Catholic league. The Catholic league was already in existence. The only question was as to its duty in the France of that day. That duty, they contended, clearly was to hfeld up the Monarchy as the only possible shelter for the wrecks of French systems of government. It will be easily understood that Pope Leo found himself placed in an anxious and a difficult position. The Republican Government had, it must be admitted, given him but little cause for satisfaction or even hope. We have already told of the sort of legislation with which that Government had assailed and harassed the religious orders in France. There was at one time a perfect tempest of anti-papal passion raging through great parts of the Republic. This was in some measure a revulsion rather more against the late Imperial system than against the Vatican, but the overt action of this turn of feeling showed itself in attacks upon the papacy, which was still to the front to be attacked, while the Empire had fallen out of existence. The scheme of the Count de Mun meantime was assailed by many Catholics, and from two diliferent points of view. Some men urged, oddly enough, that he was confounding the cause of religion with that purely terres- trial form of government — the Monarchy, while others insisted that in his CathoUc league he was not clearly enough identifying the cause of the Monarchy with the i86 POPE LEO Kill. cause of the Church. Cardinal Lavigerie, whose noble and truly Christian services to the work of the abolition of slavery we have already noticed, issued a circular to his clergy, in which he defined very clearly the differences of opinion that prevailed. All Catholics, he said, had the sacred duty of defending their faith by planting them- selves resolutely on the ground of public right, of justice, and of the liberty of souls. But he described the differences that existed amongst French Catholics as to the best means of attaining that end. Some Catholics maintained that the organization ought to hold itself outside and aloof from all party action, and to be under the direction of the country's spiritual pastors, while others called for an organization dealing with questions of faith and also with social questions apart from religious dogma, and concerning which Catholics should be free to reserve all their liberty of judgment and of action. Cardinal Lavigerie appeared to have come to the con- clusion that the Church being indirectly brought into the controversy by the existence of any such organization, a question so grave, which manifestly concerned the future of religion itself in France, ought not to be settled but by the authority of the pastors and principally by that of the Holy See. In the meanwhile, he thus concluded his circular : " For the present moment it is above all things of importance that the Catholics should not make a mis- take by sowing amongst themselves the germs of discord, or by allowing themselves to be drawn into actions which might have even in their mere form alone the appearance of useless and profitless provocations likely to rouse up against them new attacks from their enemies." The RECOGNITION OF FRENCH REPUBLIC. 187 Osservatore Romano, the official journal of the Vatican, threw something very like cold water on the project of the Count de Mun, especially as regarded the "social organization." "We have praised without restraint," the Osservatore said, " the organisation of workmen's committees who devote their care to the grouping of the working class into Catholic associations, founding thereon their best hopes for the future of the French nation. It was in the sense of the still greater diffusion of such an organisation, and by similar means of the Christian spirit among all classes of society in France, that we understood the organisation of the religious forces, that is to say, the Catholic party, projected by Count de Mun. Now, how- ever, this eminent statesman does not confine himself to this kind of action, but he announces a plan for con- stituting a Catholic party in the Chamber. To anyone who reflects on the grouping of the Conservative party, which was made with such success in France at the time of the last elections, and on the diverse elements of which it was composed, it will not appear surprising that the programme thrown out by the Count de Mun should have awakened susceptibilities and threatened to be the signal of fatal divisions." Finally the official journal expressed a hope that the union would not be broken up by a deplorable mis- understanding. The Count de Mun was willing to efface himself. He sent round to the newspapers the personal declaration that in order not to raise a division amongst the Catholics he had resolved to give up the project of organisation which he had formerly -undertaken to set on foot. Some days later, the subscriptions towards the cost of the new movement were returned to the contributors. The 1 88 ■ POPE LEO XIII. significance of this announcement on the part of the Count de Mun was found in the fact that nobody could suppose that a man so earnest, so enthusiastic, so devoted to any cause he undertook, would have abandoned his project in deference to any but the highest spiritual authority. Then the idea began to get abroad that Pope Leo was not disposed to encourage any movement which pledged the Catholic party in France to any one particular form of government. It will be seen from what we have already written that Count de Mun found himself confronted by three classes of objectors. There were the men who insisted that he did not absolutely identify the interests of the Church with the interests of the Monarchy. There were the men who said that, although for the present he only proposed to make his new party an ally of the old Conservative party in France, he appeared to them likely at some given opportunity to offer it for absorption into the Con- servative army, and thus to make it a pledged champion of the Monarchy. There were those again who found fault, as Cardinal Lavigerie had done, with those parts of his programme which went in for the solution of certain social questions, and thereby pledged the new party, as a whole, to a course of policy on which all Catholics should be left free to form their own individual opinions, and act according to their individul conscience. Therefore it is clear that Count de Mun's scheme could not in any case have had much of a success, and must have introduced a new line of cleavage into the Catholic party. He acted wisely in withdrawing his proposal. But the great question which aroused public interest in RECOGNITION OF FRENCH REPUBLIC. 189 France was as to the influence which inspired his with- drawal. Men put it to each other in plain, blunt words, " Has the Pope come to the conclusion that the re- publican form of government ought to be recognised in France ? " The Pope had indeed, after long and deep con- sideration, come to this conclusion. It should be said that in recognising the republican form of government in France, he expressed no approval of that particular system. He acted exactly as the head of any civilised state would have done. It is not to be supposed that the German Emperor has any passion for republican institutions, but all the same he recognises the Republic of the United States. It cannot be supposed that President Cleveland is enamoured of the monarchical idea, but all the same he recognises the monarchical system of England and the Imperial system of Germany. This was exactly what Pope Leo did. We shall learn from his own words later on in this narrative that, according to his interpretation, the Church neither approves nor disapproves of any particular form of government; it only approves or disapproves of certain acts of policy at home or abroad carried on by a par- ticular set of statesmen in office, and it is careful to distinguish between the policy of an ephemeral group of statesmen and the abiding and inherent policy of the state. During the anxious pause, while Catholics in France were waiting to know for certain what the Pope's pronouncement would be, the question was often put among the monarchical Catholics, "Can it be that the Pope really intends to condone the offences of the 190 POPE LEO XIII. Republic against religion and the Church ? " The question must be called a very foolish one. It could only have arisen out of the fanatical condition of mind which made so many monarchists in France insist on identifying the interests of the monarchy with the interests of the Church. To men of that order of mind it seemed that the refusal to accept any such identifi- cation was not merely the total abandonment of the monarchical principle, but the absolute approval of every- thing done by any French government which called itself republican. Through the whole course of the crisis the Pope proved himself to be a genuine statesman. He did not allow his hand to be forced. He waited to make his final and formal declaration until the right time came. The first announcement to the world in general came in a very picturesque incident. On the twelfth of November, 1890, Cardinal Lavigerie made a speech in Algiers, in the presence of the officers of the French squadron. In the course of the speech he dwelt upon the necessity of union amongst French Catholics. " Such union," he said, " is the first wish of the Church, and of all its pastors in all the degrees of its hierarchy. Of course, it does not ask us to renounce either the memories of the glories of the past, or of the sentiments of fidelity and of gratitude which do honour to all men. But when the will of a people is clearly affirmed, when the form of a government has nothing in itself in contradiction, as Leo the Thirteenth lately proclaimed, to the principles which alone can keep Ufe in nations. Christian and civilised, when, in order to rescue it from the abyss which threatens it, adhesion without concealed thought is necessary for that form of RECOGNITION OF FRENCH REPUBLIC. 191 government, the moment has come to declare at last that the trial has been made, and, in order to put an end to our divisions, to sacrifice all that conscience and honour permit and ordain that each of us shall sacrifice for the welfare of his country. Without such a resig- nation, and such an acceptance, nothing is possible, in fact, either to preserve order and peace, or to save the world from social peril, or even to save the very religion of which we are the ministers. It would be madness to hope to sustain the pillars of an edifice without entering into the edifice itself, were it only to prevent those who destroy everything from accomplishing their insane work." To make his words the more emphatic, the Cardinal sent to all his clergy a copy of his speech, and recalled to their minds the former instructions of the Pope con- cerning the duty of Catholics to take part in public affairs. "It belongs," said the Cardinal, "to the duty and the honour of Catholics not to allow the present situation of the Church in France to be prolonged, and for that they have but one practical means — that which the Sovereign Pontiff has lately explicitly advised them to employ, that is, to take a resolute part in public affairs, not as adversaries of the established form of government, but, on the contrary, by claiming their rights of citizen- ship in the Republic which governs us. That adhesion ought to be a work of resignation, of reason, and for us Catholics, after the formal words which I have just quoted, a work of conscience." The wise and eloquent words of Cardinal Lavigerie produced utter consternation among most of the Catholic Monarchists in France. That consternation was in no wise diminished by a letter published several days after from Cardinal Lavigerie, in which he declared that 192 POPE LEO XIII. "except for some miracle on which we cannot venture to count, nothing is possible in France outside the form of government which the country has legally adopted." And then, as if to make matters worse for the Monarchists, the Cardinal added, "The Monarchy has committed suicide with the Count de Chambord, who held so high the standard of Christian honour, but who has not wished to reign, because of his exalted sentiment of royal duty and of the responsibilities which it imposes." One of the French bishops wrote directly to Rome, asking for in- structions as to the course which he ought to pursue in the midst of the sudden and unexpected differences of opinion amongst French Catholics. Cardinal Rampolla, the Pope's Secretary of State, wrote a prompt and a clear reply. He explained that the Church, " whose mission is divine, and embraces all times and places," has not set itself against any form of government, and that holding itself quite above all struggles of dynastic and political parties it attaches itself before all things to the progress of religion, and with that object it recognises civil powers and maintains relations with them. " The same care for the welfare of religion," the Cardinal went on to say, " which guides the Holy See in its relations with rulers of States, ought to be also the rule of the faithful in the acts of their public life. ... In consequence, when the interests of religion require it, it is fitting that the faithful should take part in public affairs, in order that by their zeal and by their authority the institutions and the laws should be modelled on the principles of justice. So far as France is concerned it is of supreme importance that the Catholics should be in agreement among themselves, that they RECOGNITION OF FRENCH REPUBLIC. 193 should take the part in which they can best exercise their activity and their zeal, and that they should not exhaust their forces fruitlessly in the quarrels excited by the rivalries of parties.'' The Cardinal pointed out in earnest language the danger to which the CathoUcs would expose them- selves if they in any way made the interest of the Church subordinate to the struggles of political partisans. The letter concluded with the expression, of a firm hope and conviction that the Catholics of France would understand perfectly what duties were imposed on them by the neces- sity of the time, and would go to work with an entire union of souls, and a perfect concentration of forces. Still there remained much difference of opinion among the clergy and the laity of Catholic France. Some of the Monarchists wondered whether it was really meant, by the declarations of Cardinal Lavigerie and Cardinal RampoUa, that they were to renounce their traditional principle of fidelity to the Monarchy, and to declare themselves Republicans all in a moment. Of course no suggestion of the kind was contained in the speech or the writings of Cardinal Lavigerie, or in the important letter of Cardinal Rampolla. But the very confusion of idea illustrated by this curious misconception only proved more strongly the necessity of some final and authori- tative declaration from the Pope himself. Moreover, the extreme Radical and Republican politicians of France and the newspapers which represented their views, re- sented any recognition of the Republic on behalf of the Church authorities, and vehemently declared that it was only a kind effort on the part of the Vatican to "nobble," if we may use that slangy but expressive word, N 194 POPE LEO XIII. the Republic and the RepubHcan institutions of France. The time had come when the Pope thought it right to speak out for himself. On February i6th, 1892, Pope Leo issued an EncycUcal, addressed to the French people. The Pope began by renewing the affirmation of his pro- found affection for France. He dwelt on the necessity of a great union amongst French Catholics, and went on to consider the differences of opinion as to the attitude which they ought to take up towards the existing Republic. " The Catholic, like every other citizen, has full liberty to prefer one form of government to another, where none of these political or social forms is opposed by its very nature to the teachings of sound reason or the maxims of Christian doctrine. Governments must change. No one can consider any form of civil government as so definite that it must remain for ever immutable. In societies purely human, all history shows that time works great changes in their political institutions. These changes may modify partly or totally the form of government ; these changes often come as the result of a violent crisis, to which succeeds anarchy and the breaking up of laws. In such conditions a social necessity is imposed on a nation. It must without delay provide for its own security. That social necessity justifies the creation and the exist- ence of new governments, whatever form they take, if these new governments are necessary to public order, all public order being impossible without some recognised form of government. "Thus," the Pope went on to say, "is explained the wisdom of the Church, in the maintenance of its relations with the many governments which have succeeded each RECOGNITION OF FRENCH REPUBLIC. 195 other in France within less than a century, and never without producing a violent and profound shock at each time of change. Such an attitude is the most sure, and the most salutary, line of conduct for all French people, in their civil relations with the Republic which is now the government of their nation. The political dissensions which divide them ought to be put away. All their efforts ought to be combined to preserve, or to restore, the moral greatness of their country.'' Then the Pope applied himself to the argument used by so many monarchists in the press and on the platform, as to the anti-Christian character of the existing French Republic. He drew a distinction which one might have thought would be obvious enough, even to an impassioned French monar- chist, between government and legislation. Legislation, he pointed out, is the work, not of state government in the abstract, but of the particular men who command, in a constitutional country like France, the majority of votes. " It follows from this, that in practice the cha- racter of the laws depends more on the character of the men in power, than on the mere form of that power. The laws will be good or bad, according as the law-makers have minds inspired by good or bad principles, and allow themselves to be guided by political prudence, or by partisan passion." It would be needless to say that the Pope recognised the existence in France of much legis- lation hostile to the interests and the teaching of the Catholic Church. He had himself, as he reminded France, entered his formal protest against such legislation. But he added that the very existence, and the very increase, of laws destined to hurt the interests of the Church, was the 196 POPE LEO XIII. strongest reason why political dissensions should be put away amongst the Catholics of France, and why right- minded Catholics ought to unite as one single man to combat, by all constitutional and honourable means, the increasing attacks upon their religion. The Pope concluded with the expression of a hope that the words he had written would dissipate the prejudices of many men of good faith, would facilitate the pacification of minds in France, and would bring about the perfect union of Catholics in that country to sustain their great cause. The Pope certainly had the courage of his opinions. Having proclaimed them by an Encyclical, he was also wise enough and brave enough to condescend to give them general utterance, by means of what English speakers and writers are fond of calling "the ordinary channels of information.'' The Pope actually consented to be interviewed by a correspondent of the Petit Journal of Paris. It may be presumed that this was the first time a Pontiff had ever consented to express his views on a subject of the profoundest religious and political interest to the correspondent of a cheap Paris paper. The correspondent of the Petit Journal was introduced to the Pope as "the representative of the most widely read newspaper in the world." On that ground, and as reaching so many readers of all forms of faith, the correspondent besought the Pope to grant him an inter- view, and allow him to make known to the world the feelings and the opinions of the Vatican with regard to the condition of France. The Pope was a man of the world, as well as a great priest and a great statesman. RECOGNITION OF FRENCH REPUBLIC. 197 He lived in the present and for the future; he was not, as has been well said of him, the mere custodian of a cemetery in which were entombed the past traditions of the Papacy. He recognised the newspaper and the interviewer as he recognised the telegraph and the telephone. His practical mind saw at once the great advantage of making known his views through the medium of a Paris paper of immense circulation. Accordingly he gave the interviewer a really gracious reception, and explained his own ideas with the most perfect frankness. " My desire," said the Pope, " is that France should be happy and prosperous, and, for that reason, that divisions should cease as far as possible, and that there should no longer be amongst Frenchmen the merely sterile quarrels which tend but to weaken France. My conviction is that all French citizens ought to re-unite on constitutional grounds. Each one, of course, can keep up his personal preferences, but when it comes to political action, there is only the government which France has given to herself. The Republic is a form of government as legitimate as any other. I have just received the President of the Committee of Organisation for the Chicago Exhibition, who has come to ask of the Holy See its sympathy and its participation in that great American enterprise. The United States, in their republican form of government, despite the possible dangers of a liberty almost boundless, grow greater and greater every day, and the Catholic Church has developed itself there without having any struggles to sustain against the State. The two powers agree there perfectly well, as they ought to agree everywhere, on the condition that the igS POPE LEO XIII. one does not infringe the rights of the other. That which is suitable to the United States is suitable also, and even more so, to Republican France. I hold to all Frenchmen, who come to see me, the same language. I wish that it may be known of all. It is by a constitution solid in the interior that France, in spite of whatever enemies, can recover herself completely. I am happy to learn that France is resolute in her wish for peace, despite the abundance of her military resources and the bravery of her sons. If she keeps without fail that wisdom and that patience, if she knows how to avoid those divisions which check her development and paralyse her influence, if she is determined to abstain from vain enterprises and from persecutions, she will soon regain the important rank and the glorious place which belonged to her in the world." Nothing surely could be more clear than the meaning and the purpose of Pope Leo, and his words must have reached the ears of hundreds and thousands through the medium of the popular journal, to whom a Papal EncycUcal might never have found a way. Yet, in order to clear up any doubt that might have existed in any minds, the Pope addressed an especial letter to the French cardinals. This letter, like the Encyclical, was in French, although, of course, Latin is the usual language of a papal document. The Pope wished to emphasize the fact that in this instance he addressed himself especially and directly to the people and clergy of France. In his letter to the French cardinals he said that the Ency- cUcal had already done much good, and would, he hoped, do much more ; but he was not ignorant of the fact that it RECOGNITION OF FRENCH REPUBLIC. 199 had aroused some difference of opinion, and had been criticised and found fault with. All this he had foreseen. " Wherever the strife of political parties agitates pro- foundly the mind of men, as is now the case in France, it is difficult that all should render at once that full justice to the truth which is its rightful claim." But the Pope asked whether that was a reason why the Vatican should be silent at such a crisis in the history of France. "At such a time the silence of the Pope would have been culpable before God and before men. It would have seemed that the Pope cpntemplated with a tranquil eye the sufferings of his sons, the Catholics of France. He had appealed not merely to Catholics alone, but to all men of judgment and of rectitude, in order that all should hasten to stay their country on a descent which leads to an abyss. But," he continued, "We have already ex- plained, and We feel bound to repeat the explanation, in order that none may make any mistake as to Our in- struction, that one of the means of bringing about the union necessary to the safety of religion and of France is to accept, with that perfect loyalty which becomes the Christian, the civil power in that form in which de facto it exists. Thus was the First Empire accepted in France on the morrow of a terrible and blood-stained anarchy. Thus were accepted the other forms of government, whether monarchical or republican, which have succeeded each other down to our own times. When in any society there exists a government constituted and in working order, the common interest finds itself bound up with that power, and ought for that reason to accept it, such as it is. It is for these reaspns, and in this sense, that We have said to the Catholics of France, Accept the Republic, that is to say, the power constituted and existing amongst you ; respect it, and be submitted to it, as representing the power that comes from God. All political history furnishes, without cessation, examples of unexpected changes in forms of government. These changes are far 200 POPE LEO XIII. from being always legitimate in their origin. It would be vain to expect that it should be so. Nevertheless, the supreme advantage of the common welfare and of public tranquillity imposes on us the acceptance of those new governments established de facto in place of former govern- ments, which de facto are no more." In his letter the Pope insists, as he had done in his encyclical, on the distinction between constitutional government and legislation, and points out that the course of action he advises is the very course which would enable the French Catholics to use their activity and their influence to bring the Government to the substitution of better laws, for laws which are unwise or even iniquitous. " On all religious questions especially, the different sections of the French Conservative Party can and ought to find themselves in perfect accord. But the men who subordinate all to the preliminary triumph of their own particular party, were it even under the pretext that that party seemed to them the most apt for the defence of religion, may be convinced that by a calamitous reversion of ideas they are preferring the policy which divides, to the religion which unites. It will be their fault if our enemies, taking advantage of their divisions, as they have but too often done, should succeed finally in crushing them all." No statesman of our time could have enunciated more effectively the doctrine of sound policy and of common sense. The Pope indulged in* no dreams. He did not pretend that a Republic in France was more welcome to his mind than a Catholic Monarchy. He could not have forgotten, for a moment, what assaults had been made on the Catholic Church in France by the extreme anti- RECOGNITION OF FRENCH REPUBLIC. 201 clerical section of the Republic. But he saw that the Republic was set up in France, was firmly established for the time at least, and was not, according to all appearance, within measurable distance of being displaced in order that a Monarchy might be established in its stead. The Pope, too, saw quite well that there was no real union among the Monarchical parties of France. If the Legitimists, the Orleanists, and the Bonapartists were to unite for the time with the object of overthrowing the Republic, it is quite certain that the moment the Republic had been overthrown, there would be a quarrel among themselves as to the Monarchy that was to succeed to it. Should the Legitimists have the upper, hand, and the Orleanists agree to some form of compromise with them, then the Bonapartists would most assuredly be ready to coalesce for the time with any political party, for the purpose of thwarting the peaceful progress of the Monarchy. Even still the Bonaparte tradition takes a firm grip of the sympathies and the affections of a large number of Frenchmen. A whole Napoleonic Uterature has sprung up in France during the last few years. The Pope thoroughly understood the conditions of France and of French feeling, and could easily foresee what might, or what must, happen if the policy of the French Catholics were to be conducted merely on the principle of opposition to the Republican form of government. Therefore he made known, by the utterances from which we have quoted, and by others as well, that he recognized the French Republic as the established form of government in France. To recognize it, and to work under it, was the duty of Frenchmen, were it 202 POPE LEO XIII. only with the view of preventing its legislators from oppressing the religion of the Church. In all this, let it be said, Leo the Thirteenth was only following the example of his predecessors. He pointed out that fact himself in one of the declarations from which we have quoted. The Vatican recognized the Directory, recog- nized the First Empire, recognized the Republic of 1848, and recognized the Empire under Napoleon the Third. The fact was, that for a time some of the French CathoUcs wanted to be more Catholic than Leo the Thirteenth. But they had to deal with a statesman in the Pope, and the Pope prevailed. CHAPTER XVI. POLITICS AND RELIGION. Effects of the Panama Scandal — French Catholics appeal against the recognition of "such a Republic" — The Pope stands firm, and gives his reasons— His activity in the Church abroad — ^Japan, India, Jerusalem. THE Panama scandals threatened for a time to disturb the good work which the Pope had been doing, by the advice he had given to all Catholics to recognise the French RepubUc. Probably nothing in our- time has been such a revelation of corruption and scandal in speculators, in officials, and even in the State itself, as the terrible events which were disclosed by formal enquiry into the business of the Panama Canal Company. Reputations which had up to that day been high above suspicion were brought down and trampled in the dust. Men, whom we all had learned to respect and revere, old men who had had a long and an honourable career behind them, had to be treated, and justly treated, first as criminals on trial, and next as convicts. Nothing in human history is more tragic in its way than the case of Ferdinand de Lesseps, who had successfully and honour- ably carried through the Suez Canal scheme, in spite of the mistaken opposition of great statesmen and great scientific men, especially in England. At the age of 203 204 POPE LEO XIII. eighty-seven, he was put on trial with his son Charles, and other directors of the Panama Canal Company, for fraud, bribery, and other such acts, and was sentenced with his son to five years' imprisonment. The sentence in the case of the elder de Lesseps was not actually put in force. His mind had been wandering for some time, and it is understood that he never knew that he had been tried, convicted, and sentenced, and he died about a year after the close of the trial. The events have a direct importance in the story of the Pope's reign. The cry instantly raised by many of the Catholic Monarchists was that the Republic which the Pope had just recognised, must of necessity come down in this cataclysm of mud and filth. Many appeals were made to the Pope to reconsider his resolution with regard to a Republic, the Government of which had allowed itself to be thus drenched in scandal. But the Pope held resolutely to the course which he had marked out. He found an opportunity to address a letter to Count de Mun, on January 7th, 1893, in which he made clear his opinions on the whole situation. In that letter the Pope pointed out how the prosperity of France must depend, not on a form of government, but on " the love of country joined with the love of religion. . . . With what evidence," he went on to say, "does not history bear witness to the fact that when the fatal counsels of a false policy put in danger that priceless harmony, France, torn by factions and by barren rivalries, becomes the prey of those short-sighted and egotistical sectaries, who, having lost all idea of duty and of honesty, placed, to the grand detriment of the nation, their private POLITICS AND RELIGION. 205 advantage above the commonweal." But Leo XIII. saw no remedy for such evils in any mere attempt to alter a form of government. On the contrary, he impressed " on all men of good sense and goodwill the necessity of accepting with common accord the form of government actually constituted, that acceptance being the only human means of succeeding in the re-establishment of religious peace, and with that a concord among citizens, the respect for authority, justice, and honesty in public life. ... It is for all," he said, " but especially for Catholics, a duty to forget their past discords, to unite and organise with a view to the common good." The results, as we know, justified the policy of the Pope. The Republic survived the scandals. No doubt some of the guilty managed to escape, or to elude, the grasp of justice, but after all, nothing came out which showed that the Republican form of government was a failure in France. The Pope's was a policy of common- sense as well as of statesmanship. The wit of man would fail to prove that there is anything either in the Monarchical or the Republican form of government which of itself either forbids or enables corruption and fraud. The most devoted Monarchist must admit that corruption has sometimes thriven under Monarchies ; the most enthusiastic Republican could not bring himself to say that there has been no corruption under a Republic. It seemed clear to the Pope that the only way of staying corruption under a Republic, or under a Monarchy, was for all good and patriotic citizens to unite and endeavour to drive out such evils from the existing system of govern- ment. It seemed clear to him that to set about nothing 2o6 POPE LEO Xlll. better than to attempt to revolutionise the established form of government, would be simply to waste all energy in a distracting policy, and to afford a much better chance and a freer hand to the votaries of fraud and the patrons of corruption. The Pope still further expressed his opinions in a letter written to one of the French Cardinals in that same year. " A prolonged experience," the Pope said, "has clearly taught us all that the state of the country is so far modified, that in the present condition of France, it would not be possible to return to the ancient form of power, without passing through the most serious perturbations. This situation is so evident, that it can hardly escape the observation of anyone.'' But while he impressed as firmly as he had ever done on the minds of all Catholics the necessity of endeavouring to work with the existing form of government, he added the wise and qualifying words that, " It is not permitted to anyone, without rashness, to think of imposing any limits on the action of Divine Providence in all that concerns the future of nations." The meaning of these words will be easily understood. Some of the Monarchists had gone about here and there suggesting the idea that the Pope, by his doctrine, was laying down the principle that the Republican form of government must be eternal in France. Nothing could have been farther from the purpose of so thoughtful and sagacious a man. No one who is really capable of thinking can make up his mind to the belief that any form of government anywhere is destined to be perpetual. What the Pope saw and said was that the Republican Government in France seemed, so far as human foresight could tell, to be soundly POLITICS AND RELIGION. 207 established for the present, and that any possibility of its overthrow belonged to the realms of conjecture and of speculation. The Pope declared in his policy that the business of practical Catholics was to make the best use of the Republic while it was there, and that one form of government was as well entitled to the benefits of this recognition as another. He even went so far as to say, in frank an4 touching words, that he had " never had the least idea of wounding the intimate sentiments of men which deserved from him the fullest respect." There were monarchists in France whose whole sympathies and dreams were associated with the cause of a legitimate dynasty. No one could fail to be touched by their picturesque and pathetic devotion to a lost cause. They were men who would have gone to the scaffold, and, more than that, would have sacrificed all the worldly interests of their wives and their families, for the sake of him, whoever he might be, whom they regarded as their " rightful king.'' The most sturdy Hanoverian might have been allowed to give some tribute of admiration to the " insensate heroism " which risked everything and lost everything for the Stuart cause. Pope Leo, a man of wide and deep reading, who had in him the spirit of a poet as well as of a politician, was not likely to fail to appreciate the unconquerable devotion of the French Catholics whose minds and hearts were engrossed in the cause of the fallen monarchy. But, although he may have felt like a poet on such a subject, he was to give to France his advice as a politician. So he gave it again and again, and France profited much by it. The fierce spirit of 2o8 POPE LEO XIII. political partisanship was quieted — for the time, at least Even that was something gained — which may be the beginning of greater gain. All this time the greatest activity was displayed by Leo XIII. in the propagation of his faith. A complete Catholic hierarchy had recently been established in Japan. In his bull of June isth, 1891, the Pope bears testimony to the glory of the Christianity established in Japan by Francis Xavier, so zealously kept alive by his successors, and surviving, "though deprived for three centuries of priests and communication with Rome," until the return of missionaries under Pius IX., and the erection of the first Christian churches at Yokohama and Nagasaki. In the letter addressed by Leo to the episcopate of the East Indies on June 24th, 1893, after expressing his deep affection for the vast country which was the scene of the labours of the apostle St. Thomas and his "glorious successor St. Francis Xavier," he goes on to say that in accordance with his desire to benefit so large a portion of the universe he had sought to organise and develope Christian activity in the East Indies. He had removed by a permanent arrangement, concluded with the King of Portugal, the cause of the long-existing dissensions with regard to the patronage in the East Indies conceded in the sixteenth century to Portugal by the Holy See, and by letters apostolic of December ist, 1886, a new hier- archy had been established, consisting of eight ecclesias- tical provinces, those of Goa, the Patriarchal See, of Agra, Bombay, Verapoly, Calcutta, Madras, Pondicherry, and Colombo, POLITICS AND RELIGION. 209 With a view to a rapprochement between the Eastern and Western Churches, Leo XIII. in 1893 conceived the idea of a Eucharistic Congress in Jerusalem. The an- nouncement of the assembling of this Congress and the expected arrival of a papal legate in Jerusalem, unheard of since the Crusades, created consternation among what we may call the various dissenting Christian sects that surround the Holy City. Profiting by the friendly rela- tions between France and Russia, pontifical diplomacy took every step to calm the apprehensions aroused by the proposed Congress. The Cabinets of Vienna, Berlin, and London received the assurance that the Congress would not meddle with the policy of the different powers, but would limit itself to the field of Christian piety. Satisfied by this declaration these States promised not to place obstacles in the way of the gathering of the assembly. The Sultan on his side caused the necessary measures to be taken to maintain order in Jerusalem, and for due honours to be shown to the apostolic legate. Thanks, no doubt, to the influence of the French alliance, Russia did not take umbrage at the assembling of the Congress, and made known to its protdges in Palestine that this gathering would not be of a character inimical to them. Jerusalem is the very centre of irregular Mahomedan fanaticism, and in the eyes of certain Mussulmans this invasion, headed by a papal legate, assumed hostile proportions, and shortly before the opening of the Congress a fanatic, followed by a certain number of armed Arabs, proclaimed a holy war in the streets of the city. The movement was, however, promptly crushed by o 2IO POPE LEO XIII. the Ottoman authorities, who can be strong to keep order when they feel so indined. The Congress opened on the i6th of May. Cardinal Langdnieux's discourse on that occasion removed any tendency that still existed to regard its assembly as an insult to the Eastern Churches. The addresses of the Greek and Latin patriarchs in- creased still further the favourable impression, the former expressing the wish that the common belief of all the churches in the Eucharist might bring them all into union with the Roman Church in the charity of Christ. The fear lest the Roman Church should impose the Latin rite on them is, perhaps, the chief obstacle to unity on the part of certain of the dissident churches. To prove this fear ungrounded, a Mass was celebrated daily during the Congress, according to the various Eastern rites, and the Cardinal Legate was present at the Greek pontifical Mass, celebrated by the Melchite patriarch, Monsignor Yussef, assisted by four bishops, and the pupils of his seminary. Although the dissident Easterns did not take formal part in the Congress, they followed its deliberations attentively, and interesting discussions took place outside the Congress between those of different communions, and even between their bishops. The Congress terminated, as it had begun, with the expression by Cardinal Langdnieux of feelings of peace and charity, engaging its members, and especially the Easterns, to persevere in the doctrine of the Apostles, and in the fraternal participation in the Eucharist and in prayer. On the occasion of the Pope's episcopal jubilee, cele- POLITICS AND RELIGION. 211 brated February 19th, 1893, Mass was celebrated in St. Peter's by His Holiness, amid great enthusiasm, in the presence of 80,000 people, almost 50,000 of whom were pilgrims of all nationalities, in and around the church, who greeted the pontiff's entrance into the basilica with cries of "Viva il Papa Re." "Peter's Pence" was received to the amount of ;^2 63,960, of which ^^48,000 was contributed by Great Britain, and jQt20 by Ireland. In April of this year the Pope received in audience the Princess of Wales, the Duke of York, and her daughters, and, in April, he received a visit from the German Emperor and Empress. CHAPTER XVII. THE APPEAL TO ENGLAND. The Pope's Apostolic Letter to the English People — A Special Appeal to "The Illustrious English Race" — The "Inroad of Modern Errors"; a "Pious Wish" at all events. IN the early spring of 1895, the outer world was much astonished by the promulgation of an apostolic letter from Pope Leo, addressed directly to the English people. The outer world was astonished, but there were many well-informed people who had good reason to know what was in preparation. Cardinal Vaughan had been in constant communication with the Pope, and Leo had also received in audience Lord Halifax, President of the English Church Union. The Pope's letter is announced as "given at St. Peter's, in Rome, on the 14th of April, 189s, in the eighteenth year of Our Pontificate." It opens with these words : — "Leo the Thirteenth, to the English people who seek the kingdom of Christ in the unity of the faith. . . . Some time since," the Pope says, "in an apostolic letter to princes and people. We addressed the English in common with other nations, but We have greatly desired to do this by a special letter, and thus give to the illustrious English race a token of Our sincere affection. This wish has been kept alive by the hearty goodwill We have always felt towards your people, whose great deeds in olden THE APPEAL TO ENGLAND. 213 times the history of the Church declares. We were yet more moved by not infrequent conversations with your countrymen, who testified to the kindly feeling of the English people towards Us personally, and, above all, to their anxiety for peace and eternal salvation through unity of faith. God is Our witness how keen is Our wish that some effort of Ours might tend to assist and further the great work of obtaining the reunion of Christendom ; and We render thanks to God, who has so far prolonged Our life, that We may make an endeavour in this direction. But since, as iS but right. We place Our confidence of a happy issue principally and above all in the wonderful power of God's grace. We have, with full consideration, determined to invite all Englishmen who glory in the Christian name to this same work, and We exhort them to lift up their hearts to God with Us, to fix their trust in Him, and to seek from Him the help necessary in such a matter, by assiduous diligence in holy prayer." The Pope goes on to say that " the love and care of the Roman pontiffs for England has been traditional from the days of Gregory the Great." He describes the work which was done by Gregory for England, and says that he recalls with special purpose "these great and glorious events in the annals of the Church, which must surely be remembered with gratitude by the English people." The love and solicitude of Gregory for England were inherited by all the pontiffs that succeeded him. Their care for England was soon rewarded, "for in no other case, perhaps, did the faith take root so quickly, or was so keen and intense a love manifested towards the See of Peter. That the English race was, in those days, wholly devoted to this centre of Christian unity, divinely constituted in the Roman bishops, and that, in the course of ages, men of all ranks were bound to them by ties of 214 POPE LEO XIII. loyalty, are facts too abundantly and plainly testified by the pages of history to admit of doubt or question." Then the Pope goes on to consider the severance of the English people generally from the Church of Rome. " In the storms which devastated Catholicity throughout Europe in the sixteenth century, England, too, received a grievous wound, for it was first unhappily wrenched from communion with the Apostolic See, and thus was bereft of that holy faith in which, for long centuries, it had rejoiced and found liberty." The Pope speaks of the prayers offered up for the return of England to the Catholic faith. " We, indeed," he says, " long before being raised to the Supreme Pontificate, were deeply sensible also of the importance of holy prayer offered for this cause, and heartily approved of it. For We gladly recall, at the time when We were Nuncio in Belgium, becoming acquainted with an Englishman, Ignatius Spencer, himself a devout son of the St. Paul of the Cross ; he laid before Us the project he had already initiated for extending a society for pious people to pray for the return of the English nation to the Church." The Pope tells of the results which, according to himself, followed that effort. Very many Englishmen, he says, "were led to follow the divine call, and among them not a few men of distinguished eminence, and many, too, who, in doing so, had to make personal and heroic sacrifices. . . . Looking at all this, we do not doubt that the united and humble supplications of so many to God are hastening the time of further manifesta- tions of His merciful designs toward the English people. . . . Our confidence is strengthened by observing the legis- THE APPEAL TO ENGLAND. 215 lative and other measures, which, if they do not perhaps directly, still do, indirectly, help forward the end We have in view, by ameliorating the condition of the people at large, and by giving effect to the laws of justice and charity. We have heard with singular joy of the great attention which is being given, in England, to the solution of the social question, of which We have treated with much care in Our Encyclicals, and of the establishment of benefit and similar societies whereby, on a legal basis, the condition of the working classes is improved." This passage of the apostolic letter, it may be observed, is peculiarly characteristic of Leo the Thirteenth. The Pope is, above all things, an optimist. His whole mind seems to be filled with the just idea that the more the physical benefit of the hard workers and the poor is advanced, the more will their hearts be lifted towards a better mode of life. The Pope well understood that, in the poorer regions of crowded cities,, in England, as everywhere else, the miserable conditions of the hard struggle for daily living tend to shut out all glimpses of a higher world, just as a dull and dirty window shuts out all view of the sky. Through all his Encyclicals, and through everything he wrote and said, the same con- viction is made manifest that the more you relieve men from physical miseries the more likely are they to lift their minds to moral and religious purpose. "We have heard," says the Pope, "of the vigorous and persevering efforts made to preserve for the people at large an education based on religious teachings, than which there is no firmer foundation for the instruction of youth, and the maintenance of domestic life and civil policy ; of the 2i6 POPE LEO XIII. zeal and energy with which so many engage in forwarding opportune measures for the repression of the degrading vice of intemperance, of societies formed among the young men of the upper classes for the promotion of purity of morals, and for sustaining the honour due to womanhood. . . . The various and abundant manifesta- tions of care for the aged, for orphans, for the incurable, for the destitute, the refuges, reformatories, and other forms of charity, all which the Church, as a tender mother, inaugurated, and from the earliest times has ever inculcated as a special duty, are evidences of the spirit which animates you. . . . Everyone knows the power and resources of the British nation, and the civilizing influence which, with the spread of liberty, accompanies its commercial prosperity even to the most remote regions. But, worthy and noble in themselves as are all those varied manfestations of activity. Our soul is raised to the origin of all power, and the perennial source of all good things. . . . For the mind of the Christian should be so turned and fixed that he places and rests the chief hope of his undertakings in the Divine help obtained by prayer, whereby human effort is super- naturalised, and the desire of doing good, as though quickened by a heavenly fire, manifests itself in vigorous and serviceable actions." Thus far the Pope has only laid down grand truths, with which every Christian must needs agree. Dr. James Martineau, the great Unitarian preacher and teacher, has declared that prayer is not so much a means as an end. In other words, Dr. Martineau meant to convey the idea that prayer, of itself, even though it fulfilled no THE APPEAL TO ENGLAND. 217 other purpose, uplifts the soul from earth, and brings it nearer to heaven. The Pope, however, has a distinct and practical purpose in his apostolic letter. He has a proposal to make, an invitation to offer. "The time," he says, "cannot be far distant when We must appear to render an account of Our stewardship to the Prince of Pastors, and how happy, how blessed should We be if We could bring to Him some fruit, some realisa- tion of these. Our wishes, which He has inspired and sustained. In these days Our thoughts turn with love and hope to the English people, observing, as ^Ve do, the frequent and manifest works of Divine grace in their midst ; how, to some, it is plain, the confusion of religious dissensions which divide them is a cause of deep concern; how others see clearly the need of some sure defence against the inroad of modern errors, which only too readily humour the wishes of fallen nature and depraved reason ; how the number of those religious and discreet men, who sincerely labour much for re-union with the Catholic church, is increasing. . . . With loving heart, then. We turn to you all in England, to whatever community or institution you may belong, desiring to recall you to this holy unity. We beseech you, as you value your eternal salvation, to offer up humble and continuous prayer to God, Who, with gentle power, impels us to the good and the right, and without ceasing to implore light to know the truth in all its fulness, and to embrace the designs of His mercy with single and entire faithfulness. . . . Difficulties there may be for us all to face, but they are not of a nature which should delay Our apostolic zeal, or stay your energy. No doubt 2i8 POPE LEO XIII. the many changes that have come about, and time itself, have caused the existing divisions to take deeper root. But is that a reason to give up all hope of remedy, reconciliation, and peace? By no means, if God is with us. . . . The time is not far distant when thirteen centuries will have been completed since the English race welcomed those apostolic men, sent, as We have said, from this very city of Rome, and, casting aside the pagan deities, dedi- cated the first fruits of its faith to Christ, our Lord and God. This encourages Our hope. It is, indeed, an event worthy to be remembered with public thanksgiving. Would that this occasion might bring to all reflecting minds the memory of the faith then preached to your ancestors — the same which is now preached." Then the Pope appeals first of all to " Our allies, the Catholics of England, whose faith and piety We know by experience. There can be no doubt that, weighing earnestly the value and effect of holy prayer, the virtue of which We have truly declared, they will strive to succour their fellow- countrymen and brethren by invoking on their behalf the divine clemency. To pray for one's self is a need — to pray for others is a counsel of brotherly love ; and it is plain that it is not prayer dictated by necessity so much as that inspired by fraternal charity, which will find most favour in the sight of God." Then the Pope turns aside for a moment to speak of a matter which he says has given him much anxiety. " We have heard that in England there are some who, being Catholics in name, do not show themselves so in practice ; and that in your great towns there are vast numbers of people who do not know the elements of the Christian THE APPEAL TO ENGLAND. 219 faith, who never pray to God, and hve in ignorance of His justice and of His mercy. We must pray to God, and pray yet more earnestly in this sad condition of things, since He alone can effect a remedy." The Pope at the same time desires to warn his people " that they should not suffer themselves to be wanting in anything that pertains to the grace and the fruit of prayer. . . . For besides those interior dispositions of soul necessary for rightly offering prayer to God, it is also needful that they should be accompanied by actions and by words befitting the Christian profession; first of all, and chiefly, the exemplary observance of uprightness and justice, of pity for the poor, of penance, of peace and concord in your own houses, of respect for the law — these are what will give force and efficacy to your prayers. . . . We therefore," says the Pope, " humbly call upon St. Gregory, whom the English have ever rejoiced to greet as the apostle of their race, on St. Augustine, his disciple, and his messenger, on St. Peter and St. Paul, those special patrons, and above all, on Mary, the Holy Mother of God, whom Christ himself on the cross left to be the Mother of mankind, to whom your kingdom was dedicated by your forefathers under that glorious title, 'The Dowry of Mary.' All these with full confidence We call upon to be Our pleaders before the throne of God, that renewing the glory of ancient days, He may ' fill you with all joy and peace in believing, that ye may abound in hope through the power of the Holy Ghost.' (Romans xv. 13.)" Finally, the Pope prescribes certain forms of prayer which ought to be used for the purpose of promoting the object which he has in view. 220 POPE LEO XIII. Much of this letter, it will be seen, might have been written from his own point of view by any saintly teacher of any form of Christian faith. There is Uttle in it of the spirit of dogma ; there is nothing whatever of aggressiveness. It is not a summons to the people of England to come back to the Catholic faith. It is hardly even an appeal to them in the direct sense to renew their spiritual allegiance to the Church of Rome. It is the prolonged and impassioned outpouring of a prayer that the hearts and minds of the English Protestants might be guided in that way. Therefore, whatever the difference of feeUng amongst the English Protestants with regard to the probable influence of the Pope's letter, no one could profess to be in the slightest degree offended by it. Indeed, one of the London papers, The Daily Chronicle, expressed a sort of condolence with the buoyant hopes of High Churchmen, hungering for recognition of their orders, on a letter which had so little of promise in it. What, it asked, is the result of Cardinal Vaughan's pro- longed stay in Rome ? Of the visit of Lord Halifax to His Holiness ? The Pope's letter to the English people it describes as full of amiable, tender sentiment, irreproach- ably pious in tone, pathetic, as being the heartfelt words of one who has earned the respect and esteem of all Christian people. But it is nothing more. "You are not of my flock; God pity you," is its tenour. The writer of the article seems to have expected that the Pope would offer distinct terms of compromise to the Protestants of England. Indeed, he directly suggests that something might have been said on the problem of clerical celibacy. One surely does not need to be a THE APPEAL TO ENGLAND. 221 Catholic in order to know that the Pope of Rome cannot offer any compromise of his faith. He cannot say, "Behold, I abandon this or that doctrine which the Church of Rome has always proclaimed, in order to meet you Protestants halfway, and persuade you to become not exactly Catholics in the strict sense, but members of a new sort of Catholic Church, to be invented and insti- tuted for your special acceptance." A compromise is all right on a Boundary line, if the parties would only agree to it, but a compromise upon an article of faith is a somewhat different thing. It may be said that if the Pope could not offer a compromise on the one side, it would be unfair on his part to expect that the English Protestants should offer one on the other side. Apparently, the Pope did not expect anything of the kind. Certainly he did not invite anything of the kind. What he wished for, we hardly venture to say hoped for, was that England as a nation might return to the Church of Rome. Suppose any compromise were possible on the part of the Anglican Church ; suppose Churchmen were willing, let us say, to accept the doctrine of clerical celibacy ; that alone would not make them Catholics and spiritual disciples of the Pope. Then how about the whole body of the Noncon- formists, who are, for the most part, strongly anti-papal in their views and in their tone ? The truth is, that the Pope expressed in his letter exactly what he wanted to express ; his cordial affection for the English people, and his earnest wish that they might be brought back to the old Church. The season must have seemed to him appropriate to the expression of such a wish. Many great and prominent High 222 POPE LEO XIII. Churchmen were avowedly looking to some sort of possible reunion between spiritual England and spiritual Rome. Many sermons had been preached from Anglican pulpits, which breathed this spirit in all sincerity. The time seemed fitting to the Pope to utter a pious wish, were it only a wish — to utter also a prayer — that such a reunion might be accomplished on the only terms which to him could make it a genuine reunion. It is hard to see how any impartial critic could say that the tenour of the Pope's letter was only, "You are not of my flock; God pity you." It reads to me much more like, "Be of my flock; God bless you." The Pope could have accomplished nothing by issuing a sort of command to the English people. He could have accomplished nothing by merely imploring them for their own sakes to become Roman Catholics again. By simply expressing his pious hope, his pious wish, at all events, he expected to touch some chord of sympathetic feeling in the mind and heart of English Protestantism, which might bring out the first impulse towards a future reconciliation. CHAPTER XVIII. THE ARCHBISHOP OF CANTERBURY'S REPLY. The Lambeth Conferences — The Eastern Churches — Genial Recognition of the Spirit of the Pope's Letter — But " we cannot begin by forgetting our own Church." — Interview with Monsignor Johnson. THE Archbishop of Canterbury, at all events, thought the occasion of sufficient importance to call for the issue of a pastoral letter to the clergy and the laity. In this letter he pointed out that the bishops upon a recent occasion requested the archbishops to address the clergy and laity on two subjects upon which their views were practically unanimous. "These subjects were, first, a certain friendly advance made from a foreign church to the people of England without reference or regard to the Church of England; and, secondly, the recent appearance within our church of certain foreign usages and forms of devotion." Then the Archbishop goes on to say that " a desire for sympathy among classes, for harmony among nations, above all for reunion in Christendom, is characteristic of our time. . . . We recognise the fact. We cannot fail to find in it a call to renewed faith in the mission of the church, and to more strenuous labour for the realisation of Christ's bequest of peace." The Archbishop reminds those whom he 223 224 POPE LEO XIII. addresses that the official letter of the bishops of the Anglican Communion, assembled in conference at Lambeth in 1878, already suggested "the observance throughout our communion of a season of prayer for the unity of Christendom." The Lambeth Conference of 1888 "commended this matter of reunion to the special prayers of all Christian people." " Similar desires have been expressed by Eastern churches. Conferences have been held between leading men of various com- munities. Almost all the Christian bodies known among us, including the Roman Communion, have by their heads requested that prayers should be offered this last Whitsuntide for grace to attain to so great a consum- mation. In thankfulness to the One Spirit for these manifold signs of His operation, the whole Christian Church will consider both the duty of continued move- ment towards this divine end, and will also mark all forms of action likely to hinder or invalidate such movement." Then the Archbishop goes on to suggest that there might be peril " in any haste, which would sacrifice part of our trust, and in narrowness which would limit our vision of Christendom. The expansion in late years of our knowledge of the religious spirit and work of the past, the revived and cultivated love of primitive order, and the enthusiasm for repairing failure or carelessness in the acknowledgement of things divine, have yielded happy results." But then the Archbishop passes on to survey another side of the question. "We cannot," he says, "conceal from ourselves that owing to the attractiveness of appearances, rather than of realities, some things have THE ARCHBISHOP'S REPLY. 225 been introduced among us which find no true place in the religious life of the English Church. Evidence of this appears in the introduction of manuals for teaching, and of observances, which do not even halt at mediae- valism, but merely reproduce modern Roman innovations in ritual and doctrine. . . . On the other hand," the Archbishop admits, " there is some danger lest we should forget that every age does, and ought to, shed new lights on truth. To refuse to admit such light and its inherent warmth is to forfeit the power of seeing things as they are, and to lose the vigour of growth. . . . The aspiration after unity, if it be intelligent, is a vast one. It cannot limit itself to restoring what is pictured of past outward unity. It must take account of Eastern Churches, of non-episcopal reformed churches and bodies on the continent, at home, and among the multiplying populations of the new world, as well as of the Christianising of Asia and Africa under extraordinarily varying conditions. The Roman Com- munion in which Western Christendom once found unity, has not proved itself capable of retaining its hold on nations which were all its own. At this moment it invites the English people into reunion with itself, in apparent unconsciousness of the position and history of the English Church. It parades before us modes of worship and rewards of worship the most repugnant to Teutonic Christendom, and to nations which have become readers of the Bible. . . . For the unquestioned kindliness which now invites our common prayers, already gladly offered, we are thankful," the Archbishop says, and he adds that "all Christian Churches must rejoice in the manifestation of a spirit of love." "But p 226 POPE LEO XIII. this happy change of tone, and the transparent sincerity of the appeal, make the inadequacy of the conception of unity more patent. Recognition might have lent a meaning to the mention of reunion. But, otherwise, what is called reunion would not only be our farewell to all other Christian races, all other churches, but we are to begin by forgetting our own church, by setting aside truth regained through severe sacrifice, cherished as our very life, and believed by us to be the necessary foundation of all union. . . . On the other hand, history appears to be forcing upon the Anglican communion an unsought position, an overwhelming duty from which it has hitherto shrunk. Thinkers not of its own fold have boldly foreshadowed the obligation which must lie upon it towards the divided churches of East and West. By its apostolic creed and constitution, by the primitive scriptural standards of its doctrine and ritual, by its living catholicity and sober freedom, by its existence rooted in the past, and on the whole identified with education and with progress, by its absolute abstention from foreign political action, by its immediate and intense responsibilities for the Christianity of its own spreading and multiplying race and of its subject races, it seems not uncertainly marked by God to bring the parted churches of Christ to a better understanding and closer fellowship. We know that the unique character and position of the English Church cannot be without drawbacks. Its distinct blessings are not such as to tempt to self-assertion. We recognise them as providential gifts and quiet historic developments. They are encompassed with difficulties and obscurities, as THE ARCHBISHOP'S REPLY. 227 yet impenetrable to our sight and effort. But we may not be faithless to them. The blessings themselves are solid realities, which demand the thoughtful contem- plation of its sons, and a readiness to follow the same divine leading which hitherto hath helped us." Then the Archbishop goes on to point out the immediate duties of Churchmen and particularly of clergymen. " They are plain," he says. They are. First : " to preserve in*purity and in loyalty the faith and practice which characterised our primitive, catholic, and scriptural Reformation — a renewal in which Church and family and individual claim their part — a renewal which courts above everything the examination of its principles ; Second : to avoid all that can cause confusion or weakness, by either excess or defect ; Third : to grow stronger in prayer that the Lord of the Church would interpret to us His own prayer that we all may be one in the oneness of Father and Son, and the Father himself answer and fulfil it. If it is not yet given to us to realise the full force of the prayer, or in our minds to reconcile the assurance of its efficacy with our visible conditions, it is none the less our supreme and perfect hope that, at last, ' the peace of God shall rule in all our hearts to the which also we are called in one body.' We steadfastly pray the prayer. We commit ourselves to Him that is able to do exceeding abundantly above all that we ask or think." The Archbishop's definition of the immediate duties of Churchmen, might, except for a line or two, have been written by the Pope himself. Even as regards that line or two it is doubtful whether Pope Leo might not have been the writer. Certainly the whole spirit of the Pastoral Letter is liberal, is charitable, is Christian-like, and shows no unwillingness for a complete Christian reunion. But at the same time it is impossible not to see 228 POPE LEO XIII. that on neither side is there suggested the slightest chance of a practical compromise. As I have said before, the Pope could not compromise on any point that could possibly be considered essential, and the Archbishop of Canterbury, so far as he is concerned, does not seem to see that the Church of England could anywhere yield a point. Under such conditions it does not seem as if anything more could be done for the time. No Christian, of whatever denomination, could help feeling gratified by the overture which Pope Leo made, or could feel surprised at the answer given by the Archbishop of Canterbury. Nobody who knows England and the English population well can believe that as yet the majority of the English people are willing to return to the faith of Rome. But the most determined Nonconformist might admit a certain gratification at the advance made by the Pope, and the surely not ungenial reply made by the Archbishop of Canterbury. The time has not yet come for the practical reunion of the Churches. None the less was it wise of the Pope to make the appeal ; none the less was it wise of the Archbishop of Canterbury to answer it in a spirit of Christian brotherhood. So far as one can judge of the present and of the immediate future, the essential difficulty about such a reunion would not be found so much in the Anglican Church as in the great majority of the English Nonconformists. Then again, outside the Nonconformists and entirely different from them, are the large number of Englishmen and women in almost every class, who are intellectually sceptical as to the essential principle of every Christian creed, or are totally indifferent to the whole subject of religion and the THE ARCHBISHOP'S REPLY. 229 future life. Perhaps in no other country in the world is there so large a proportion of the population who are absolutely indifferent to all religious questions, and into whose lives religion never finds entrance at all. About this time, while the public in general were absorbed in the letter of the Pope on the one side, and of the Archbishop of Canterbury on the other, and while a considerable interest was felt in the statements made by Lord Halifax, President of the English Church Union, an idea got abroad somehow that the Pope would be willing to concede so far to the Anglican Church as to relajc the rule of clerical celibacy in the Catholic Priesthood. One of the London newspapers. The Daily Chronicle, published several letters, especially those signed "A Catholic Priest," and " Sacerdos," which, as the Chronicle says, "have so plainly suggested the existence of a widespread, though necessarily suppressed, anti-celibacy sentiment among the rank and file of the priesthood, that there must be no slight curiosity to know how these revolutionary pronuncements appear to the eye of con- stituted authority in the Church to which they refer." To satisfy this not unnatural curiosity, a member of the staff of The Chronicle sought an interview with Monsignor Johnson, Secretary to Cardinal Vaughan, and for many years secretary to Cardinal Manning. We have seen already how Pope Leo himself consented to be inter- viewed by the correspondent of a Paris newspaper, and, therefore, there could be no reason why we should not accept all the information we can get from the inter- view of the Chronicles correspondent with Monsignor Johnson. 230 POPE LEO XIII. The letters which appeared in the Chronicle were shown to the Cardinal's secretary. His answer was very clear : " 'fhere is most certainly no desire among our priests," he said, "for any relaxation of the rule of celibacy. I myself have been a priest for 38 years, and during the whole of that time have never once heard such a desire expressed, either in private conversation or otherwise. Among priests who have fallen, or among the few, happily very few, who have derogated from the Church's high idea of the priestly office, such a wish may have found expression. But apart from these sad cases, no such desire is possible. When a priest is ordained, he is of full age to decide whether he is capable of the great renunciation which his high vocation entails ; and even at the last moment he has full opportunity of withdrawal if he doubts his own fitness. But we believe that every priest worthy of his office receives grace at his ordination that enables him to welcome and rejoice in the surrender of his whole life and being to the service of the Church." "Then," asks the interviewer, "it may be taken for granted that the recent reports as to the possible inten- tions of His Holiness on this matter are utterly unfounded ? " The answer is prompt and decisive. " Utterly unfounded : they have already been contradicted on the highest authority." The interviewer still perseveres. " If such a step were known to be contemplated, it would not create the satisfaction suggested by the writers of these letters ? " "No, indeed; it would be regarded, on the contrary, with deep and general regret. But it never will be contemplated — never," repeated Monsignor Johnson, with some emphasis. The interviewer, however, was not yet quite satisfied : it is not the business of an interviewer to be easily satisfied. "But," he persisted, "the rule could be abrogated by the Head of the Church?" "Certainly," Monsignor Johnson replied, "it is a THE ARCHBISHOP'S REPLY. 231 matter of discipline, not of faith; and the discipline of the Church is in the hands of the Holy Father." Then the interviewer turned on to a subject of special interest in this country. "May I ask, Monsignor, whether, in your opinion, the concession of a married clergy would greatly advance the cause of reunion in England?" ''No, I think not," is Monsignor Johnson's answer. "There are, of course, individual cases of Anglican clergymen who would come over if they were eligible for the priesthood^ but are debarred by marriage, and con- sequently remain where they are for the sake of their living and that of their family, being, perhaps, unfitted to take up any secular occupation as laymen. I do not think the cause of reunion, or, as we would say, of conversion, would be very greatly affected if it were possible for the law of celibacy to be relaxed for the special benefit of the Anglican clergy." I may call attention to the keen distinction which Monsignor Johnson makes between reunion and conver- sion. When we are studying the history of the times to which we belong, we have to study the significance of phrases, and these are phrases which have an especial and a practical signification. It has already been pointed out in this volume, that the Church of Rome cannot com- promise on any question of doctrine, however the Pope might be willing to concede certain re-arrangements of discipline. Monsignor Johnson, then, touched the key- note of the whole difficulty when he said that what Protestants may call reunion, the Church of Rome can only accept as conversion. The interviewer asked whether on the question of Anglican orders the rumours of a fresh pronouncement from Rome were probably not trustworthy. Monsignor 232 POPE LEO XIII. Johnson replied, that "should the Holy See ever think fit to make a new pronouncement on that subject, it would only be after the fullest and most exhaustive examination of the whole question. But no such pro- nouncement is looked for, and the attitude of the Church on the subject remains what it has always been. The highest dignitaries of the Anglican Church, on becoming converts, and candidates for the priesthood, would be regarded simply as laymen, and would be required to go through the regular course of preparation, and be ordained, step by step, like any other candidates for Holy Orders. This has been the invariable practice since the change of religion in England, and shows clearly enough the mind of the Church in the matter.'' The interviewer tells the public that he felt a little inclined still to argue the point, to " reason out the case,'' with Cardinal Vaughan's secretary. But, he adds con- siderately, " I did not pursue the thorny subject, and took leave of Monsignor Johnson with a reference to the Pope's letter to the English people, of the tone and tenour of which he spoke with evident dehght.'' " It is so gentle, so persuasive,'' he said, "and, above all, so free from the spirit of controversy. It cannot fail to do a great deal of good." Therein the writer of this volume thoroughly agrees with Monsignor Johnson. The Pope's letter could not fail to do a great deal of good in England. It did not call for an immediate return of the whole population of England to the faith of the Church of Rome. The Pope is far too sagacious and practical a statesman, far too well-informed as to the conditions of the population THE ARCHBISHOP'S REPLY. 233 of Great Britain to indulge in any dream of the kind. But the Pope may have drawn comfort and encourage- ment from the change which has come over the minds of the educated classes in England lately, as to the possi- bility of any general acceptance of materialism as the universal doctrine. There was a time when the hard science of negation seemed in a fair way to get an abiding hold on the intellect of educated England. Unquestion- ably that mood of mind has to a great extent passed away. Public feeling has largely changed since the memorable occasion when the late Professor Tyndall proposed his famous leap backwards. Every year since that time has tended more and more to diminish public faith in the possibility of settling all the problems of life, of the soul, and of the future, by the narrow teaching of a strictly materialistic science. Pope Leo no doubt felt that much was gained for the cause which he had at heart by the fall of the materialistic theory from the high place to which at one time it had risen. His letter, however, must have done good in England, if merely by showing even to the most anti-papal populations here, that the Pope after all is not Anti-Christ, but only a man and a brother. From the days when Pope Pius IX. was denounced from every Protestant platform in Great Britain, and when Cardinal Wiseman, driving in his carriage to deliver a lecture in the Philharmonic Hall, in Liverpool, was pelted with stones by a crowd, what a distance we have traversed ! Let it be admitted that the improved tone of public feeling on both sides has been brought about in the first instance by the statemanship, the temper, and the demeanour of Pope Leo himself. Never was there in 234 POPE LEO XIII. modern history a time when the mind of Protestant Englishmen was so set against the Papacy, as the time when Pope Leo succeeded to Pope Pius IX. Never since the Reformation was there a time when the public heart of England was filled with a more general kindli- ness and cordiality towards the head of the Roman Church than that which prevails here now. The Pope has shown himself a lover of all men, and he has won in return the regard, the confidence, and the affection of all men who, whatever their creed, are open to the claims of reason, of statesmanship, and of common philanthropy. The Pope's appeal to the English people may have greater and deeper results hereafter, but, happen what may, it has done much already to win English sympathy. CHAPTER XIX. 'IF YOU YOURSELVES ARE OLD!" The Pope's Growing Years — A Prophecy — Leo's " Unconquerable Mind " — Mr. Marion Crawford's Description of the Pope's Habits, His Work, and Himself — The Twenty-fifth Anniversary of the Occupation of Rome by the Troops of King Victor Emanuel THE years of Pope Leo are growing on apace. He has already surpassed the average age and length of reign of the Roman Pontiifs. Since the Pope's return from Avignon to Rome, only sixteen pontiffs had lived more than eighteen years. Of the two hundred and ninety-three Popes who succeeded St. Peter, only eleven have reigned more than seventeen years. There was a kind of popular belief, or superstition, that no Pope could reign longer than twenty-five years, the period, as it was supposed, that the Apostle Paul reigned in Rome. This idea, however, was put out of account by the pontificate of Pius the Ninth, who, in despite of popular super- stition, reigned for thirty-two years. A story goes that some fortune-teller announced to Pope Leo in his youth that he was destined to live to be ninety, and the Pope was said to have believed in the prophecy. In any case, the prophet can hardly be far out in his prediction, only, of course, a miss of a year or two in a prophecy is as much of a miss as an error of twenty years. 23s 236 POPE LEO XIII. On the 25th of April, 1895, a New York paper pub- lished a telegram from Rome, with the sensational head- ing, "The passing of Leo XIII.," which announced that " Pope Leo is at the point of death." " This,'' said the telegram, "has been reported before, but it is true now." Yet "your news," to quote Hamlet's words, "is not true." The Pope himself does not appear to have known, at the time, that he was on the point of death. Nearly a year has passed, and he has done much good work in the meantime. He is not even still the oldest among the great men of Europe. Mr. Gladstone is about a year his senior. The Pope still continues to be indomitable in his willingness for work. I may bring back a memory peculiarly interesting at the present day. The President of Venezuela addressed, in 1895, the following letter to the Pope, on the failure of the proposal that His Holiness should arbitrate on the boundary dispute : — " Most Holy Father, — When, in June of last year, through the intervention of his Excellency, Monsignor Torti, the diplomatic representative of the Holy See in this Republic, and by means of a special communication, directed, by my orders, to his Eminence, Cardinal RampoUa, I prayed for the intervention of your Holiness to obtain the consent of England to a transaction pro- posed shortly before by the Government of Venezuela for the final settlement of her boundaries towards the Colony of Demerara, I was entirely convinced that the goodwill of your Holiness would express itself in the same certain and decided manner in which it has always been displayed whenever there has been question of measures tending to the welfare of nations, and the peace of the world. The event has confirmed my convictions in an eloquent manner, and although the extremely valuable negotiations "IF YOU YOURSELVES ARE OLD!" 237 undertaken by command of your Holiness have, on account of special circumstances, not succeeded in obtaining a result adequate to the loftiness of thought which inspired them, yet the Republic and its Govern- ment cannot fail to estimate at their true value the steps taken by the Holy See in this delicate question, and is bound to so hold and esteem them, as if their efforts had been those which your Holiness anticipated, and the Republic desired. As an indication of my warmest thanks for so signal a favour, I address the present letter to your Holiness"; while, at the same time, imploring you to grant the Apostolic Benediction, and expressing the earnest hope that it may please Heaven to preserve your precious life for many years, to the greater glory of the Papacy." The eminent novelist, Mr. Marion Crawford, has lately given to the world, in the Century Magazine, a most interesting account of the Pope's ways and occupations during his recent years. Mr. Crawford is, as we all know, almost an Italian by education and by residence. He has had peculiar opportunities of studying Pope Leo in, what we may call, his inner life, the life apart from pageants and ceremonies, and the reception of princes and ambassadors. Speaking of great men, Mr. Crawford says, that "in some rare high types, head, heart, and hand are balanced to one expression of power, and every deed is a function of all three. Leo the XHL probably approaches as nearly to such superiority as any great man now living. As a statesman his abilities are admitted to be of the highest order ; as a scholar he is undisputedly one of the first Latinists of our time, and one of the most accomplished writers in Latin and Italian prose and verse. As a man, he possesses the simplicity of character which almost always accompanies greatness, together with 238 POPE LEO XIII. a healthy sobriety of temper, habit, and individual taste, rarely found in those beings whom we might well call ' motors ' among men. ... It is commonly said," Mr. Crawford goes on, "that the Pope has not changed his manner of life since he was a simple bishop. He is, indeed, a man who could not easily change either his habits or his opinions ; for he is of that enduring, melan- cholic, slow-speaking, hard-thinking temperament which makes hard workers, and in which everything tends directly to hard work as a prime object, even with persons in whose existence necessary labour need play no part, and far more so with those whose little daily tasks hew history out of humanity in the rough state. . . . For he is a great Pope," says Mr. Crawford. " There has not been his equal intellectually for a long time, nor shall we presently see his match again." Mr. Crawford gives some picturesque and striking descriptions of the Pope's appearance, movements, voice, and manner : " Leo the thirteenth was born and bred in the keen air of the Volscian Hills, a Southern Italian, but of the moun- tains, and there is still about him something of the hill people. He has the long, lean, straight, broad-shouldered frame of the true mountaineer, the marvellously bright eye, the eagle features, the well-knit growth of strength, traceable even in extreme old age." The stiff mannerism of the patriarchal system, Mr. Marion Crawford says, " which survived until recently from early Roman times, gave him that somewhat formal tone and authoritative manner which are so characteristic of his conversation in private." His voice, neither deep nor very full, "is ■'IF YOU YOURSELVES ARE OLD/" 239 wonderfully clear and ringing, and it has a certain in- cisiveness of sound which gives it great carrying power. . . . No one who ever heard him intone the Te Deum in St. Peter's, in the old days, can forget the grand tones " of his baritone voice. "His enunciation is exceedingly clear, both in Latin and Italian, and also in French, a language in which he expresses himself with ease and clearness. . . . His bearing is erect at all times, and on days when he iS well his step is quick as he moves about his private apartments. ' II Papa corre sempre ' (the Pope always runs) is often said by the guards and familiars of the ante-chamber. " In spite of his great age " the Pope has in no respect changed his habits since the time when he lived at Perugia as cardinal. "He rises very early, and when, at about six in the morning, his valet, Pio Centra, enters his room, he more often finds him risen than asleep." The Pope sleeps little, not more than four or five hours at night, though he rests awhile after dinner. " Of late he frequently says mass in a chapel in his private apart- ments, and the mass is served by Pio Centra. On Sundays and feasts he says it in a small chapel, opening on a room to which only privileged people, such as distinguished foreigners, are admitted on application to the Maestro di Camera. After his own mass the Pope hears a second one by one of the private chaplains. To those present at his own mass he frequently gives com- munion with his own hand. After mass he breakfasts on coifee and goat's milk, milk supplied by goats kept in the Vatican garden. Daily about ten he receives the Secretary of State, Cardinal Rampolla, with whom 240 POPE LEO XIII. he converses for an hour or so on current afifairs. On Tuesdays and Fridays he receives the Diplomatic Corps in his own apartments. In the papal ante-chamber a list is kept of the various cardinal prefects, and those in charge of different offices, with the days of their audiences. " During the morning he receives the cardinals, the bishops ad limina, ambassa- dors who are going away on leave or who have just returned, princes, and members of the Roman nobility, and distinguished foreigners." At ten he takes a cup of broth. At two he dines, eating most abstemiously. Every day, unless indisposed, he receives in private audience. When the weather is fine the Pope generally walks or drives in the garden, being carried out to the gate in a sedan chair, where the carriage awaits him. He gets in with the Cameriere Segreto Partecipante, who is always a Monsignor. Two Noble Guards ride beside the carriage, a simple brougham, with his coat of arms on the panels. After driving several times round the avenues, the officer of guards dismounts and opens the carriage door. The Pope enjoys walking about, directing the work and improvements in the gardens, he likes talking to Vespignani, the architect of the Holy Apostolic Palaces, going over the plans of the works he has ordered. He also takes pleasure in talking about flowers and plants with the director of the gardens. During the great summer heats, the Pope, after saying mass, goes into the garden about nine, spending the whole day there, receiving as he would in the Vatican, dining, and often not returning till after sunset. In the evening "TF YOU YOURSELVES ARE OLD!'* 241 he attends the recitation of the rosary, and then retires to his room, where he studies, reads or writes verses, and about ten he takes a slight supper. Since 1870, the Pope has not conducted the solemn services either in St. Peter's or in the Sistine Chapel. The only services of this kind in which the Pontiff takes part are those held in the Sistine Chapel on the anniver- sary of the death of Pope Pius the Ninth, and on the anniversary of his own coronation. The finances of the Vatican are under the direct and very thrifty control of the Pope himself. " The contribu- tions of Catholics, on being received, are immediately invested in securities bearing interest," the securities being generally Italian National Bonds, "a curious fact, and indicative of considerable confidence in the existing state of things, as well as a significant guarantee of the Vatican's good faith toward the Monarchy." The Pope was not always left, even during these latest years, the quiet enjoyment of that " Vatican and a garden," which so many of his political enemies declared to be domain ample enough for the head of the Roman Church. He had to hear, on a recent occasion, the shouts and jubilations of those who exulted in the fall of the temporal power — some of whom would have been only too jubilant if the spiritual power had gone at the same time. It is certainly by no means a " far cry " from some of the populous Roman streets to the enclosure of the Vatican, and among many of the population there was no particular desire to spare the Pope's ears or the Pope's feelings. The twenty-fifth anniversary of the occupation of Rome by the troops of King Victor Emanuel, was celebrated in Q 342 POPE LEO XIII. the early autumn of 1895, with immense display of national exultation. The display was made especially manifest in Rome itself. It was a military pageant, and undoubtedly, to a great extent, a national pageant as well. No one can question the fact that a great majority of the Itahan people are in favour of Italian unity and of an Italian State, with Rome for its capital. Whether the majority of the Italian people are right or wrong in this judgment, it is hardly a part of my task just now to enquire. Richard Cobden used to contend that the best qualities of man's intellect, man's courage, and man's physical strength, were brought out in little states, which one could ride across in a day's journey. Just now, however, it is certain that the tendency is for the agglomeration of provinces into federations. To many minds it seems that this principle is the solution of all future forms of government. I may frankly acknowledge myself to be one of those who cannot profess to see any farther into the future of political government for the world than that principle of federation — of local govern- ments for the different parts of the State, and unity of government for all that concerns the common interests. I am, by my own political creed, pledged to such a principle, and, while I admit the large amount of truth contained in Cobden's doctrine, I do not see that it has much of a practical and working value in our time. To me the unification of Italy appears to have been under the circumstances inevitable. I do not believe that any considerable number of persons in Italy really regret the eviction of the Austrians and the extinction of the Bourbons, and the suppression of the Grand Dukes. "IF YOU YOURSELVES ARE OLD/" 243 But, as I have said already, it is idle and futile to try to get over the fact that the Pope stands on a totally different footing in Italy from the Austrians, and the Bourbons, and the Grand Dukes. This is a fact which was recognised in all its gravity by Count Cavour himself. In his famous talks with Lord Clarendon, at the Congress of Paris, after the Crimean War, Cavour described the eviction of the Austrians and the expulsion of the Bourbons, and the suppression of the Grand Dukes, as comparatively easy work ; but he acknowledged that the serious trouble would begin when it came to be a question of dealing with Rome and the Pope. He had an undaunted mettle, and he was not a man of many scruples, and he had, therefore, fully persuaded himself that the thing would be done sometime and somehow — but he freely acknow- ledged its complications and its difificulties. Whether these complications and difficulties would have been lessened if Cavour had lived longer, it would be a sheer waste of time to speculate. It may be that to the marvellous intellect of Cavour some form of compromise would have become possible. But Cavour did not live to face the Roman question, and the question was crudely and imperfectly settled for the time by the entry of the Italian troops into Rome. This was the event that was celebrated with so much exuberance, and even with some turbulence, in the September of 1895. It is not to be wondered at that the Pope should have issued something in the nature of a protest against the commemoration. It was the celebration of the deposition of the Pope as a Sovereign Prince, and it could not quite reasonably be expected 244 POPE LEO XIII. that a Pope should take a pride in the rejoicings^ over his own fall from temporal power. Leo XIII. issued a «ort of public protest— perhaps he might just as well have let it alone. No protest on his part could change a single opinion. The question in Italy does not admit of argument just now. Either a man is in favour of the Pope's temporal rule, or he is against it. So far as the countries outside Italy are concerned, the question is determined just as easily. The Catholic populations, speaking generally, are for the temporal rule of the Pope ; the Protestant populations are against it. There is some- thing pathetic — something that might appeal to any rnind — in one of the opening passages of what may be called the Pope's manifesto, concerning those demonstrations of the 20th September ; " The sentiment of humanity," he says, " which is pre- served even in minds dominated by passion, seemed to permit of the hope that some consideration would be shown for Our old age ; but this sentiment has been brutally ignored. We have been reduced to becoming almost the immediate witness of the apotheosis of the Italian Revolution and the spoliation of the Holy See. What pained Us most of all was the intention to per- petuate rather than terminate a conflict whose disastrous results none can measure. Moreover, an essentially anti- religious ideal has been pursued ; for the ultimate aim of the occupation of Rome, if not in the minds of those who took part in it, at least in the minds of the sectaries who promoted it, was not to complete political unity, but by battering down the walls of the Papal metropolis to secure a better position for attacking the spiritual power of the Popes. The aim was to change the destinies of Rome,, to transform her, to make her once again Pagan, and to give birth to a third Rome — to a third era oi civilization. This is what was recently celebrated by "/F YOU YOURSELVES ARE OLD!" 245 the sanction of a new law, by noisy demonstrations led by a sect who are the enemies of God. The nation suffers, for not only has the promise given to her that her material welfare would be assured, not been kept, but Italy is morally divided, and the parties of sub- version, who menace all civil and social institutions, are increasing in numbers and in strength. Nothing can ever confer true independence on the Papacy so long as it has no temporal jurisdiction. That condition, which it is affirmed has been guaranteed to us, is sub- ordinated to the "caprice of others, and latterly we have been confronted by a veiled threat to abrogate existing Papal guarantees," Perhaps the time may come when civilised man will be content to celebrate his triumphs in war, or in conquest, or in diplomacy, without in any way offending his neigh- bours and his late rivals. Perhaps the recent celebrations in Rome might at least have been kept a little apart from the regions of the Vatican. Some of us who were- in much sympathy with the cause of the Germans against the Third Empire, cannot help thinking that the annual celebrations of Germany's triumph might have been made a little less flamboyant and a good deal less noisy. But the inherent vulgarity in the human being, however kept under on the whole by reason and education and kindly feeling, comes out overwhelmingly in moments of triumph, and, what is far less excusable, in the anniversaries of triumph. Certainly the man who can find in himself no sympathy whatever with the Pope's protest, must carry religious or political partizanship to its utterest extreme. The protest itself has much dignity in it. Perhaps it had better been left unpronounced. The same thing might be said of a great many human 246 POPE LEO XIII. utterances. Perhaps there was little practical purpose in Lear's protest — ". . . Oh heavens, If you do love old men, if your sweet sway Allow obedience, if you yourselves are old, Make it your cause. " Nothing very particular came of the appeal and of the protest. But both were natural and were human, and will thrill the hearts of some men as long as the world lasts. CHAPTER XX. THE CHRISTENING OF PRINCE BORIS. Prince Ferdinand of Bulgaria, his family and his heir — An odd and modern version of Abraham's sacrifice. THE christening — not the baptism — of Prince Boris, the infant son of Prince Ferdinand of Bulgaria, became the occasion of some alarm in the opening days of 1896. Bulgaria was one of the new states created by the Congress of Berlin, which was presided over by Prince Bismarck, and at which Lord Beaconsfield and Lord Salisbury attended as representatives of England. Bul- garia, up to that time, had been nothing but a cruelly- entreated province of Turkey. The oppression to which it was subjected, and the crimes and cruelties by which that oppression was maintained, aroused the horror and awakened the conscience of Europe, and it became evident that something must be done to put a stop to the existence of such a barbarous system. The Treaty of Berlin created Bulgaria a self-governed, but tributary, principality, under the nominal suzerainty of the Sultan. It was to have a Christian government and a national militia. The Prince of Bulgaria was to be freely elected by the- population, and confirmed by the Porte, with the consent of the great European powers. It was stipulated 247 248 POPE LEO XIII. that no member of any of the great European reigning houses could be elected Prince of Bulgaria. Afterwards Eastern Roumelia, which the Treaty of Berlin had left under the direct authority of the Sultan, but with condi- tions of local self-government, became, by a sort of revolution, a part of the principality of Bulgaria. Prince Ferdinand of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha, youngest son of Prince Augustus, Duke of Saxe-Coburg, and of the Princess Clementine, daughter of Louis Philippe, was elected Prince of Bulgaria by the unanimous vote of the National Assembly in 1887, in succession to Prince Alexander, who had abdicated in 1886. Prince Alexander, who was the hero of the war forced on Bulgaria by Servia, was compelled to abdicate by the sheer force of Russian military and political influence. He was succeeded by Prince Ferdinand. At the time of Ferdinand's election, there was a tolerably distinct under- standing that he and his heirs should be allowed to remain members of the Roman Catholic Church. Prince Ferdinand was then a strong Catholic ; so was his mother, the Princess Clementine. Prince Ferdinand, warned by the fate of his predecessor, was somewhat too anxious to conciliate the good will of Russia. It was sent along the diplomatic wires, in one way or another, that Prince Ferdinand would not be altogether unwilling to allow his infant son, Boris, to be brought up according to the ritual of the orthodox Greek Church. It is not easy to find, for a certainty, whether Prince Ferdinand himself was the first to give out this idea; but the idea certainly was given out, and it was welcomed by Russia and by the Bulgarian people, the majority of whom belong to the THE CHRISTENING OF PRINCE BORIS. 249 Greek Church. The Bulgarian government twice over announced that the little Prince was to be brought into the Greek Church. More lately, however, Prince Ferdi- nand seems to have shrunk from the idea. No doubt the members of his powerful family had all set themselves against the suggestion that the son of a Catholic Prince, the descendant, on one side at all events, of a long line of Catholic Princes, should be brought up as the member of a church which was not Catholic. Unfortunately, such arrangements and compromises are not altogether uncommon in reigning families. The King of Greece, for example, was brought up as a Protestant, and his name was William. But when he was offered the crown of the Hellenic kingdom, it was found that his name could not well be worked into Greek, and so he became George. It was also found that it would be inconvenient for him not to be a member of the Greek Church. Accordingly he ceased to be a Protestant, and conformed to the ritual of the church of his new people. In other words, he came in at one door Prince William, a Protestant, and passed out at the other door King George, a member of the Greek Church. Prince Ferdinand of Bulgaria appears not to have been able to make up his mind quite so easily and decisively. He " boggled," as the Elizabethan writers would say, and at last he ran off to Rome, and applied to the Pope for counsel. His difficulty was that if he did not consent to the so-called conversion of his infant son, he might be compelled to abdicate, and, if he did consent, he would undoubtedly offend some of his nearest and most powerful relatives. No one can profess to tell, with any- 250 POPE LEO XIII. thing like authority or authenticity, how the Pope received him, or what the Pope said to him. But it is quite safe to assume that such an appeal as he had come to make, received no comforting response from Leo the Thirteenth. It would, of course, be obviously impossible for the Pope to sanction the so-called conversion of a Catholic child to the Greek faith, because of any political advantages which the child's father might derive. Nobody was able to suggest that poor little two-year Boris, himself, had any conscientious misgivings with regard to the faith of his father, or any devotional yearning towards the ritual of the Greek Church. It would have been impossible to make the little child understand the difference between one church and the other, or, indeed, understand any- thing about a church of any kind. The crude question, therefore, propounded to the Pope seems to have been : "Can you not give me, Ferdinand, Prince of Bulgaria, your sanction to transfer my child, against my own liking, and against my own conscience, from the Catholic to the Greek Church? If you do not give me that sanction, and if, therefore, I do not consent to the transfer, the chances are many to one that I may lose my throne." We can easily understand that such an appeal must have failed to impress the Pope. The wonder is how even a weak-minded man, like Ferdinand, could have thought it possible to obtain any sanction from the Head of the Roman Catholic Church for a proposal to hand over his infant son to another faith, with the mere purpose of securing the throne. Not the humblest Roman Catholic curate would consent to discuss a proposition of the kind. Either one has a religion or THE CHRISTENING OF PRINCE BORIS. 251 one has it not. If one has a religion he is not supposed to sacrifice it for mere worldly advantages. If one has not a religion, he is not expected to apply to the head of a faith for sanction for an irreligious act. We may assume that the Pope very summarily disposed of Prince Ferdinand's appeal. Prince Ferdinand apparently thought over the matter, and decided to call in the present world to redress the balance of the future. In other words, he determined on allowing his infant son to be brought up as a member of the Greek Church. No doubt, if he had acted otherwise, he would have been flying in the face of Russian influence, and would have offended the majority of his own people. It may be, too, that the fate of Stambouloff was on his mind. Perhaps he thought it not impossible that some enemy of his might plan his assassination. However that may be, it is certain that he gave way, and, in fashion most unkingly, consented to put aside his own religious principles, and his own conscience, and to allow his son to be received into the Greek Church. It was an ignoble episode in history, and it is by no means certain that even surrender will make Prince Ferdinand's seat on the throne a life-long lease of power. The best that any friend of Prince Ferdinand could say of him would be that he has not done much worse than other men con- fronted with an equal difficulty. But the wonder will still remain as to what put it into his head to ask the advice of the Pope on such a question. There was only one advice the Pope could possibly give, and the Pope gave it, and it was disregarded. One might as well have con- sulted one of her Majesty's judges about the lawfulness 252 POPE LEO Xin. of picking a pocket, or forging a cheque, as to consult the Head of the Roman Church about the propriety of handing over, for worldly advantage, one's innocent infant child to a faith different from that in which its father and mother believed. Prince Ferdinand went back to his dominions, and issued a manifesto to the Bulgarian nation, in which he declared to his "beloved people" that, "in pursuance of the promise given from the Throne to the representatives of the nation, I have used every possible endeavour, and have striven with all my strength, to remove the difiS- culties which oppose the attainment of the ardent desire of the entire nation that the Heir Apparent should enter the fold of the national church." Then the Prince went on to say that " after having fulfilled my duty in showing respect towards those with whom it rested to smooth away these difficulties, and after having seen the dis- appearance of my hopes without finding, where I had expected, a wise comprehension of Bulgaria's needs, I have resolved, of my own initiative, and true to the oath given to my well-beloved people, to surmount all obstacles, and to lay on the altar of the Fatherland the greatest and heaviest of sacrifices. I therefore announce to all Bulgarians that, on the 14th of the present month, the feast of the Purification, the rite of holy confirmation will be administered to the Heir Apparent, Prince Boris, Prince of Tirnova, according to the usages of the national orthodox church." The manifesto was read, by the Bul- garian Prime Minister, to the representative assembly of the State, and, as the newspapers tell us, "was enthusi- astically received by the deputies." The newspapers also THE CHRISTENING OF PRINCE BORIS. 253 announced, at the same time, that a telegram had been received, intimating that the Tsar had consented to act as sponsor to the baby prince, on the occasion of his confirmation. The correspondent of the Daily News, at Sofia, wrote that the manifesto came as a surprise. " It is not possible to decide whom the Prince alludes to when he says that his hope to find a wise and ready under- standing for the wants of Bulgaria has not been fulfilled. This may refer* either to the Pope or to the Princess; more likely to the latter, from what is reported of what happened yesterday." The correspondent tells us what he understands to have "happened yesterday." The Bulgarian Prime Minister, Mons. Stoiloff, had an audience of Princess Mario I^ouise, "to whom he expressed the devotion of the Bulgarian people, its thanks for her charitable work, and for the favourable influence she had had upon social life. He assured her that the nation fully valued the battle she was fighting with her convic- tions. The Princess leaves Sofia on Frida)', with her younger son, and goes to Vienna. After a short stay there, she leaves for Nice, in the neighbourhood of which she will remain for some time. The Prince and Princess, it is asserted, are fully convinced that it is best for the Princess to leave Sofia." Then the paragraph closes with the significant words, "everybody hopes she will some day return." The papers of the following day state that the Princess had asked the Pope to annul her marriage with Prince Ferdinand. The Pope, however, it is declared, dissuaded the Princess from such a step, and added that, although Prince Ferdinand had betrayed his promises to his wife. 254 POPE LpO XIII. the Duke of Parma, and the Roman Church, the Vatican "would not apply the canonical punishment of excom- munication for the apostate's contemplated act." There was naturally much difference of opinion amongst the Continental newspapers as to the conduct of Prince Ferdinand. The Vaterland, of Vienna, a clerical paper, denounced the Prince, and declared that his wife was quite right to leave him, and predicted that her departure was but the beginning of a far more serious step. The great Catholic journal, L'Untvers, of Paris, branded him as an apostate, and a perjurer. On the other hand, the Russian newspapers, and public opinion generally in Russia, expressed great satisfaction at Prince Ferdinand's resolve with regard to the conversion of Prince Boris, and spoke of it as specially gratifying to the national and religious sentiment of the Russian people. Even the Russian papers, however, treated the conversion as rather in the nature of a stepping-stone towards the settlement of the Bulgarian question, than as a completion of it. The final solution, it is pointed out, is " subject to numerous others conditions which are inscribed in Russia's political programme." Very likely. The unfortunate Prince Ferdinand may find that, after having laid on the altar of the Fatherland the greatest and heaviest of sacrifices — the sacrifice of conscience and of honour, of a man's dignity, and of a father's rights — he has not yet sufficiently propitiated his patron, and may have to make other sacrifices, which, perhaps, will do a greater hurt to his feelings. Still, for the hour at least, all appeared to look well with Ferdinand. His Imperial patron, the Emperor of THE CHRISTENING OF PRINCE BORIS. 255 Russia, had done his patronizing work ungrudgingly, and had promised to use his best endeavours to get the Prince and his State recognised by the great Powers of Europe. Ferdinand's Prime Minister was immediately sent off to Constantinople, where he met with apparently a very cordial welcome from the Sultan. So far, the sacrifice would not seem to have been made all in vain. The general feeling of Europe was a sort of sense of relief that the thing was dSne with, and the scandal put away, if even only for the time. Western Europe wondered at the whole transaction, and was glad to be rid of it, with an uneasy feeling all the time that we probably had not quite got rid of it yet. Meanwhile, the Osservatore Romano, which, as I have already said, is understood to be the official organ of the Vatican, published a note on the subject, which could hardly be regarded as uninspired. " If," says the journal which I quote, "we have preserved silence in regard to the so-called conversion of Prince Boris to the schismatic Greek rite, it is because we had always hoped that we should not have been given the scandal of such a spectacle. We hoped this the more, inasmuch as we knew that the Pope had gone to the extreme limits of his paternal forbear- ance in making it known that he would have sanctioned the change from the Latin to the Bulgarian Catholic rite. But even that, it appears, has not sufficed. Henceforward there is nothing to do but deeply to deplore that a prince should have given such offence, and inflicted such a sharp sorrow on the Church of his birth, and have caused to all the Catholic world a scandal as iniquitous as it is real." A correspondent in Rome, commenting on this 256 POPE LEO XIII. official utterance, says, "it is to be pointed out that the action of Prince Ferdinand in assenting to the con- version of Prince Boris is regarded the more seriously at the Vatican, from the example which it sets in the East, at the very moment when the Pope is doing his utmost to induce the return of the dissident Oriental Churches to the fold of Catholic unity. The Pope, as head of the Roman Church, and the Tsar, as head of the Greek Orthodox Church, have been, as it were, placed in direct opposition, and the Prince's action has strengthened the schismatic Church, for in this affair, as in the question of the policy of the Holy See in the conversion of the Copts, and in all Eastern questions in general, the religious point of view taken by the Vatican is diametri- cally opposed to that of Russia, supported by France. The Holy See is now confronted by the problem of reconciling its religious interests with its policy of sup- porting France and Russia, in order to counteract the Triple Alliance as a whole, and Italy in particular." These, of course, are the comments of a layman and a newspaper correspondent. We must not take it that the view which it expresses with regard to the Pope's pohtical purposes thoroughly represents the policy of Leo XIII. To me, at least, it seems extremely improbable that the Pope had set his mind on any plan hostile to the Triple Alliance, and to Italy in particular. It would not seem in accordance with the general statesmanship of Pope Leo to have determined on any scheme of opposition to this European State and of support to that other. The actual condition of things forced him into a certain antagonism to Italy, as it had forced him into a certain THE CHRISTENING OF PRINCE BORIS. 257 antagonism to France. But we may be sure that he brought an open mind to the guidance of his general and future relations to every State in Europe and outside it. All the same, it is no doubt true that the action of Prince Ferdinand must have had an embarrassing effect on the religious purposes of the Pope with regard to the Eastern Churches, and their return to union with the Church of Rome. Prince Ferdinand's action is only one other illus- tration of the immemorial truth, that weakness can some- times do greater harm than even misdirected strength. CHAPTER XXI. IN CONCLUSION. A Summary of the Pope's Career. A SUMMARY of the purpose and result of the Pope's years of reign was given in New York quite lately by the Most Reverend Archbishop Satolli, Apostolic Delegate to the United States. I give it, of course, as the work of a devotee. We cannot take account of any great stateiilan's life and public career unless we pay some attention to the opinions of his devotees. It must reckon for something that a man was able so to impress his devotees. We must consider what his enemies said just as well, and give full weight to their opposition, and the reasons for it, but we can really understand no career unless we look at it for the moment, at all events, through the eyes of those whom it most fascinated. With this view I wish to direct attention to the opinions of Monsignor Satolli. "It would seem," he says, "as if from the time when Leo XIII. succeeded Pius IX., he had formed a grand plan, in which he took cognizance of all the needs of humanity, and determined on the provisions he would make for those needs during the whole course of his Pontificate. "We can best distinguish this design of the Pope in three particular directions. "Firstly, in the Holy Father's ardent zeal for the development of studies. 258 IN CONCLUSION. 259 " Secondly, in the continued interest which he has shown in social science. " And, thirdly, in his untiring efforts to bring peace into the Christian countries by the spread of civilization, the teaching of religion, and the promotion of concord between Church and State. " With regard to studies, Pope Leo has already reared a monument of imperishable fame by the successive acts of his Pontificate. "Early in his reign he turned his attention to the encouragement "of the study of classical literature, of philosophy and the natural sciences, of theology and the various branches of sacred sciences, such as Biblical know- ledge and ecclesiastical history, and of judicial sciences, especially of Roman law and comparative civil law. "To accomplish his aim he founded new chairs and new institutions in Rome for these various departments of literary and encyclopaedic knowledge, and called to his assistance some of the most eminent and learned professors. " With regard to sociology, it is another of the Holy Father's glories that at this latter end of the nineteenth century, his encyclicals are regarded as so many admirable parts of a grand doctrinal system, comprehensive and universal, embracing all the social sciences, beginning with the fundamental theorems of natural law, and going on to the consideration of the political constitution of States, and of every economic question. "The whole world knows how well the Pope's ency- clicals have carried out his plan, and how, for this reason, they have their own peculiar character, by which they are distinguished from the pontifical utterances of other Popes, even those of his immediate predecessor, Pius IX. "Turning again to his policy of pacification, the ecclesiastical history of his pontificate, the civil history of Europe, the universal history of the human race, will in the future have to give up pages of the highest praise to Leo Xin. "Germany, Belgium, France, and Spain profess their boundless gratitude for the peace-giving interventions of Leo Xin. in many grave and critical emergencies, and 26o POPE LEO XIII. for acts which have been of the greatest moment to those nations. "Asia, too, and Africa will be found joining in the chorus and lauding Leo, who has so often and so resolutely laboured to reawaken those old and fossilized portions of the earth to a new life of Christian civilization. " Nor will America, throughout its length and breadth, withhold its tribute of loyal and generous esteem, venera- tion, and gratitude to Pope Leo for those acts of his pontificate which have at various times been promulgated, and by which he has shown his confidence and hope in the grand future of this mighty nation." I am sure the calm judgment of the civilized world, apart from political or sectarian prejudice, one way or the other, will accept and confirm this summary of Pope Leo's career. I have tried to tell the story of his life as one might tell the story of the life of any other prince or statesman, surrounding it with no halo of mere hero- worship or saint - worship. But it is hard indeed not to grow enthusiastic as one studies the records of such a career. Statesmanship and philanthropy are combined in it, each at its best and highest. 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