The Press. — London, England, 1858-10-23 00:00:00

THE PRESS, OCTOBER 23, 1858. for a long time past to reduce our National Church to the level of a sect ; it behoves the real laity of the Church to look to it, lest she become not only a sect but a persecuted sect. We should much like to see a " religious census " of these said "representative men of the metro polis," to whose judgment and tender mercies the Church is to be handed over. How many of them are bona-fide members of the Church—not mere occasional church-goers, but communi cants ? how many of them are professed Dis senters? how many of them Jews? how many of them infidels? Can Mr. HoitAcE MANN help us, by publishing a Municipal Directory with the religious denomination appended to each name ? We should then have a chance of seeing what we are about. A propos of this point, one word in the ear of the Hon. Colonel VERMEIL He is, we infer from his speech, a Churchman, though after a fashion peculiarly his own. Nevertheless we are willing to give him credit for his Church manship, such as it is. But is he quite sure that he is not at this very moment a tool of some crafty " emissary of Rome ?'' The Jesuit has played his game before now with simple-minded ultra-Protestant puppets. That these matters are fast approaching a crisis, when something will have to be done to restore peace and order in the Church, is pretty evident. We agree with the sentiment uttered by one of the speakers at St. James's-hall, that to secure a remedy there must be " a long pull, a strong pull, and a pull altogether." Nothing can be more true. The only question is, who they are that shall "pull together." The ans wer is obvious—the members of the Church. In saying this, we wish it to be borne in mind that the Church does not consist of the clergy alone ; the laity—the true Church laity, of course, not any body that calls himself a " layman " because he is not in Holy Orders—arc as much an integral part of the Church as the clergy. We venture to commend this point more especially to the notice of their Lordships the Bishops. There is in the Church laity an element of strength which has been too much overlooked. Let it be called into life; let it be made a party to united, cor porate Church action. We might then hope to see harmony, peace, and godly concord reigning, I where at present all is isolation, discord, and con fusion. w ould not long ago have pressed for the trial and con viction of the criminated clergyman, instead of skulking, as they do, behind vague gene ralities whenever they are challenged to the proof o f their assertions. The truth is that these broad and coarse statements are made, without the least regard to the obligations of the Ninth Commandment, for the simple—we must add, the malignant —purpose of inflaming the passions of • the multitude , and getting up riot and rebellion in the Church. That this is the real aim of the prime movers in this and other like tumultuous meetings, and the cry about auricular confession merely a means to produce a factitious excitement, for which the clerical eccentricities of Mr. ALFRED POOLE and Mr. RICHARD WEST have furnished an excellent pretext, is tolerably evident both from the composition of that meeting and from its avowed object. The latter does not, indeed, appear plainly on the face of the resolutions adopted at St. James's-hall ; but we can hardly go wrong if we accept the interpretation put upon them by the mover of the first, the lion. Colonel VEREKER. That Honourable and Gallant Gentleman, who amo ig the assembled vestrymen of the metropolitan parishes is, we doubt not, "a burning and a shining light," stated in so many words that the only remedy for the evils complained of was " a reform of our Prayer-book." What is in contemplation, is an attack on the great standard of our Church's faith, the expo nent of her interpretation of Holy Scripture, the documentary evidence of her distinctive doctrines, by which she guards herself alike against the errors of Rome on the one hand, and against those of numberless Protestant sects on the other ; and with a view to render that attack successful, the virtuous indignation of the multitude is to be aroused by this cry about the alleged " abomina tions, impurities, bestialities " of auricular con fession. And under whose auspices is that " Reform of the Prayer-book" to be accomplished? The Honourable Colonel VEREKER, gallant cham pion of the faith, is good enough to inform us. Depend upon it," he said, " whatever "was effected, it would have to be done by "the middle classes and by the people." As for authorities in Church or State, the Gallant Colonel holds them in sovereign contempt. The highest judicial tribunal in questions of eccle siastical law and order, the Judicial Committee of Privy Council, he denounces—on the ground of their having, in their recent judgment in the liiiightsbridge ornament cases, ventured upon a recommendation to mutual forbearance and charity somewhat after the manner of St. PAUL— as having given utterance from the judgment seat to "such unconstitutional, such disloyal, such ungodly sentiments" as he hoped none in that meeting would be " base enough to echo." From the lips of the Gallant Officer who indulged in this indecorous attack upon constituted authori - ties, we learn who are to be the judges of what is required in the way of liturgical reform. They are " the vestrymen of London, the elected " municipal representatives of this vast metro "polis." These are the men whom he admo nishes "not to be content with any claptrap, " catchpenny measures of liturgical reform " such as might be tried to be palmed off (,n " them, but to insist on a thorough, honest, " and complete expurgation of every word that " savours of Romanism." And to give weight to the judgment which they shall pronounce on that noble composition of the athers of the English Reformation, that heirloom, as it is in many of its parts, of primitive Christianity, the said vestrymen are to call meetings in their respective districts, and, by the repetition of such veracious statements and such fustian argu ments as were put forth by the Honourable (, olonel and his brother orators in St. James's to " stir up their friends and neighbours to "Join in a real and righteous indignation." The Synod that is to reform and purify the Church of I . ngland is to be composed of the " representa tive men of the metropolis," convened according to " the Municipal Directory." We are not insensible to the supremely ridi culous character of these schemes of Church Reform. We have felt the temptation—a very strong one—to exhibit the whole affair in its ludicrous aspect. But there is a serious side to If; the subject itself is too grave for banter. A steady well-sustained effort has been made THE MORTARA CASE. Tins case, which has created so profound a sen sation abroad, and given rise to such violent con troversy in the journals of the Continent, has been hitherto so little noticed here, save in the foreign correspondence of our newspapers, that it may be desirable, before giving our own view of this last aggression of the Papal Church, to state shortly, for the information of our readers, the circumstances as they occurred. The son of some Jewish people at Bologna, aged six years, has been forcibly taken from his parents on the pretence that two years previously—that is, at the age of four—he had been subjected to the rite of lay baptism by his nurse. The child has been placed in an Institution called the Refuge of Catechumens, and is still forcibly with held from his Parents under the express sanction of the Pope, who has been appealed to, on the ground that by the Canon Law he has become a subject of the Church into which he has been fraudulently baptized. This monstrous outrage on all usage, on all fundamental principles of law, and upon those universal rights of man which it ought to be the first object of all law to establish and to uphold, has excited, we are glad to observe, the strongest and most unfeigned indignation among the greater portion even of the Members of the Roman Church. The Constitutionnel, the Journal des Debate, and the Nord have animadverted in the most earnest manner upon the scandalous conduct of the Papal Priesthood, and urgent appeals have been made to the French Go vernment to interfere in the matter. Of their right, of our right, of the right of every member of the family of European nations to use their influence byraresentation to have this grievous wrong redress there can not, we apprehend, be the slightest doubt, if not in the mere interest of MORTARA, a Jewish citizen in the Papal States, at all events in the 1019 interests of humanity at large. It is a right of the same character as that by which we use our influence to protect the children of Africa from slavery and the subjects of the King of NAPLES from subjection to the treatment of wild beasts. Much as we pity and feel for the parents of this unfortunate little victim of Papal greed and despotism, the interests of the family are absorbed in the greater question of the interests of humanity, and of the necessity that all Europe should make a stand against this new attempt of the revived Inquisition to assert the immunity of their Order and of their sys tem from the control of natural and civil law. It is to be regretted that some of our foreign contemporaries have suffered themselves to be in a considerable degree led away from the true issue by the false issues which have been raised by the Univers and other advocates of the Ultramontane doctrine, with regard to the enact ments of the Canon Law, and the powers con ferred by it. The defence that has been put forward is of a twofold character. It is asserted, firstly : that this little boy of six years of age is in a perfect state of beatitude; that in reply to an appeal from his father praying him to return to his home on the ground that the Command ments enjoin him to honour his father and mother, he said, " The Pope knows the " Commandments better than you, and I " will do what the Pope tells me ; " that he desires earnestly to convert his father and mother, a task to which the Weeping Virgin, whose statue is over the door of this prison-house for infants, has miraculously made him quite equal ; and finally, that he is a remarkable in stance of special grace, and that his abduction has been forcibly effected in order to secure to him that perfect liberty of conscience to be found only in perfection within the pale of the Papal Church. Those are the arguments in support of the violence derived from the alleged condition and wishes of the Boy himself. We shall not trouble ourselves to inquire into the truth of these allegations or the soundness of these argu ments, as they are put forward merely to lead opponents into by-paths of controversy that can lead to no end. _ _ . The real issue that is raised by this act of the Inquisition, and upon which the Univers on its behalf before it was aware of the strength and universality of the feeling against it in the first instance, took its stand, is the pre-eminence and supremacy of Ecclesiastical Law and Hccle siastical Authority whenever the Church and State are in presence together, and whenever CiVil and Canon Law are in antagonism. That is the issue which Rome is bent on trying now, and which she will continue to try with that continuity of policy and perseverance of action in which no other Power, save Russia, has ever equalled her. She tried it here in England in 1851, when She parcelled out the dominion of Queen Vicroina into territorial principalities. She tried it in Sardinia upon the question of marriage. She tried it in Austria upon the question raised by the Concordat. She tried it in Ireland upon the occasion of the progress through the Kingdom of one of her Temporal Princes, by proclaiming, through the marked and designed omission of the Queen's health on a great public occasion, the supremacy of the Pope and his authority, and She is trying it now in the face of Europe by the violent abduction of this Boy, and by the re-establishment in Germany of those Ecclesias tical Councils which the Emperor JOSEPH 11. so wisely abolished and interdicted. In the first attempts She has failed ignominiously. Her territorial Bishops are myths, her Cardinal- Prince is a laughing-stock. In Austria alone she has met with success. It remains to be seen whether the Emperor of the FRENCH, by the aid alone of whose soldiery the Pope sits in the Chair of St. Peter, will permit all law, natural, human, and Divine, to be set aside and overridden by an organization of des potic l'riests seeking irresponsible temporal power. We have italicised the last words because we desire especially to impress upon the minds of our readers the great and important fact that these aggressions have every one of them been as a tem poral, not of a spiritual character, and that in every one of them the object has been the acqui sition of purely temporal despotism, of undisputed and irresponsible control over the political ordi nances, the social life, and the private property of all men in all countries.