The Press.
London, England, 1858-10-02 00:00:00

947

whom he himself owes allegiance. Whether the
presence in any independent State of such a poli-
tical interloper, without the sanction of its
Government, and in defiance of its laws, is or is
not consistent with the maxims and principles of
international law, it needs no PUFFENDORF or
VarrEL to inform us. The illegality of the in-
trusion is palpable ; and equally manifest is
the indignity thereby offered to the Sove-
reign in whose dominions, and to the nation on
whose soil, it is committed. Yet that intrusion
we have tolerated, to that indignity we have
submitted, for upwards of seven years, until at
last the author of the " insolent aggression," ren-
dered foolhardy by the impunity he has hitherto
enjoyed, has bethought himself of making a
further experiment on the powers of endurance
of which John Bull is proverbially possessed.
When Dr. NICHOLAS WISEMAN, Bishop of
Melipotamus, returned from Rome, empowered
by " His holiness " to astonish the natives of
these islands by the appearance among them of a
full-fledged Cardinal, he seemed himself to have
some misgivings as to the success, and even the
safety, of the business he had taken in hand.
With more discretion than he has shown at any
subsequent stage of his proceedings, he lay perdu
beyond the seas, awaiting the effect which the
publication of his Popish proclamation would
produce when it reached England. The mo-
ment was, it must be confessed, not ill
chosen. The dignity of the British Crown
and the honour of the nation was in the
keeping of men noisy in bluster, but craven in
deed. A lew lines from the Premier's pen, a
few words conveyed through her Majesty's re-
presentative in Belgium, intimating to Dr.
WisEmAN that the presence of a Cardinal within
these realms was contrary to law, and that the
Government were determined to enforce the law
against him, if he should venture to show himself,
in that character, on British ground, would pro
bably have been sufficient to induce " His
Eminence " to suspend, indefinitely, his return.
This, followed by a Royal proclamation, de-
claring the Pope's Bull to be an illegal do-
cument, and threatening with prosecution all
who should venture authoritatively to promul-
gate it, or to do any overt act in execution
of its mandates, would in all likelihood have
nipped the " aggression " in the bud. But the
then guardians of the honour and independence
of the kingdom had not the sense or the courage
to do anything of the kind. A few big phrases,
in Lord JOHN RUSSELL'S memorable letter to
Bishop MALTBY, were all that the Whigs could
think of, ;or venture on, in vindication of the
Queen's Supremacy. Dr. WISEMAN accordingly
took the measure of the men he had to deal with,
and pursued with hearty good will his lawless en-
terprize. The presence in England of a Cardinal
Legate, commissioned to exercise both personal
and territorial jurisdiction in the name of the
Pope within her Majesty's dominions, became a
fait accompli, undisturbed in its effects by an
intentionally abortive enactment, which, while it
prohibited the Papal nominees from assuming,
left them at full liberty to accept from any one
willing to give them, titles conferred upon them
by a ffireign potentate in defiance of British law
The grave question which the Cardinal had
raised—described by Lord JOHN RUSSELL himself
as "a pretension of supremacy over the realm of
" England, and a claim to sole and undivided
" sway, inconsistent with the Queen's supremacy,
" with the rights of our Bishops and Clergy, and
" with the spiritual independence of the nation "
was suffered to go to sleep, and might have lain
asleep for we know not how long, had not Dr.
WISEMAN felt himself emboldened to raise it
afresh.
The singular effrontery of his recent progress"
through a part of the United Kingdom, in the
official costume of a Prince of the Church, to be
knelt to on railway platffirms, and elsewhere, by
the subjects of Queen VICTORIA, and to mark
his contempt of her Majesty's authority by the
omission of the usual loyal toast at the gather-
ings over which he presided, has once more
aroused public attention to the gross impropriety,
as well as illegality, of permitting the representa-
tive of a foreign potentate to claim, and, so far
as in him lies, to exercise, in his master's
name, supremacy and jurisdiction within the
Queen's dominions. The fact that religion is
made the pretext for this barefaced usurpation
does not palliate, but, on the contrary, aggra-
vates, its illegal character. The most entire