The Press.
London, England, 1858-12-04 00:00:00

THE PRESS, DECEMBER 4,1858.

1174

invalidate the world-wide Supremacy inherent
in the Papacy ; or abrogate the right, and, if a
suitable opportunity should present itself, the
duty, of the Sovereign Pontiff to reconquer and
reduce anew to obedience any portion of his
subjects, any kingdom or nation, that may be in a
state of rebellion against his authority. In witness
whereof the Bull in Caw; Domini, which pro-
nounces sentence of exsowastnication against all
who rebel against the Supreme head of Christen-
dom, is annually republished at Rome ; the for-
mality of such republication at the seat of the
Papal Government being, by the provisions of
the Bull itself; binding upon all, ecclesiastics and
laymen, Catholics and heretics, throughout the
world.

Peace, real peace, with a Power advancing such
pretensions, is obviously possible only on one
condition—that is, submission to the Papacy.
Until that submission is yielded, any apparent
peace, any relaxation of direct and open hostility,
any approach to friendly intercourse, any consent
to mutual co-operation, even though under the
sanction of formal compacts and treaties, on the
part of the Papacy, is nothing more than a delu-
sion and a snare—a phase of Papal policy, adopted
under the pressure of circumstances in times of
Papal weakness, with the mental reservation of
intended recurrence to a totally opposite, an in-
ternecine policy, whenever the Papacy shall feel
itself strong enough to assert its full authority.

This is the key to the view taken of England,
and the line of policy adopted towards it, in those
secret counsels of the Papacy to which Dr. WISE-
MAN, by virtue of his office as Cardinal, is a party
—to which, by virtue of his allegiance to the
Pope, he is as much sworn to give effect to the
utmost of his power, while keeping them invio-
lably secret, as are the Ministers and Privy Coun-
cillors of Queen Vicronia to keep secret the
deliberations, and to carry into effect the resolves,
of her Government. It is by the light of the
theory of the Pope's universal supremacy, and
of the relation in which Cardinal WisEmAN
stands to the Pope, as his Privy Councillor, and
his plenipotentiary—not ambassador, but deputy-
governor—in England, or rather over England,
—and not over England only, but over the United
Kingdom, and throughout the British dominions
—that the proceedings of that arrogant intruder
must be examined, if we would form a correct
estimate of their objects and tendencies.
The errand on which Dr. WISEMAN was sent
to this country is, simply, to reverse not only the
religious, but the political effects of the Refor-
mation in the sixteenth century; to re-establish
the supreme authority of the Pope amongst us,
or, rather, over us; in pursuance of the sentence
pronounced against the British Government in
the days of Queen ELIZABETH, a sentence which
his never been revoked nor cancelled—sus-
pended, it may be, while CHARLES H. deceived,
and JAMES 11. betrayed, the nation,—but still in
full force, not executed only for lack of power.
By virtue of that sentence the right of Queen
VICTORIA to the British Throne, and to the alle-
giance of her subjects, is a perfect nullity; and
so is every act of her Government ; so is the le-
gislation of the British Parliament, and every
statute it enacts,—all heretical, in deroga-
tion of "the Supremacy of the Holy See," and,
therefore, aL initio null and void. This is no
merely theoretical deduction from the letter of
the Bull in Ccen4 Domini, and other parts of the
Roman canon law, which it would be tedious to
recite ; Cardinal WISEMAN is himself a living
witness to the practical application of the prin-
ciples of that law to the British dominions. If
he had not considered, and intended deliberately
to treat, the Throne and Government of Queen
VlcroluA as a nullity, would he have had the
audacity to enter the Queen's dominions in his
official character as a " Prince of the Holy
Roman Church " without saying so much as " by
your leave " to the Queen's Government, and to
announce his determination to " govern" the
Queen's subjects in the Pope's name ? If he had
studied for years how best he could proclaim his
profound conviction, and that of his Sovereign
the Pope, of the nullity of Queen Vicroara's
Throne and Government, he could not have hit
upon a more effectual, scarcely upon a more
offensive, method of doing so. And when, stn!
by the insolent affront thus put upon the BritiZs
throne and kingdom, the British Parliament
enacted a law—thanks to Lord JOHN RUSSELL
and his Whig Following a miserably inefficient

one—not making, for they were illegal already,
but expressly declaring illegal the territorial
titles conferred by a decree of the Papal Court
upon Dr. WISE MAN and others the Queen's sub-
jects within her dominion; the only notice taken
of that law by him and his coadjutors in their
aggression upon the supremacy of the British
Crown was their ostentatious persistence in the
use of those titles.

Now, as regards England, Dr. WisEmAx is too
shrewd a diplomatist not to know that it would not
be advisable to carry this intrusion of a foreign
supremacy into the dominions of the British
Crown too far all at once. What he might have
hoped to do, at one time, when he imagined that
at least one-half of the clergy and laity of the
English Church were prepared to fling them-
selves into the embrace of Rome, it is impossible
to say. But from that day-dream " llis Emi-
nence" has no doubt awoke long ago ; and,
having pretty clear evidence that he is not likely
with advantage to pash his pretensions further
just at present on this side of St. George's Chan-
nel, it was far from unnatural that he should
direct his eyes towards the opposite shore. In
Ireland his secret mission as Privy Councillor
and Special Delegate of the Pope has a much
wider scope. There the territorial invasion of
the Queen's dominions, although not less illegal,
is of older standing ; the hierarchical organiza-
tion is more complete, and has taken deep root
all over the country ; there an ignorant peasantry,
kept in a state of ignominious bondage under a
pnesthood drawn mainly from its own ranks,
and trained up at a Jesuit college in Jesuit
doctrines and Jesuit ethics, may be made sub-
servient to the secret purposes of the Papacy
to an extent never to be ventured on or
hinted at, even among " the faithful," in Eng-
land. The theory of the Papacy may there
he carried into practice one step further.
Here, if the point be raised, it is, of course, only
over the Queen's Roman Catholic subjects, and
over them only an ecclesiastical and spiritual
rule, that the Cardinal professes to exercise. But
in Ireland it is a fact well established in the minds
of the priests and of their flocks that obedience
is due to the Pope from all ; Protestants are
looked upon and execrated by the priestridden
multitude as revolted subjects of the Pope, whose
rebellion is, not excused, but aggravated, by here-
tical error, and, it is added, by the usurped
and unlawful possession of property which,
accordion. to Popish law, rightfully belongs to the
" Catholic " Church, and to the representatives
of former " Catholic " proprietors. A population
imbued with such notions presents a much more
promising field for the prosecution of the objects
fbr which Dr. WISEMAN has been raised to the
dignity of " English Cardinal." And that he
thought so is evident from his own account of
his Irish progress.
" He was," so he told his Hanover-square
audience, " invited by a brother bishop, who
" represented that it was necessary that he
" should go in order to encourage and strengthen
" his congregations against the obstacles they
" had to contend against." What obstacles are
those ? Obstacles to what ? The Cardinal
shall make answer for himself. Ireland pre-
sents to his eye " the appearance of a country
" throwing off the dust of three hundred years,
" and endeavouring to obtain that position to
" which they"—the Irish Catholics—" are en-
" titled ;" the appearance of "a great nationality
" struggling to rise from a state of great depres-
" sion.' Of what nationality is his Eminence
speaking ? Let him again explain himself. After
some flummery about the " nationality of faith "
—that is, Romish superstition,—and the "na-
" tionality of charity "—that is, the multiplication
of monasteries, convents, and the like,—the Car-
dinal went on to say there was in Ireland
" another nationality, and that was their attach-
" ment to the nationality of the Holy See. In
" England there was the greatest attachment of
" the National Church, because it was a national
" and a domestic institution. They could under-
" stand that feeling in England; but, during his
" visit to Ireland, he had received the kindest
" addresses, which had been presented to him
" not only by the clergy but by the laity, by
" societies and other bodies of men, and every
" one of them breathed the strongest feelings of
" Atial affection and devotion to the See of Rome.
" He believed that the very kind feeling that
" had been expressed for him was entirely owing

" to the belief that he was more imniel
" nec ted with the Pope than other Bisho "
l
" was in fact a connecting link betweenP; eaitu:'
Habemus confitentem reum ! It was to freshen
up in the hearts of the Irish peoplet
tachment to " the nationality of the I:1;
See"—that is, to steal away from their lawful
Queen the hearts of the people, and to bind them
more closely to the Pope's supremacy--thr pur-
poses of the Papacy, to be developed in due time
—that Cardinal liirfsigtaAN made the tour of
Ireland. It was for this that he displayed his
scarlet robes to the wondering gaze of Irish rail-
way porters ; and, in open violation of the law,
headed processions of bishops and priests in full
canonicals at Ballinasloe and elsewhere. It was
to inculcate this sentiment of " the nationality of
" the Holy See " that the Pope's health was sub-
stituted for that of the Queen at :the festive
demonstrations got up in honour of "His Emi-
nence," and that the luckless German brass
band which, uninitiated in the mysteries of Papal
diplomacy, innocently and instinctively struck up
" God save the Queen ' to the first toast, had to
pay the penalty of broken heads for their want
of sympathy with the occasion they had been
hired to grace by their performance.
It is some satisfaction, certainly, to learn that
the Cardinal's progress was not altogether as
triumphal as the Popish newspapers boasted, or
as he himself endeavoured to persuade his
audience at the Hanover-square Rooms. Judging
from the statements made at a public meeting
since held at St. James's-hall, by eye-witnesses
of the scenes enacted during the Cardinal's visit,
there appears to have been considerable exagge-
ration in the descriptions which filled the columns
of the Irish journals of the enthusiastic reception
that awaited him from railway station to railway
station, and from town to town. But notwith-
standing the comparative tameness of the out-
ward show and demonstration of attachment to
" the nationality of the Holy See," which it was
doubtless one of the Cardinal's objects to elicit, it
would be rash to conclude that his visit has been
a failure altogether. If the rabble that thronged
around him was neither as numerous nor as noisy
as he might have wished, the signal has, never-
theless, been given in Ireland for a renewed
aggression in the name of the Pope upon the
supremacy of Queen VICTORIA. how far that
signal has been understood and responded to—
how far the revival of Ribbonism may be taken
as au indication of its having told upon the Irish
mind—still remains a question ; and before
.a
satisfactory solution of it can be arrived at, it
will be necessary to make, as we propose to do
in our next, some little inquiry into the princi-
ples on which the Papacy has been wont to pro-
ceed, and the methods to which it has commonly
had recourse, for the reduction of its rebellious
subjects.