The Express.
London, England, 1867-12-06 00:00:00

HA,nt AIM ET.

*lan 1111iiiiiiiIRG-e.ULD. Mr. earlipicir.
1111111 lIER RAM. Mewl. Pothers, Ruckstone, comptuo, John-
son. he.: Mistime. 4.lopsedale. Robertson. Lewin. tte.—wed
MY WIFE% MOTHER.. Messrs. ClUppeudale and Howe.

PRU!TC6IIS%.,

THIS Erwsnio. A I.Tril.-FiLltraTlON.—After which THE
COLLEE% HAWN. Mears. Bonciesnit, D. Murray, E. Atkins, O.
Neville. J. U. Shore, L. Mellon, dc.: Ilya Boucicault, & Mires
Barnett end Elsworthy.—And NO. ONE ROUND TUE CORNER.

LYCKUM.

Tars Emma,. PEEIICI6.I3. Mks. Maud Shelley.—And
ROM PA) AND JULIET. Messrs. W. Lacy and Ryder ; Mlle
VestvaU, Mrs. Mantas, and Elks Dilly Palmer.

~raaAn.

Two Immo, NOTRINTITO NFASE. Yr. Thorne and Mae
Ne•ton.—KlND TO A FAULT. Moon. Parodic Belford, and
James Menlarase Johnstone, Gwynn*, and Hughea—And
WILLIAM TELL WITH A vssorascg.

ITLIOLN.

THIS EVTIMO, IPOR 317m65. H. J. Montagne, Peke,
Garden, Westland, and IL Wlddleornb: Mesdames Stephens,
Menrnde, C. Saunders, ke.—And MARY TURNZR; OR, TRY
WICIOUS WILLIA. Mhos Josephs.

BRITANNIA.
Tura Evros% T/T6 KING'S DRATH-TRAP. Mews. Rey-
nolds, Bell. te.. Mrs. S. Lana—Mr. R. Fraser; Mr. Mark Floyd
Mr. and Mrs. Lane&n and Mr. J. Wilmot —C A VIAIN GERALD.
Messrs. Howe, Charlton, do Mesdames Courtenay, Booth, Be

HIGH WATT& AT LONDON BRIDGE.
mm DAit —Morning. Ilk —Afternooo, 9h. 365.
To-31AitiON—LIornIns. 10b. 10m......Attemoos. lob. 42m.

- - -
LONDON, FRIDAY, DECEMBER 6.

Nornmo can be more legitimate, nothing more
natural than that Roman Catholics should meet
together whenever and wherever they will and can,
to express their sympathy with the Head of their
Church in the midst of his many trials and trou-
bles, and their devotion to his spiritual authority.
Roman Catholics who have the good fortune to be
Englishmen as well as Roman Catholics, or, as
Lord DENBIGH prefers to desciibe himself, " Eng-
" lishmen, if you please, but Catholics first,"
are happily in a position to do without let or
hindrance in a Protestant country what no Pro-
testant or Jew born in the States of the Church
could dream of doing at Rome on behalf of his
faith. Imagine a public meeting at Rome to
inveigh against the surreptitious baptism of a
young Jew, or to demand liberty of worship
within the walla of the city, or to protest against
a " Papal aggression " in England. Archbishop
MANNING, the Chairman of the meeting at St.
James's-hall on Wednesday last, "would leave
" perfectly free to everybody the right of private
" judgment" ; we should be glad to know
how much of this liberty of private judgment he is
disposed to leave to heretics who enjoy the hospi-
tality of the " most irreproachable, just, and mer-
" ciful Government on earth." That, however, is
one of the previous questions " which infalli-
bility allows itself to beg. " Liberty of private
" judgment " is a question of degree—of lati.ude
and longitude. In a meeting to which admission
is obtained by ticket liberty of private judgment
is not a very dangerous concession.
It deserves to be remarked that this meet-
ing was presided over by • " convert," and
that the principal orators on the occasion
were also converts. This simple fact will
account for and excuse any excesses or eccen-
tricities of language. Converts are the en-
fant., terribks of Holy Mother Church. It is
creditable, however, to the sagacity which never
quite deserts an English speaker of the most
furious convictions, when he hears that he is being
"reported," that Archbishop MANNING and the
speakers who followed him laboured to coduse,
after the manner of all the State papers of
the Court of Rome, the two perfectly distinct
questions of the Spiritual and the Temporal
Power, and by way of appealing to the sympathies,
not of the "Catholic world" exclusively, but of
all Christendom, denounced " the outrages and
" sacrileges which bad been levelled against the
" holy office"—not against the political office—
of the Port. These attacks had moved the indig-
nation of Catholics. But what had a few
speeches against the "holy office" of the POPE,
delivered by irresponsible agitators at a popular
congress, to do with the question of the Temporal
Power? At Genova, a city where, as in London,
the majority of the population are Protestants,
but the Roman Catholic minority enjoy perfect
liberty of private judgment, these attacks were
not left unanswered : the offended minority
appealed, not to argument, but to the local admi-
nistration, against its adversaries. But no one
knows better than Dr. MANNING that the question
between Rome and Italy is not one that concerns
the POPIN " holy office." The Archbishop de-
mands, and has a right to demand, that the
voice of " the Catholic world " shall be heard,
when "the dignity and independence" of the Head
of the Church are in jeopardy. But let us sub-
mit this " Catholic world" to analysis. What
is it composed oft Is it the France
of VoLraine, and of the Revolution, or the
France of the First NAPOLEON, who abolished the
Temporal Power of the Pore by a stroke of his
pen ? Is it the France which pays for the
public worship of Jew and Gentile alike out of
its budget ? Is it schismatic Russia Is it Pro-
testant England ? Is it the Austria which has just
repudiated the Concordat and insisted on lay in-
struction and civil marriage ? Is it Prussia
Last, not least, is it Italy I There are, or are sup-
posed to he some twenty-four million Catholics in
Italy, and surely Italy, of all European States,
has a right to be counted as part of " the
" Catholic world "—ltaly, the seat of the Papacy,
the centre of Catholicity. Or does your
" Catholic world " consist only of a few noisy
fanatics, a powerful vested interest, an uncounted
mass of ignorance and superstition, a clique of
political intriguers, a coterie of frivolous and devout
women of the world at a loss for excitement to
kill ennui, Antibean legionaries, and Pontifical
Zouaves t Dr. MANNING praises the King of
PRUSSIA for having expressed the hope that the 1
Roman question might be settled in a manner
satisfactory to " the legitimate desires of
" his Catholic subjects." Every Protestant
Sovereign may in perfect good faith de-
sire as much as this, without for a I
moment admitting that the perpetuation of '

the Temporal Power of the POPE is a " legitimate"
desire of Prussian or English Catholics. To deny
that Rome is the capital of Italy because it is
the capital of Christendom (which it is not) is
equivalent to denying that Constantinople is the
capital of Turkey because it is the capital of
Islam. It may be rhetorically convenient to the
orators in St. James's-hall to treat Christendom
and "the Catholic world" as convertible terms,
but the fallacy is too transparent for public
credulity. If " the patrimony of the Church "
means a certain enclave on the Italian peninsula,
it will certainly never be guaranteed by
" Christian Europe" sitting at a Conference.
The Archbishop of PARIS invites " Christian
" Europe " to provide the Papacy with those
material resources without which no earthly State
can erbeist in these days ; with a solvent
exchequer, a standing army, improved agricul-
ture, flourishing industry. There is something
tangible and practical in the views of Monseigneur
de Paris, but we fear " Christian Europe " will
respectfully decline his proposals. Yet they are
not more fantastic than the Archbishop of Wm
MINSTER'S historic admonitions. "No King or
" Emperor," he declares, " has yet tried strength
" with the Roman Pontiff who has not been
" abased." Thusitmustbe a vulgar error to suppose
that an English King had tried strength with the
Roman Pontiff and had on the whole come
out of the encounter in a tolerably sound condi-
tion. Indeed, if we compare the present state of
the kingdom which tried strength with the Pots
three centuries ago with that of the only kingdom
in Europe which still preserves its unity of faith,
we can only suppose that Dr. MANNING takes
refuge in prophecy, and points to the
future abasement of Protestant England and
the future glorification of Catholic Spain.
For the present, at any rate, his warning
is not calculated to discourage Italy. But we
should be sorry to misrepresent the Archbishop of
WESTMINSTER. He protests that it Is not because
the HOLY FATHER seta any value on the Temporal
Power that he invokes the aid of Saint Chanel-sit
to defend it. The HOLY FATHER " counts all
" temporal things as PETER counted his boat and
" nets." Only the successor of St. Parts is
always ready to lay down his life (or, rather, the
lives of six hundred Italians) for his boat and nets.
The Apostle himself left his boat and nets,
and all that he had, to lay down his own life for
his MASTER, and to preach the gospel of charity.
No one who has seen Pies IX. on his knees at the
tombs of the Apostles will doubt the perfect sin-
cerity of his self-denial and his indifference to all
worldly possessions. But it is his misfortune to
serve two masters ; St. PETER served one.
Lord DENBIGH, who, notwithstanding his re-
nunciation of the title, was an Englishman before
he was a Catholic, does credit to his conscience.
A certain " Fenian " element even in the most
respectable British ultramontarism appears to
great advantage in his speech. Taking exception
to the perfectly neutral accuracy of the expression
in the QUEEN'S Speech which referred to the
irruption of " a band of volunteers " into the
Papal States, Lord DENBIGH gives the lie to her
MAJESTY. He is indignant that her MAJESTY
should not have described the Garibaldians as
" bandits and cutthroats." But he tells a story
of one of the soldiers of the POPE which is worth
preserving. This young servant of the Cross
" killed fourteen Garibaldians with the butt of
" bis musket," which seems to imply that the
Garibaldians were unarmed ; "and then commended
" his aoul to God, and knelt down just in time
"to receive seventeen bayonet stabs from the
at

." When the life of Saint Chas-
sepot comes to be written, this story will hold a
place among the exploits of his disciples , along
with that other charming bit of " word painting,"
the account of the young Zouave who, as he lay
dead on the field, wore an angel's smile, while the
face of the Garibaldian at his aide " looked dam-
" nation." After these agreeable little narratives,
we need notbe surprised to hear that if Gssuaran
had captured Rome, eight thousand priests,includ-
ing the whole Sacred College and the HOLY
FATHER, were to have been guillotined. A year
ago, when the French were leaving Rome, the
Catholic world in that city were looking forward
to ther fate with all the gaiety and assurance of
martyrs ala mode. At Rome, as all the world
knows, they always speak the truth. Si dice is
infallible.