The Sun.
London, England, 1863-08-24 00:00:00

LATEST INTELLIGENCE.

(REUTER'S TELEGRAMS.)

TILE BOMBAY MAILS.
SOUTHAMPTON, AUG. 24.
The Peninsular and Oriental Company's steam-
ship Ceylon, Capt. Evans, with the heavy portion
of the Bombay and Mediterranean Mails has ar.
rived. She brings 58 passengers, 4 packages specie,
value £1,277, also 27 cases Indian shawls, 1 box
mosaics, 46 packages sundries, and 426 bales raw
silk, valve £40,000 sterling.
The Ceylon experienced from Cape St. Vincent
to Finisterre head winds and heavy sea ; across the
Bay of Biscay, light winds end fine weather.
On the 15th, in lat. 36 21 N., long. 13 34 E.,
the Ceylon spoke the steamship Memon, steering
eastward ; on the same date, lat. 36 40 N., long.
12 40, the steamship Belona, bound west; on the
16th, in lat. 37 38 N., long. 6 42 E., s.s. official
No. 29,639, bound east ; 19th, in lat. 36 15 N.,
long. 6 30 W., s.s. Tiber, steering N•W.; and on the
22d, the company's steamer Pera, bound for the
East, with the outward mails of the 20th.
The steamer Ellora, with the outward mails of
the 12th, left Gibraltar for Alexandria on the 18th.
The Tangier, of Liverpool, 30 days from Sunder-
land, bound to Constantinople, passed Gibraltar on
the 18th.

Her Majesty's sh'ps Cossack, Malacca, Surprise,
and Psyche, were at Malta, and the Trident at
Gibraltar.
The Russian screw frigate Asleaba arrived at
Cadiz on the 15th.

GIBRALTAR, AUG. 19.

The following British ships have arrived here:—
The steamer Arabian, 51 days from Liverpool, and
the schooner Stork, 10 days from Funchal, on the
15th; the schooner Catherine Ann, 3 days from
Alicant, on the 16th; the schooner Blue Vein, 21
days from Cardiff, on the 17th ; and on the 18th,
the brigantine John and Mary, 22 days from Car-
diff, and the barque William Wilson, 19 days from
New York. The british brig Florist, with a
general cargo, left Gibraltar on the 17th, for
Liverpool.

Exchanges on London,
90 days' date, 49 to 50 ;
Paris, of. 280. ; Marseilles, 5E 29c. ; Genoa, sf. 29c. ;
Madrid, 8 days'
sight, par; Cadiz, par to -} prem. ;
Seville, par; Malaga, par toy ; Barcelona, 7 prem. ;
Almeira, par; Valencia, par; Alicant, 1 discount.
Freights without change.

THE CONGRESS AT MALINES.
(FROM OUR SPECIAL CORRESPONDENT.)
MALINES, Aug. 21.
Yesterday morning the labours of the Congress
were resumed, according to the programme, by the
separate meetings of the sections ; and, to endeavour
to see something of
them beyond the sth, which
had hitherto engrossed my attention, and had led
me to visit it a second time from the interest the
first meeting had provoked, I went up to the hall in
which the 4th or Fine Art section met. It was
holding its third and last meeting, and had got be-
yond all the strictly artistic part of its programme,
to discuss questions of literature, which had some-
how or other been set down to it, under the respec
tive headings
of historical works and novels.
With regard to novels, which, from their attrac-
tive nature, may be made very useful to morality,
it was deemed that all discussion and controversy
should be excluded from such works, as not being
authoritative. One of the members called the
attention of the section to the class of novels
that may be called historical; and, taking as models
those of Fabiola and Calista, as contrasted with
French and Italian works of the same kind, ex-
pressed a wish that those who so attractively weave
together history and fiction for the instruction of
many, should more carefully note and distinguish
for their readers what is fact and what is fiction.
Art criticism was also discussed; and as the sth
section had decided on the
publication of an inter-
national journal, it was suggested that, practically,
a great desideratum in criticism could be attained,
namely, an international criticism.
At three o'clock the usual general meeting began
members of the
ee, England and
Poland, Spain,
central
eryen
Ireland,
onominationerm committeeany fo:f rcsolwrAtridetmizsypee,rroliFnac danr
a. Mgr. Manning,
idng n,
Portugal, and Spanish
Society, and Major O'Reilly,
Lambert, awn odo
di Messrs.oe k ,were
et 1 ihrNee'' i
nominatedl
1:
tb ee r
vf o. Dr. O'Brien, the founder of
the Young Men's rc e , A
for V
England; and Mgr.
e g g-
-Prosser, and John
M.P. for Longford, were nominated for Ireland.
Then followed two reports from the fifth section,
one on the intended international journal, the other
on the liberty of association. The former of these
was made the text, or rather the pretext, of a
speech by a Parisian lawyer who left
us rather
Church
confused in our notions. The latter was read by a
Belgian in a sensible manner. The power of associa-
tthioed
n rea iexistingnes
s withithen
whichr the Cardinal of Malines,
eh Was aptly illustrated by
there present, had succeeded, but a few weeks before,
in reorganising the college which the civil authori-
ties had attempted to destroy, by removing from
hie direction the town college. The Cardinal
issued a single appeal, and the means were imme-
diatelypurchase other premises,
body of professors and pupils were
duly transferred.
nherethfebrwthhcoolme ing to
The General Secretary of the Congress, M.
Dupectianx, announced that, in conformity with a
wvoctueld applytheof itself the central committee
gathering the statistics of
Catholics throughout the world. The baptismal
registers kept in every parish in Christendom will
readily give the number of Catholics in any country
by multiplying the number of baptisms in a year
fitth section,
to cti"'
by the average number of years of human life in
each locality.
A report from the 2d section, on the Society of
St. Vincent de Paul, in Belgium, was then read in
a rather plain-chant tone, and afforded us the pleas-
ing information that no less than 15,674 poor
families are relieved Weekly by the society in Be
gium.

Mgr. Nardi, auditor of the Supreme Court of
Rata in Rome, and the Signori Alberi, of Florence,
and Casoni, of Bologna, successively addressed the
meeting on the present state of the Catholics of Italy.
Mgr. Nardi noticed especially the noble efforts of
the Catholic press, as represented by the Azmonia
of Turin, and the Eco of Bologna, the latter of which
has already been condemned by the Piedmontese
to thirty-five sequestrations, 17 years of imprison-
ment for its editor, and £3,000 fine, and yet sends
weekly to the St Peter's Pence Associotion a sum
of 400 francs. He alluded to the triumphs of the
Church in the sufferings of its bishops exiled and
imprisoned in Italy. He spoke of having eight
days before taken leave of the Holy Father, who
had expressed to him the hopes he grounded on the
Mechlin Congress. He mentioned also that the
Catholics of Rome bad already subscribed more
than a million of francs to the St. Peter's Pence,
which the Pope wanted to refuse, but they had
claimed to be treated in the same manner as ether
Catholics, and to be allowed to contribute to relieve
their Father from all threatened embarrassment and
dependence. Mgr. Nardi concluded by announcing
that on his return to Rome in a few days, his first
act would be to ask the Holy Father's blessing for
all the members of the Congress and for the country
in which they had met,
that it might ever be free,
glorious, and happy.
Signor Alberi, in the course of a most spirited
address, expressed his feeling that the programme
of a free Church in a free State had been
applied to Italy in a manner to deride at once free.
dom, the Church, and common sense. He described
also the system of conscription and of loans and
taxations, as it was now carried on by the Pied-
montese, as calculated to absorb the whole of the
public strength of Italy.
Signor Casoni, a remarkably fine looking man of
thirty, kept the assembly delighted by his address,
in Which he described the Catholics of Italy as

EVENING, AUGUST 24, 1863.

Somewhat unfortunately, after this the rigour of
the programme imposed on Count Toucher de Cureil
the duty of delivering, and on us of listening to,
a rather clever speech on the fraternal spirit of
nations among themselves, and on the strength of
real national feeling, as evidenced by Poland.

having to sustain the attack and shock of the Whole
of the enemies of the Church throughout the world,
and as being now in a state of persecution to the
extent of having no less than 1,200 monasteries
destroyed, 6,000 religious and nuns turned out
penniless from their homes, and 50 bishops impri-
soned or exiled.
During the address of Signor Alberi, the ap-
plause and rising of the whole assembly had greeted
the entre nce of the eloquent champion of Catholic
rights, the Count de Montalembert. At the end of
Signor Catoni's discourse the proceedings were
suspended for half an hour, at the termination of
which they were resumed, the meeting becoming a
public meeting, at which ladies and other persons
provided with tickets were admitted. The great
intellectual treat of the Congress then began.
The COUNT DE MONTALEMBERT, after twelve
years' silence, o ace more addressed a public as-
sembly, which hung upon his words for an hour
and a half, as the monk of the legend listened
to the little bird's song for a thousand years,
as if it were a single day. The Free Church
in 'a Free State was his text, his own wards stolen
from him by a great culprit, as he rightly observed.
He held to its truth, despite of its gross misapplica-
tion, and he pointed to Belgium as the realisation of it.
He described himself as coming thither, drawn by
the publicity still reigning in Belgium, glad to escape
for a time from a country which has consented to
become the least free of the Western world. Fe
spoke of the advantages for Catholics to understand
rightly the duties and opportunities of public life,
to know how to accept political changes which
could not be reversed. Democracy had now become
supreme in the world, and however he might have
occasionally been frightened by it as a man, he had
never been so as a Christian. The waters of the
flood, all destroying as they were, served but to prove
the safety of the Ark ; and, in the midst of revolution
and an unruly Democracy, the Church and the
Church alone, stood out as the refuge of society truly
affording it the right of sanctuary. When the
waters abated and the dry land reappeared as a new
world, it needed the more, as such, to be blessed by
the pervading influence of religion. Exclusive pri-
vileges and state protection had ever brought the
Catholic Church into a state of slavery to temporal
despotism, infimitely more prejudicial to it and de-
grading to its clergy, than:any amount of attacks
and insults on the part of heresy and infidelity.
In France, it was the man who dared to
say that the state was himself, who had
insulted the Holy Father in Rome, and had
imposed the most servile yoke on the episcopate
who bad repealed the Edict of Nantes. In 1771
Voltaire said—" lam not a Parliamentarist. I had
much rather obey a handsome lion than two hun-
dred rats like myself." His fine lion was a Louis
XV., who was the finisher of a political despotism
founded by a Louis XI. The modern restorer of
that despotism, that great man of prey, Napoleon 1.,
had restored the Church to its political status, but—
to oppress its ministers and cruelly handle its
supreme Pontiff, while he sought with all the in-
genuity of his satellites to enslave even the con-
sciences of the meanest among the faithful. Ie
modern States the protection of Government ever
implied servitude, and servitude of a minute kind
unknown to posterity. Bureaucracy and centrali-
sation compressed us on all sides, and the Belgians
had to beware of this of all others, and not to vote
by their acts for an annexation which their honour
repelled. Let them look to the consequences of
restricted public liberty in a neighbouring country;
it held down religion and honesty defenceless
against the attacks of the theatre, changed into a
laboratory of calumny and immorality, while the
very literature of fiction and romance was made
the vehicle of insulting God, and of degrading
the people's hearts by inducing them to hold
Him as a mere man. Democracy led essentially
to despotism, and could be defeated or rendered
innocuous only by a strenuous advocacy of freedom
for all. In 1849, one of the leaders of Democracy
in France, Felix Pyat, had dared to say that
the Republic held two powers, two swords,
from the sovereign people, the temporal and the
spiritual, for that the people was at once Pope and
King. Again, one of those very men at the Social
Science Congress, held at Brussels that very year,
had repeated with ferocious naivete that he cared
but for one sword provided its handle were in his
own hand Such were the pretensions of popular
democracy. But they had to apprehend the effects
of a much more formidable attack from another
form of democracy, the Imperial form, which had
resources such as the old Cwsarisra knew nothing
of, and which stole on to oppression under the
mask of protection. Popular freedom soon found
the want of religion, which had made the French
revolution powerless, politically speaking, however
powerful it had been socially speaking, so that it
might well be called une grande esperance trompee.
Freedom was not too precious to be purchased
by that great and exclusive treasure of the
Church on earth--martyrdom for it had well
been called the last resource of mankind, an inven-
tion of Heaven to tame down the masters of the
world. He concluded for that day by expressing
his heartfelt admiration for the founders of the
Belgian Constitution, who had enriched their coun-
try with the four-fold freedom of Education, Associa-
tion, Religion, and the Press; while, to guard this
religiously, they had had a realy henest man for a
Kings who had never infringed his oath. This
was received by the Assembly with long and en-
thusiastic cries of " Viva le Roi !" The venerable
President of the Assembly, also President of the
National Congress of 1831, Baron de Gerlache, who
sat among the audience, between the two cardinals,
hastened up the steps of the platform to embrace
the eloquent orator at the end of his address, which
left the whole Assembly in an indescribable state
of emotion.