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

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.

Daring the address of Signor Alberi, the ap-
plause and rising of the wholo assembly had greeted
the entra nee 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 nce 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 ieast free of the Western world. He
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, infinitely more prejudicial to it and de-
grading to its clergy, than:any amount of attacks
and insults on the part of heresy and infidelity.
En 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 had 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 XL The modern restorer of
that despotism, that great man of prey, Napoleon Ii
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. In
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 aides, 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 hole
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 naiveté 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 Coesarism 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 trample.
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 honest man for a
King, who had never infringed his oath. This
was received by the Assembly with long and en-
thusiastic cries of " Vive 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.

Somewhat unfortunately, after this the rigour of
the programme imposed on Count Puncher 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.