The Sun.
London, England, 1867-04-19 00:00:00

rancour of rage and sectarian hatred against
" the House of Hapsburg as the mortal enemy
of the Protestant Church." All the chief jour-
nals were then let loose, which were soon followed
by the mob of lesser journals. The most shame-
less falsehoods were circulated, among others that
Catholic priests had from the pulpit preached
a crusade against Lutheran heresies, which was
never and nowhere the case, while, on the con-
trary, the rector of a Protestant university, Dr.
Becker, in Greifswalde, on the 15th May, in a
solemn official oration, incited to a war of reli-
gion and to " a Gustavus Adolphus-like onslaught
on a Catholic country." The rumours industri-
ously propagated of immense sums of money
being sent to Austria by the bishops and clergy
were especially calculated to madden the fanatical
populace. In Breslau twelve million of thalers
were said to be collected for the enemy ; in
Berlin, forty to fifty million. Then the Prince
Bishop of Breslau had " been captured with tons
of gold on the frontiers, and brought home by
an escort of twenty men !" Everywhere threat-
ening letters were sent to. Catholics declaring them
to have forfeited all right to life and property ;
placards were set up at the corners of the streets
exciting to the murder of Catholic priests ; the
Prince Bishop of Breslau himself was subjected
to personal ill-treatment. This lasted until the
final triumph of Prussia, when the Government
deigned to protect its Catholic subjects against
these falsehoods and malicious instigations, which,
until then, they had been left to protect them-
selves against, just as if there were no police in
the land. The experience derived from these
memorable facts is not to be forgotten by the
Catholics of Prussia, and, indeed, we marvel
much that no notice is taken in the work we
are reviewing of this " Gustavus Adolphus "
fanaticism. Even before the war, indeed, the
Prussian Government had taken up a position
hostile to the Catholic Church ; for example, it
had followed in the same track as Russia in filling
up the episcopal chairs. Let us hear Bishop
Ketteler on this subject :—" The manner," he
says, "in which the Prussian Government has
made use of its influence in naming to bishoprics,
the interpretation that in official papers and
journals it put on the rights of the Government
in this matter, the support given to these im-
moderate demands, even by certain servile mem-
bers of the clergy, show what dangers threaten
them-Church of Prussia in this respect. We cannot
draw attention to this too urgently ; for, if the
Government succeeded in carrying out in the no-
mination of bishops the principles laid down. in
the last election of a bishop, it would be a deadly
wound for the Catholic Church in North Ger-
many.

It is then clear what the will of the Prussian
Government is ; what it sought before the war it
desires still more now; for no one can believe
that since the war it has acquired A more favour-
able disposition towards the Church, and what it
wills it can now carry out . with much more ease
than formerly. Thus we see in this important re-
spect the situation of the Catholics in Prussia is
unenviable indeed. Must we remind our readers
again of the potent Masonic Lodges—anti-Chris-
tian from the beginning—that have just been

helping Prussianism to its triumph. No political
party of influence comes to the rescue of the
poor Prussian Catholics ! A simple constitutional
manoeuvre will suffice to extinguish these cele-
brated constitutional paragraphs—just as at this
moment the Diet at Berlin tramples a whole
mass of similar paragraphs under foot. Our
distinguished author considers, indeed, that "to
lay hand on these constitutional paragraphs
would be the triumph of the ' black colour' in
Prussia." In our opinion it would be but the na-
tural consequence of the victory achieved by the
" black colour" last summer. We also believe
that the victory of the "black colour" would
then be fully appreciated by the Catholics in
Prussia, and that frOm that moment a struggle
most dangerous for Prussia would begin.
abandonment would ben nothing i
on
fg
theels e
principlea t the present
o f
rda toleration,ra
iys tl.
vhiatnrittiu!iee,s
destruction of the harmony existing between the
different religions in Germany ; it would be the
signs, we are
proclamation of a Russian Cmsaro-Papacy,
of a State placing itself above God. Our dis-
tinguished author tells us, before he
e in prooTees
ttohlavta,radesesotridchinag "manydevelopment."
IO pllle n t . " a ,

This would be a crisis like that described in a
well-known fable told in low German, which on
the whole, bears a singular affinity to the hisory
of the Prussian State. "Dune fru de Ilsebil,"
borne up by typhonic, power, ever higher and
higher, and at length seated on the Imperial
throne, "desires to be made Pope, and at last to
But then, all at once, the whole
become God."
ry passes miserably away and perishes.
infernal glo