The Sun.
London, England, 1867-04-09 00:00:00

BISHOP OF WESTMINSTER.

HENRY EDWARD, by the Grace of God and the
Favour of the Apostolic See, Archbishop of
Westminster, to the Faithful of the said Diocese.
Dear Children in Jesus Christ,

On this Feast of St. Patrick I speak to you with
a mixed feeling of joy and sorrow. The festival of
your great Apostle and Father brings vividly before
us the grace which through him has descended upon
you, and upon your children, and likewise his glory
which through your faith is always increasing both
on earth and in heaven. Excepting the Apostles
of our Divine Master, there is perhaps no saint
whose spiritual children are so faithful and so fer-
vent, so numerous or so widely spread. They are
in Ireland, England, and Scotland, in Canada,
throughout the United States, on the shores of both
their seas, in the West Indies, in India, in Australia,
in the islands of the Pacific. It is a wonderful fact
in the providence of God that when the English
tongue began to contradict the Catholic Church,
the children of St. Patrick took it as if their own,
and have spread the Catholic faith wheresoever the
English speech is heard ; not only throughout the
empire of Britain, but wheresoever the Anglo-Saxon
race and language have extended. North America
and Australia are evidently marked out for a great
future. Empires will one day rise out of them ; and
in their destinies the children of St. Patrick must
bear largeproportion.
that St.th the people
bma,hsomlefGt
God
recorda
his confidence
had given him, in the ends of the earth, would
never be lost to his inheritance ; and that confi-
dence has been signally justified. The children of
St. Patrick have continued faithful to their saint
and father with a fidelity not surpassed by any
nation of the Christian world. This day bears wit-
ness throughout the world that you are steadfast to
the faith he taught you, and to the laws which he
delivered to you. You love him as the great and
powerful intercessor Who is praying for you before
the Throne of God, and as the Spiritual Father
through 'whom you have passed from death to life.
It is he that made you heirs of the kingdom of
heaven. You owe to him a great debt of gratitude ;
and I know that you faithfully fulfil towards him
the obligations he has laid upon you. He has taught
you to believe the Holy Catholic Faith, to hold fast
by the Catholic unity, and to adhere, even at the
cat of life, to the Vicar of Jesus Christ. By his
example and by his words he has taught you the
duty of mortification, of detachment from the world,
and of peacefulness. This is the inheritance of the
children of St. Patrick, and these are the fruits he
will look to find in return for all his toil. And I
bear witness that in steadfast adherence to the
Catholic Faith and to the Catholic Church, and in
close filial union with your pastors, you show your-
selves to be the true children of St. Patrick,
throughout this great city and iu all the world.
This then is the cause of my joy.
But 1 have also a cause of sorrow. It is because
the country we love so well is at this moment in
affliction. You have a right to know my thoughts
at such a time as this, and I have a duty to warn
and to guide you. God forbid that I should be
silent when I ought to speak, or that I should in
mistaken prudence keep back from you what you
ought to know. I do so the more freely because
ever since I was of age to know the history of Ire-
land, all the sympathy of my heart has been with its
faithful, noble, and martyred people. If my prayers
or my efforts can avail anything, they shall never
cease for Ireland. The centuries of conflict of race
against race, embittered seven-fold by conflict of
religion against religion, have left upon Ireland an
accumulation of evils and sufferings which genera-
tions alone can remove. But removed they must
and will be, if only the gradual and onward move-
ment of England and Ireland to perfmt unity and
equality be not hindered by violence.
The past is past, and cannot be recalled. Spain
was once divided into many peoples and
dynasties : it has been fused and united into
one kingdom. France was once many states
and monarchies : it is now one indissoluble race
and people. England was once seven king-
doms : for 1,000 years it has been a monarchy. Eng-
land, Scotland, and Ireland were once three king-
. dome they are now one incliiriale realm, what

God has consolidated by .ges of time no human
hand can dissolve. The onward march of Divine
Providence has accomplished this fusion of races, in
their higher and mightier unity. There is no re-
turning upon the past. The wheat in the ear can-
not go back into the stalk, nor the stalk into the
blade. As the world moves onward, the provi-
thnce of God calls into existence new social orders ;
and out of them arise right, justice, and sove-
reignty. For tiii3 reason the Apostle says—" Let
every soul be subject to higher powers : for there is
no power but from God ; and those that are, are
ordained of God. Therefore he that resisteth the
power, resisteth the ordinance of God. And they
that resist, purchase to themselves damnation."
In these words S. Paul is speaking of the
heathen empire of Rome : of a civil power always
active in persecuting the Church. He declares
the government of the empire to be from God,
and to have a claim upon the conscience of
Christians to obey it. If so, the empire of Great
Britain has the same rights and claims, the same
obligation on our conscience, and on our obedience.
To rise against it, is to resist the ordinance of God ;
and they that resist shall receive to themselves not
only the penalties of man, but the judgment of God.
We have long ago warned those who praised, flat-
tered, abetted, justified, glorified the revolutions of
the continent, and above'all the revolution in Italy,
to take heed lest their own principles should recoil
upon themselves. They have recoiled upon us now.
The same anti-social, anti-Christian principles,
which have been conspiring in the dark against the
Government of the Sovereign Pontiff, have now con-
spired against the English monarchy. We have
always condemned these principles everywhere,
and equally, as intrinsically sinful. The temporal
power of the Pope, on the lowest ground, rests on
the same providential ordinance as the British
Empire. The British Empire, on its highest
base, rests upon the same foundation. We
have consistently defended both upon the same
laws and principles ; and we likewise condemn
all conspiracy, and all excitement to sedition from
neighbouring States, whether in Italy or in Ireland,
as anti-social and anti-Christian.
I am the more watchful to warn you, dear chil-
dren in Jesus Christ, because at this moment the
principles of rebellion have been openly and syste-
matically published among you. The first number,
of a Paper' has Ikt,#:o3At tore, addresscii especially
to my flock L.9nclol), and intended Is a means of
uniting others3n a common cause :throughout Eng-
land. It is my duty to declaresto you the nature
of that paper, and my ludg,raent.upon it. Whatever
be the good intentions or patriotic virtues of its
authors, I am bound not to suffer errors to enter
among you without warning.
In the first number, then, published on March
16, I find the following words
" As long as prelates and priests, when from the
pulpit or the altar they preach to their flocks, con-
fine themselves to spiritual topics, to subjects
purely religious, so long should not a layman criti-
cise their sermons, exhortations, or discourses ; but
if the bishop or the priest discourses ethics, then we
have the right to criticise the subject under consi-
deration. And for the good reason that, with very
few emendations made by the Church, the morals
or ethics of Cicero or Aristotle—Pagans—are those
now in use. Their principles a learned layman can
apply to the analysis of any theme, just as well as
the most exalted ecclesiastical dignitary."

That is to say, bishops and priests are to be
listened to when they preach the doctrines
of faith, but not when they preach the doc-
trines of morals ; their authority is confined to the
faith alone. But the Church is infallible both in
faith and morals ; and bishops-awl priests are bonnet
to preach the infallible truths and laws both of faith
and morals, under and by the authority of the
Church. Now " ethics" are morals ; and the first
laws of politics are a part of morals. It was as a
teacher of political morality that S. Paul enjoined
obedience to the powers, and condemned rebellion
as a sin. This proposition is therefore at least erro-
neous ; but if it be intended to deny to your pastors
the office to teach and guide you in these first
principles of political morality, it denies the office
of the Church as the teacher of morals, it is there-
fore heretical ; and for either or both these reasons
it is scandalous.
It was in this way that the leaders of the rebel-
lion in 1848 against the authority of the Holy
Father began their insidious course. One of the
foremost in assurance addressed to the Sovereign
Pontiff the supercilious warning to " withdraw from
the turbulent affairs of the world- to the serene
sphere of dogma, and there to pray, bless, and par-
don ;" that is, to be silent, to deliver over the Chris-
tian world to revolution. But politics are a part of
morals, because they are the morals of society.
S. Paul was teaching both morals and politics
when he said, "There is no power but from God ;"
and S. Peter when he said, ‘, Be ye subject there-
fore to every human creature for God's sake : whe-
ther it be to the king as supreme, or to governors
as sent by him for the punishment of evil doers, and
for the praise of the good. For. so is the will of
God, that by doing well you may silence the igno-
rance of foolish men : as free, and not as making
liberty a cloak of malice, but as the servants of
God."
Again, in the same paper I read as follows: "Now
we have closely read the Canons, Bulls, Decretals,
and Rescripts of Popes, respecting 'Secret and Oath-
bound Societies,' and we have not been able to dis-
cover any' sentence iu any' of them—not even of
Pio Nouo—which could be interpreted as bearing
upon Fenianism, which we have been discussing on
its abstract merits. Fenianism is consequently not
opposed to, much less is it for, the overthrow of
Catholicity." This affirms-
1. That Fenianism is not condemned by name,
and is therefore not condemned at all.
2. That the condemnation-of the Church applies
to " oath-bound societies," and that it therefore does
not apply to Fenianism.
3. That Fenianism is not opposed to Catholicity,
and is therefore not condemned.

These three propositions are alike erroneous and
false.

1. First, it is not necessary that a Secret Society
should be condemned by name. All seditious societies
are condemned by definition, by description, and
by indentity with those which are 'condemned by
name. In the Allocution of Sept. 14th, 1865, the
Holy Father, after renewing the condemnations of
Clement XII., Benedict XIV., Pius VII., Leo
XII., declares that the last named Pontiff condemned
all the clandestine societies which had been specifi-
cally named, and " all others whatsoever, by what-
soever name they might be called, which conspire
against the Church and civil power, and prohibited
them to all the faithful under the severest pain of
excommunication."

2. Secondly, oaths are accidents. This is as-
serted in the Encyclical of 1864, by which it is de-
clared that "all clandestine societies, whether any
oath of secrecy be exacted in them or not, together
with their followers and abetters are condemned."
This condemnation falls upon all societies cr con-
spiracies, open or secret, against the Church or the
civil power. In order to perfect certainty upon this
point, the Archbishop of Dublin, in 1864, consulted
the Sacred Congregation of Propaganda, which, on
June 7th, 1864, answered in these words, " The
secret societies, of which there is question in the Pon-
tifical Constitution, are understood to be all such as
purpose to themselves anything against the Church or
the Civil Government, whether they require on oath
of secrecy or not."
3. Lastly, all such conspiracies, whether directed
against the ChtuTh and Civil Power, or against the
Church alone, or ag3,i;.lst the State alone, are by the
s.une Allocution condemned. ,The words of the
Holy Father are these 1---" We confirm the before.
cited Constitutions of our predeee.6sors.; and by our
Apogtolioal authority ve reprobate and condemn the

Let no man then deceive you. Trust to no guides
or teachers who contradict the voice of the Vicar of
Jesus Christ. Their words make anarchy. His
words make law. They.are not the interpreters of
canons, bulls, decretals and rescripts ; but the So-
vereign Pontiff is. They are not the expositors of
the Pontifical law. He is both expositor and legis-
lator. You have it, therefore, dear children in Jesus
Christ, not from my lips but from his, that all con-
spiracy, open or secret, with or without oaths,
against the Church or the civil power is-mortal sin.
Lay this to heart, and make it known to all who
may be in danger of being misled. Dissuade,
exhort, and beseech with all love, earnestness, and
patience, that no man may be carried through
natural but misguided emotions into a sinful path.
.My heart bleeds for the Catholic people of Ireland.
I know its history, its sufferings, its wounds, the
sting which has been planted in its conscience, its
heart, its faith, its highest, noblest instincts. I
know that in the past the wound has gone to the
quick, that the iron has entered into its soul. I
know, therefore, the present danger of its sons.
Much that is good in them rises up in behalf of their
homes and of their faith. It is their higher, purer,
most human and deepest instincts which are worked
upon ; and the past has ripened them to take the
influence of evil counsels coming from abroad.
Letters from Ireland tell me that many who have
become entangled in this sinful rising have done so
in full belief that it was a holy cause. They were
men who loved their faith, who went, before meet-
ing the hour of danger, to make their peace with
God : tiricoliscious of doing wrong, misled, con-
fused iu mind by the consciousuetis of4ll that Ire-
land has suffered, and: over-persnaded by evil voices
and the false principles I have here exposed. Even
in this -there is a pledge of better things. If the
Irish people ever lose the Catholic instinct of obe-
dience to the powers ordained of God, what shall
restrain them from giving way to the temptations
to insubordination which the history of Ireland un-
happily ministers, and to the influences of American
sedition which are profusely at work? I have said this
before, and I say it now again, to open the eyes, if
opened they can be, of those who think to pacify and
to tranquillise Ireland, or even to calm and govern
it, while they put public dishonour and legal
contempt upon the faith and the Church of Ireland.
They who would undermine the faith of Ireland by
mixed education and by mercenary conversion are
the worst enemies of the peace of Ireland, and of
the union of the two kingdoms. In the measure in
which they succeed, in that measure they weaken
over the Irish people the mightiest power of obe-
dience, faith in the Church of God. At this mo-
ment much that is noble, generous, pure, unselfish,
manly, humane, and even religious in the heart of
Irishmen, is alienated by the wrongs of the past,
and wounded by much that survives both in the
letter and in the spirit. And this alienation is the
invitation to foreign sedition, and the predisposition
to all manner of moral and social disease. It would
be an ill day for a kingdom if the highest and
noblest instincts of its people, if the manhood and
the faith of its sons, be estranged from its allegiance
and run wild in sedition. While I am compelled
by duty to publish the authoritative condemna-
tions of the Church upon all such as break the
Christian law by rebellion, I grieve for those who
are misled by an affection which England counts
one of its chief virtues, the love of our country.
But the words of our Divine Lord are clear :
" All who take the sword shall perish with the
sword." There is a higher and mightier power, and
weapons against which the world cannot stand. It
was not by force that the Christians won the empire
of the world. It was not by the sword that S.
Patrick subdued Ireland. It was not by arms that
your great leader and counsellor, forty years ago, to
whom, more than to any one man, you owe your
Christian emancipation, vindicated for you the free-
dom we now enjoy : it was his rule that no political
changes were worth one drop of blood. The only
violence you can use without breaking God's law is
the violence of faith ; that is,:of justice, reason,
patience. This is the invincible power of the king-
dom of God. -
Wheresoever the violence of this world enters it
destroys those that use it. The revolution in
France sacrificed Ireland in 1798. Bloodshed,
misery, executions, widowhood, social hatreds, and
thirty years more of penal law were the conse-
quence. The revolutions of 1848 all but sacrificed
it again. For nearly twenty years peace and a
better order has been coming, slowly but surely.
God avert that America should sacrifice Ireland for
the third time. Press on as in the last twenty years,
and Ireland will be like the Provinces of the Rhine,
or like Belgium, fertile and peaceful, with their
thousand towns and villages, their ten thousand
industries and busy ploughs, mountains covered
with cattle, and fields rich with harvest. Listen to
the gospel of sedition, and the land we love so well
may be like the Southern States of America, wrecked
and desolate ; or, far worse, like Russian Poland,
bleeding and crushed in freedom and in faith. Why
should Ireland be always between the upper and
nether millstone, between England and France,
England and Revolution, England and America,
broken and ground to powder? Work together
with the wise and peaceful providence of God, and
all is before us. There is a tide in time as in the
waters of the sea. All things are moving onwards,
and no human band can turn the current
-back. Two things are certain : the one that these
three kingdoms are indissoluble ; the other that
they must all be equal. Scotland has been lifted to
the prosperity of England: Ireland must be lifted
to equality with both. Every badge of oppression
and of perseQution must be effaced from the statute
book, from die face of society, from the heart of the
people. The Church and faith of the Irish people
must be the Church and faith of Ireland. The
Catholic Church in all the amplitude and dignity of
public recognition, right, and law must be acknow-
ledged by man as it is constituted and honoured by
God. It was a senseless illusion to ignore the
breadth of Ireland beyond the pale. It is a more
senseless fiction to ignore the Catholic Church which
alone is recognised by Ireland and by the world.
It is hard to kick against the goal It is harder to
contend against the providence of God. Catholic,
Ireland was, is, and always will be. Thwart or vio-
late its faith, and it can never be at rest. Honour
and cherish its dearest treasure, and it will be peace-
ful, loyal, and content. When the faith of a people
has free expanse, society prospers. And society
springs from the furrow ; labour builds homes,
villages, towns, with all the acts of life and grada-
tions of social order so fine and closely knit
that the commonwealth is one, with one
action, heart, and will. Commonwealth is a
common welfare ; and such Ireland will be
be if the god of this world do not enter in to mar
the work of peace : if our rulers be wise and just,
and if you, children of St. Patrick, keep his word
and are true to his example ; steadfast in the faith,
submissive to the Vicar of Jesus Christ, united to
your pastors, self-controlling, peaceful, and makers
of peace. Then you may confide in the promise of
, God to His chosen people ; " If you return and be

Messrs. C. E. Stewart, Mr. G. P. Bidder, Mr. J.
D. Birchall, and Mr. J. Chadwick, having been de-
puted by a meeting of the principal holders of the
preference and ordinary stocks in this company to
consider and advise on the course to be adopted for
the preservation of their property, reported :—That
the net annual revenue of the company was suffi-
cient to pay all the preference interest and divi-
dends, but, from the distrust now affecting all rail-
way securities, the company had been obliged to
employ that revenue in meeting capital obligations ;
hence the non-payment of the two last half-years'
preference dividends. To meet the dividends now
due, and to liquidate the existing engagements of
the company on capital account (other than the
Metropolitan Extensions, which would be sepa-
rately provided for), would require one million and
a half sterling. The interest paid last year upon
£BOO,OOO of temporary loans exceeded £6:),000,
which would represent the interest upon £1,200,000
of the debenture stock subsequently referred to.
They deemed it essential to the restoration of the
company's credit, and to the permanent security of
the preference holders:—" Ist. That, in "order to
meet the interest on the debentures and debenture
stock, and so afford absolute security to the inves-
tors, there shall be paid, under Parliamentary obli-
gation, week by week, to the credit of the three
trustees, to be nominated by the Governor of the
Bank of England such a proportion of the traffic
receipts as will meet the current interest on the
whole of the debentures and debenture stock of the
company : 2, that three trustees, to be appointed by
the preference shareholders, shall be vested with
power to veto any further capital expenditure or
liability beyond that now existing which they may
disapprove ; 3, that in order to provide for thedivi-
dends now due, and to meet the pressing require-
ments on capital account, there shall be created,
under Parliamentary sanction, one million and a half
of debenturestock, bearing interest at the rate of £5
per cent. per annum, to be offered to preference share-
holders, and such persons as are willing to receive
it in satisfaction of their claims, and to be payable
by instalments ranging over three years from the
present time, having the dividends or sums now due
written up in part payment." They confidently
recommended this arrangement for adoption. As
an example of how it would work, it was shown that
a holder of £l,OOO of 5 per cent. stock, with one
year's dividend (£5O) unpaid, would receive scrip
representing four years' dividend, or say for £2OO,
of which £5O would be written up as paid, leaving
£l5O to fall due, by instalments of £25, on the Ist
of September and the Ist of March in each year,
until fully paid up. There was no obligation on
the holder of preference stock to keep the scrip.

GRAND TRUNK OF CANADA.
The report of the directors of this company states
that the gross receipts for the half-year ending the
31st of December last, upon the whole undertaking,
including the Buffalo and Champlain lines, had been
£719,370, and the ordinary working expenses
£413,608, or 5749 per cent., leaving a balance of
£305,762, From this was deducted £72,392, the
proportion of renewals of the permanent way and
works debited to revenue, leaving an available net
balance of £233,370. Out of this was deducted
£174,891, including £20,722 for postal and military
service bonds, £61,826 discou'it on American cur-
rency, £32,786 rent of Atlantic and St. Lawrence
Railway, £11,250 rent of the Detroit line, £10,779
interest on equipment mortgage, and £31,580 for
proportion of Montreal and Champlain and Buffalo
and Lake Huron Railway Company's traffic, leaving,
with £2OO from the preceding half-year, a balance
of £58,680, which would provide for a cash divi-
dend on the first preference bonds, leaving a
balance of £326 for next account. This dividend
would be payable on and after the 22d inst., and cer-
tificates for the arrears of interest to be capitalised on
the second preference bonds and on the third and
fourth preference stocks would, under the terms of the
Act of 1862,be subsequently issued. The increase in the
aggregate receipts for the half-year, as compared
with the same period of 1865, was £4,500, the total
revenue being the largest yet received in any one
half-year. The decrease of net revenue was caused
by an increase in loss on currency, an increase in
legal charges, the debit of a sum under award to
the Brantford Gas Company, and a larger outlay in
the locomotive department for new engines and cars
to maintain the existing stock in an efficient state.
The two last items, together about £16,000, accounted
for the increased working expenses. In appropriat-
ing the net revenue £5,359 had been paid to the
postal and military bondholders, in excess of the
sum due to them in the corresponding half of 1865.
This had .risen from increased receipts for the con-
veyance of troops and stores arising out of the Fenian
raid. The receipts from passenger traffic, mails, &c.,
showed an increase over the corresponding period of
1865 of £5,165, or 1.67 per cent. ; but the merchan-
dise receipts showed a falling off of £420. The dimi-
nution of revenue in the freight traffic was entirely
in live stock, and was in consequence of the United
States tariff laws which came into operation on the
repeal of the Reciprocity Treaty. The live stock
receipts in the corresponding half of 1865 were
£36,011, while those for 1866 were only £16,333.
The average receipt of passengers per head was
7s. 2d., against 7s. 10d. in 1863, and the average
per ton was 15s. 11d. as compared with 15s. sd. in
1865. The working expenses were 57.49 per cent.
for the past half-year, 55.35 for the same half of
1865, 59.68 per cent. for the same half of 1861, 5711
per cent. for same half of 1863, 59.68 per cent. for
same half of 1862, and 68.64 per cent. for same half
of 1861. The total loss on the American currency
since June, 1862, amounted to £290,384, the loss
for the past half-year being £61,828. The enormous
loss occasioned by this wholly extraneous cause had
altered the entire aspect of the recent finances of the
company. The price of gold fluctuated during the
six months ended Dec. last between 154 in July and
1314 in Dec. The continued inflation of the prices
of labour and materials in the United States, con-
sequent upon the state of the currency, still led to
an excessive cost inmanydepartments. The amount
expended out of the revenue in renewals of perma-
nent way, from 1862 to 1866 inclusive, had been
£621,543, and of the extremely large expenditure in
the past half-yearof £97,392 the board had charged
£25,000 to capital account. The debit for stock of
stores in hand had. been reduced from £245,419, the
amount in Dec., 1865, to £202,357. The reciprocity
treaty with the United States ended in March, 1866.
The full results of its repeal had, however, been
more apparent in the past half-year, and while the
local traffic had kept up in a very satisfactory man-
ner, the interchange of traffic between Canada and
the United States had suffered. All accounts with
the Government of Canada and her Majesty's Go-
vernment were now settled and disposed of. Looking
to the heavy loss which had during the last fiveyears
arisen from the condition of the American currency,
to the pressure of the excessive outlay for renewals
of the permanent way, to the impossibility of the
railway earning even the amount of revenue now
obtainable without an increasing quantity of rolling
stock, and to the realisation of the expectations, so
long formed, of the construction of the lntercolonial
Railway, the board considered the time had arrived
for maturing a plan under which the progress of the
traffic and the resources of the undertaking—now
, destined to become an integral portion a a great