The Sun.
London, England, 1859-10-17 00:00:00

CH
M. ABOUT AND THE FBEN
BISHOPS.

M. About, having been personally attacked by
the Bishop of Orleans on account of his celebrated
book La Question Romaine, replies to the Prelate
as follows in the columns of the Opinion Nationale :
" Schlittenbach, Oct. 8.
" Monseigneur,—l am living with my mother in
a retired cottage in the department of the Bas
Rhin. No scandalous journals penetrate into our
retreat. Consequently Ido not see the Figaro or
the Univers, or the political mandements of the
bishops. But an inhabitant of Saverne, who takes
an interest in me and does not like to see me in-
sulted, yesterday sent me a copy of your pamphlet.
You, Monseigneur, are a Liberal. You formerly
defended freedom of instruction, or, at any rate,
what the French clergy call by that name.
You tolerate the classic authors, and you have
a little seminary of your own, in which you.
have Greek tragedies played. You opposed M.
Veuillot with a courage not commonly, found among
men of your cloth, and you only- bowed to that great
genius when the Pope took his part against you.
You now, Monseigneur, defend the liberty of the
press—nay, more, you boldly and openly practise
it, with that manly pride which is fostered in heroes
of the long robe by the certainty of impunity. In
former days a mandate was a little episcopal
gazette, treating of eggs, butter, cheese, and other
comestibles lawful to be oaten in Lent. You have
transformed the mandate into a political journal,
and you evade the stamp, duty and the caution
money to which ordinary journals are subjected.
Secured by your sacred character against tb e rigours
of the correctional police, you declare war upon
your former Sovereign and our faithful ally the
Xing of Sardinia. You make no account of the
Government, which found you a Savoyard and
made you a Frenchman, from a priest turned yon
to a bishop, and now pays you a salary for your
services. You post your diatribes upon walls be-
longing to the State, you cause them to be read
from the pulpit by public functionaries receiving
State pay; and the Prince, who has just granted
an: amnesty to his political enemies, deigns to
allow your small insurrection to enjoy an apparent
triumph. There were two good reasons why you
should have kept silence, since you were born under
the sceptre of the King of Sardinia, and you are
now living in the French empire. Is it conceiv-
able that your ecclesiastical garb can have enfran-
chised you from the allegiance due to both your
legitimate Sovereigns, and made you the subject of
a petty foreign Prince ? Do not suppose,Monseig-
neur, that any personal rancour prompts these ob-
servations. You have ill-treated me, it is true, but
in such good company that I am only too much
honoured by your attacks. I shall be most happy
to remain to the end of my days in the category in
which you have classed me, by the side of the King
of Sardinia and the glorious chiefs of the Italian re-
volution. I even confess, between ourselves, that
I did not think my advocacy of the cause of an
oppressed people was wonthy of such a glorious
recompense. Perhaps you would have done better
to speak in more courteous terms of a literary
man and a gentleman ; for only to suppose such a
misfortune as that 15 or 20 years hence you should
find me on the next bench to you in the French Aca-
demy, you would be forced either to leave your seat
or to admit that you had gone a little too far. But
religious polemics have their peculiar customs. The
instruments of torture which religion no longer
dares to use in practice it imports, as far as is
practicable, into its language. The sacred fire of
the inquisition now burns only in the eloquence of
men. I was made to feel it in the first mandate—
I mean the first article—of your new friend, M.
Veuillot. When I was told that this Pere Duchesne
of the Church had declared war against me, I ex-
pected to have some formidable arguments to meet.
I buckled on my best logical and historical armour.
How simple was I ! M. Veuillot merely insulted
me as you have done, Monseigneur, and he de-
nounced my book to the police. For it is easier to
ruin an editor than to destroy an argument ; there
is no reply so irrefutable as a seizure. According
to law, I might, Monseigneur, require you to insert
this, my- answer, in your next number—l mean
your next mandate. But I will not be too exact-
ing ; lam satisfied with being in the right. I re-
spectfully kiss your pastoral ring, and humbly bow,
Monseigneur, to the sacred character with which
you are invested. " EDMOND ABOUT."

:(From the Times.)
M. Edmond About is still the mark fQr the de-
nunciations of all the zealots in France who own
allegiance to the See of Rome. You may estimate
the amount of the danger with which they con-
ceive themselves threatened by the virulence and
frequency of their attacks upon M. About. We
have just heard that the Pope has set out (wills
travels for Castel Gandolfo, and, contemporaneously
with this event, the Bishop of Orleans—a Savoyard
by biith—has been inflicting a fresh castigation on
M. About for the benefit of the faithful. To abuse
M. About world seem to be the .specific for all the
diseases to which the Papacy is subjected. It is
the colchicum, the quinine, and the calomel in the
hands of the faithful physicians. Of course, the
reason for all this exasperation is that at a critical
moment M. About published a book in which he
rather suggested than denounced the vices of the
Papal Government ; but even suggestion was ter-
rible. Herein lay M. About's crime. Not only
did he this, but he did it at a critical moment, and
with all the brilliant and epigrammatic vigour of
an accomplished French writer. There is that in
M. About's sparkling pages which reminds us of
the writing of Paul Louis Courryer. The character
of Cardinal Antonelli, as drawn by M. About, may
fairly stand comparison with many passages in the
Petition des Villageois qu'on empeehe de dancer.
Everybody read his book. The knowledge of the
fearful condition of the Roman States existed at
the bottom of all our minds as ore exists at the
bottom of a mine. But M. About drew it to the
surface, stamped it, as it were, and threw it into
commerce. M. About got all the laughers on his
side, and that is a very important point, even when
the agony of our fellow-creatures constitutes the
subject matter of our inquiry. The dull leaden
oppression of priestly rile was proof against tears
and remonstrances, against censure and indigna-
tion, but it was helpless against the keen shafts of
its last assailant. It was the struggle of the
clumsy whale against the bright and polished
harpoon of the whale-fisher. The huge animal
would lash the waters with its tail, and enve-
lope itself in clouds of mist ; it could have
dashed his opponent to atoms had he trusted him-
self within its reach ; finally, and as its last re-
source, it could have sunk to the bottom of the sea
far from human observation, and, could it have
stayed there, would have done well enough. But to
the surface it must return, snorting, panting, and
wounded, a fresh mark for the ready weapon de-
stined to pierce it to the heart, and reduce that
vast strugglinc, bulk to the condition of inanimate
matter. M. About is the harpooner; the temporal
Government of the Pope the whale.
After all, this discussion ought not to be en-
venomed with religious denunciations Is the truth
of the religion preached from the Vatican inex-
tricably bound up with the temporal oppression
of a considerable section of the Italian people ?
The discussion involves metaphysical and historical
points of controversy which probably never will be
settled, and which we certainly will not discuss in
the columns of a newspaper. The character and
results of a temporal Government are, on the other
hand, within the grasp of an ordinary understand-
ing. What madness, then, it is in the partisans of
the Pope to confound the results of his spiritual
with the results of his temporal rule ! Sir Hum-
phrey Davy might have said, "My discoveries in
chemistry are true, and Connaught is the best
governed portion of the earth's surface ; and if
Connaught is not the best governed portion of the
earth's surface, then my discoveries in chemistry are
untrue Very few of his contemporaries would
have been in a condition to appreciate the value of
the great chemist's scientific discoveries, but they
would have been very )f forming an opinion
upon the north-west ceoaapstabolfe
ill with Ireland Sir
at that day.
It would have gone
3.Humphreylis:eh
grounds.h ad h e
rested the value of his researches u
ntosetehat
Yet this is, after all, but an analogous
of the more zealous partisans of the Roams:
our time. They do not or: will not see that such is
the deplorable condition of the Pontifical States,
considered merely from a political and social point
of view, that, at any rate, whether or not Pius IX.
be the true successor of St. Peter, this is an
evil which must be abated. The fact is broad and
patent in the litsht of day. Farini wrote 40 years
ago, " There is in the Roman States no care for the
cultivation of the people, no anxiety for public
prosperity; Rome is a cesspool of corruptions and
privileges ; a clergy made up of fools and knaves
in power : the laity slaves ; the treasuries plun-
dered by tax-farmers and spies ; all the business of
Government consists of prying into and punishing
the notions, the expectations, and the imprudences
of the Liberals." Nor have matters been better
during the last ten years of this period ; from 1818
to 1857 the expenses of foreign troops to keep
down the inhabitant,-; have been about £1,000,000.
The Pontifical States had no railroads;until recently ;
and now the line to Civita Vecchia has been made
but for the convenience of foreign troops ; all com-
munications through the States are difficult. The
roads are infested by brigands. The Po threatens
continual overflow. The collection of the common
taxes costs 31 per cent. The collection of the re-
venue derived from the "Lotto" costs 62 per cent. ;
that from the monopoly of tobacco 46 per cent.