The evening telegraph. [volume] (Philadelphia [Pa.]) 1864-1918, 1869-12-21

should not furnish vessels TO either party in
our civil war The Alabama was fur 1ished to
the Oonfederacy in violation of that law, and
we may accordingly call upon England to pay
for the mischief which the Alabama did.
But as General Grants message swept away
Mr.. Summers silly reason, so the subser-
viency of the administration to the Spanish
despots has swept away the sensible rea-
SOM and thus the new negotiations which Mr..
Fish is beginning are left without a leg to
stand upon.
BY permitting the Spanish gunboats to go
to sea, Notwithstanding the protest put in by
the representatives Of Cuba, we fout in the
face our law of neutrality, and furnish war
vessels to one of the parties in civil war;
openly and ostentatiously. The British Gov
ernment can plead that it was by stealth and
evasion that the Alabama violated the English
neutrality law, and got to sea; but that we,
under similar circumstances, have sent out
thirty Alabamas in broad day, and with the un-
disguised cooperation Of both our courts and
our Executive. Our neutrality law perfectly
covers the case of the Cuban republic, and
binds both courts and Executive not to suffer
either party to the civil war now raging in
Cuba TO procure war vessels or to enlist sol
diers in this country. By deliberately and
conspicuously violating this law in the case
of the gunboats, and by allowing men to be
we have deprived ourselves of the only real
ground for exacting pay from England for
the Alabama claims Thus, in Mr.. Fishs
blind and unintelligent zeal to serve Spain,
and in Mr.. Summers jealous haste to sacrifice
everything, no matter how sacred, that in his
opinion might compromise the Alabama
claims they have actually thrown those
claims away Thus we stand before the
world as betraying the cause of liberty, siding
Will "a haqaQt E,nrOnaan Ct
our own friends and neighbors, and doing
our best to maintain slavery and the slave
trade in North America, and as sacrificing
millions upon millions in order that we might
cover ourselves with this indescribable shame.
CATHOLIC LESSON FOR PROTESTANTS.
From the NJ Y. Nation.
There is one instructive feature of the
Gcumenical Council, to which, however, it
would perhaps be useless to draw the atten-
ton of anybody but Protestants; and that is,
the striking illustration it offers of the power
of organization. Catholics, of course, will
not be persuaded that the force which enables
an old and not very able priest to summon
from the four quarters of the globe an as
sembly whose decisions the greater portion
of Christendom will regard as the direct
utterances of Divine wisdom, and dozen
sovereigns are looking for with real anxiety,
miraculously, from the Almighty himself.
But Protestants, whatever they may think of
Romish DOCTRINES have long been satisfied,
and with abundant reason, tkat the
organization known as the Roman
Catholic Church, such as we see it,
with its great clerical army its elaborate yet
skilful discipline, its wonderful power of
using all kinds and conditions of men for its
own advancement, of adapting itself to all
Of niN az nd al pf
ners and antecedents, of bringing learned and
simple, proud and humble, to kneel before its
affairs with a forgetfulness of worldly distinc-
tions which the Protestant sects all preach,
and sigh, and pray for, but have never been
able to bring about, is simply legacy be-
queathed to the modern world by the Roman
empire. Mr.. Maine has pointed out, in the
closing chapter of his great work, the
influence which was exercised on the
doctrines of the Latin Church by the
Roman lawyers, into whose practised and
cunning hands the moulding of the ecclesi-
astical organization naturally passed, or, at all
events, from whose minds and methods the
Church naturally received powerful impress
after it had emerged from the Catacombs and
become the religion of the State. 1t was
| from them, too, that the clergy undoubtedly
learned the art which they have never since
| lost-the art of government the art which en-
political empire, and without any other mate
rials than savages and slaves, that splendid
spiritual empire which, because it is spiritual,
| is perhaps the greatest glory of the human
race, and whose wonderful passage through
fifteen hundred years of storm and change,
the Oldest proudest, and, all things con-
sidered, most powerful of existing institu-
| tions, the Goumenical Council meets to
| celebrate
Now, the thing which distinguishes the
Latin Church to-day from the Greek Church,
aad which distinguishes it from all the sects
| which have broken off from it, which makes
it a sovereign power treating on equal terms
! with secular governments, instead of being a
mere State institution for the spread of reli-
gious instruction, or an obscure association
of believers for worship and mutual editica-
ton, is, undoubtedly, that it has from the be-
ginning been managed by jurists, or men
thoroughly permeated by the judicial spirit.
Mere theologians, or mere moralists or mere
politicians, would have made shipwreck of the
Church as an organization long before the
ninth century. The Christian religion they
no doubt would have preserved-that had
foundations to which the Roman lawyers
could make no additions; but the Catholic
Church, as we now see and know it, could
never have passed through the Dark Ages and
come down to our time if there had otalways
remained at its head body of men who had
inherited the great traditions of the Roman
bar, its knowledge of human nature, its saga
city, its subtlety, its faith in human reason,
and, above all, in cultivated human reason,
as controller and director of the affairs OF
men.
1t is very certain, as it seems to u.s. that
''the army of progress may learn good deal
from that venerable and, as many think,
oI,o