The Irish standard., 1897-03-27

I
daily occupations, heedlessly snatch out
of the secular journals and magazines
undigested opinions upon important
subjects, opinions hastily written and
not infrequently erroneously expressed;
! men and events, theories and schemes
and projects are discussed upon un-
sound principles and assumptions
which the readers have but scant time
to unravel and rectify; the poison of
these false premi~es enters ino their
thinking, corrodes their reasoning, and
unconsciously they accept as truth con-
clusions that are only distortions OF
truth. 1t is among the chief purposes
of the Summer School to supply anti
dotes for this poison"
1t is in vain that the student searches
the partisan" histories for an ac-
acknowledgement of the fact that the
great elements of our institutions,
namely representative government OF
the Christian type, electoral franchise,
manhood suffrage, written ballot, writ
ten constitutions, bills Of rights, recip-
rocal oaths between rulers and t1.sr
people, trial by jury, limitation OF laws
| Of labor, sanctity OF human life, and
the recognition of the woman's rights in
the marriage law as standing upon an
equal footing with those Of man, come
from the Catholic church alone,
The republic OF San Marino has ex-
listed in papal dominions more than
1 1,4OO years, and therein that popular
form Of government, which in our coun
try is called the New England town
meeting, has been In use for a period
which antedates the time which the
Angles, the Saxons, and the Jutes de-
parted from the sand dunes that front
the Baltic sea and invaded Britain. The,
saint who founded San Marino institut-
ed the town meeting after seeing the
same form of government among
tribes in the North of Italy. In the
Germanicus of Tacitus is an excellent
descriptive of town meetings. p Our fed
eral constitution does not contain a line
+; which cannot be found; in a, complete
edition of Esprit des>Luis,' the great
est French book of the eighteenth CEN
tury, written by Baron Montesquieu,
whose body was inferred in St. Sui
| plice's,, church, Paris, exactly 81 years
| before the constitutional convention
! met at Philadelphia. Frederick the
Greet, Ell. ..::-:,Il Burke, George Wash
| ington, Franklin, Hamilton Jefferson,
Madison and Napoleon the Great have
recorded their indebtedness to the
Esprit des LOIS" which was in the
hands of every framer of the constitu
| tion; yet of credit to the great Catholic
statesman and author there is not a
! line in any history of our country.
f! When the thirteen colonies set forth
| the Declaration of Independence,
| they only joined in unison with
| maintained by the pOpes in Eng
| land from the 9th year after the Pas
sion of our Lord "Resistance to Ty-
rants is obedience to Cod" is not, as is
generally believed, AN original declara-
ton against King George, made by
! American patriots. 1t was declared
from the high altar of Canterbury cathe-
dral, by the author Of ''the Great Char
ter of the Liberties of England" Arch
bishop Langton, centuries before Colum-
bus discovered America. The church
! never taught, but On the contrary, has
ever denied, and always contended
! against, the so-called divine right Of
kings, and the equally false doctrine
! that the king is alone the law. No
| lawyer who is learned in the eccelsias-
| tical and civil laws of England in the
time of Henry Will, will deny the fact
that tyranny in England began in 1889
under parliamentary act (Henry WILL,
Act 13, Caption g. forced through a par
| Lament from which Catholics had been
| excluded) which accorded to individual
proclamations of the sovereign all the
force of legislative. statutes. Does not
{ this show that the king, under Catholic
] government was subject to the law?
The doctrine Of the divine right of kings
! was enacted in the following year.
| Against these doctrines stood every
Catholic, prelate, priest ard layman in
I England. Read the letter of Cardinal
! Pole to the pope, in which he states
! the grievances of the Catholics of Eng
land, and note how much there is in the
document that reads like the Declara-
tion of independence. j
During the War Of THE Revolution,
! from 1775 to 1888, 9,416 men were killed
on che. American side IL we go back
to the foundation of the@sacred cause in
which these noble patriots laid down
their livevs. we find thasfthey died fight
ing against that infamous law, else
where alluded to in tnis article (Henry
VIII, Act 10, Caption 81, which is the
first anti Catholic law enacted in Engi
land. When Charles I. was brought 10
trial, he rested his case on the. afore-
said. act His accusers cited Catholic
laws, and histories in support Of. their
statement, that the king was under the
law, and that it was the bounden duty
of the people to depose an unjust ruler;
In this contention the Roundheads were
in accord with the Law, Of the church in