and a concurrent jurisdiction necessarily implies the possibility of collision and of a conflict of laws. The claim of Rome has for centuries been that where a conflict of this kind arises the appeal is to the Curia, and not to the temporal lord; and the most subtle forms of eternal damnation have been specially invented for clerics who should appeal to the secular power. On the other hand, the secular power has everywhere maintained its right to be the ultimate judge.

The provisions of the third section of the law under consideration only puts into a more definite form a right always claimed and always exercised, not by Prussia only, but by every state in which there are Roman Catholics. Even in our longsuffering islands the O'Keefe case amply showed that her Majesty's judges considered that the municipal laws of Great Britain took precedence of the canon laws, in spite of the contrary opinion of the Irish episcopate.

The principle of the law being the only really important point, we need not enter into the details of its application.

(3.) Intervention of the State without being appealed to.

This section is far more important than the last, for it exchanges the merely defensive attitude of the state for one of offence-le cas échéant. It no longer confines itself to receiving appeals from those injured, but steps forward and declares itself the injured party. It decrees in a word that where the executive Government considers "that a priest or other servant of a church society shall so seriously contravene the laws of the state, or the ordinances of the lawful authorities in matters that come within his office, or in the exercise of his spiritual functions, as to make his continuance in office incompatible with public order, he may at the instance of the state be removed by a judicial sentence." The eight paragraphs of the section lay down the forms of procedure to be observed on such occasions. Complaint is to be first made to the ecclesiastical superiors, and they are to be called upon to dispossess the obnoxious individual, and only in case of their refusal is he to be cited before the tribunal

individual has no ecclesiastical superior in Germany, i.e., in the case of bishops, the state brings its charges directly before the tribunal.

There can be no doubt as to the stringent character of this law, and as to the incisive manner in which it cuts into the canon law. There is also a prima facie illogical look about it, for the state discards the pretension to appoint clerics, but here claims the right by a process of law to remove them. A door is also opened much more widely than we could wish to see to conflicts between the spiritual and temporal, by including contravention to the ordinances of the authorities in the same category as contravention of the laws of the state. In a country with the traditions of an absolute bureaucracy still so deep-rooted in the political life of the people as is the case in Prussia, the placing the ordinances of the authorities on the same footing as the laws is certain to result in a maximum amount of arbitrariness. Whether a suspension from office, with a withdrawal of the state salary, wou'd not have sufficed without so violent a shock to Catholic consciences as the assumption of the right to depose a spiritual person spiritual person from his spiritual office is a question which we think may fairly be asked. Nevertheless, we still maintain that in an established Church the State must find the means of restrain

ing persons exercising functions which, though of a spiritual, are yet of a public kind, from so exercising them as to inflict injury on the community, and the best means for such a purpose is clearly a process of law before a proper tribunal.

To refer once more to British precedents, the principle at stake is exactly the same as that which Parliament asserted last session in creating a court against Ritualistic abuses with the apparent intention of enlarging it next session to a tribunal competent to judge ecclesiastical offences generally. Only the Prussian

1 The assumption of the right to depose Bishops from their Bishoprics by the sentence of a secular tribunal is clearly an indefensible and unjustifiable inroad into the province of the spiritual authority. We shall refer to the question more in detail in con

Parliament and tribunal keep their hands off dogma.

The section we have here treated of reads like a parody of the Unam Sanctam:-"The state is one body, with one head, not two heads, which would be a monstrosity, and that head the king. But in this body there be two powers, the temporal and the spiritual, and if the spiritual power err it shall be judged by the temporal, for in very truth it is the function of the temporal power to direct the spiritual, and to judge it if it be not good"!

(4.) Royal Tribunal for Ecclesiastical Affairs.

The fourth section constitutes the tribunal for ecclesiastical affairs, before which cases coming under Sections (2) and (3) are to be tried. It is composed of eleven members, six of whom, including the president, must be judges of the realm. Seven form a quorum.

VIII. We now come to the last, and by far the most important of the Falk Laws, entitled, "An Act regarding the preliminary education (Vorbildung), and the appointment of spiritual persons."

The first section lays down the general outlines of the intended legislation in the following terms:—

"A spiritual office can in the Christian churches only be conferred on a German who has received his preliminary scientific1

1 The English word "scientific," which must be used in want of a better one, does not give the equivalent of the German word wissenschaftlich, by which is meant not science in the sense of the exact or positive sciences, but only thorough and systematic knowledge (wissen) on any subject. The standard of this thorough and systematic knowledge is not arbitrarily set by the state, but is the outcome of university culture; and a scientific knowledge of history, or philosophy, or German literature, or theology, would therefore be the knowledge approved as such by the faculties of philosophy or theology at the great universities. In regard to theology the reader will at once seize the difference between the scientific knowledge which the state requires candidates for orders to acquire, and the dogmatic teaching which it leaves untouched in the hands of the bishops. The former is concerned with exact information respecting the dogmas believed by mankind in general and Christians in particular, the latter with teaching what particular doctrine A and B are to be

education in accordance with the provisions of the present law, and against whom the government has raised no objection." We must carefully examine the principles here enunciated.

2.

1. Spiritual persons shall be Germans, not foreigners. The churches, whether Evangelical or Catholic, shall be thoroughly national establishments, officered by natives of the empire. These native officers shall, as regards their scientific education, i.e., the systematic thoroughness of their secular knowledge and their acquisition of what is knowable about theology, have attained a standard determined by the state, which standard shall be that of the great universities. 3. The state claims the right to veto appointments which may be dangerous to the interests of the community at large, but this not arbitrarily, but on certain definite grounds, subject to the judicial decisions of an ecclesiastical court.

The second section determines the conditions required by the state in regard to preliminary education.

1. The candidate shall have been educated at a German gymnasium, i.e., at a public classical school, and shall have passed the Abiturienten Examen, i.e., the final examination at such school. This final examination is so far a state examination, that it is carried on under the immediate supervision of the state, which jealously watches whether the standard is

Englishmen believe that the Prussian state, like Henry VIII., has turned doctor of theology, and lays down what are the theological doctrines which Catholic candidates are to learn; but nothing could be more incorrect. The state examinations have nothing to do with the theological studies of the candidates. All the state requires is that these shall have learnt all that is knowable about theology as taught by the Catholic theological faculties at the universities, i.e., by bodies of Catholic professors appointed by the state with the approval and consent of the bishops. We do not deny that for the future these appointments may prove difficult on account of the anathemas launched by the Vatican Church against all forms of scientific teaching, and more especially scientific history and scientific theology, but for the present the difficulty has not yet arisen, as at every one of the great universities there is still a sufficient stock of Vaticanist professors left to make up the

kept up to its normal height, and equally throughout the land. It is bound to do this, as a great many public functions are dependent upon it, e.g., the one year in lieu of the three years' military service. It is also the portal through which a man has access to university education, answering in this respect to our matriculation examination.

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2. After having at the age of eighteen or nineteen passed the Abiturienten Examen, the candidate must proceed to a German university for a three years' course of theology and humanities (§ 4). The State examination, respecting which there has been so great an outcry in the Vatican camp, has reference solely to the latter, and comprises mainly philosophy, history, and German literature (§ 8). The special theological studies are an affair to be settled between the candidate and the faculty of theology, just as special medical studies and the qualification of the candidates are an affair between the medical faculty and the medical students. When the candidate has absolved his three years' course of theology, and has had his secular knowledge tested by a state examination, he is handed over to the spiritual "arm," and, if a Catholic, can, in the episcopal seminary, be Vaticanized and infallibilized to his, or rather the Bishop's, heart's content. With the examination for Holy Orders to be passed by him at the close of this course the state has nothing to do.

There are still two provisions of the law to be noticed, which refer exclusively to Catholic candidates.

The boys studying at the gymnasia, and the theological students at the universities, are no longer to be collected into seminaries in the former case, and into colleges (convicte) in the latter. The existing seminaries and colleges are placed

1 There are exceptions to all these rules, such, e.g., that in a diocese where there is no university, candidates for orders in the diocese may receive their scientific training in the episcopal training establishments when these have been approved by the state, &c.; but the exceptions do not affect the principles sought to be established by the Falk Laws, and we need not therefore concern ourselves with them. They fill up a large number of the paragraphs of the law.

under very strict state surveillance, all manner of conditions being imposed upon them, which, considering that they are not allowed to take in new inmates, and must, in the natural course of things, very shortly die out, appears to us a very useless kind of bureaucratic tracasserie.

This measure certainly seems a harsh one to our English eyes, and we should be sorry to pass a verdict of approval without going more into the evidence than we have yet been able to do. The prima facie case against these seminaries and colleges is, however, a very strong one. It is certain that they are looked upon by Ultramontanes as the key of their position, or rather as their base of operations, and that all their hopes of future empire are wrapped up in them. If, they say, the tender seed cannot be sheltered in the bosom of Mother Church from the angry blasts of the seculum, how can it grow up into the mighty tree that is to overshadow the seculum? the other hand, if Ultramontanism, St. Ignatianism, and Vaticanism, as distinct. from Roman Catholicism, are recognized as dangers to society, it may be plausibly argued that what Ultramontanes, St. Ignatianists, and Vaticanists affirm to be the great instrument of their power may very fairly be attacked by society.

On

The practical argument against the seminaries is that no amount of intellectual training given individually in the public school, or the public university, is proof against the adverse influences exercised upon the alumni in their corporate capacity by the Ignatian discipline of the houses where they are boarded and lodged. It is a case of Obscurantism versus Humanitarianism, and experts say that the latter having only the school hours, and the former all the hours of the day and night which are not school hours, the advantage is all in favour of the former. The Scythians, Herodotus tells us, blinded their slaves lest they should become conscious of their united strength, and turn and rend their masters. They could go on grinding corn as well as before, but we presume were unable to make themselves generally useful. The seminaries, so the experts say, are institutions in which cecity is pro

duced by artificial means, and this blindness, though impairing the general usefulness of the blinded as members of society, is not found to interfere with their aptitude for grinding the grist that comes to the Vatican mill.

In judging of the measure, however, there are other considerations of no small weight. The first is that it is only a return to the former state of things, and that the abuses to be remedied are of a comparatively recent date. The gymnasial seminaries in Prussia only go back to 1850. It was the emancipation of the Church at that date which called them into life, and since then the utmost efforts have been made to generalize them in obedience to the decrees of the Council of Trent, which lay down that candidates for the priesthood shall from their twelfth year be shut up from the light of day, and their humanity kneaded out of them. Before that date the boys destined for the priesthood, and who are largely recruited from the peasant and humbler bourgeois class, were lodged in private houses in the country town where the gymnasium was situated, and boarded turn about with charitable citizens, under the general supervision of the parish priesthood. By this means they grew up into manhood as integral portions of civil society, and with the feelings of citizens, and they entered the priesthood with their eyes open and knowing the world in which they were to be called upon to work. Very sincere Roman Catholics affirm that this system had great advantages, that the knowledge of human life thus obtained in the concrete, with its real human lights and real human shadows, was in many ways truer than that obtained within the spiked walls of clerical cadet houses, and that for the practical work of a parish priest the experience gathered in youth from daily intercourse with the members of humble but carefully-selected households, was superior to that derived exclusively from the legendary lives of fantastic saints instilled into imaginations rendered morbid by seclusion; also that the kindly feelings generated between the families in the middle and even humbler classes, by whom the boys were boarded

tended greatly to parochial peace and goodwill, and to the softening down of professional and hierarchical exclusiveness.

It is further said, that had the system continued and not been superseded by that of the seminary, the episcopacy would not have disposed, as they do now, of a jeune garde severed and separated from the great body of the people, and ready to follow them to the death, or, at all events, to well-warmed prisons, in the cause of the Curia and the Syllabus.

One thing is certain, that it is scarcely possible to imagine a greater contrast between two varieties of the same species than that presented by the average priest of sixty and the average priest of thirty as they are to be met with at the present day in Germany.

We have given the argument against the seminaries, which seems a strong one. We need hardly advert to the Vaticanist argument in favour of them, as it is of the well-known kind: Whoever objects to them is ipso facto... well, it is perhaps better to use the Greek expression-anathematized.

There only remains the English argument that such a measure is in restraint of those natural liberties which should be secured to all citizens, and the only answer to this would be the vis major of an overpowering public necessity.

In the above sketch we have placed before our readers the great Falk Law in regard to the preliminary education of spiritual persons. And now the strange

thing, considering the outcry it has caused, is that, apart from the matter of seminaries it introduces no new principle whatever into the Prussian legislation. What it does is to define and sharpen the provisions of the old law. "Rome having furbished and paraded anew every rusty tool she was fondly thought to have disused," Prussia has looked to her needle-guns, and finding a good store of them on hand, has merely improved their locks and seen that her powder was dry.

The right of the state to fix a standard of preliminary education for candidates for holy orders had always been proclaimed and always been acted upon. The final

been compulsory, the education in the gymnasium equally so, the seminarieswith a few perfectly exceptional caseshaving been merely clerical boardinghouses for the boys being educated at the gymnasium with the rest of the citizens; and so likewise the three years' university theological course or its equivalent. The only new feature is the state examination in humanities at the end of the university career, a repetition on a larger scale of the Abiturienten Examen, the object of which is merely to make sure that the candidate has not had all his secular knowledge infallibilized out of him during his theological course.

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We are therefore in a position to judge of the kind of knowledge which Dr. Manning brings to bear on the subject when, after using language of the very strongest Vatican sort about the Falk Laws, he states in his essay on "Cæsarism and Ultramontanism," as one of the worst things that can be said of them, that they give to the State the office of forming and educating the clergy by compulsory education in the gymnasiums and universities of the State," i.e., a right which had existed and been continuously exercised during the whole period which Dr. Manning, on another occasion, describes as having been one " in which the liberties of the Church had been carefully respected and secured."

Such then is the preparatory training which the Falk Laws require that men charged with such important public functions as those imposed on Catholic and Protestant ministers of religion should undergo, before they can be considered fit for the duties to be by them performedmen who, in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred, are the local managers of the national schools which constitute the rocher de bronze on which the Prussian State is built up.

We can only say that we heartily wish we could hope to see the day when our own Anglican, Romanist, and Nonconformist pastors and masters would be compelled by Forster" laws to go forth to their work thus equipped.

The third section of the law has reference to the appointment of spiritual

claims a right of veto. There is nothing new in this principle. This right of veto had, as regards the nomination of Bishops, been conceded by Rome in the negotiations for the Bull De salute animarum, and the present law only extends the principle to the inferior clergy.

Against the principle1 (we are dealing, the reader must never forget, with a State Church paid out of the funds of the state) it seems to us impossible to object. As a mere question of pecuniary investment, the state which pays, has surely the right, if not to insist on a superior article, at least to reject a bad one; and if it is lawful for the state to determine the qualifications of spiritual persons, it must be lawful for it to veto the appointment of non-qualified persons. We have nothing to object to the principle, therefore, though much to the details of the law, and the misfortune is that, with our limited space, it is very difficult to go into details.

The law enacts (§ 15) that every spiritual superior shall duly notify to the government the candidate whom it is his intention to present to a cure. If the government has an objection to make to the applicant, it must be lodged within thirty days of this notification. The objection must be based on one of three grounds, either that the candidate does not possess the qualification required by the law; or that he has undergone a criminal sentence; or that there exist facts which justify the assumption that he will set himself in opposition to the laws of the State, or to the ordinances of the lawfully-constituted authorities, or that he will disturb the public peace.

The first two grounds are clearly valid, the last we can only describe as deplorable. It is true that it is not left to the libre

1 Before 1873 this law had been applied in principle in almost every state of Germany except Prussia, and yet the Prussian bishops, in obedience to orders from Rome, had to go to prison rather than obey it, on the plea that Rome never could submit to this encroachment on her liberties. The reductio ad absurdum of the episcopal position was reached when the Bishop of Münster refused to submit to the law as regards that portion of his diocese situated in Prussia, whilst obeying the law without more ado as regards the parishes situated in Oldenburg, where the law had