The tenets of the French Government at that period represented by royalty were fundamentally "liberal."

French unity is one of the principal results of a policy, which radical historians like Michelet, Quinet, Blanc, Esquiros, and H. Martin praise in a manner so compromising for the successors of St. Louis.

England had the good fortune to preserve all the political principles of the Catholic Middle Ages in her government, even after the troublous period of the Reformation; the best proof of which is, that she maintained an obstinate opposition to the introduction of the Roman code, whose royal Cæsarism overspread the whole continent of Europe from the period of the Renaissance. She preserved the text and principles of Magna Charta, a document having for its first signature the name of Stephen Langton, Cardinal of the Roman Church; she kept her old national traditions and ancient laws; and even to the present day points with pride to portions of her legislation dating back to the time of Alfred the Great; she maintained intact the interior organization of her secular government, and even in many respects the exterior form of the government of the Catholic Church.

Since the Reformation the remarkable phenomenon exists of one nation who ceased to be Catholic (by what unworthy means is well known) but yet preserved an administration which has to this day remained the most Catholic in Europe, whilst another, who from the fact that the great mass of its members were Catholic deserved the title of Eldest Daughter of the Church, has never ceased from the time of Louis XVI. to be governed by princes and statesmen whose political doctrines are at variance with the teaching of the Catholic Church.

This fact of historical philosophy has been commented on with great power by M. Coquille, former editor of the "Univers" and now on the editorial staff of the "Monde." The glorious liberty of the institutions of England can never be thrown in the teeth of Catholics..

Those institutions are our own, the work of our Catholic forefathers, and worthy of the highest admiration.

To this very day the House of Commons is presided over by a person attired in the costume of the Middle Ages attended by his chaplain, who reads the prayers of Christians, just as in the days of Edward III. and Philippa of Hainault.

Close to the palace of Westminster is the tomb of St. Edward the Confessor and a grave-yard of the fourteenth century, which the piety of the English people has kept intact in the midst of a metropolis like London, but which would soon have been destroyed and converted into some practical use, if it had been in the hands of the modern continental school of progressists.

Representative government as it exists in England is the product of the Catholic Middle Ages; it has been lost in France since the time of Louis XI. (nearly a century before the official birth of Protestantism), and in the electorate of Brandenbourg, the principal Protestant Power of Europe, it can never be said to have existed at all.

It was preserved throughout the whole of the Netherlands, as well amongst the Calvinist population of the north as amongst the Catholic population of the south, until the reign of the "liberal " Joseph II. of Austria, and the "liberating" army of the French General Dumouriez, who deprived the entire country of its independence and secular liberties, by infecting the inhabitants with the false principles of the French Revolution.

The ecclesiastical principality of Liége, previous to

its overthrow in 1789, possessed a representative government very similar to that in England, which had existed for many centuries. Burke, in his Thoughts on French Affairs," asserts that it is not easy to conceive governments more mild and indulgent than the Church sovereignties.

If any of our readers are interested in this subject we would suggest the works of M. Poulet, the eminent professor of Louvain, or those of the learned Canon Daris, to their notice.

It is a well-known historical fact that in Switzerland Catholicism and free institutions flourished for centuries in complete harmony until the era of Calvin, and that even after the troublous era of the Reformation the cantons which remained Catholic (equally with those that had become Protestant) preserved their Christian forms of democracy until their deliverance by the war of the Sonderbund.

Quite recently the hardy mountaineers of the Tyrol celebrated the fifth centenary of their local institutions.

Though it is the fashion amongst a certain class to sneer at this vigorous Alpine race, as men completely bound in the chains of Roman slavery, they have nought to covet from any nation in the world, either as regards nobility of mind, strength of body, or the

possession of all the virtues that make men bold and free.

Can the constitution of St. Stephen of Hungary be considered inferior to the ancient institutions of England? Does anyone seriously imagine that because there were no Puritans or Quakers, Presbyterians or Independents in the various ecclesiastical electorates of the Holy Roman Empire, that therefore the people were less free and more corrupt than the half-civilized Scotch?

Would anyone have the presumption to assert that the peasants of Westphalia or the people of the Rhineland, wherein town and rural life is superabundantly vigorous, have become degenerate by reason of their profession of the Catholic faith ?

Could it be said that Suabia and Franconia, lands hallowed and converted by St. Boniface, whose inhabitants preserved an amount of energy that manifested itself in the Thirty Years' War, in the Seven Years' War, and again under the rule of the French revolutionary authorities at the beginning of this century,— have nurtured people who have become degenerate by reason of the profession of Catholicism?

Is it not rather evident that their strong religious faith has alone preserved them powerful and pure,