the carrying out of any abstract political theories, or as the imitation of the past or present system of any other nation.

Till the Charter was wrung from King John, men called for the laws of good King Edward. We have made changes from time to time, but they have been changes at once conservative and progressive. They have been the application of ancient principles to new circumstances; they have been the careful repairs of an ancient building, not the pulling down of an old building, and the rearing up of a new.

Our national assembly has changed its name and its constitution, but its corporate identity has lived on unbroken. In France, on the other hand, institutions have been the work of abstract theory; they have been the creations for good or for evil of the minds of individual men." (Pp. 55, 64.)

And again :

"There is, indeed, a wide difference between the political condition of England under Edward I. and the political condition of England in our own day, but the difference lies far more in the practical working of the constitution than in its outward form.

The changes have been many, but a large portion of those changes have not been formal enactments, but those silent changes whose gradual working has wrought out for us a conventional constitution existing alongside of our written law.

Speaking generally, and allowing for the important class of conventional understandings which have never been clothed with the form of written enactments, the main elements of the English constitution remain now as they were fixed then." (Pp. 86, 87.)

"At last came the sixteenth century, the time of trial for many

parliamentary institutions in many countries of Europe. Not a few assemblies which had once been as free as our own Parliament were, during that age, swept away or reduced to empty ormalities.

Then it was that Charles V. and Philip II. overthrew the free constitutions of Castile and Aragon; then it was that the StatesGeneral of France met for the last time but one before their last meeting of all, on the eve of the great Revolution.

In England parliamentary institutions were not swept away, nor did Parliament sink into an empty form; but for a while our parliaments, like all our other institutions, became perverted into instruments of tyranny."

Every act which has restrained the arbitrary prerogative of the Crown, every act which has secured or increased either the powers of Parliament or the liberty of the subject, has been a return, sometimes to the letter, at all times to the spirit of our earliest law." (Pp. 98, 137.)

These examples may suffice for Protestant nations. From the sixteenth century the interior government of all the Catholic States has been bad, but on the whole the masses of the people have remained faithful to the order, discipline, and established authority of the Church. Preserved for 200 years from the dangers of the Reformation, they were at length carried away by the great revolutionary movement of 1789, which was itself but the logical development of Protestantism.

Poland forms an exception, but we must not forget that she was coveted by two powerful potentates in the East and West, and that the exclamation of one

M

of her magnates, "Malo periculosam libertatem quam otiosum servitium," was a cry of self-defence against her powerful enemies, who at last succeeded in their guilty and oft-renewed attempts. In the present century there is but one Protestant country that has resisted all the revolutionary aspirations of 1789, and that country is England, whose inhabitants have remained Christian, and whose government alone since the Cæsarism of the Renaissance has preserved the forms of the ancient Catholic governments of the Middle Ages.

Unquestionably she merits much praise, and Catholics owe her a debt of gratitude on this matter; for them England has remained a model and a consolation: a model, because she is the representative of ancient historical and Catholic institutions; a consolation, because they can point to her as a specimen of what all European countries would have been but for the excesses of the Renaissance, the bigotry of the sectarians in the sixteenth century, the insolence of the governments of Louis XIV., the Regency, and Louis XV., the corruption of the encyclopædists, the revolutionary theories of the eighteenth century, and the liberal ideas of the nineteenth century-none of which arose from Catholicism.

Let us examine the present condition of South America, Spain, and France, for Italy (although a Catholic nation) is considered by our opponents to have entered their new path of salvation.

In South America many States that had been governed by European Powers during the eighteenth century found themselves suddenly cut adrift from them, and for the space of forty years had to struggle in the throes of anarchy.

These States were Mexico, Venezuela, and the Argentine Republic, all of which were governed by revolutionists or men who had adopted the principles of 1789.

We do not make special reference to Spain, because what we say of France is equally applicable to the country of the Cid. Only an unparalleled boldness or a profound contempt for the public can enable anyone to lay down the theory that the frequent revolutions in France are attributable to the Catholic Church.

The French as a body have doubtless remained steadfast in the faith of St. Remi, but we cannot pretend to find in this fact a solution to the question.

Freedom of worship is one thing, and liberty of conscience is another, but modern liberalism confuses

them. Catholics admit of the former as a necessity of

modern society.

There is no Catholic country in Europe where nonCatholic forms of worship have not been tolerated; and in countries where non-Catholics have formed an important part of the population, Catholic governments have never shrunk from granting toleration of worship. Cardinal Richelieu induced his master to sign the Edict of Nantes long before any Protestant State had granted any kind of toleration to Catholics. When Englishmen inveigh against Louis XIV.'s unfortunate revocation of that Edict, they seem to forget that at that very time the laws of England were inflicting the penalty of death upon any Catholic priest who ventured to offer the sacrifice of the Mass within that realm. The gratitude of Christendom has ratified the praise of the heroic deeds of Frenchmen, deeds which the historians of the Middle Ages had lauded in the proverb gesta Dei per Francos, comprehending in this last word, not only the actual French people, but the Franks of ancient Lorraine and the tribes settled along the borders of the right bank of the Rhine as far as Friesland.

It must not be forgotten that the country of St. Vincent de Paul has also given birth to Voltaire, and