to seize the prey! Thy prey is the wealth of both the hemispheres, thy proud independence, thy vast and fertile continent. Thou hast couched between the two oceans, in the shadow of thy lofty mountains, on the banks of thy rivers that are like seas! Thou hast roared like the lion; and like the lioness thou art slumbering in thy might. Who shall dare rouse thee up? Quis suscitabit eum l' [Gen. xlix., 9.]

"Well, then, who is it that holds the sovereignty in this nation

None but itself. The very day when it was born in pangs of travail, it grasped the sovereignty in its own bloody and jealous hands, and to this day it has not let it go. There every man is at once citizen and king." pp. 47, 48.

But the main thing in Father Hyacinthe's doctrine is, that wherever the sovereignty may be deposited it is held only in trust, and is never unlimited. The power, whether of a sovereign prince or of a sovereign people-and of the latter no less than of the former-is limited by right. In the order of ideas, and in the order of facts, rights are prior to government in civil society, and are related to it, and to civil society itself, only in the relation of, the end to the means. Government exists to protect rights, not to take them away-to harmonize every man's rights with his neighbor's, not to infringe upon the rights of either. "Political sovereignty no more extends to the substance of human rights when it is vested in the people than when it is vested in a prince; neither can it legiti mately tamper with them, whether they be rights of the individual; rights of the family—the primitive society; rights of the church-the superior society; or rights of voluntary asso ciations. Every man has, by his own natural right, the power of associating with his fellows, so long as he does it openly and for objects not incompatible with morality and the public peace. Civil law has only one thing to do in this case; it has not to grant the right but to acknowledge it." In a word, he holds that the doctrine, which is the basis of all liberty and for which so many Protestant ministers of Christ in this country, only a few years ago, endured reproach and execration-the doctrine of the Higher Law-the doctrine that no sovereignty has a right to do wrong. "When civil authority oversteps these limits, it is guilty of an abuse. It must be warned of it; if need be, it must be resisted "-not by insurrection, but by "moral resistance, a resistance respectful toward the power, energetic against the abuses of power-the 5

VOL. XXIX.

only permissible resistance, and the only effective:" like the resistance which Naboth the Jezreelite made, when Ahab demanded of him "the inheritance of his fathers:"-like the resistance which Elijah made, coming down from Carmel in his "glorious rags" to protest against the crime and to denounce the criminal in the name of God, when the usurper had slain and taken possession. "This is liberty! It is the outery of every honest man's conscience in the face of the violation of a right. It is the protest of public opinion against the abuse of force and the more perilous abuse of law." pp. 51-54.

Of course the doctrine so eloquently set forth by Father Hyacinthe, that sovereignty in civil society-even the sovereignty of society itself is always limited, and is liable to protest and rebuke whenever it exceeds its limits-has bearings which the conservative or retrogressive party in the Roman Catholic communion, the party of personal government over the universal church by the absolutism of Papal infallibility, could not but feel. Such thoughts about the limitations of power, about the inalienable right of protest in the name of conscience, and about the power of protest and of public opinion in resistance of wrong, are bolts of light shot through the system of darkness which the Retrogressives hope to impose upon Christendom and the world by establishing the personal infallibility of the Pope. As the Pharisees and hierarchs at Jerusalem felt, instinctively, that Jesus of Nazareth, in his parables about the kingdom of heaven, and in all his discourses, was sowing among the people seed-thoughts which might subvert their cherished dream of dominion over the nations, so these men at Paris and at Rome felt, without reasoning out the sequences of thought, that the doctrines of the Carmelite preacher about liberty and the right of protest against power were full of danger to the whole scheme and theory of personal infallibility. They must keep watch over him; they must try to entangle him in his talk; they must find matter of accusation against him; in one way or another, they must bring the power of personal government at Rome to bear upon him and to silence him. The speech before the Peace League gave them the advantage they had been waiting

for; and, till there shall be some change either in him or in the balance of power between parties in the Roman Catholic Church, he speaks no more from the pulpit of Notre Dame or from any other pulpit. A change in him may introduce him into Protestant pulpits; and a much less probable (hardly supposable) change in the Roman Catholic Church, or in the relations of the French people and government to the Pope, might restore him even to the pulpit of Notre Dame—though, on the whole, he has about as good a chance of being invited to preach at the reconsecration of the old Saint Sophia now occupied for Mohammedan worship. We do not believe that any change can take place in him which will induce his now triumphant adversaries to restore to him the functions of which he has been ecclesiastically deprived. He will never consent to wear the fetters which he has broken and trampled on.

Our readers can now judge for themselves concerning Father Hyacinthe's position and his relation to conflicting tendencies and parties in his own communion. That Roman Catholic France, in this latter half of the nineteenth century, has produced such a thinker and preacher-earnest in his convictions, reverent in the habit of his mind, an evangelical believer, yet free and fearless-is a significant fact. We dare not say that this true minister of Christ, so gifted, so modest, and (unless every indication deceives us) so adorned with the graces of the Spirit, does not stand alone to-day-that in the decisive step of leaving his convent, throwing off his monastic dress, and braving the excommunication which he knew must follow, he has the approval or even the sympathy of any who to that hour had been his friends; but the fact of such a man taking such a position, just at this crisis, is nevertheless a great fact. It is a fact of the same sort with the manifestoes against "Papalism" issued by Roman Catholic bishops and theologians in Germany. It is a fact of the same sort with the testimonies which the illustrious Montalembert is giving out as his last utterances before he dies. It is a fact of the same sort with the well known position of such prelates in France as the Bishop of Orleans and the Archbishop of Paris. Father Hyacinthe may find that the step which he has taken

separates him from his party; he may even find himself condemned and renounced by his former friends, and that they feel their cause to have been weakened by what seems to their grieved hearts to have been his rashness; but the attention of Christendom has been turned to the fact that within the bosom of the Roman Catholic Church there is a party, likeminded with him, which stood by him and protected him till his Lutherlike act of hurling defiance at Rome and appealing "to thy tribunal, O Lord Jesus!"

But is it so? Father Hyacinthe still claims that he is not a Protestant but a Catholic, loyal to Rome as the center of unity; and has he no friends in the communion of the Roman Church? If he has any friends, who are they? Will any voice in the ecumenical Council dare to speak for him, or to testify with him " against those doctrines and practices which call themselves Roman, but are not Christian?" Is there, in that assembly of bishops, one who indulges even an unspoken sympathy with the monk who dared to say, "I have promised monastic obedience-but within the limits of an honest conscience, and of the dignity of my person and my ministry?" Not one-beyond all doubt, not one. Among the inferior clergy of France-there may be a few-there may be even more than a few-whose regret that he has taken so bold a step is mingled with a profound respect for the artless dignity of the man, and with a glimmer of hope that in consequence of his rashness, deliverance (they know not how) may come to them. Among the laity of Roman Catholic France there may be many whose admiration of him is full of sympathy, and who, whenever he shall lift up his voice again in publicnot from the pulpit of the cathedral, but from the platform in unconsecrated halls-not as a Carmelite nor as a priest, but as a Frenchman and a Christian-will be ready to listen and to learn. In Germany there may be even more of sympathy with him than in France; for the Teutonic nations have always been less tractable than the Latin under the sway of Rome. But is there a Romanist in England-is there even a Ritualist in the Church of England-who looks upon him as any better than a heathen man and a publican? And how is it in the United States? Nobody need be told that there has

been no expression here of Roman Catholic respect for the "distinguished visitor." Probably no American Romanist of the sort recognized among their clergy as "good Catholics " has read Father Hyacinthe's letter to the General of his order, without being shocked at its impiety.

Father Hyacinthe, then, is quite dissociated, at least for the present, from the party which begins to be called, and sometimes calls itself, Liberal Catholic. That party can ill afford to lose him, for it has no strength to spare; but it is not eady to stand where he stands, and must therefore let him go. We call it a party, for, though it is not organized with a definite platform of principles and aims, it is more than a merely fluctuating difference of opinion about particular measures. It is not strong if we measure its strength by the number of votes it can give in the ecumenical Council. It is not numerically strong as compared with the great body of the clergy, "secular" and "regular." It is strong in men of thought and learning, strong in the dignity and character of its leaders, strong in the ideas which are its life, and strong in its sympathies with Christian liberty and with the progress of Christian civilization. On the question which the Pope and the Jesuits are now forcing to an issue-the double question of the Syllabus and of Papal infallibility-it is strong in the good will of those enlightened laymen, throughout Europe,-statesmen, scholars, poets, artists-who have not lapsed into indifference to all religious questions, but who know that personal infallibility in the Church means personal government in the State, and that the anathemas of the Syllabus, imposed upon the people by the clergy in the name of the gospel, can hardly fail to make all the intelligent people irreligious. Some of the Liberal Catholics, though knowing that the Encyclical, with its Syllabus, was aimed at them and really came out in reply to Count Montalembert's rousing speeches in their "Catholic Congress" at Malines in 1863, have endeavored to construe that manifesto "in a non-natural sense," and to make themselves believe that the Pope did not mean what he said. But if they had the courage to grasp the fact and to use it, the Encyclical might be an irresistible weapon in their hands. Can an intelligent man of this nineteenth century-be he