THE BRITISH PRESS ON THE ENCYCLICAL.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume I, Issue 44, 28 February 1874, Page 9

THE BRITISH PRESS ON THE ENCYCLICAL.

The important Encyclical Letter of his Holiness, which we- published as a supplement last week, has furnished a text for leading articles to most, il not all, of our Protestant contemporaries. The article which appeared in thn ' Times ' on Tuesday, is an example of that species of mystification which is effected by innuendo. Wo comment on it at greater length elsewhere; we will here merely poiut out that the c Times ' bolsters up the Errperoi William's charge that the Catholic clergy " had for some time taken a line incompatible with the respect due to civil government," with the following gloss :—": — " The line in fact, of the Vatican decrees." "The Pope," it adds, "speaks as if their

offence consisted in their resistance to the new laws." We confess that we thought it was this they were being prosecuted for. But it is, perhaps, for belief in the decrees concerning God, Divine Faith, and the organ of the Church's infallibility, that bishops are being fined and priests imprisoned, and that Archbishop Ledochowski is to bo expelled from his see. The device is, to say the least, ingenious. And when the excommunication of Bishop Reinkens and his diminutive sect is treated by implication as a kind of excuse for the policy of the Prussian Government, we would ask which was the first in order of time, the appointment of that official, or the passing of the May Laws ? and if it be replied that some other ecclesiastics were already excommunicated before the Falk Laws were enacted, we would ask further whether it is any new thing that the Church should cut off from her communion those who have already separated themselves from her,, and whether that is a matter in which the Civil Power has any conceivable right to interfere. As a contrast to this kind of plastering — intended to make oppression appear liberal and persecution patriotic — we cannot rsfrain from reprinting the following manly remarks of the ' Manchester Guardian,' which may serve to show the Prussian Ministers what English independent Liberal opinion really is. Wa have been carefully informed that they are much gratified by the sympathy expressed towards them in this country, and it is only fair that they should learn the limits to which that sympathy extends :—: — " The Liberals of Prussia — the men who fight under the standard of civil and religious liberty — crowd to the support of a Minister whose name is associated with the most tyrannical laws of the nineteenth century. And, what is more curious still, we are to have an Exeter Hall gathering, with Lord Russell in the chair, to wish the Prussian Premier ' God-speed ' in his work. On this question— 'with deep regret we say it —we must keep aloof from both the Prussian Liberals and Exeter Hall. They cannot like the doctrines of the Syllabus less than we do ; but we contend that the laws of May are in their essence unjust, and that no more effective method could have been conceived for converting every moderate Catholic into an uncompromising Ultramontane, and so aggravating and rendering infinitely more formidable the very evil which Prince Bismarck has considered himself bound to combat. As Englishmen, hatiug oppression in every form, we can only view these laws with profound concern % while as Protestants we have n< reason to be grateful, but very much the reverse of that, to the Minister who framed them. Notwithstanding the encouragement which he has received from so many quarters, Prince Bismarck can scarcely be unconscious of the fact that he has attempted more than it is possible for him to perform. The news of agitation in Poocn — the Ireland of Prussia— is ominous, and can ho be insensible to the truo meaning of the suddenly assumed democratic attitude of the Ultramontane party in the Diet, with their measures for an untaxed presa and a really popular basis of representation ? It would undoubtedly be a humiliation for him to retrace his steps, but when a blunder has been committed it is the manliest and safest cDurse to acknowledge the fact and get out of the unpleasant position you have created for yourself with all possible haste. Prince Bismarck may, perhaps, remember that the British Parliament once passed aa Ecclesiasticel Titles Act, that that Act was never put in force, and that, after a time, it was struck out of the statute-book — for reasons which would tell with a thousand-fold force if applied to the ecclesiastic il laws of Prussia. — ' The Tablet.'