A WORD OF ADVICE.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume II, Issue 61, 27 June 1874, Page 11

A WORD OF ADVICE.

Undeb the above heading the ' Fortnightly Review,,' an! Englfch Pro"tes'ant journal, reviews the present German persecution, and predicts ft ie utter futility of sach measures to" oru»h out Catholicity. It says : "We in England know the whole stoiy of these State interventions in religion. We have tried them all, and are sick of them all. Queen Elizabeth ouco had to deal with a Catholic Church which threatened her kingdom and her Ike with danger a hundred fold greater than Prussia or the Emperor William can ever pretend to fjur. ' Queen Elizabeth met this assault by measures of which we are not exactly proud, and which perhaps but made things worse. But Elizabeth's action was a measure of policy, not of religious interference. And Burleigh and Elizabeth "would huve sinilwd at a scheme for making her the h«Mid of a Catholic a* well as the head of a Protestant Church. We have tried penal luws in Irelaud, and we did not find them of much use in resisting Catholic sedition. We have tried bargains with Catholic bishops, aad we find they have nothing to giv. 4 We huve had Convention Ac's, Acts of Uuitorraity, Dissenting and Catholic Disabilities ; we have legislated agaimtt ' .Papal aggression,* nnd have tried Test Acts and suppressed religious communities. They huve all broken under our hands. We know liow all these attempts to control communions obnoxi jus to the State have recoiled on tUo State that tried them. We, too, have our Ultramontane aggressions in Ireland, and we hare learned that there is only one \ gistation for it — to lee it alone. We find Chut when the State hassought to contioi the education of a dozen priesthoods, it has made worse enemies of them all. We have found that orguuiaations are always lea«t dangerous when they are not forced to be secret or simulated by the sense of oppression. la the Catholto Church in Irehuid less Catholic, less Ultiamantune, less capable of inflaming a dangerous population than the Catholic Church in Prussia? Where are the dangers to thu State in Prussia which we linve not in Ireland ? And what would our statesmen think of a project to pacify Ireland by son iing Macilale andCullen to prison for appointing parish priests who have not. been educated at Oxford ; by subjecting the administration of every Catholic pariah inlrclmd to the sanction of Mr Lowe, and the curriculum of every Catholic seminary to tho theological censorship of Mr Jforater ?"