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CONTINENTAL NOTES. Attention is again co...
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IS THE KING OF PRUSSIA A PROTESTANT ? Fr...
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Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.
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Gg2 Ffifttf It£&&£*? [Saturday,
gg 2 ffifttf it £ && £ *? [ Saturday ,
Continental Notes. Attention Is Again Co...
CONTINENTAL NOTES . Attention is again concentrated upon France . The Bepublic enters upon a new phase of existence . Ihe President , after some irresolution , has played his last card , and is once more committed to the chance * of Universal Suffrage . Thfe factions Composing th « great Party of Order , are all < m the alert , preparing for the next Parliamentary campaign . In the mean time , they are endeavouring to agitate the Bourse by alarming reports of coups d ' etat , and of the coming alliance of M . Louis Napoleon . with the Democratic Opposition . They deckre that society » in danger , and threaten reprisals against the " Personal Government .
. . M . Louis Napoleon , if he regain the confidence of the masses , can afford to sacrifice the false alliance of the Burgraves . The masses , once repossessed of the suffrage , will laugh at Royalist intrigues . They will have learned not to put their faith m princes , still less in kings ; and in the consolidation of the Democracy , they will work out patiently social emancipation . . . T E . de Girardin expresses his firm conviction , that the Majority in the Assembly will once more stultify their past votes by assenting to the abrogation of the
law of limited suffrage ; that the Revision will then be carried . He is engaged in a controversy with the Republican journals , wno refuse to vote Revision at any price . They treat him as a secret supporter of the President's reelection . He replies that , with Universal Suffrage , and the will of Prance represented -by a Constituent of 900 members , elected by 10 , 000 , 000 of votes , he is content to await all issues . The popular will , which is , after all , the true Republic , will have spoken : he is content to abide by its sovereign decision .
The successors of MM . Leon Paucher , Baroche , and Co ., it would be difficult to guess at ; it is clear that the President , having thrown himself upon the masses , must choose a ministry of transition : between restrained and universal suffrage ; between the present factions and h ostile coalitions , and the Democratic Assembly ( whether Legislative or Constituent ) of' 52 . It is very significant , that the names of Girardin and Lamartine should have risen to the surface of rumour :
the latter means rose-water pacification , and phrases about an "honest and moderate" Republic ; the former is too great and too bold a man not to be considered " impossible" at the Bourse . But he is perhaps the only man capable of hewing out the future of France , in the midst of her perplexing problems ; and of founding a regime of true order , peaceful progression , and sincere liberty , limited only by the public conscience .
From the date of the abrogation of the law of the 31 st of May , all pretence of civil war vanishes . The Revolution resumes its peaceful march . But the game of the factions is up , and they know it . The old struggles between the Ultramontanes and the Gallieans would seem to be reviving in France . The former has been patronized by the Reaction as expressing the doctrines of passive obedience to authority ; the latter are headed by the present Archbishop of Paris , whom we shall call a Christian Socialist—a man of meekness , gentleness , reconciliation , as opposed to intolerance , obscuritiam , despotism . Iiis admirable charge to the clergy , enjoining them to keep aloof from politics , may be remembered ; and the intemperate opposition to itu precepts of the
Bishop of liiin & res , in a letter which \ v ; is the very essence of the worst form of spiritual desj otism and ecclesiastical bite . The Archbishop's Vicar-General resembles his diocesan . A work oi bis on common law , which haa been a text-book in the seminaries , baa just been condemned by the ( Jonyreyation of the Index at Home for heretical tendency . This is the reply of IJltramontaniKm , now in the ascendant at Rome , to the tempt rate Gallieanisni of tic Archbishop . It is the revenge of the good Bishop of Lang res . 15 ut it is the Bishop of Lucon that has especially distinguished himself by condemning a series of noxiou . s books , including ( amongst others equally pernicious ) Walter Scott and our old friend Robinson Crusoe ! Such is the condition of
religions libeity in I'Yance in the third year of the Hcuonri Republic ! Such arc the blessings of a dominant Church ! From Germany , we have no news worth recording . Youiitf Austria ' s precipitate retreat from Ital y been well accounted for . It kccuih that F » me Hungarian ami Italian regiments devoured hm Majesty ' s provisions , and indulged in revolutionary cries ; and that the discipline of the troops wuh completely broken by exposure and iutigue . He in now gone off to Cracow , to be received with enthusiasm of the same description hh the Italian . It in well known that bin Most Sacred Majesty of Naples is the dearest won of bin Holiness the Tone , whose aflection lit : has won by bin Htnct performance of the ottUu-H of relig ion , and by the constant
practice of ecclesiastical virtues . Hut we find that even tho holy oflice of the priesthood does not protect true Christian men from the tender mercies of this Royal assassin , whom the Pope absolves . Religion muni be the prostituted inslrunimt of murder , nn < l the accomplice of perjury : if ' ehe fail m thm part of
her mission , she mils tinder the rod of the temporal Sovereign . Hence this protest , signed by twentyone Neapolitan priests—tfiree . of them canons , three of them doctors of divinity , one of them a doctor of canon law , * twx > of them Ligornian missionaries , and the remainder simple priests , addressed to the Procurator-General of the criminal court of Naples , claiming at his hands that merciful treatment to which every untried prisoner is entitled . These priests , be it understood , are all political prisoners :- —that is to say , they are men who were , and are , favourable to that constitution which Ferdinand first gave to his people and afterwards perjuriously revoked . They are , and have been for months , lodged in the prison of St . Francis , at Naples , were they lie forgotten—at least , untried . For some time after their incarceration these
gentlemen ( for some of them are gentlemen by birth , and all by education ) were allowed three-halfpence a day of our money to subsist themselves upon ! But ever since the 25 th of February last they have , by a decision of the Secretary of State , been deprived of this miserable pittance , and have been told they ought to subsist themselves out of the patrimony of the Church . The result is that some of these gentlemen are now lying on the bare flags of the prison floor , without covering , and that they are actually perishing slowly from the pangs of hunger .
For months the friends and families of these priests sent them such succour and assistance in money as it could be occasionally conveyed into the prison . But these sums are now exhausted , and they complain they mu 6 t perish unless they be alloAved by the Government , not three halfpence , but three carlini a day . " We are gentlemen and priests , ' ' say they , in a touching appeal , " and either bring us to trial , liberate us , or give us wherewith to subsist as gentlemen and men of honour , so that we may not perish of hunger . " Divine right divinely exercised !
Is The King Of Prussia A Protestant ? Fr...
IS THE KING OF PRUSSIA A PROTESTANT ? Frederic William is charged with being about to become si Roman Catholic . So he says . To speak more plainly , it is rumoured that he has actually turned Papist ; and whatever blame is cast on him , it is not founded on the supposition that he has changed his religion , but on the inference that he attempts to deceive his Protestant subjects into the belief that he continues at the head of that Church of which he is thought to be no longer a member . Feeling , apparently , very uneasy about that imputation , he has recourse to the ingenious expedient of declaring the report to be an invention of the democracy in London , the general scapegoat for princely misdeeds . This stratagem does some credit to his cunning , if little to his sense of what is becoming .
We have no positive evidence how far these rumours are well founded . But , accustomed though we are to this monarch ' s eccentricities , it struck us with some surprise , that he was not ashamed to boast of information , which , if true , he could not have otherwise obtained than from eavesdroppers , or by opening letters . Doubtless many a country parson will believe that royal assertion , or affect to believe it , whether from a blind hatred of democracy , or from a desire to cover an approaching cowardly desertion of their Church with the cloak of an ardent attachment to , and unscrupulous confidence in , the Crown . But there are others interested
in knowing whether the first Protestant state on the Continent is ruled by a disguised Papist . His Majesty must not be allowed to escape so easily a suspicion ( to Bay the lenst ) so important in its bearing on the cause of civil and religious liberty throughout the European continent . His Majesty will not take it amiss—and if he does , we cannot help it—that we do not feel quite satisfied with his royal assurance . A man who declares that he seldom drinks anything but water , that he is far from going to enforce a severe Sabbatarianism , that he has
no thought of turning Papist—who protests thus m the face of the facts that he has ordered the Sunday to be kept in a rigorous manner , contrary to the wishes and custom of the people—that he has publicly exhibited himself on muiiy occasions in a state not commonly produced by the pure element ; such a man , even if his former career were not made up of broken faith , evaded pledges , and histrionic performances , cannot complain of any want of fairness when he finds himself Bubjected to a strong presumption , not that he ia about to become n Papist , but that he already is one .
Let us collect Home evidences , widely scuttered in timu and Hpuce—each nmall in itself , but in combination , important and deserving the most serious attention . The lving , to begin with hitt personal disposition , i « a red-hot Romanticist . The no-called Romantic school in Germany was tho natural reaction against u period of unbounded scepticism . Kichly gifted men , tired of rationalism , despairing of the present , lied to the opposite extreme , plunged into Hcntiincntulisin , indul ged in uncontrolled imagination , worshipped the pnRt , and eust themselves down in abject prostration before authority . It is clear that this was u course which led directly to Popery , _ and ho it did . The most distinguished . Romantic writers went over to Jtoine .
Until 1840 the mind of the then Crown Prince was influenced by the commonplace orthodoxy and austere Protestantism of his father . HavingaBcended the throne , he freely indulged in his Romantic whims but , owing to the absence of any very decided convictions , in a tolerably harmless manner , injurious only to the finances * Land troublesome to those who were compelled to j & dopt them . He had castles and steeples built in mediaeval style , the
footmen of his household and the professors in public institutions dressed after the fashion of the fifteenth century , and factory chimneys within the view of his- palace were clothed in Gothic towers He made the miller / of Sans Souci , his " vassal " with the injunction to follow him in time of war with not less than six shield-bearers , to be mounted , we presume , on donkeys . He made speeches , and issued orders , studiously modelled after worm-eaten originals . He invented the
Brandenburg helmet , and nearly every week a new pattern of military accoutrements . England is indebted to him for being party to that Quixotic undertaking , the establishment of the Jerusalem bishopric . Once a week he paraded his glorious army before the Queen *• sitting on high balcony , " thinking himself a second Cceur de Lion , Abderhaman , or Alexander , according to the fancy of the hour . In short , he behaved like a boy of fourteen , of fervid imagination , but weak understanding , with plenty of money and no control .
But he was to learn a serious lesson . The haughty prince who boasted in March 1847 that he held hia crown from God , in March 1848 bowed hi 3 head before the corpses of slaughtered workmen . It can easily be imagined how terribly that degradation fell on a mind wholly destitute of firmness , self-control , and principle , llespectable witnesses state that he spoke like a man whose mind wandered . From wanton haughtiness he fell into abject despondency . Two parties attempted to use the opportunity , liberal statesmen and Popish emissaries . For a few days the former gained ascendancy . Henri von Arnim , then ambassador in Paris , a constitutionalist of the school of Stein and Hardenberg , -when he was summoned back to Berlin to report on the state of affairs in France , endeavoured to elevate the
King ' s mind and advised him to throw himself on the people . His Majesty yielded at first , and signed memorable proclamations . His heart swelled with emotion at the idea of placing himself at the head of Germany . Images of the Hohenstaufen glittered before his eyes . But he was not the man for such a post . Very soon the more congenial party gained complete possession of his weak mind , carried him away to Potsdam , and- isolated' nim from every popular impulse , from every patriotic inspiration .
The priests tried their craft , and it is a well established fact , though never yet published , that in the month of July the Ministers were in daily expectation of learning that the King had become ii convert . A mystery still hangs over the history oi these days . Certain it is that a Popish plot hatched y ears before , centred in the Queen . Elizabeth ot Prussia is sprung from the house Wittelsbac " , notorious for rank Popery , and is sister to King Louis of Bavaria and to that dark and bloodthirsty
woman , the Archduchess Sophia , of Austria . Of course she was brought up as a Catholic . Before marrying , she turned Protestant . It is a very remarkable circumstance that she left the Romish Church under the explicit permission and sanction o » the Arclioisnop of Munich . Every one versed in the prmcpiU-s oi canon law and in ecclesiastical history * ° ,, " a Romish prelate cannot allow any one oi his not * a IVOiniSH JireiMMJ CUUUUI . auun « "J " .. r beneiu
to change religion , except for the particular Holy Church , in majorem Dei ylorUivi . tidier , u y speaking , if a Catholic turns Protestant , he loaves tni-Catholic fold cursed by thopricst . When any one w » that step with priestly consent there are . B () in ^ j ] in - " pledges and dispensations— some " ' scrvlltl 0 ^! sta , 1 Ce 8 , at bottom . It is further known from m 8 " r - \ . nt ( . ; u that Catholics have been allowed to P " ( u . another worship , even to take the Communion an
the Protestant form . ,, i , mii 4 task , The King ' s secret confessors had an aruuo . but they uid it clovorly . Always " ^ nf \ , , y might relapse into hia ambitious vibk > u , ^ laboured incessantly to touch hiH heart , i ^ - his spirita , to darken his undcrstnn <;"'«¦ , UHh « , |~ - another fact very little known , but well csh » ^ , _ that he sometimes wan led into a Ucser . ^ ^ qucstered pavilion , there to meet the B' wiflj () f ancestore , and to conBult a somnambulist , a bootmaker formerly residing at iirmBV ^ omc w hioh Iu 184 i > another crisis took place , to p * aij ( j uUrH . tliu most strenuous efforts oi the AU " thm ; tw <» montane particH were re < ii » "Ca . j Al , rI | interest * were joint or / uiher «
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Citation
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Leader (1850-1860), Oct. 18, 1851, page 2, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse2.kdl.kcl.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/cld_18101851/page/2/
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