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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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HOW TO CRUSH THE PAPAL MOVEMENT . Amid all the vague and furious talk now assailing our ears against the Papal Movement , men perceive not the real lessons of that movement , the real courses of action and of resistance which it makes incumbent on the English People . On the theological bearing of the question we have already explicitly declared ourselves . As a matter of spiritual government , we are bound to
tolerate the new change ; only bigots can oppose it . But , l y ing at the bottom of this immense furor in the public mind , there is a dim sense of something more , an alarm reaching beyond theological differences , and the alarm is at the political significance of the change . England rises against the abstract ideal of Papal domination . It dreads and hates Papacy ; but it has not yet seen the proper position for attack .
Let Protestants of the old school regale themselves as much as they like with the No-Popery cry ; let boys and ballad-singers bawl down the Pope and Cardinal "Wiseman in the streets ; let honest bull-headed citizens , who have no other religion than that a man should be open and aboveboard in all he does , entertain all allowable indignation at the sight of young Jesuit gentry going about in long black cloaks with sore eyes , and pimples where they should have whiskers ; let "Whig lawyers pore over the statute-book with a view to see what " pains and penalties" it may still
permit against subjects of this realm owning too ostensible an allegiance to an Italian priest ; and let Whig statesmen , with Lord John Russell at their head , decide , as it seems good to them , respecting the expediency of applying these pains and penalties , and respecting the propriety of concocting moreover , any new enactment more expressly suited for the occasion . Since it needs must be so , let all this hubbub go on . How much of it all is but bluster and bravado we have already sufficiently said . It is not all bluster and bravado ; there are even in the midst of this noisy element some germs of legitimate and proper activity against the movement that so alarms us .
But , assuredly , if this be all , Popery has , and deserves to have , the best of it . If we can but bawl down the Pope , order his Cardinal to emit the kingdom , and pepper his Bishops with pains and penalties , —if this is all we can do , then , as surely as there is prediction in History , we are the defeated party , and the Pope is the victor ! If this is our only way of meeting the Papal aggression , it is for the Jesuits to clap their hands , for the moral
triumph will be wholly theirs . Thank God , it is not the only way . There is a better and a nobler way—a way , at once , to serve all that is good in our own purposes as Englishmen and as patriots , and to make Jesuitism the whole world over rue the day she came amongst us . Let us convert our paltry tactics of defence into a large policy of aggression , and , as the Papacy wages war against us , let us wage war against all that constitutes the Papacy .
And , first , if wo regard the Papacy in its aspect us a secular and political power , what is it ? It is a corporation of Italian ecclesiastics , with the Pope at their head , misgoverning Central Italy . That is one aspect of the Papacy . Let us make war upon that . Let us do our best , by all honourable and advisable means , to pull down the Papal misgovernment of Central Italy , In any case , that
would be as ellicient a piece of service to mankind as Englishmen could render—a piece of service for which at least one noble People would revere and thank us . But now it is no longer a question of mere generous Quixotism whether we shall engage in it ; it is imposed on us as a necessity of selfdefence . No policy of defence is worth anything that is not at the same time a policy of attack and retribution .
Accounting as of naught any petty policy of pains and penalties against the Papal emissaries amongst ourselves , let us play the game of a high strategy , by giving battle to the Papacy in its own dominions . Let our Government and our Foreign Minister see to this . Have they not in this very event of the Papal aggression had a severe lesson read to them how much superior in wisdom is the wholesale sentiment of a People to the frivolous maxims of diplomatic tradition ? A few months ago the secular Papacy was prostrate , and , amid the acclamations of all Italy , the foot of Mazzini
was on its neck . What did we do then ? Why , had the whole British nation been polled man by man , to ascertain what it would have done , the overwhelming answer would have been—" Help Mazzini , and deliver Italy . " AVe did not do so . Our Government corresponded and diplomatized , —aimed at steering Italy a little off the Scylla of Despotism , but was far more intent on saving her from the fancied Charybdis of Republicanism . Lo ! the result . France came in ; the foot of Mazzini was removed from the neck of the prostrate Papacy ; Italy has once more fallen under the despotism of
ecclesiastics ; and the first act of the Papacy , after its unexpected resuscitation , is to do what , for three centuries , no Pope has dared to do , —reannex England to the Papal see . Let our Government lay the lesson to heart . It is not too late . The Pope is again on his legs * , but it is as a superannuated cripple held up between two very fatigued Frenchmen . The Democracy of Central Italy is not extinct ; a word , an event , may once more rouse it ; once more the ecclesiastical conclave that so wretchedly rules in Rome may be broken up and
dispersed ; once more the foot of an intrepid Republican Triumvir may be on the neck of the Papacy . And if so , let it not again be removed ; let the struggle be completed ; let the secular Papacy be fairly slain and abolished ; and whatever spiritual form of Popedom Catholic Europe may desire , let it be a form compatible with the freedom and the good temporal government of every portion of the civilized earth . Nor at present are we entirely debarred from this mode of aggressive defence . In Piedmont , in the Papal States themselves , all
over Europe , in short , there are opportunities for attacking the political power of the Papacy , for paralyzing the ecclesiastical corporation wherein that power lies , and for encouraging and stimulating the Democracy which watches to destroy it . Without having recourse to arms , or to any mode of action not authorized by international custom , there are hundreds of ways whereby it may be known over Europe that a placard has been hung up in the English Foreign-office inscribed , " Death sooner or later to the Secular Papacy . " This will
be more efficient than burning e / tigics of the Pope , or applying to Alderman Challis for the arrest of our new Wolsey . And we do not propose this as vaguo speculation . An opportunity offers for the English Government to carry out its professed antagonism to Papacy by overtly or covertly lending its countenance to the proposal for an Italian
Loan issued by Mazzini ' s party—a proposal first promulgated in our columns . Let the Government but assist the Italian party even with its countenance , and the Pope will again quit Rome never to return . Again , there is another aspect of the Papacy . It is a particular theory of the Church as visible amongst mankind . Its professed opposite in this respect is Protestantism .
Adhering , then , to the policy of aggression , as being at the same time the best policy of selfdefence , how is England in general , and the English Church in particular , to oppose the present movement of the Papacy so regarded ? Plainly , in no other way than this—by taking another step forward in the career of Protestantism . The Reformation in England , it is well known , was but a half measure , falling short not merely of such a theory of the Church as might now be devised and proposed , but also of theories of the Church actually extant at the time it was carried into effect , and
actually adopted in the reformation of other countries . Let England now make up her deficiency . Let her seize this time for carrying on her arrested Reformation one great stage farther . We do not here suggest changes of theological doctrine , modifications of the Thirty-nine Articles , or the annihilation of such formularies altogether . That is a large question , the bearings of which on the present emergency are clear and palpable too ; but we refrain in this place from entering on it , knowing that whatever we might say on such a topic would be liable to special suspicion . But there is a step in Protestantism that all parties without the Eng-
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COSTUME DEMAGOGUES . It is a pleasant and unquestioned fact that teachers of Elocution have always a stutter or a brogue . There is moral significance in the fact . Out of an intense consciousness of deficiency arises the impassioned desire for perfection . The fluent propriety of a perfect vocal organization never suspects
that elocution is an art ; no more than the peptic vigour of an agricultural stomach suspects the virtue of Cockle ' s Pills . As the Logicians say , we only know what a thing is by first knowing what it is not . Plato would discourse grandly by the hour on this topic ; Kant would show you how the " antinomies" ( pleasant word !) are conditions of human reason . We will be more modest and more
brief . Ah illustration shall suffice . The anarchical spirit of our age has penetrated even to our most trivial domesticities ; a demagogic desire for change has disturbed even the institution of Hats . Costume in general , but Hats in particular , have their orators and radicals . The respectable Beaver is smashed as an antiquated prejudice ; silk and velvet , with more delusive splendour and delusive cheapness , have dethroned the Hat of our Fathers ; nay , more , the ruthless hand of reformation has not paused at silk . There
were men who agitated for silk , got it with the acclamations of fathers of families , and then pronounced it a " finality . " But—and here is the moral of all inconsiderate change : once give its specious promises a hearing , and ruin is inevitable ! —this age , which respects nothing , holds nothing as a finality , now finds demagogues who talk of felt ! " Wide awakes " have startled our streets .
Brims have broadened , crowns diminished , the sweet simplicity of chimney-pot design has been derided by those who hold nothing sacred , and the Hat of our Fathers has been made a mockery and a bye-word . A society exists for the reform of that indispensable article of attire . The Exhibition of 1851—which is to do everything for everybody —is called upon to offer a typical Hat , such as befits the spirit of the age .
Now , much as this desire for reform—this revolutionary fever troubling the Repose of Faith { that is the correct phrase , we believe)—is to be reprobated in larger questions , it is still more " insidious and aggressive" in the smaller questions . It can only proceed from a painful consciousness of ugliness . Because you look a Guy in the Hat of your Fathers , is that a reason why we , who are content with that costume , should yield to your caprices ? The hat which Byron , Keats , Shelley , Wordsworth worethe hat which Wellington , Louis Napoleon , and Count D'Orsay wear—will that not suffice for the symmetry of Jones ?
The reasons alleged in favour of a change are all sophistical . It is said that the present hat is no protection against sun or shower ; that it presses heavily on the head , brands the forehead with a fierce red line ; and , besides , being uncomfortable and expensive , is ludicrously ungraceful in its appearance . With such sophistical objections , you might undermine all our " sacred institutions . " The law of primogeniture " presses heavily "; so
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lish Church , and all parties within it , except the Tractarians , might very well agree in recommending her to take—a modification , namely , in the direction of Protestantism , of her scheme of Church government . Might not the majority of the Church-clergymen , for example , seize the present opportunity for demanding , and might not the Queen ' Government , by royal commission or otherwise , seize the present opportunity for advising and expediting some reconstruction of the English Church , having for one of its main features the
admission of the laity to a greater measure of influence than they now have in ecclesiastical affairs ? The separation of the clergy from the laity , of ecclesiastical from religious society , is essentially a Popish idea ; and it is still too dominant in the English Church . The clergy of England are too much a caste among us—they have too much the character of English Brahmins . Let some step be taken to remedy this , and to admit the laity , as they are in Presbyterian churches , to a share in the general ecclesiastical administration . Such a modification in the constitution of the
English Church would not necessarily touch the idea of spiritual independence—an idea in which , we believe , there is permanent truth and value . If it touches any portion of the theory of the English Church at all , it is the High Church notion of the powers of the episcopate . But that and many other notions must go if we are to meet this Papal movement in real earnest .
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SATURDAY , NOVEMBER 23 , 1850 .
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There is nothing so revolutionary , because there is nothing so unnatural and convulsive , as the strain to keep things fixed when , all the -world is by the very law of it * creation in eternal progress . —Da . Arnold .
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Citation
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Leader (1850-1860), Nov. 23, 1850, page 828, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse2.kdl.kcl.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/vm2-ncseproduct1860/page/12/
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