example of this, he mentions that the Catholics in Ireland have never persecuted their Protestant brethren. In a recent pamphlet on "Religious Persecution," Mr. John Lee proves that quite recently the ecclesiastical authorities in Ireland approved of violent measures being employed for the extirpation of heresy, and it may be objected to Lord Acton that Pius IX., a well-meaning and holy man, obedient to the doctrines of his faith, inscribed everywhere he could in his concordats that all dissenting worship should be suppressed.

When, in 1815, the King of Holland granted his new realm a constitution according freedom of worship, the bishops had it thrown out, because this spirit of freedom is directly opposed to the teachings of the Roman Catholic Church. When, in 1830, Belgium gave herself a constitution with modern liberties, Gregory XVI. condemned it on this account in a famous encyclical letter. In the concordat concluded with Spain by Pius IX., in 1850, one of the articles is as follows:

"The Catholic religion shall be maintained as the exclusive religion of the realm in such sort that the practice of all other worship shall be forbidden and prevented."

In the concordat with the republic of Ecuador, in 1862, there is the following stipulation:

"The Roman Catholic and apostolic religion is to continue to be the religion of the republic of the Ecuador. Consequently no other worship may be practiced nor any other sect tolerated in the republic."

When freedom of worship was proclaimed in Mexico, the encyclical letter of December 15th, 1856, denounced it to the world as an abominable act, destined to corrupt men's minds and to root out the holy religion; ad populorum mores animosque corrumpendos ac detestabilem teterrinamque indifferentismi pestem propagandam. In Protestant countries, Catholics either dissimulate or deny this dogma of intolerance, but when they are masters they apply it in full force. One of their writers, the most highly approved at Rome, Mr. Louis Veuillot, says cynically:

"When there is a Protestant majority we claim religious liberty, because such is their principle; but when we are in majority we refuse it, because that is ours."

M. de Tocqueville, when speaking of the influence of religion in the United States, says:

"Nothing in Christianity, nor even in Catholicism, is absolutely opposed to the spirit of democracy, and there is much favorable to it.”

He very erroneously confuses Christianity and Catholicism. Christianity pure and simple, as at its origin, is wholly democratic, and is certainly highly favorable to the maintenance of democracy. Did it not in Holland and the United States found and support a free democracy? But Catholicism, the finished model of autocratic theocracy, inspired the despotism of Louis XIV., and of Philip II., resisted the French Revolution, and nullified its effects, and is now leagued with aristocracy for the purpose of re-establishing the old system everywhere possible.

A religion which accords to a human being the unheard-of attribute of infallibility; which is overloaded with customs and superstitions wholly contrary to the gospel; which is as far removed from the teaching of Christ as light from darkness; and which, above all, condemns modern liberties, and particularly liberty of conscience-such a religion as this is never likely to be adopted by the civilized nations of the future.

EMILE DE LAVELEYE.

THE HYSTERIA OF SECTIONAL AGITATION.

THAT section of the Republican press which may fitly be described as Red Republican, getting its inspiration from a speech delivered by Mr. Blaine just after his defeat for President in 1884, is seeking to rekindle the angry passions of the era of Reconstruction on a claim, of Mr. Blaine's suggestion, that the negro vote is suppressed, and the last three amendments to the Constitution nullified, by the white people of the South. Beneath this incendiary scheme, trumped up for present party uses, lurk the demons of race war and anarchy. In the December and February issues of the FORUM it finds a ruthless, if not a powerful, champion in Mr. Murat Halstead, who, with a great array of figures and an ostentatious display of indignant patriotism and affected candor, undertakes to prove the case of his associates in a purpose as mischievous and misleading as any that ever confused and imbittered the politics of the country.

In order to lay the foundation for his arraignment of two generations of his countrymen, one at least of which had no part or lot in the Rebellion, and the other of which is passing rapidly from the scene, it is assumed by Mr. Halstead, nearly twentythree years after the firing of the last shot in that bloody conflict, that loyalty to the Constitution is confined to a single section of the Union, and in that section limited to a single party. It is assumed that the white people of the other section are not merely disloyal, but dishonest and inhuman; the friends of assassination, partly for the love of it and partly for its advantage as a force in the elections. It is assumed that the black people of this incriminated section are not only qualified to vote intelligently, but that they agree entirely with Mr. Halstead, and are, as a matter of course, one and all ardent Red Republi

cans.

This species of reasoning is certainly ingenious in its sim

1

plicity. It admits of no flaws or doubts. Cast up the white and black votes of a State or congressional district—so runs its argument—and wherever a Democrat is found representing a community in which there happens to be a black majority, set it down to fraud and murder. It does not cross the mind of the author of this indictment against a whole people that any white man living on the south side of the old battle line can be less violent and sanguinary than he seems to be himself; and, taking his measure of southern elections by methods which prevail in Ohio, he writes of intimidation, ballot-box stuffing, bribery, and the lawless arts of corrupt political management in the great cities of the North, as if they had an existence exclusively at the South.

It is only fair to Mr. Halstead to say that he is in this, if in nothing else, perfectly consistent. During two decades he has made it the business of his life to stir up sectional hate, to bend the history of every day to the service of sectional strife, and to contribute, so far as I can recall, not one word to the cause of sectional good-will. Thus, with the best intentions, as he conscientiously believes, he has surrounded himself, and filled the air about him, with a troop of political hobgoblins, who play strange, fantastic pranks upon his fancy. They are none the less the phantoms of an inflamed patriotism, an imperious and restless temper, and an imagination (if he will forgive my saying so) not yet quite cured of its original, and, for the matter of that, its aboriginal, luridity and fervor. "Difficilem oportet aurem habere ad crimina." Let us, however, look into the matter in detail, and, to obtain a better standpoint for our observation, let us see how Mr. Halstead is wont to treat differences of opinion as to this great question when he is not on dress parade in the FORUM, but at home in the office of the "Commercial Gazette."

In the issue of that redoubtable journal for the 12th of January last, I find a communication from the Hon. William M. Dickson, a reputable citizen of Cincinnati and an ex-judge of Hamilton County. It was written, apparently, as a kind of protest against Mr. Halstead's interminable tirades against the South. From it I make the following relevant and suggestive quotation:

"Shall we continue a sectional agitation until we compel the southern States to submit to the rule of the ignorant field-hands? Would Cincinnati vote in the affirmative on this question? This you dodge. You say that Cincinnati would vote by an overwhelming majority for the maintenance of the rights of men. No doubt of that; but that is not my question. The Constitution and the law of Ohio guarantee to the colored children of Oxford, O., admission to the public schools, but the white citizens of that village nullify that Constitution, and deny the colored children their school rights; and this not in Mississippi, but in the shadow of Paddy's Run, the town honored by your birth. Seventyfive of the leading citizens have banded together to boycott these poor negro children; not, mark you, to protect themselves against the vote, the rule of these negroes, but to deny to them the opportunity of education. And you are silent! The wrongs of the negro of Louisiana touch you, but not those at your own door. And yet the people of Oxford would vote to enforce negro rule in Louisiana. Now, in my opinion, it is cruel, it is inhuman, to deny to the colored children the school. It is also illegal, unconstitutional, in every way regrettable, to deny to the southern negro his vote, and it is monstrous injustice to give the whites there the advantage in representation of this negro vote. But of what value in either place to the negro are my unavailing regrets? If race prejudice is cruel and inhuman, how can I help it? If civilization would perish to allow the ignorant field-hands South to rule, how dare I to enforce that rule? And if I dared to enforce it, how could I succeed? Were you in power to-day, what would or could you do? Reduce, you say, representation under the Fourteenth Amendment? You can't. That part of the Fourteenth Amendment is dead-killed by the Fifteenth Amendment. What, then, do you propose? A vain and aimless agitation? That is child's play. Will you send an army South to compel submission to the rule of the ignorant field-hand? Grant tried this; sent soldiers into the Legislature of Louisiana; unseated certain members and seated others. . Can you do now what Grant failed to do then? Would Cincinnati aid you in sending an armed force South ? Would it be good for the negro to awaken at this time a fierce race struggle? These are plain questions; will you answer them? Flighty anathemas, skyrocket declamation, droll buffoonery, may amuse the groundlings; they do not deceive the judicious. The race question is a difficult one; it becomes fearfully difficult in a community where the intelligent white man is outnumbered five to one by the ignorant field-hand. Then arises a conflict of rights. In 1819 John Quincy Adams recorded in his diary, speaking of the race problem as it then presented itself with slavery, these words: This is a question between the rights of human nature and the Constitution.' The problem of to-day is a question between the rights of Civilization and the Constitution. Until we can see our way clear to a proper solution of this problem, is it not the part of wisdom to leave it to the people directly involved in it? At all events it is clear that it would better things to refer this question to the citizens of Oxford."

Surely there is nothing very unpatriotic in this, and, as a suggestion of public policy, there are those who will think it not