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what others should do. The knowledge required of officers is more comprehensive than that which suffices for privates; generals must know strategy as well as tactics and discipline. The highest duty of every man in an army is to study military science. Now, our industrial condition makes of the people of the United States a great economic army. What we call social relations are almost entirely industrial relations, or else they arise out of industrial relations; what we call social classes are industrial classes. As voters and tax-payers all citizens are economic factors; as workers or as supported by industry all our people are subject to the operation of economic laws; hence, the highest duty of the citizen is to study economic science. The discipline and the tactics of industry suffice for the simple worker and voter; but those who are captains of industry, those who hold or who aspire to political office, must master the principles of the science.

Can it be doubted that there is a true economy just as there is a true theology, a true morality? Scientific truth revealed through the operation of natural laws is surely as well authenticated, as clearly and definitely comprehensible, as morally binding upon our acceptance and belief, as spiritual truth revealed through the writings of prophets and evangelists. Our earliest and strongest beliefs, those upon which we are absolutely dependent even for the continuance of animal existence, are drawn from observation of the uniformity that obtains in the operation of natural laws. This is the source of the confidence we have in the testimony of our senses, in the stability of matter, in the persistence of force. In what province of physical existence, in what corner or recess of the conceivable universe, under what possible conditions of form, substance, or position, can the human intellect figure to itself, in fancy even, a being or a thing that is or rests or moves, except by the never-relaxing tension, the never-varying force, of nature's laws?

He who believes that God governs the universe must also believe that the laws of nature are his ordinances; and he who feels it a duty to learn and to live up to the written word of God cannot escape the obligation to learn and to live up to those laws which he has wrought into the very nature of things,

and which he has fitted the human mind to discern, define, and classify, and which he compels it to recognize as belonging to the highest order of verities. The scientific man realizes that the laws of nature represent absolute truth, that their invariability is not only indispensable to existence, but is the fundamental concept of all reasoning, and therefore the ultimate basis of every form and degree of belief; while the theologian must recognize in them the ordinances of that constitution with which God has endowed the universe, the conditions prescribed by Infinite Wisdom for the eternal exercise of infinite power.

The sanction of scientific truth being complete and the economic organization of society being obvious, can it be doubted that there is the very highest obligation resting upon every one to study this science, or at least to see that only those who have mastered it are intrusted with the making or the administering of the laws which impinge upon industrial interests and adjustments? It is only through the medium of this science that we can fully realize how true it is that we are "members one of another;" it is only by its light that we can fully live up to the golden rule, "Whatsoever ye would that men should do unto you, do ye also unto them;" it is only by its teachings that we can allay the turmoil between capital and labor, adjust the economic rights of the community to the industrial freedom of the individual, and reconcile the security of property with the progress of society; it is only by its aid that we can detect and remove influences that are now disturbing the equitable distri bution of wealth and threatening us with calamities of portentous magnitude.

W. L. TRENHOLM.

ROMANISM AND THE REPUBLIC.

"LET us be Catholics," said Bossuet, "but let us be Gallicans." It is in the spirit of this great French preacher that I, a Frenchman by birth and education, would presume to offer a brief criticism upon the Roman Church and its relations to the American republic. Let us be Catholics, but let us be Americans. But is it possible to be, at the same time, loyal Roman Catholics and loyal American citizens? I believe that it is not, and shall endeavor, in the following pages, to give the reasons underlying this belief. "If the liberties of the American people are ever destroyed, it will be by the hands of the Roman clergy." These are the words of another French Catholic, a man even greater than Bossuet, and one to whom the American people gladly acknowledge an everlasting debt of deep gratitude; a man who did more, perhaps, than any other single individual, not an American, to win the political independence and secure the national freedom which this country now enjoys. But what grounds were there for such a prophecy? When Lafayette spoke these words there seemed to be nothing whatever in the actual state of things to give them warrant. The Roman hierarchy was very weak and very poor in these United States, and the churches were, for the most part, small missionary stations widely scattered over an almost boundless territory. Power and influence it had none; but it had a system which Lafayette knew well, and he saw in that system a potency which made him fear for the liberties of the nation which he had done so much to establish with his treasure and his sword.

Lafayette knew this system of old. He had seen it in his well-beloved France as a mighty serpent, coiling itself around the national life and choking out the liberties of the people. This monster serpent, Ultramontanism, had crawled up out of the deep, dark Roman sea many years before, and, as in the case

of the loyal Trojan priest Laocoon, had wound itself around the Gallican priest at the altar, and was slowly but surely strangling the priest and his faithful children, the sons of France. Many true Catholics, such as Bossuet, had seen the danger and escaped the coils of the great Vatican reptile. But Bossuet was gone; the Gallican Church was gone; liberty was gone; and Rome and anarchy were fighting over the spoils of the French nation. To change the figure, Lafayette saw in these small missionary stations the outposts of the Roman army, whose well-trained legions might ere long be in absolute possession of the whole land. It was the system that he feared, and it is the system, I think, that we should fear; for not to fear too often means not to be ready when danger is near. No native-born American could have seen danger where Lafayette saw it. No one but a Roman Catholic, born and brought up in a Roman Catholic country, could possibly have seen any danger to the American republic in the few missionary priests whom the Roman Church had sent over to the New World in such modest guise. The Americans who heard the warning words of Lafayette did not, I imagine, take them seriously; but, on the contrary, they probably laughed within themselves at such groundless fears, just as Americans to-day laugh when they are asked to give any serious attention to the dangers which appear to me to threaten this fair land from a system known as "Ultramontanism."

A good-natured contempt of such danger seems almost universal among the citizens of this great republic. I do not like the role of an alarmist, but I believe I see danger ahead, and am willing to expose myself to some ridicule in the hope of arousing my fellow-citizens to a sense of the danger which, as I believe, threatens the American nation from the Roman Church. If the note of alarm is ever sounded, it must be, I think, by some one less optimistic than the typical American; by one, in fact, who knows the Roman system, and how it has operated and is operating in other countries for the enslavement of the people.

Look about you and see what the few poor missionary stations, in which Lafayette saw cause for alarm. have become. Behold the innumerable churches, cathedrals, monasteries, nunneries,

seminaries, colleges, and universities which cover the American continent from east to west, and from north to south. See the army of priests, bishops, archbishops, and cardinals, all thoroughly trained, under the most perfect discipline, and swearing implicit obedience to the Constitution of the American republic? No. Swearing obedience, in all things temporal and spiritual, to an Italian pontiff, who lives in Rome and issues his orders from a palace called the Vatican. Leo XIII. sits in the Vatican at Rome, and commands his army of priests and prelates in America and Ireland with as much absolute authority as any Cæsar ever commanded his loyal legions in their subjugation of the nations of the earth. Lafayette saw but a few straggling outposts; we see the mighty army in solid column with banners flying, marching, with firm step and steady eye, conquering and to conquer. But some one may say that this army and its victories, in any but a spiritual sense, are creatures of my imagination; that they are fanciful, not real; that there is nothing to be feared from any number, however great or powerful, of Roman Catholic priests; that these ministers of religion, with all their church institutions, are blessings, not curses, to this or to any country; that they are the conservators and guardians of law and order, rather than a danger to the peace and safety of the liberties of the people. Morally speaking, that is true, in a certain sense. The Roman Church is a great means of restraint; is, or may be, a powerful check upon certain forms of vice and immorality. It is, perhaps, the only church which does, or can, exercise any positive control over the dangerous classes. This in itself has been, and might continue to be, a blessing to the state, and I would not say one word which could weaken that power of control. But is not this a comparative rather than a positive blessing? Is it a matter for which the Roman Church can justly claim any great credit? Is it not fair to ask why it is that the great majority of the dangerous classes are subject to the control of the Roman Church? Is it not because they are her own children, the products of her system, if not of her teaching? Examine the police records of this or any other great American city, and I think you will find that at least seventy-five per cent. of the criminals are of Roman Catholic parentage. Is it, then,

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