Слике страница
PDF
ePub

up a cry of "Fire!" as they had often done in other places. This, however, did not terrify Ronge; he soon reassured the congregation, and won new and numberless allies to the side of human freedom.

While Ronge was thus fighting with priests and Jesuits in Gratz, and was amused with the fierce excommunications that the Roman Catholic bishop of this city was fulminating against him, much sadder things were happening at Vienna: Windischgrätz was triumphing in the capital; the city had fallen again under the dominion of the despotic Hapsburgs an event full of disasters to the free Catholic society, and pointing with tragic significance to Robert Blum. After this victory of despotism over the people, Ronge could no longer remain in the Austrian dominions, or Metternich's second self, Schwartzenburg, would but have been too glad to kidnap such a prize. Bavaria, however, was still open to him; and he went to Munich, the capital. Notwithstanding every conceivable difficulty, Ronge celebrated a triumphant service in this city. Immense multitudes flocked to his first meeting, which held together well, albeit the old Jesuit-cry of "Fire" was got up again. Here in Münich, Ronge was favoured with a repetition of some of the Tarnowitz treatment, stoning his windows, to wit, added to which excommunications and slanders of every description fell on him in abundance. After staying some weeks in Münich, Ronge went next to Nürnberg, about the middle of December, where he raised a congregation of nearly ten thousand members. His old friends, the Jesuits, however, did not forsake him; their kind services might ever be confidently relied on. "The priests and beer rule everything in Bavaria," was an experience that Ronge made in this country. And the former knew well how to make the latter minister to their wishes. Nothing was easier than for the priests first to make a mob beastly drunk and then let them loose upon their great annoyer. In this way it was that Ronge's life was often in danger while visiting the several towns of Bavaria. These functionaries knew, too, the happy result of "giving a dog a bad name," and failed not to try it upon Ronge. One of the most interesting tales which they got up about

him was, that he was in the pay of the Jesuits! Notwithstanding all this, Ronge succeeded by the month of April in forming eight new congregations in this popish and fanatical country.

By the time that Ronge had completed his tour in Bavaria the horizon had begun to darken, and tempeststorms to arise. Vienna had been lost to the people and to liberty, in the preceding October. Robert Blum was brutally shot on the 9th November, when his own prediction, that "if Vienna fell, then falls Blum," was confirmed. Divine service was prohibited in the free congregations, and their ministers put either into prisons or madhouses, while many of the members were publicly flogged at the instigation of the Catholic priests, and by the following August every congregation in the Austrian dominions was suppressed. Imperial despotism now knew no bounds. By the alliance between barbarous Cossacks and savage Croats, it had succeeded in crushing one of the purest national struggles for independence which modern history can refer to; not less overwhelming was its onslaught on free religion. In the wake of the Austrian despot followed the other petty princes of Germany. But the man of whose tyranny Ronge has to complain most indignantly is that paragon of protestant princes, the King of Prussia. The laws of Prussia are based upon an avowed acknowledgment of religious liberty. The king of this country Ronge describes as "inclining as a romantic to the Catholic church and to despotism, by God's grace." At the time of the Austrian triumph this king

who at the moment at which we write is being extolled to the skies for his humane interference on behalf of the Madiai at the Tuscan court-this very king and his ministry "called the Jesuits into the country, and supported them with money and landed property to build up cloisters and schools;" by means of Jesuit craft this belauded Protestant monarch set about suppressing the congregations which Ronge had formed; which he did, not openly and at once, like the Austrian government, but stealthily and cowardly, thus undermining the fundamental principle of his country's laws, and blowing into all the winds the many oaths of allegiance which he had solemnly

sworn to the principle of religious freedom.

[ocr errors]

Ronge was obliged, after the summer revolution of 1849, to retire to Hamburg, to keep himself clear of the despots. Here it was that he took to letter-writing again. He had made great proficiency in this branch of agitating tactics, as we saw in his letter to "his friend" Bishop Arnoldi, five years previously. The person at whom he this time levels his pen is the religious King of Prussia. From this letter we extract the following paragraphs: "Friederich Hohenzollern, look back upon your deeds, upon your life, and you will find that the judgment of history follows you closely. In 1840, in answer to the high hopes which Germany reposed in you, you said, 'Between me and my people there should be no leaf of paper.' You turned your eyes to the past rather than to the future; fought with phrases; and instead of rising to the height of a President of Germany, became a petty, wavering despot, who dazzled with words of free thought, while he persecuted freedom itself as a crime. There is, indeed, between you and your poople no leaf of paper, but cannons, powder, and a stream of blood. Instead of taking part in the worldredeeming deed of the reformation of the 19th century, you forwarded and protected lies, hypocrisy, immorality; you helped forward Jesuitism. Judge yourself, what history will and must do. It will and must condemn you. It has already answered through deeds. During the nine years of your reign you have interdicted freedom of speech. Men who speak for the rights of the people were and are persecuted and thrown into prison. You had a full treasury at the beginning of your reign, and could easily work and prevail against pauperism. You trifled in hunting; threw away millions on useless buildings, and in unjustifiable military expenses; and when, in 1844 and 1847, hunger drove the people to revolt, you gave them bullets instead of bread, and prohibited the press from speaking of the wants of the people. Thus did you act, most pious and believing king! But you did more: you allowed thirty thousand men to die of hunger and disease in Upper Silesia in the beginning of 1848. Perhaps you call this 'serving the Lord.' History

will form a fearful judgment. More could I speak of the many perfidies of last year, but the oaths which you have violated will cause history to call you 'a perjurer and betrayer of your fatherland." Strange sounds these to ring on royal ears, which had been accustomed only to the words of lying sycophants and servile adulation. The monarch who for once in his reign had been spoken to in the words of truth, became incensed at the truth-speaker, and sent his policemen to Hamburg to seize him, but failed in his attempt, as Ronge, preferring exile to imprisonment, eluded his pursuers by retiring into France. In Strasburg, early in the year 1850, Ronge formed a free congregation, and delivered lectures, but was obliged to act secretly for fear of the government and the priests. Shortly after "Bonaparte the Little" sent orders for his expulsion, and the priests offered a reward to any one who would discover to them his retreat. As there was no rest nor safety for him in France, Ronge went over to Holland. Thither too the persevering Jesuits followed him, dodging about him wherever the scent led them. Thence he crossed over to Belgium, but as he had no passport to that country he was condemned to imprisonment for two years. As this latter condition presented no favourable opportunity to him for developing his ideas of freedom, he adopted a course likely to be more suitable to him, and that was of running away from his detention, and crossing over to England, which he did with meritorious success towards the close of the year 1850.

We have now traced at some length of detail the career of one of the noblest exiles now harboured by the free institutions of England. How chequered has been this man's course! How triumphant, how depressed! How honoured, how despised! But the cause of these vicissitudes is not to be found in his own vacillations, nor qught it to be attributed to the fitfulness of the people that honoured him ; it lies rather in the success with which the armed despots entered into an alliance against all freedom of the subject, and in the utter disregard of moral obligation, and shameless violation of oaths, which have so dishonourably distinguished the continental

T

sovereigns. Take away these, or even reduce them to the condition of honest and oath-fearing men, and Ronge might at this moment return to his labours, and find his churches re-organised and strengthened, and the people as enthusiastic as ever. The probabilities are even now strong that better days are in store for Prussia in a not very remote future, for the Jesuits the king took into his bosom have stung him, and become a plague to him that he would gladly be rid of. He has got a proper recompence; let him now see and do justice to the true man whom he has persecuted.

To return to Ronge in England. He has been here now about two years. The retreat of the exile is on the shady base of Hampstead Heath. Here he has dwelt, and still dwells, in a quietude which, independently of his exile, must be grateful to his fretted spirit, after the toils and agitations of the last eight years. Nor has he here been without labour. The never-resting spirit within him has been planning some schemes to keep up the fervour of his friends in Germany, and to awaken the sympathies and co-operation of British patriots with his labours on the continent. The spirit of freedom and reform which he has brought over with him is now for the time a British spirit; it has gone into the general circulation of that rushing stream which ceaselessly presses round British life and British institutions; the tale of his labours and wrongs has become a portion of our own literature, free among ourselves what must not be published in the imperial dominions. Ronge is also about to organize a free German catholic church in London, at which he will in a measure repeat those services which have so often been the terror of both priests and despots on the Continent. Another movement has already been set on foot, called the "United German Democratic League." This designs to aid in the accomplishment of the real political redemption of the fatherland, and Ronge is associated with it as its treasurer.

Already has Ronge become an object of pious solicitude to an arch priest of high eminence in England. Some little time since he was waited on by an inferior priest, who stated to him that his master had heard he was ill, and in all Catholic love had sent him to in

quire if he did not think it a favourable moment to return to his allegiance to the church he had injured; the worthy priest also assured him he had been urging on all pious Christians the duty of praying earnestly for his soul, and had himself been so much absorbed in the devout exercise that he had been

praying for him all the way from the Bank down to Hampstead in the omnibus; at present all these devotions seem to have been attended with no fruit, nor had the priest sufficient power of persuasion to induce him to a reconciliation with the holy church, which was holding out her loving arms to welcome back the straying sheep. What another sixpenny ride may effect, with simultaneous supplications, remains to be seen. Another Jesuit priest has also been trying his hand on Ronge; he went to his house in plain dress, but could not thereby hide his nature from view. His was a most benevolent mission; he, supposing Ronge to be a poor and destitute exile, to whom a little money might be serviceable, went and told him that he had an excellent friend, who had conceived the humane thought of handing over a little cash to him, which would undoubtedly be given as hush money; Ronge informed him that he was in no circumstances of want himself, but that any donation the unknown friend might be pleased to give toward the new German Catholic Church in London he would be happy to receive and appropriate to that purpose. Foiled in his attempt to bribe, the priest brought no money for the church.

Ronge has been styled the New Luther. The comparison between him and the early reformer has some points truly of concidence; but in others it altogether fails. The movements with which their names are respectively associated both had their origin in a barefaced attempt of the Romish church to fling dust in the eyes of the people, in order to find an easy way into their pockets. Tetzell, in the 16th century, went round Germany hawking his indulgence-wares, selling pardons for sins either committed or contemplated, at an unusually low charge. This was the signal for the outburst of the feeling which led to Luther's reformation. Arnoldi, the old clothes bishop of the 19th century, hung out an old 'acket for all the ladies

and gentlemen to "walk up and see," who were willing to pay the showman for the peep. This functionary also went too far, for he brought the old house about his ears with a terrible crash. In this respect, the making use of a gross hypocrisy as the startingpoint for a new development in the church, the two reformers acted in common. But almost from this point the comparison ceases. Luther was assisted in his crusade against indulgences and Rome by the powerful arms of several of the princes of Germany. Ronge had only his own sense of duty and a national feeling to support him; all the princes who were not dead against him turned to him at least the cold shoulder, and bade him get on as best he could. Luther provided for his secession a stereotyped church constitution, and a creed settled and fixed till the resurrectionday. Ronge, on the other hand, has provided his churches with a constitution which will adapt itself to the spirit of the time, subject to all the amendments which the progress of time suggests as necessary, and has bound them to no definite symbolic creed, but affords scope for the growth and enlargement of their convictions and belief. Luther confined himself to church duties proper, and never went beyond them, but even enjoined on the members of his churches not to meddle in politics, but to be content with just such privileges as the princes spontaneously gave them; Ronge, on the contrary, has made religious freedom and political liberty inseparable, and urged his followers to be at once Christians and patriots, and has himself set the example. The difference between the two men is interpreted in the fact that Luther lived in the 16th and Ronge in the 19th century. The ideas which were groaning for birth in the 16th century found a full and adequate exponent in Luther; and but for the previous development of these, Ronge had had no platform on which three centuries later he could unfold

the ideas of his own age. We make no invidious distinctions between these two noble-souled men. If it be true that Luther had to confess he had made many mistakes in the organisation of his movement, true also it is that Ronge will one day, with equal frankness, deplore many errors that exist in

his reformation. The two men, however, have this in common, that where we are obliged to withhold our assent from any of their proposals or acts, we are yet compelled to accord to both of them our hearty admiration.

But as the qualities of the movements led by these two men respectively have necessarily so few points in common, yet if we look into the interior of the men, we shall there see a wonderful harmoniousness and unity. Both of them, sons of the old church, gave their mother a deadly bite. Both of them, sons of truth, were constant and filial to their sublimer parent. Their attachment to truth was hardy, almost desperate. Whatever she moved them to they would speak, and speak boldly. Both were men full of courage and gigantic bravery when truth was assailed. Luther would go to Worms, and tell his revelations of truth, though "there were as many devils in Worms as there were tiles upon the house-tops." Ronge would always rush to the point of danger, and say what truth had commissioned him, though a despot met him in every town, or a prison yawned to immure him, or priests hired drunken assassins to murder him, or lewd fellows of the baser sort had had their orders to pitch him into the river. The castle at Wartburg for a long time concealed the early reformer and made him silent, but it never stopped his ear against the truth which was whispering therein; Ronge's imprisonment led him but into a closer communion and a holier alliance with truth, and each on their deliverance became only the more valiant for the truth. The inner movements of each of these men's lives became the seed of life-revolutions, whose effects are not limited by the centuries in which they sprang up. Luther's truth-created organisations exist, or have been enlarged into better existing ones, at this day; Ronge's have in many cases been suppressed by the tyrant's iron hand, but they are not silenced, they still grow spiritually; and some hundreds of now-existing churches proclaim them to be still living, and waiting only for freer times that they may flourish again.

Misrepresentation is a powerful instrument in the hands of priests with which to darken a man's designs and paralyse his power, and this they laid

thickly about Ronge. He has been declared to be a man whose character comprises all the means and the extremes of licentiousness; but, happily for Ronge, the imputations rest upon nothing but the exacerbated ire of the priests. He has been published as an anarchic republican, a communist, and a levelling socialist. With respect to the two last charges, Englishmen who have been taught to believe them ought to accept the unqualified repudiation of them which he himself has given; as to the first of the three, Ronge is a republican, but not an anarchist; and however content we may be with our excellent constitu- | tion and free institutions, we have yet to learn that to be a republican is a crime in a man, who on the continent has so often been made the victim of the perjury of princes, and who, with his friends, has so often been smitten by the iron hands of absolutist despots. Ronge is a republican, because he sees in the sovereignty of the people their only extrication from the savage and cruel bondage which they endure, and their deliverance from those crushing social evils which the excesses and lusts of their princely rulers have entailed upon them. Ronge is a republican because his great heart sympathises with the enormous sorrows that wring the souls of his countrymen ;the princes by their despotic rule are a fearful incubus on the freedom, industry, cultivation, intelligence, and morals of the people; and in the removal of such irresponsible power, he sees the highest moral, social, and religious elevation which the people may attain to.

But we must close this sketch. Ronge is in England, and the man who spends a day, or even an hour, with him cannot but feel the intercourse an honour and a privilege, nor will he quit his society without feeling himself drawn into a vortex of sympathy with him and with the noble cause which has made him an exile. Ronge is a man of personal appearance truly prepossessing, in height not beyond the middling stature, about five feet six; the long trailing curls which once offended his church superiors still flow gracefully round his head! his forehead is ample and high, his eyes are jet-lights which dazzle and penetrate one, his upper lip and chin are covered

by a luxuriant dark moustache and beard, which we fancy would make him still more terrible should he ever again confront the Pope or any of his minions. Unlike to the fat burly portraits of Luther, he is somewhat spare in his build, and altogether suggests the idea of a man of refinement and high cultivation.

Far distant, we say, be the day when it shall become necessary to write a complete biography of Ronge! There is work we believe for him yet to do. We would not over-tax the abilities of any man who has already wrought well; but labour is the life of Ronge, and we believe we only feebly utter the heart-longings of the man himself when we say, we hope the time may speedily come when he may freely return to his own country and complete his noble work of emancipating his brethren from the claws of the despots and the fangs of the priests; and, finally, in the salutation of his fatherland, we say to him from our heart of hearts, Leb' Wohl.

CHARLES DICKENS.

"C'est un panorama mouvent de toutes les classes de la société anglaise; une critique fine et piquante de tous les ridicules, une vaste composition, ou mille personages se mouvent et posent devant le lecteur."-Preface of the French Translator of Dickens.

LITTLE more than forty years ago, at Landport, Portsmouth, the most popular, if not the greatest modern author, Charles Dickens, was born. His father, Mr. John Dickens, who has but recently deceased, was at the time filling a post as clerk in the Navy Pay Office, which required him to reside at one or another of the various ports of the kingdom, and, as it fell out, at Portsmouth, on the 15th of February, 1812, his most celebrated son was born.

When the war ceased, there being, fortunately for England and the world, far less occasion for navy pay clerks Mr. John Dickens retired upon a pen sion, and going to London, he (being a man of considerable talent and good education) obtained an engagement to report the debates in Parliament, and eventually became attached to the 'Chronicle," on the staff of which he remained for some years. Dickens's early recollections of Portsmouth are

66

« ПретходнаНастави »