heretics, and of all persons who disturb or oppose the jurisdiction of the holy see; and after the reading, the Pope threw a burning torch in the public place to denote the thunder of his anathema." In 1809, the Pope excommunicated the Emperor Napoleon, and virtually, if not expressly, absolved all his subjects from their oaths of allegiance. Did he not, in 1794, "condemn and reprobate" the acts of the ex parte Council of Pistoia, which approved a previous declaration of the French clergy, that the Pope had not the power to depose kings, nor to absolve subjects from their oaths of allegiance, thus, by necessary implication, claiming this power; -and later, in 1851, anathematize a book written in Peru, to refute the doctrine that "he who governs in spiritual things, governs also in temporal"? And even later, in July last, the government of Sardinia having passed a law, as the Pope recites, "to suppress almost all the monastic and religious communities, the collegiate churches, &c., and to hand over their revenues and property to the free disposition of the civil pow er," he declared this law to be "null and void," and excommunicated the king and parliament which passed it. Moreover, the government of Spain having, as the Pope again recites, in the same month of July, "passed a law ordaining the sale of church property, and issued various decrees forbidding bishops to confer holy orders," &c., he, “in virtue of our [his] apostolic authority," abrogated and declared null and void the law and decrees aforesaid.

Though the papal hierarchy has renounced none of its pretensions, a great change has taken place in many parts of the Christian world; and this change has doubtless proved a restraint on its conduct. It has exercised less frequently the powers which it once exercised often. Its thunder has not been so frequent nor so loud. Well remembering that its power has had alternate periods of decline and restoration, it waits, and waits patiently, taking care not to excite alarm, for the time when the thunder of the Vatican shall be again efficient, not only to terrify the ignorant and credulous, but to rally under its banner the selfish, ambitious, and sceptical. That it is a political, as well as a religious party, its whole career gives manifest and forcible testimony.

We make no charge against the Romish religion, nor do we feel the slightest hostility towards its professors as such. We have the same regard for our neighbor who believes in transubstantiation, in purgatory, in the invocation of saints, in the immaculate conception of Mary, as for him whose belief is identical with ours. We do not know nor think that so believing, if his belief is sincere, makes him less honest, less benevolent, less patriotic. But not ranking among re ligious tenets the belief that any man, or body of men, has a perfect right to interpret to us the will of God, and to insist that such interpretation is imperative, we do feel, we confess, and have long felt, hostility to the papal hierarchy. This feeling is justified and confirmed by facts of which all history is full, and by results which are continually made manifest. We are confident that it does not arise from religious prejudice. It has a moral rather than a religious, a political rather than a moral origin,-using the word political in its primitive and best meaning. We are sure that the claims of the papal hierarchy are inconsistent with political liberty, with self-government, with free institutions, with intellectual progress, and with the elevation of the human race. We reject its arrogant assumption, that the Romish Church is the only true church; and its teaching, that all are doomed to eternal perdition who stand without its pale. We deny its right to found a claim to precedence on any doctrine or custom of the early Christians. On the contrary, we find in authentic history conclusive proof that this claim is founded only on usurpation over ignorance and credulity, at a time when the whole world was in eclipse; and we charge it with taking superstition to its aid, and using all the power and influence which, by any means whatever, it has acquired, not to enlighten the mind, but to thicken and prolong intellectual darkness, in order to exercise its sway the more easily and despotically. We do not deny to the members of the hierarchy the possession of the common attributes of humanity,— the best of them; but these are turned from their appropriate function by the delusive doctrine (we think we should be pardoned for using a harsher term) of Jesuitism, that acts which would otherwise be wicked become praiseworthy and

holy,-"pious frauds," — if performed for the benefit of the Church. We do not ask that the law shall make any distinction between the Romanist and the Protestant; we insist that both shall be allowed to enjoy equal and complete religious liberty; and we trust that the State governments will not permit any man, or any class of men, belonging to the clerical profession, to possess any such power over property intended for religious or charitable uses, as may enable him or them to exercise the slightest authority over others in religious ceremonials, or in the worship of God.

We do not hesitate to call the attention of the friends of freedom, as well as of theologians, to the work of Dr. Beecher. He has gathered, and given to the public, a multitude of facts in relation to the exercise of powers, temporal as well as ecclesiastical, by the Pope, showing his claim to be the appointed vicar-general of our Saviour on earth; has expatiated on the intolerance, immorality, and impiety of the priesthood; and charges the Romish Corporation, as he styles what is usually called the Roman Catholic Church, with having formed and matured a conspiracy to restore and annex America to the papal see. From the vigor of his attacks and the severity of his censures, sometimes transgressing the bounds of temperate discussion, we perceive that he heartily despises that coward cant of candor, which betrays a fear of blame for saying aught against any religious sect, even if the purpose and effect of saying it should be to secure to all men the right to worship God according to the dictates of conscience.

We think there can be no question that the papal hierarchy intends, expects, and is acting with a set purpose, to obtain a firm foothold, and ultimately, at some period near or remote, a predominance in these United States. In this it is but acting in compliance with a necessity imposed by its constitution and creed. Its functionaries have always been propagandists, and would be obviously false to the belief they profess,— that there is no salvation out of the pale of their Church,—if they should cease to be so. They are but using instruments contrived and furnished for that purpose, and embracing oppor tunities auspicious for its accomplishment. Was it not for

this purpose principally that the Pope, forty years ago, revived the order of the Jesuits, an order once rejected by all Europe, and now distrusted and abhorred in many parts of it? What means the constant influx of members of this order into these States? What inference must be drawn from the multiplication of Jesuit colleges and seminaries of education, in which nothing is taught tending to impart independence and vigor to the mind? And is not all reasonable doubt removed by the boasts, occasionally uttered by organs of the hierarchy, what degree accredited organs we pretend not to know, that the time will assuredly come when this country, which once belonged to the Pope, will be again subjected to his control?

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We are not surprised that these confident boasts, and the inauspicious signs which constantly force themselves on our attention, have produced alarm. We know that an inordinate thirst for power has ever kept the hierarchy restless and active; and that, in resorting to modes and means for that end, its members are not restrained by any conscientious scruples, believing that whatever may be done for the benefit of their Church, the holy and only true Church, is permitted, if not commanded. They find here subjects to operate on, and agents to work with, well adapted to insure success, if success is possible. There is not among us, it is true, so much of ignorance, credulity, and superstition as prevailed in Europe in the Dark Ages; but more exists than is generally supposed, and the comparative amount is constantly increasing. The delegated leaders have, and will continue to have, for efficient aids and instruments, purely selfish ambition, and zealous, infuriated party spirit, reckless of aught save present success. They cannot have forgotten the lessons of their own experience, and as, in the ages of barbarism, on every occasion of aiding a rival claimant to a throne, they advanced a step in their long ascent to supreme power, so here and now they may offer such aid to one of many aspirants to a position much more elevated, demanding and receiving a similar reward. The past history of the republic gives us no assurance of absolute safety; and we do not therefore feel inclined to ridicule all apprehensions of danger. We rather welcome and cherish them as indications that the love of civil and religious liberty is still fresh in the

hearts of many among us, and that there are sentinels on our watch-towers who will not cease to warn us against that apathetic confidence of safety which invites danger.

It must be a comforting reflection to those who have no fear of the ultimate predominance of the papal hierarchy in this country, and regret what they consider unfounded accusations, that all the efforts which could properly be made to prevent that predominance are appropriate and even necessary efforts to avert the lesser evil, and yet a great evil, of such increase of this power as would perpetuate as they are, and multiply among us, a numerous population, whose intellectual faculties would be "cabined, cribbed, confined," whose volitions would not be their own,-whose conduct would be guided by a single will, whenever that will should determine to guide it,—and who, stationary themselves, would, instead of aiding, retard the upward progress of man, and the onward progress of the republic.

ART. VI. Der Jakobiner Klub. Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte der Parteien und der politischen Sitten im Revolutions-Zeitalter, von J. W. ZINKEISEN. Berlin: Erster Theil. 1852. Zweiter Theil. 1853. [The Jacobin Club. A Contribution to the History of Parties and Political Morals during the Revolutionary Period, by J. W. Zinkeisen. 2 vols.]

Ir required all the industry and research for which the Germans are proverbial, to prepare this most valuable contribution to historical literature. The work is thorough and accurate, and its author is obviously a complete master of his subject, to which he has devoted years of labor in collecting and digesting the mass of memoirs, journals, and fly-sheets, in which the history of the Jacobin Club is, of necessity, principally to be found. He seems, indeed, to have sought information in every possible quarter, occasionally drawing a few items even from American sources, and once, at least, from the reports of the insane asylums of Paris, to which retreats, indeed, some