Neuve des Capucines, on the site till recently occupied by the Foreign Office, and within a few doors of the palace which was the official residence of the Company. No sooner was it known that he had died than the poor dwelling was invaded by a swarm of eager creditors, each armed with the power of the law, each breathless to secure himself by a prior seizure. Thus expired, in the wretched plight of a positive pauper, goaded and baited by cruel wrongs even in his last moments, a man of princely nature, whose qualities of head and heart deserve our admiration, as his misfortunes must command our sympathies. Englishmen at least, contemplating the life of Dupleix from the vantage-ground of posterior events, must cordially acknowledge the genius of the man who, at so early a time, distinctly foreshadowed the propriety and necessity of those measures which in the end they themselves have adopted bit by bit. Dupleix was wrong only on one point. He who with such unerring instinct looked into and weighed India and Indian matters, was blind to the rottenness of the France of his own days. A giant himself, he kept projecting for his generation schemes utterly above its vigour; and thus he encountered a cruel downfall, for which he was unprepared. All his misfortunes were due to the overlooked discrepancy between his individual boldness and the pusillanimous nature of the men on whose support his conceptions were doomed to rest. Out of this antagonism sprung that apparent assumption of arbitrary authority on his part, which was but the haughtiness of conscious superiority. It is altogether to misunderstand Dupleix to ascribe to him a vulgar and selfish ambition, working all along from personal motives or mere vanity. He was not the rebellious proconsul, bent on setting up for himself, whom the Company's Directors either fancied or pretended to believe him inclined to become. If he acted wrongly, he did so under a mistaken, but sincere and high spirited, love for his country. But he lived in a time and amongst a generation which were not fit for one like him-a time when a Pompadour could at pleasure make and unmake policies, and a Louis XV., wallowing in his stye at the Pare aux Cerfs, was unblushingly cherished by the wit and nobility of France as the glorious representative of national honour.

ART. II.-A CATHOLIC VIEW OF THE ROMAN

QUESTION.

The Church and the Churches; or, the Papacy and the Temporal Power. An Historical and Political Review. By Dr. Döllinger. Translated, with the Author's permission, by William Bernard MacCabe. London: Hurst and Blackett, 1862.

DR. DÖLLINGER'S book merits the attentive consideration of political students in England; and not the less because it is written entirely from a Continental and a Catholic point of view; because both the religious belief and the political tone of the author are totally different from those which prevail among ourselves. It is not easy for a people Protestant for generations, and Constitutionalist, not to say Liberal, for centuries, to form a sound practical judgment on questions involving the existence of the Papacy, perhaps as a religious, and certainly as a political power. To a very numerous and earnest, if not a very enlightened, section of the English middle-class the Papacy is a religious abomination,-the imagined embodiment of the kingdom of Antichrist, the object of righteous hatred and of unmingled abhorrence. It is not necessary to criticise the Evangelical doctrine on this subject; it is sufficiently plain hat those who hold it are on their own showing disqualified as judges in a case where the statesmanship of Europe is perplexed, and its peace endangered, by the entanglement of a spiritual ascendency, venerated by two hundred millions of devout Catholics, with a temporal authority detested by twenty millions of patriotic Italians. Setting aside its theological aspect, and the passions which that aspect arouses, the Papacy appears to most Englishmen simply as an unmitigated political nuisance. This is the view taken of it by thousands of Liberals, who repudiate as indignantly as Mr. Cobden the idea of a No-Popery cry, and who looked with wonder and shame on the violent excitement which followed the so-called papal aggression of 1851. This is the view of a large section of the Conservative party, who have almost as little faith as Lord Derby himself in Italian unity, but who heard with surprise and regret the language held by Mr. Disraeli in regard to the so-styled "independence" of the Pope. But it is not by English Liberalism any more than by English Protestantism that the cause of the Italians against the Papacy can be satisfactorily judged, and a verdict pronounced which will carry with it that which alone can give it full and irrevocable effect-the consent of Catholic Europe. It behoves those in this country who

desire either that their own opinions should be formed upon a full consideration of all sides of the greatest of European perplexities, or that the opinion of England should be expressed in such form as to have a practical influence on the final settlement of the question, to regard it not as it appears to Englishmen, but as it presents itself to the two parties directly concerned,-to Catholic Christendom, and to Italy aspiring after unity and independence.

And here, in the first place, we may thank Dr. Döllinger for the pains he has taken to recall what no reader of history can have any excuse for forgetting, but what nevertheless is constantly and habitually forgotten, that the Papacy was not at first a political evil, nor the Reformation altogether a political blessing. It is undeniable that in England the influence of the Church was for many centuries exerted on the side of personal and political liberty; that the independence which she derived from the unity of Latin Christendom, and from the acknowledged principle that the sovereign had no ecclesiastical jurisdiction, was the bulwark both of national liberties as against the crown, and of individual liberty as against the barons. Not only were ecclesiastics among the leaders in every struggle for political privileges, not only did the Church exercise her spiritual authority with immense effect for the emancipation of the peasantry, but the tone given by ecclesiastical influence to our earliest jurisprudence established in all our courts, and especially in the courts of equity, that strong presumption in favour of liberty, to which, more than to any direct legislative action, England owed the sure and gradual growth of the best system of law and the largest securities for freedom that were enjoyed by any country, Catholic or Protestant, until all old institutions were swept away by the French Revolution. The first effect of the Reformation, here as elsewhere, was not to favour liberty, but to strengthen tyranny. It came just when the power of the nobles had every where yielded to the ascendency of the crown; it struck down the only power that was still a match for the monarchy. The infamous maxim, "cujus est regio, illius est religio," invented by the political necessities of the Reformers, gave to Protestant despotism a license to which the worst of Catholic absolutists never pretended. Abroad that maxim was eagerly enforced by princes, and not unwillingly accepted by the people; and the result was, that no Protestant country of the Continent-except Holland, liberated by arms from Spain-was more free at the end of the eighteenth century than at the beginning of the sixteenth: most had lost a considerable portion of the liberty they formerly enjoyed. Nor did England gain in freedom under the Protestant Tudors and

Stuarts. If she was not enslaved, it was because the people never accepted the spiritual authority of the crown. Down to the reign of Elizabeth the Catholics remained a resolute and formidable minority; after that time the Puritans formed a still more formidable religious and political opposition. But had the Reformation been here as completely successful as in Sweden or in northern Germany; had the Lutheran doctrine regarding sovereign rights over religion ever become firmly established among us, it may well be doubted whether all the liberties extorted in Catholic times would not have perished during the two first Protestant centuries.

England has forgotten these things; forgotten that the Papacy was ever the ally of civil freedom, and that Protestantism was ever linked with the worst doctrines of royal absolutism. We see Protestant Germany making progress in freedom; we see the Papal See in intimate alliance with the meanest and most horrible of modern tyrannies, the Bourbon rule in Naples, and united with Austria in hostility to Italian liberty; and we fancy that this is, and always has been, the natural and necessary course of the two religions. Continental nations know better. The Catholics are not likely to forget the ancient glories of their Church; the papal championship of Italian liberties against German Emperors and local tyrants, the long connexion between the Guelphic or patriotic party and the Roman Pontiff, and the many undeniable boons which Italy once received from the Papacy. It is natural, therefore, that they should incline to reproach the Italians with ingratitude. It is not strange that they should refuse to believe that what has been can never be again; that the cause of the Pope and the cause of Italy are severed for ever; that the holy Father, for whose spiritual sovereignty they entertain so profound and loyal an affection, can be, as a temporal prince, the worst of European rulers, the just object of the hatred of an oppressed and miserable people. We cannot expect them to admit, save on the clearest demonstration, that the papal rule not only is, but must of necessity be, an intolerable political evil-a torment to Rome, a nuisance to Italy, a danger to Europe. From men so honourable and so candid as Dr. Döllinger we may obtain the admission that the present government of the Roman States is utterly detestable; but we find them always most reluctant to admit that its badness is an inevitable necessity of its constitution. In their eyes, the papal government ought to be, and might be, the best in the world, as at one time it was probably the best in Italy; and while they desire to reform, they would on no account destroy it. And for them, moreover, the question has another aspect, higher and more important than

the political. The Pope is much more than sovereign of the States of the Church. That sovereignty is merely an incident and consequence of his spiritual position as supreme Head of the Church itself, to which those States belong. And if his temporal sovereignty be necessary to the maintenance of his ecclesiastical dignity, or to the free exercise of his spiritual authority, Catholics will be resolute at all cost to maintain the temporal power. The security, the undiminished lustre and unabated influence of the Catholic Church is to Catholics the first, paramount, all-overruling consideration, and inevitably must be so. To this end they would be ready to make any sacrifice; to this end they are, we fear, not unwilling, if need be, to sacrifice the prosperity and happiness of the Roman population. Such is the temper, such are the views of those who have at present the power to prevent any solution of the Roman question; and unless we take their views into account, we cannot possibly form any reliable judgment either of what will probably be done, or of what it would, under all circumstances, be wisest to attempt. For though Catholic governments, and especially the Sovereign in whose hands the decision seems at this moment to rest, may be wiser or less devout than their subjects, it may well be doubted whether they would dare to act or to remain inactive in defiance of the earnest desires of the Catholic population over whom they rule.

On the other hand, the Italians indignantly protest against the maintenance, by whatever means, for whatever purpose, under whatever pretence, of an anti-Italian power in the heart of Italy. They protest against the presence of a foreign army on Italian soil, against the oppression of three millions of Italians by a government resting openly and only on foreign bayonets. The King of Italy complains of the harborage afforded to enemies who are incessantly conspiring against him, and to brigands who constantly issue from the Roman States to plunder, burn, and murder in his Neapolitan provinces, and when hotly pursued by his troops escape from the punishment of their crimes by taking refuge under the shadow of the pontifical throne. The people of Italy complain that they are kept in continual agitation by the miseries of their enslaved brethren, whom they are not permitted to release; and a terrible proof has just been given of the seriousness of this evil by an attempt to rescue the sufferers, which threatened to convulse the whole Peninsula, and to shake the newly-established monarchy. The population of the Pontifical States murmurs loudly and continually against a government which crushes their aspirations, which condemns them to ignorance, which almost enforces upon them idleness and poverty; against an administration which has