estimation of some, should not be successful in the attempt to do so.

The spirit manifested by Popery at the hustings in Ireland is the same which has characterized Popery in America, in Canada, in France, and in Belgium.

These instances are pointed out in the introduction to the work to which we have just referred; and the readers of these remarks, and the subscribers and friends of the Protestant Association, and the friends of the Protestant cause in general, will do well to circulate and make known these facts: to get them noticed and brought forward by the press in their respective localities, and to interest their representatives in the House of Commons, in the question.

LOUIS NAPOLEON AND THE EMPIRE.

"LOUIS NAPOLEON and the Empire." Such is the heading of a leading article which appears in the "Tablet" of 16th October. As a leading organ of the Ultra-montane party it is well to see what sentiments are held and uttered on so important, so portentous an event!

Whether peace or war will be his policy, whether, if he prefers peace, the party to whom he owes his present and prospective elevation, will suffer him to pursue a pacific course, -remains yet to be seen.

The friends of liberty and order, the advocates of Scriptural Christianity, have not been without apprehensions upon these points. Protestants justly look with some evil forebodings, as regards the future, to the movements of a power, whose rise, progress, and spirit, indicates a reliance upon the Romish party, if not a fond attachment to it-a desire to promote its interests, and to uphold its power.

Is there anything on the part of Romanists-on the part of Romish writers-to disabuse them of such fears, and to engender confidence? We fear not. Little or nothing is to be found of that kind: but rather to the contrary.

Fully alive to the existence of these feelings; and whilst expressing an opinion that wars against any state, and least of all, against England, cannot be a part of Louis Napoleon's policy, the "Tablet" proceeds, in the following language, to shadow forth the prospective power of the Emperorship in terrorem, against the manifestation of any ultra-Protestant feeling in the development of a sound Protestant policy by Great Britain.

"Yet we must frankly confess, that the instinct of English Protestant opinion about Louis Napoleon is not wholly without foundation.

"The fanatical Protestants and persecutors of England are right in considering Louis Napoleon's empire, and his military strength, as the hope of the oppressed in many countries; and as a power, the existence and the terrors of which, should in all prudence check their appetite for wrong."

Then adverting to some causes which have led France to do less in missionary work than has been accomplished by England, the writer proceeds:

"In this dubious outlook of affairs the Napoleon reaction slowly came, and with it there came in England the anti-Papal fanaticism, then, and perhaps now, at the beginning of its development. England, hotter than ever to put down and revolutionise the Church wherever her influence extends, at home and abroad. France once more, with a chance of social and political stability, and, if that chance be realized, more than ever bent, in appearance at least, upon upholding the Church, resisting all attempts to its injury, lending her whole force to the dissemination of Catholic opinions, resolved to make the Church and its ministers respected, and, in every capital of Europe, meeting the English infidel propagandism with a counterinfluence on the side of truth.

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Not, therefore, in the way of aggression or invasion is France the enemy of England; but still there is between them a deep-rooted and permanent hostility of another kind; an hostility which does not necessarily break the peace, but which has for its battle-field every corner of European civilization, and extends beyond Europe to the furthermost ends of the earth; an hostility which, in some respects, divides every society, and ranges the good and the evil under two standards, making the evil look up with more or less of hope, mixed with a strange fear and dislike to England, and the good turn their thoughts with the beginning of a greater confidence to France. All who hate and fear England look to France under Napoleon III. as an incipient source of hope; an influence from which good may come, and by which evil may be averted; a strong force, by which the selfish and evil designs of England may be kept in check; and the dread and the power of which may and must limit the operations of evil."

The writer then speaks of the "yearning wherewith Ireland, for so many generations, has turned her heart to France as to a place whence cometh help," states that "the eye of the peasant glistens when the name of Louis Napoleon is mentioned, and his heart bounds when he hears of the coming Empire," &c., &c., and then proceeds :

"Yes, these hopes (how could it be otherwise under the established rule?) are nourished in Ireland; and the day when the vicar of Christ-if this, too, as it seems probable, is to happen-shall place the Imperial crown upon the brow of the Third Napoleon, and give him the benediction of the Church, will bring joy, and exultation, and hope to the down-trodden peasant of this land. Nor is this joy absolutely without reason; for even if a French soldier never crosses

the Channel, or sets foot on these islands, the erection and consolidation of a gigantic power so near at hand, sympathising with justice, truth and mercy, is in itself a protection and a guarantee. When the peasant hears-for the things that speak to the hearts and the hopes of the people spread quickly and strike deep-that Louis Napoleon is to be crowned-that the English Journals which abuse the revelations of God write against him-that the talk is about invasion-that invasion is thought so possible as to be dreadedthen you may be sure the mind of the listener travels back to the day when the dread of another French invasion struck off the first links from the chain of Irish bondage. Reasonable or unreasonable, these hopes are in the nature of things. They must be so; and, as everything is said and done by writers and rulers in England to make us believe that they hate and loathe us, and desire to wound and trample on us, we take it for granted that the existence of such feelings towards France as we have been describing, is thought rather desirable than otherwise. The moment when the Pope lifts his hand to place the crown of the French Empire upon Napoleon's head, and to consecrate him and his five hundred thousand men in uniform as the armed soldiers of the Church, will, we suppose, be selected by our rulers as the time for passing new laws against the Church, and for decreeing new penalties against its ministers."

Towards the end of the article the real opinion of what Louis Napoleon may do if things permit, is more clearly expressed, and given in the following striking language :

"We believe that the system of Louis Napoleon is one of peace; and that any rash attempt to identify his Empire with French ambition would speedily hurl him from the throne. But, let the Empire be once established and consolidated; let the first fears of its aggressive character pass away; let it sink down, as it may after a short time, into a secure and definite position among the powers of Europe; let the jealousies and distrusts of the great Empires of the North be laid to rest, and the time come in which France can measure itself singly against England, without exciting fears of a general scheme of French conquest ;-then, indeed, it will be difficult to tell what direful results may spring from a long and ancient hatred, a course of national insults unredressed, some tempting opportunity offered, a momentary interest to serve, a great prize to be secured, and the slaughter of the legions at Waterloo to be avenged and expiated."

DIPLOMATIC RELATIONS WITH ROME.

SOME of our readers will bear in mind the struggle made to prevent the passing of an Act to render lawful diplomatic relations with Rome. But the Act passed. Not, however, till an important amendment of Lord Eglinton's was carried, and which has diminished, in some considerable degree, the mischievous operations of the measure. We desire to keep clear of

any friendly, as it is called, intercourse between the Pope and the Queen-the Vatican and St. James's-feeling well satisfied that England's most prosperous period has been, since she cut the gordian knot that bound her to the Papacy, and which our ancestors, till then, had been long puzzling themselves to untie. No friendly relation can exist, no reciprocity of good offices and kind feeling can be found, where one party is bent upon the destruction of the other, and uses apparent friendship only as a mask to conceal its treacherous designs.

Roman Catholics would gladly entangle Protestant England in the meshes of the Great Fisherman, and rumours are frequently put forward which turn out to be fictions, of some mission authorized by the British Government at Rome to ask the Pope's aid in governing the Queen's dominions.

In June last, there was such a report, but Lord Derby directed a reply to Mr. Lord's letter of June 26, stating that such rumour and assertion were without foundation.

Since then, the question has been again revived.

The Tablet, of September 11, has the following:

"AFFAIRS OF ROME.-Sir Henry Bulwer left Florence on September 1st for Leghorn, where he will embark for Civita Vecchia, and proceed thence to Rome. This journey,' says the Florence correspondent of the Daily News, undertaken at a period when the Eternal City is most deserted, and the air of the surrounding Campagna most unwholesome, shows very plainly that Sir Henry has some important question to settle with the Papal Government, and that, although his credentials are limited to Central Italy, his sphere of diplomatic action will extend farther south.' The writer goes on to hint that the object of Sir Henry's journey must be to endeavour to induce the Pope to check the political tendencies of the Irish clergy by a pastoral address, and adds:-'To effect this, without compromising the dignity of the British Government, would be a delicate piece of service and worthy of Sir Henry's well-known tact.'"

We find the following, of a later date, in another journal :—

"The Debats' publishes the following: We have received advices from Rome to the 14th September. A long interview which had taken place a few days previously between Sir Henry Bulwer and the Cardinal Secretary of State, was the topic of conversation. According to report, the following is the substance of what passed:

The amicable relations of the two governments were first brought forward, relations which have been somewhat disturbed on the one side by the introduction of a Roman Episcopal hierarchy in England, and by the imprisonment of Murray; on the other side by the recent legislative measures and by the Achilli trial. To preserve better relations in future, Sir H. Bulwer is reported to have hinted that it would be advisable to accredit to Rome an agent with a higher title than that of consul-for instance, a simple Envoy. To this it was replied, that it would be time to discuss such a question when a Papal

Nuncio was admitted to the court of England; and that as far as Mr. Freeborn, the English Consul at Rome, was personally concerned, the Pontifical Government had clearly given to understand that the maintenance or recal of that agent was totally indifferent to it, by its not having deprived him of its exequatur. As regards the demand made by Sir Henry Bulwer for the documents relative to Murray's imprisonment, the reply of the Secretary of State is said to have been very unequivocal, declaring his inability to do so. He is even reported to have said,—'A judgment has been given in England, which has astonished and afflicted us (the Achilli trial). But, notwithstanding our astonishment and affliction, we do not wish to question the sentence pronounced by the legal courts of a regular government, master of its own penal legislation. We also are a regular government. We have a penal code which differs from yours, but a code sanctioned by the ruler, for a long time in force in the land, and regulated according to rules which we deny to any other Government the right of questioning. Murray was sentenced by that code, according to its prescribed legal forms. A demand for the documents relative to his trial would be equivalent to a suspicion of false dealing, a suspicion which would be an insult to the justice of the Roman Courts, and to the State which entrusts to them the honour, property, and life of its subjects. We disclaim against such an insult without discussion, and will not establish a dangerous precedent without communicating the documents you demand. The sentence was legal, and there it must rest.' The conversation then turned on other subjects of a secondary nature-railways, and the deplorable state of Ireland. At Rome the news of this interview was, generally speaking, regarded as satisfactory."

Mr. Lord has since addressed a letter to Lord Derby upon the subject; and we subjoin his letter, and that sent by Lord Derby's direction, in reply to it :

(Copy.)

The Right Hon. the Earl of Derby.

Protestant Association, 6, Serjeants' Inn,
Fleet-street, Oct. 18, 1852.

MY LORD,-You were pleased to favour me with a prompt reply to my former letter, dated June 26; and to give an unqualified denial to a report to which I had drawn your attention with reference to the alleged mission of some Diplomatic Agent to Rome to treat with the Pope, on certain important subjects then referred to. Since then a rumour has gone abroad, attended with some matters of so circumstantial a kind as to give probability to it, and have impressed many with a belief of its truthfulness. The rumour to which I now refer appeared in substance in the "Debats," and other papers.

It is to the effect that Sir Henry Bulwer had visited Rome, and when there had an interview with Cardinal Antonelli, on which occasion Sir Henry is represented as having hinted that it would be advisable for the British Government to accredit to Rome an agent with a higher title than that of Consul, and that Cardinal Antonelli had replied that it would be time to discuss such a question when