that frequent elections, except in towns and cities, are desirable. General Grant would make as good a president for three terms as for two or one. He has more ability, and, perhaps, more statesmanship, than he gets credit for; but he is too much of a democrat, and avows he has no policy to be insisted on against the will of the people, meaning, by the will of the people, not their will expressed officially through the constitution and laws, but their will as collected from caucuses, the resolutions of public meetings, leading journals, and delegations of bankers, merchants, mechanics, and simple workingmen, which is of no authority for the government, and the very will that a president ought often to resist and defeat. The president, in vetoing the senate financial bill, supposed to be favorable to the inflation of the currency, gained the good-will of bankers, capitalists, bondholders, and the whole creditor class, by increasing the value of their securities ten or fifteen per cent., and has of course secured their support; and yet we approved the veto, as necessary to save the honor of the government. error was committed by the financial policy of Mr. Chase, who unwisely listened to Messrs. Jay Cooke & Co.

The

Protestantism has had here its free and full development, and has proved its incompetency to sustain wise and just government, or either private or public morality. We see this in the dishonest rings which everywhere obtain, in the venality of our public men, hardly one of whom has not his price. We see it in the lack of private morality, shown by such revelations as those of Plymouth Church. Whether Henry Ward Beecher is or is not an adulterer, matters comparatively little to the public at large; but the revelations of the state of morals in Plymouth Church, the tone of religion and morals exhibited in the statements made to the public by both the accusers and the accused, prove that our Protestant society has become or is becoming rotten to the core. Protestantism has ceased to be an objective religion or a religion independent of the soul, over it, above it, commanding it, and restraining the passions and lawless tendencies of human nature, and has become in its successive developments purely emotional, sentimental, subjective. Beecher started with the assumption of the purity of human nature, the holiness of its instincts and tendencies, which, therefore, are to be indulged, not restrained: and Beecher is a representative man, and shows us in his own teaching what is the popular tendency of the age and country. Hence

his popularity, which is immense, greater by far than that of any other Protestant preacher at home or abroad. His popularity is not due to his superior ability as a thinker, his superior erudition, diction, eloquence, or originality, for in all these he is surpassed by hundreds and thousands even among his own countrymen, but to the delicacy with which he feels the public pulse, the sagacity with which he ascertains the rising public opinion of Protestants, the fidelity with which his own mind and heart respond to the passions, emotions, sentiments, tendencies, and aspirations of his age and public, and to his unscrupulousness in yielding to and expressing them. The Beecher nature is receptive, susceptive, and sympathetic, and leads by following. In the sermons and writings of Henry Ward Beecher you see reflected, as in a mirror, the present state and development of the Protestant mind and heart, and not only what Protestantism now is, but what it is rapidly becoming. Hence he is, as we have said, a representative man, and in the revelations of the moral state of the Plymouth Church we may see the logical results or the legitimate fruits to be expected from the Protestant spirit. Hence he and his church may be appealed to as furnishing ample proof that Protestantism is powerless to sustain wise and just government, or private and public virtue.

Protestantism can furnish no remedy for the evils that threaten our society, and its spasmodic efforts at reform only, make matters worse. Our hope for our government and` society, for politics and morals, depends therefore on Catholics, for they only of all our population are placed by their religion on a plane above paganism, and have in it sound principles and the supernatural helps needed for private and public morals. This hope should be strong and consoling to the American citizen in view of the astonishing increase of Catholics in the country in numbers, wealth and influence, in the multiplication of churches,-some of them not unworthy of the name,-of colleges, of academies for our daughters, and of parochial and other schools for the children of the so-called humbler classes, which, however inferior to what we could wish them, are vastly superior to any others in the country, at least in a moral and spiritual or Christian point of view; but it is somewhat damped by the fact that we cannot measure the growth of Catholic influence by the increase of the number of Catholics, of Catholic churches, and of Catholic institutions. We fear, as we have

already said, that Catholics imbibe from association with non-Catholics not a few of the popular errors so prevalent in the country, and which threaten its ruin. It is only, the Catholic Church that can save us; but even she can do it only through the action and influence of Catholics, and through them only by their standing by the faith in its purity and integrity, and faithfully observing in their conduct what it requires of them. If they suffer their faith to become crusted over with the popular errors of Protestants, and in their daily conduct or practice differ hardly at all from them, their action and influence will not be Catholic, and hardly more salutary than the action and influence of non-Catholics. Such, to a great extent, we fear is the fact. In americanizing, we protestantize. We do not see that the Catholic press is much more elevated in tone and sentiment or influence, when not treating expressly of Catholic faith and morals, than the non-Catholic press. Our political Catholics do not usually act in reference to a higher standard than do Protestants. We see in them the same lack of principle, of conscientiousness, of integrity, of public spirit, and disinterestedness. When we talk with them, we find their views of political science and statesmanship as crude and as low as those of their non-Catholic fellow-citizens. Their standard of political morality is popular opinion; and it would seem that they agree with their Protestant neighbors that vox populi est vox Dei, that what is popular must needs be right, and also that one seeks or holds office for his own private advantage.

A very large proportion of us are too much attached to the world, are too intent on getting up in the world, are too obsequious to the rich, and too afraid of poverty. We are by no means free from snobbishness. We are too fond of show and parade, too solicitous to stand well with the enemies of our religion, and too sensitive to the opinion nonCatholics may have of us. We thus fail to exert a truly Catholic influence on our countrymen, or to do what we might and should do to save the nation from the ruin that stares it in the face. Catholics abroad have forgotten the precepts of the Gospel, and God has suffered them to be persecuted, to become a prey to the secret societies, and to be oppressed by the enemies of Christ, as a needed chastisement; and we are beginning to need, and must expect ere long to receive, a similar chastisement. We do not believe the peace, freedom, and prosperity we now enjoy will continue, because

we are growing too worldly, and are forgetting to be faithful to our duty as Catholics in a democratic country,-that of introducing an unworldly and spiritual element into the life of the nation which it lacks, and which Protestantism serves only to extinguish. The outlook for religion and politics is to us not encouraging, but decidedly discouraging, or at least, if we hope still, we hope with trembling; and we dare not indulge in the exultations of either our Catholic brethren or of our non-Catholic countrymen, who believe things are going on finely.

The outlook abroad would be cheering, if we did not see our leading Catholics looking to political agencies to reinstate Catholics and their chief in their rights. We regard the calamities of Catholics in France and Spain, their persecution in Italy, Switzerland, and Prussia, as blessings in disguise. They were merited, and give Catholics an opportunity to expiate centuries of unfaithfulness to their religion, and to atone for their statolatry, or preference of the state to the church of God. They preferred Cæsar to Peter, and Cæsar is now teaching them what fools they were. No thanks are due to Cæsar, for his intentions are evil, and God in due time will punish him according to his deserts; but in his madness Cæsar is teaching Catholics that their only safety is in returning to Peter, and abiding by the Rock on which the church is built, and whence flow the waters of life.

The state can have no stability unless founded on religion, and no security where the people do not in their faith and love place the church above the state. The church does not hold from the state nor depend upon it; and where the Catholic people so believe and love and obey the church for her own sake as the kingdom of God on earth, Cæsar can do them no harm, and persecutions are to be received with joy, and with sorrow only for the persecutors. If the Catholic nations of Europe still retain the seed of faith in their bosom, the afflictions they now suffer will cause it to germinate, spring up, blossom, and bear fruit a hundred-fold.

HOME POLITICS.

[From Brownson's Quarterly Review for October, 1875.]

POLITICS abroad present little that is encouraging to the statesman or the Christian. Cæsarism and liberalism, or, perhaps, we should write, cæsarism and communism, have formed, by natural affinity, a league offensive and defensive against civil and religious liberty, the family and property, the rights of God and society, and are chiefly engaged in a sacrilegious war on the pope, the divinely appointed guardian of all rights, the rights of conscience, of the family, of nations and individuals, of sovereigns and of subjects. They are doing incalculable evil to society and the souls of men, but they will fail in their purpose and be shamefully defeated in the end, for the Lord God omnipotent reigneth. Yet we seem to have fallen on those times predicted in the New Testament, that, "except those days be shortened, no flesh can be saved."

At home things appear, at least, to be about as bad as they can be. No doubt the journals, whose mission it is to create a sensation whenever possible, exaggerate the corruption of public men, and paint the political and financial delinquencies of the day in the blackest colors possible; and no wise man believes that things are, from a worldly point of view, half so bad as represented: not all the representatives of the people are peculators, rogues, and swindlers, nor are the people universally venal. We believe there are some honest officials, and some people in the country who are not corrupt or easily corruptible. We do not believe President Grant is a positively bad man: he certainly has the virtue of standing by his friends; but unhappily his friends, when not notoriously incompetent, are for the most part rogues, swindlers, thieves, or blackguards. His great fault is that he lacks a high moral sense, genuine public spirit, and that he looks upon himself as simply detailed to perform certain duties as president. Yet we think it not unlikely that his successor will render his administration respectable, and cause it to be regretted, as Harrison's and Tyler's adminis tration made Van Buren's administration respectable, as Frank Pierce's administration made the Taylor-Fillmore administration respectable; and so on down to the present.

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