t shut my eyes to the facts that militate against the influence
of the Catholic spirit,--facts which have transpired more especially
during the last third of a century, and which are still in
progress,--facts that are fitted to excite in every mind that
sympathises with the Catholic cause, the most lively apprehensions. On
comparing the respective progress made since 1814 by non-Catholic
Christian nations, with the advancement of power attained by Catholic
nations, one is struck with astonishment at the disproportion. England
and the United States, which are Protestant Powers, and Russia, a Greek
Power, have assumed to an incalculable degree the dominion of immense
regions, destined to be densely peopled, and already teeming with a
large population. England has nearly conquered all those vast and
populous regions known under the generic name of India. In America she
has diffused civilization to the extreme north, in the deserts of Upper
Canada. Through the toil of her children, she has taken possession of
every point and position of an island,--New Holland (Australia),--which
is as large as a continent; and she has been sending forth her fresh
shoots over all the archipelagos with which the great ocean is studded.
The United States have swollen out to a prodigious extent, in wealth
and possessions, over the surface of their ancient domain. They have,
moreover, enlarged on all sides the limits of that domain, anciently
confined to a narrow stripe along the shores of the Atlantic. They now
sit on the two oceans. San Francisco has become the pendant of New York,
and promises speedily to rival it in its destinies. They have proved
their superiority over the Catholic nations of the New World, and have
subjected them to a dictatorship which admits of no farther dispute. To
the authority of these two Powers,--England and the United
States,--after an attempt made by the former on China, the two most
renowned empires of the East,--empires which represent nearly the
numerical half of the human race,--China and Japan,--seem to be on the
point of yielding. Russia, again, appears to be assuming every day a
position of growing importance in Europe. During all this time, what way
has been made by the Catholic nations? The foremost of them all, the
most compact, the most glorious,--France,--which seemed fifty years ago
to have mounted the throne of civilization, has seen, through a course
of strange disasters, her sceptre shivered and he