y-six, in a
population of twenty-five thousand Catholics, at the city of Bonn, which
M. Reinkens had selected as the seat and centre of his episcopal
ministrations. Meanwhile, there was a considerable reaction in
prevaricating Bavaria. The Catholic minority was changed into a majority,
and the Prussian Catholic representation, which was called the fraction of
the centre, was strengthened at the elections of 1874 by an increase from
twenty-five to forty votes. The chancellor, although enlightened, was not
corrected. Nothing could divert him from his evil purpose. By a strange
confusion of ideas, he called _Kulturcampf_ (struggle for civilization)
the open war which he waged against the Church, the source of all
civilization and of liberty of conscience. The persecuting laws which,
with the aid of the so-called "liberal" party, or party of unbelief, he
succeeded in causing to be enacted were to the following effect. As was to
be expected of the blind political fanaticism of the party, the Jesuits
were the first objects of hostility, and the first victims of persecution.
The May laws required that these unoffending individuals should be
expelled without any form of trial, and deprived of their rights of
citizens. At the same time, certain religious orders which, it was
pretended, were affiliated with the Jesuits, were subjected to the like
treatment.

All ecclesiastical seminaries were suppressed, the solons of legislation
pretending that it was necessary to oblige the candidates for the
priesthood to imbue their minds in lay schools, with the ideas and wants
of modern society.

The new laws abolished articles fifteen, sixteen and eighteen of the
Prussian Constitution, which guaranteed the autonomy of the different
forms of worship; they bestowed on the State the nomination to
ecclesiastical functions, and went so far as to forbid bishops the use of
their right to declare apostates excluded from the Catholic communion.

They suppressed the subsidies and allowances which the State, until that
time, paid to the diocesan establishments and the clergy generally,
notwithstanding that such subsidies were not gratuitously bestowed by the
government, but were nothing else than, as in France and Belgium, the
restitution, in part, of the debt due by the State to the Church. It was
provided, however, that such members of the clergy as should make their
submission should at once have their salaries restored. By a refinement of
crue