now rarely to be found among those
who specially represent the spirit and teaching of their Church, and
much more frequently among men who are unconnected with it, and often
with all dogmatic theology. How seldom has the distinctively Catholic
press seriously censured unjust wars, unscrupulous alliances, violations
of constitutional obligations, unprovoked aggressions, great outbursts
of intolerance and fanaticism! It is, indeed, not too much to say that
some of the worst moral perversions of modern times have been supported
and stimulated by a great body of genuinely Catholic opinion both in the
priesthood and in the press. The anti-Semite movement, the shameful
indifference to justice shown in France in the Dreyfus case, and the
countless frauds, outrages and oppressions that accompanied the
domination of the Irish Land League are recent and conspicuous examples.

Among secular-minded laymen the _Coup d'etat_ of Louis Napoleon was, as
I have said, differently judged. Few things in French history are more
honourable than the determination with which so many men who were the
very flower of the French nation refused to take the oath or give their
adhesion to the new Government. Great statesmen and a few distinguished
soldiers, with a splendid past behind them and with the prospect of an
illustrious career before them; men of genius who in their professorial
chairs had been the centres of the intellectual life of France;
functionaries who had by laborious and persevering industry climbed the
steps of their profession and depended for their livelihood on its
emoluments, accepted poverty, exile and the long eclipse of the most
honourable ambitions rather than take an oath which seemed to justify
the usurpation. At the same time, some statesmen of unquestionable
honour did not wholly and in all its parts condemn it. Lord Palmerston
was conspicuous among them. Without expressing approval of all that had
been done, he always maintained that the condition of France was such
that a violent subversion of an unworkable Constitution and the
establishment of a strong government had become absolutely necessary;
that the _Coup d'etat_ saved France from the gravest and most imminent
danger of anarchy and civil war, and that this fact was its
justification. If it had not been for the acts of ferocious tyranny
which immediately followed it, his opinion would have been more largely
shared.

It is probable that the moral character of _Co