bidding
of the court of Rome, disturb these peaceful shores. But although such
fears may be visionary, it is more visionary still to suppose for one
moment that the claims of Gregory VII., of Innocent III., and of Boniface
VIII. have been disinterred in the nineteenth century, like hideous
mummies picked out of Egyptian sarcophagi, in the interests of archaeology,
or without a definite and practical aim." What, then, was the clear and
foregone purpose behind the parade of all these astonishing reassertions?
The first was--by claims to infallibility in creed, to the prerogative of
miracles, to dominion over the unseen world--to satisfy spiritual
appetites, sharpened into reaction and made morbid by "the levity of the
destructive speculations so widely current, and the notable hardihood of
the anti-Christian writing of the day." This alone, however, would not
explain the deliberate provocation of all the "risks of so daring a raid
upon the civil sphere." The answer was to be found in the favourite
design, hardly a secret design, of restoring by the road of force when any
favourable opportunity should arise, and of re-erecting, the terrestrial
throne of the popedom, "even if it could only be re-erected on the ashes
of the city, and amidst the whitening bones of the people."

And this brings the writer to the immediate practical aspects of his
tract. "If the baleful power which is expressed by the phrase _Curia
Romana_, and not at all adequately rendered in its historic force by the
usual English equivalent 'Court of Rome,' really entertains the scheme, it
doubtless counts on the support in every country of an organised and
devoted party; which, when it can command the scales of political power,
will promote interference, and while it is in a minority, will work for
securing neutrality. As the peace of Europe may be in jeopardy, and as the
duties even of England, as one of its constabulary authorities, might come
to be in question, it would be most interesting to know the mental
attitude of our Roman catholic fellow-countrymen in England and Ireland
with reference to the subject; and it seems to be one on which we are
entitled to solicit information." Too commonly the spirit of the convert
was to be expressed by the notorious words, "a catholic first, an
Englishman afterwards"--words that properly convey no more than a truism,
"for every Christian must seek to place his religion even before his
country in his inner heart; b