l should be
dissolved in case of his death, had seemed an injury or an insult to the
episcopate. These measures undid the favourable effect of the caution
with which the bishops had been received. They did what the dislike of
infallibility alone would not have done. They broke the spell of
veneration for Pius IX. which fascinated the Catholic Episcopate. The
jealousy with which he guarded his prerogative in the appointment of
officers, and of the great Commission, the pressure during the
elections, the prohibition of national meetings, the refusal to hold the
debates in a hall where they could be heard, irritated and alarmed many
bishops. They suspected that they had been summoned for the very purpose
they had indignantly denied, to make the papacy more absolute by
abdicating in favour of the official prelature of Rome. Confidence gave
way to a great despondency, and a state of feeling was aroused which
prepared the way for actual opposition when the time should come.

Before Christmas the Germans and the French were grouped nearly as they
remained to the end. After the flight of Cardinal Mathieu, and the
refusal of Cardinal Bonnechose to coalesce, the friends of the latter
gravitated towards the Roman centre, and the friends of the former held
their meetings at the house of the Archbishop of Paris. They became,
with the Austro-German meeting under Cardinal Schwarzenberg, the
strength and substance of the party that opposed the new dogma; but
there was little intercourse between the two, and their exclusive
nationality made them useless as a nucleus for the few scattered
American, English, and Italian bishops whose sympathies were with them.
To meet this object, and to centralise the deliberations, about a dozen
of the leading men constituted an international meeting, which included
the best talents, but also the most discordant views. They were too
little united to act with vigour, and too few to exercise control. Some
months later they increased their numbers. They were the brain but not
the will of the opposition. Cardinal Rauscher presided. Rome honoured
him as the author of the Austrian Concordat; but he feared that
infallibility would bring destruction on his work, and he was the most
constant, the most copious, and the most emphatic of its opponents.

When the debate opened, on the 28th of December, the idea of proclaiming
the dogma by acclamation had not been abandoned. The Archbishop of Paris
exacted a promise