epublican estimate of the Carlist religion. The San Sebastian
newspaper, _El Diario_, may be assumed to be a fair exponent of the
sentiments of the anti-Carlists, and thus emphatically, and not without
a spice of antithesis, it delivers itself:

"The religion which has the commandment, 'Thou shalt not kill,' forbids
murder.

"The religion which has the commandment, 'Thou shalt not steal,' forbids
robbery.

"The religion which is peace, obedience, and love, is no friend of war,
rebellion, and massacre.

"Resigned and joyous in other days, its martyrs went to death in the
amphitheatre of Rome, and on the plains of Saragossa, pardon in their
souls and prayer on their lips; to-day pardon is exchanged for wrath,
and prayer for reproach. Instead of the martyr's palm, we have the
Berdan breech-loader and the flash of petroleum.

"Anointed of the Lord, ministers of Him who died invoking blessings on
His enemies, kindle the fires of fratricidal strife, which they call a
sacred war, and lead on and inflame their dupes by the pretence that the
gates of Paradise are to be forced open by gunshot.

"Meanwhile the bishops are silent, Rome is dumb, the moral law sleeps,
the canon law is forgotten; and these pastors, transforming their flocks
into packs of wolves, scour the plains, blessing murder and sanctifying
conflagration.

"'King by Divine right,' they cry, like the legists of the Lower Empire;
'Die or believe,' like the sons of the Prophet. Apostles without knowing
it, they seek to achieve the triumph of a Pagan principle by a Saracenic
process.

"They say that religion is lost, because it is shorn of the honour and
power their kings gave it; that the portals of heaven are barred,
because they have forfeited their tithes and first-fruits, their rents
and fat benefices; and they try to convince us by discharges of musketry
that our whole future life depends, on the one hand, on a question of
vanity, and on the other, on a question of stomach.

"Holy Apostles, disciples of Him who had not a stone whereon to lay His
head, you who conquered the earth with no arms but those of word and
example, oh! would you not say if you returned here below, 'Those who
preach by the voice of platoons; those who evangelize from the mouth of
cannon; those are not, cannot be, our disciples and successors, for they
are not fishers of souls, but fishers of snug posts under government'?

"And you, glorious martyrs of the Roman circus and Sarag