hey really
purposed that Louis Napoleon should be a _president faineant_, while yet
permitted to retain the nominal functions of government. Louis Napoleon
strengthened himself by a new ministry, in which the assembly, by a
large majority, declared its want of confidence. M. Montalembert and
some others, who were expected to vote on the side of the opposition,
voted with the Buonapartists. This made it evident that a strong
party among the priesthood deemed it the best policy to support Louis
Napoleon, as the friend of the pope's temporal power at Rome, and of the
Roman Catholic religion in France. A very large number of the priests,
and of the lay devotees, refused to trust Louis Napoleon as a friend of
the church. They did not forget that his first public act, on arriving
at the estate of manhood, was to create, or at all events aid in
council, and in the field, an insurrection against the pope. Neither did
they forget that, although a French army garrisoned Rome, to support the
pope under the auspices of the president of the French republic, that
the president in his less fortunate days had animadverted in severe
terms upon the education and patriotism of the Roman Catholic clergy of
France. He had in one of his works drawn invidious comparisons between
them and the German clergy, much to the disadvantage of the former. The
following was especially quoted by that section of the French clergy
and laity who were unwilling to give the president a warm support:--"The
clergy will cease to be ultramontane when they shall be obliged, as
formerly, to distinguish themselves by learning, and to obtain their
education from the same sources as the generality of' citizens. Southern
Germany, without contradiction, is the country in which the Roman
Catholic clergy are the best instructed, the most tolerant, and the
most liberal; and why are they so? Because the young men who in Germany
destine themselves to the priesthood, learn theology in common with
students destined for other professions. Instead of being from infancy
sequestered from the world, and obtaining in ecclesiastical seminaries
a spirit hostile to the society in the midst of which they have to live,
they learn at an early age to be citizens, before being priests. The
consequence is that the German Catholic clergy are distinguished by
great enlightenment and ardent patriotism. There are no sacrifices
which they are not ready to make for the triumph of liberty, and for
t