noble lives under circumstances often cruelly unjust and always rigorously hard. Of such as these, said Hadrian, was the English Race composed. He reminded England that she had received more from the Latin Church than any other nation: that her gains had been direct before 1534: indirect after that date, when her natural enemies were dragged down by the corruptions of Rome. (He thought they would enjoy that point.) He assumed nothing, not even a prejudice. He advised without commanding: He directed without trespassing. The latter half of the “Epistle” concerned those who owed Him spiritual allegiance: to these He spoke with all authority. He blamed their phrenetic anxiety to enter into worldly competition. He pointed out that the Penal Laws, which from 1534 to 1829 had deprived them of “that culture which contact with a wider world alone can give,” had rendered the Catholic aborigines corporeally effete and intellectually inferior to the rest of the nation. He did not blame noluntary defects: but facts were facts, and only fools would refuse to face them. These defects would find their remedy in the influx of new and vigorous blood and unexhausted brains. He quoted the words of a great critic who said that the religious movement of our day would be almost droll if it were not, from the tempers and actions which it excited, so extremely irreligious. It had taken four centuries to produce the present position of Catholics in England; and, as no man has a right to expect miracles, it might take four centuries more to restore them to a corporeal and intellectual equality with the average of their fellow-countrymen. To this end, He bade them to welcome and to comfort accessions to their number, not (as was the present custom) with slavering sentimentality giving place to slights, snubs, slanders, and sneers: but with brotherly love, putting in practice the Faith which they professed; and
letting their light shine, instead of advertising comparatively paltry efforts at illumination. He reminded them that “God made man right, but he had sought out many abstruse reasonings”; and, for a society of Christians to pretend to be “the world” or “of the world” was an incongruous monstrosity. He warned them that the kind of conscience which they cultivated, the conscience which descends from its high personal plane, which consents to haggle and discuss how far resistance to temptation must be carried, which deigns to consider consequences, to weigh possibilities, and to guard against disaster, was the proximate occasion for the well-founded charges of hypocrisy and humbug brought against all religion by lewd fellows of the baser sort. As for those of the clergy, whose comportment elicited from outsiders testimonials to the effect that they were “thorough men of the world having nothing clerical about them except their collars” or “thoroughly good chaps who take their glass and enjoy a smutty story like ordinary beings,”—His Holiness assured Their Right Reverencies, Their Very Reverencies, and Their Reverencies, that they completely misconceived their sacred character.
“Our citizenship is in heaven (ἡ πολιτεια ἡμων ἐν οὐρανωι.) If then in very truth, ye look for a city which is an heavenly, ye must esteem yourselves as being ‘in the world’ as strangers (ξενοι), or resident aliens (μετοικοι); and so ye ought not to be ‘curiosi in aliena republica.’ ”
He ordained that married Anglican clergy (whose wives were alive and who possessed the grace of a Divine Vocation) on resuming allegiance to the See of Peter, should be admitted to the priesthood and serve secular churches: but faculties for hearing confessions were not to be disposed to married priests; and each such priest, having charge of a mission, must nominate and maintain at least one Regular as curate whose sole duty should be the administration of the sacrament of penance. Finally, the Supreme Pontiff commanded the sacrifice of that phantom uniformity which had been the curse of Catholicism for four centuries, and the retention and cultivation of national and local rites and uses. And He commended England to St. George, Protector of the Kingdom.
The Archsocialists were bitterly chagrined by the pontifical denunciation of their “Open Letter”; but the “Epistle to the English” made them gnash their teeth. In print, they gibbered at first, and vomited after their manner. In congress, each one suspected his neighbour of being a “traitor to the Cause” whose treachery had taken the form of urging his comrades corporately to attract the pontifical fulmination. There was a dreadful scene at West Ham and a free fight at Battersea. Comrade Pete Quillet threatened to ’ave Comrade Bill Meggin’s blighted ear; and had as much of the left one as twenty-seven unclean gorgonzola-coloured fangs could tear off, before he succumbed to six boots, a bottle, and a harness-buckle. At headquarters, the demagogues did behave with outward decency: not disguising their disappointment, but casting about for a new lead. The curious thing was that not one of them now but was more than ever anxious for alliance with the Power which disdained and damned them. It was the Power which they coveted—and admired, in the first intention of the word. Their attitude to the Pope was that of those who lick the hand that lashes them. The Pope was not a Penrhyn, against whose liberty they could invoke the laws at which otherwise they girded: He was to them something immense, intangible, potent, detestable—and most desirable.
While they were debating as to the precise posture in which they next should cringe, Comrade Jerry Sant communicated startling news. He was a delegate from the north: by profession, first a haberdasher’s bagman, secondly a socialist; Socialism appearing to him an easy way of self-aggrandisement. As a rule, he did not push forward, working in the background, anonymously writing for the papers, watching for a chance to snatch. He whispered a word to his neighbour at the table.
“Rot!” said the latter.
“Rot yersel’!” Jerry retorted.
The other Fellowshipper guffawed. “Here, I say, Mr. Chairman, this Comrade says
