THE TABLET

A IVeekly Newspaper and Review.

WITH SUPPLEMENT.

D u m VOBIS G R A TU LAM U R , AN IM O S ET IAM ADDIMUS U T IN INCOSPTIS V E STR IS CONSTAN TER M AN EA T IS .

From the Brief of His Holiness to T he T a b let, June 4, 1870,

Vol. 43. No, 1766. L o n d o n , F e b r u a r y 14, 1874.

P rice sd. B y P o s t 5 d.

[R e g i s t e r e d a t th e G e n e r a l P o s t O f f i c e a s a N ew spaper

•C h r o n ic l e o f t h e W e e k : —

Page

The Great Catholic Meetings.— Telegrams Received.— The Conservative Majority.— The Future Cabinet.— Mr. Disraeli and the “ Great Families.” —Mr. Disraeli •on the Indian Famine.— And on Home Rule and Education.—-The Influences at Work.-The Attitude o f the Government, and the Speakership.— Liberal Defeats.— Missing Members—the “ Doctrinaires.” — Electoral Caprices.— Working Men's Candidates.—'Decrease of Conservative Strength.— .Some Irish Contests.— The Galway Elections.— The Bengal •Famine.— The Swiss Catholics and Mr. Urquhart, &c., &c. .. 193

C O N T E N T S .

L e a d e r s :

Page

The Duel of the Meetings .. 197 The Lessons of the Elections^ .. 198 The Result of the Irish Elec­

tions .. .. . . . . 199 Bismarck v. La Marmora .. 200 An English Freethinker on the

German Persecution . . .. 201 0 ur P r o t e s t a n t C o n t em po r a r ie s :

Conservative England—Radical

R i tu a l is ts .................................... 202 R e v ie w s :

Three Essays on the Maintenance of Church of England as an Established Ghurcli .. . . 203

■ R eview s (continued) :

Sainte Cécile, et la Société Romaine

Page aux deux premiers siècles .. 204 S h o r t N o t ic e :

Mary Desmond and other Poems 205 Literary, Artistic, and Scientific

G o s s i p .............................................205 C orrespondence :

Catholic Education in Ireland .. 206 The Meeting in St. James’s Hall 207 Doubtful History .. .. . . 207 Louise Lateau . . .. . . 207 The Dominican Nuns o f Pe­

rugia .................................... 207 R ome :

Letter from our own Correspondent 209

R ecord of G erm an P er secution :

The Campaign against the

Page

Church, its True Object .. 2ir Anti-Catholic Meeting in London 212 The Lower House . . . . .. 2x2 Herr Reichensperger .. .. 212 Herr Mallinckrodt .. .. .. 2x2 Penalties on Bishops .. . . 212 Probable Results of the Persecu­

tion in Germany .. .. .. 213 Great Catholic Meeting at St.

James’s Hall .. .. .. .. 214 Great Meeting at Spitalfields . . 215 I r e l a n d :

Letter from our Dublin Corre­

spondent .. .. . . . . 215 General N ews .. . . .. 216 Supplement :

Great Meeting at St. James’s Hall.

C H R O N I C L E O F T H E W E E K .

■ THE GREAT CATHOLIC MEETINGS. T

'H A T the Catholic meeting of the 6th was a very great successs is incontrovertible. Not only was it attended by the heads or representatives of every Catholic

-family of any note in England and Scotland, but the great room which gives its name to St. James’s Hall was filled long before the hour named to overflowing. And it overflowed— not metaphorically, but literally— for first a second room in the same building had to be taken; then the overflow of this second meeting had to adjourn to the Church in Warwick-street, where a third was held ; and lastly, those who could not gain admission to any one of the three meetings, in numbers variously estimated from 1,000 to 3,000 — we way safely put them at 2,000— marched to Trafalgarsquare, held a fourth meeting, and passed the same Resolutions by the light of torches at the foot of the Nelson Column. We give in our Supplement of this week a full and accurate report of the speeches at the great meeting in St. James’s Hall. A t the second meeting in St. James’s Hall Sir Charles Clifford was in the chair, and the meeting was addressed by Mr. Wegg-Prosser, Mr. T . Galton, Canon Macmullen, Canon Browne of Stamford, and others ; while at Warwick-street the Hon. and Rev. Dr. Talbot presided, and the Right RevJMgr.[Patterson, the Rev. J. Bamber, and others spoke. The assembly in Trafalgar-square was addressed by Mr. Nevins and the Very Rev. Prior Wilberforce, passed the resolutions with enthusiasm, cheered the Pope, the Archbishop, and the Duke of Norfolk, and expressed its disapprobation of the persecutors in the usual British fashion. We comment upon the proceedings at greater length elsewhere.

The importance of this event and the ex-

tblegrams traordinary interest and enthusiasm excited by receive», it are a sufficient justification of the length of our report. But we have been compelled by the irresistible exigencies of space to withhold the text o f the telegraphic messages of cordial sympathy forwarded to the meeting, These telegrams, twenty in number, afford a striking proof of the importance attached to the demonstration, and to the question which was the occasion of it, by our continental brethren. Telegrams were received from the Catholic Electors of Cologne; from the Catholic Electoral Committee, Bonn, Rheinbach; from the Vienna Catholic C lu b ; from the Alservorstadt Catholic Club, Vienna; from the Landstrasse Catholic Union, Vienna; from Count Ballerstrom, President of the Catholic U nion in Breslau; from the ten deputies of the Catholic party in Baden (Carlsruhe) ; from the Catholic electors of Bonn; from the Catholic Union

N ew Series V o l , XI. No. 275.]

in the Inner Stadt, Vienna; from the Catholic Union, Bonn ; from Appellations-Rath Isbert and 250 Catholic men, Limburg ; from the Catholic Patriotic Union, Vienna ; from the Catholic Electoral Committee, Treves ; from Herr Director Philip Vert, the Very Rev. Canon Moufang and the Catholics of Mainz ; from the President of the German Catholic Union, Mainz ; from Professor Dr. Forster, President of the Concordia Society, Aix-la- Chapelle ; from Count Arco Nyberg and the Catholics of Munich; from the Catholic Association, Leeds ; from the Catholic Union, Florence ; from the Prince of Campagnano and the Società degli Interessi Cattolici at Rome.

Now that the elections are virtually over,

t “ eER- 582 members having been elected, we may majority. f°m a pretty accurate idea of the relative strength of parties in the new Parliament. The Liberals have been thoroughly beaten, and they have won no local successes— as in Scotland, for instance— to an extent sufficient materially to lessen the magnitude of their defeat. The Conservatives had on Thursday evening gained 88 seats, the Liberals 33 , which gives the Conservatives a net gain of 55, or n o votes on a division. At the dissolution Government had a majority of 64, and the excess of the nett Conservative gain over this figure gives the majority, which the Conservatives have already secured. There are 46 seats still to be filled, and allowing on these the average amount of gains to each side, we may assume that Mr. Disraeli will find himself at the head of a majority of nearly fifty, This would be a very respectable working majority for any Government, but the Conservative leaders have their party so well in hand that in their control its efficiency is doubled. Mr. Disraeli has never had such a chance before ; he will now be able to frame his measures on his own lines instead of on those of his adversaries, and, to carry them by his own strength and not by hostile sufferance. The Times sees this, and says that we have a right to expect from him “ a bolder and more constructive “ policy.”

CABINET

There has indeed been a vague rumour in thb future (-iie Q ubs that Mr_Disraeli will not take the

• • Premiership ; that the internal politics of the party render it desirable that Lord Derby should be Prime Minister, and that Mr. Disraeli has a fancy for the Foreign Office. We cannot, however, believe in the existence of this arrangement ; and should at first have imagined it to be an unauthorized suggestion thrown out by some outsider anxious to heal the divisions of 1867, and to win back to his party the services of Lord Salisbury and Lord Carnarvon. But we have some reason to believe that the last named statesman is no longer indisposed to support Mr. Disraeli, and to the former the future Conservative Premier might