THE TABE ET

A W eekly Newspaper and Review.

D u m VOBIS G R A TU L AM U R , A N IM O S ET IA M ADDIM U S U T IN IN CΠP T IS V E S TR IS CON STAN TER M AN E A T IS .

From the B r i e f o f H is H olin ess to T he T ablet, J u n e 4, 1870

Vol. 44. No. 180j. L ondon-, O c t o b e r 31, 1874.

P r ice 5d. By P ost

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

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^Ch r o n ic l e o f t h e W e e k : —

The Arnim Despatches.— Specula••tion in Official Documents.— The Hunt after Evidence.— The Imprisonment of Count Arnim.— Origin of the German Persecution. — Mgr. von Hefele.— The Due Decazes on the Septennate.— And on the Foreign Policy o f France.— A Septennate for the Assembly.— Bishop Ellicott on the Dangers to his Communion..— Mr. O. Morgan son Disestablishment.-Nana Sahib. — Municipality for London.— "Spanish Canards.— Affair of the

.Nieves — Turks, Prussians, and .Armenians.— Church Music . . 545

CONTENTS.

L e a d e r s :

The War Rumours throughout

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Europe .. . . . . . . 549 Ritualism and Crime . . . . 549 Government Interference in Italian

E l e c t i o n s .................................... 55* O ur P r o t e s t a n t C o n tem po r ar ie s : 1

Ecclesiasticism and Absolutism .. 552 1 R e v ie w s :

The Future o f the Russian Church 553 ! Le Mot de L'Enigme . . .. 555j The Fiery Soliloquy with God .. 556 S hort N otices :

Purgatory Surveyed .. .. 55<5 Afternoons with the Saints . . 556 | N ew M usic :

Missa Tempore Paschali . . . . 556 C o r r e s p o n d e n c e :

Mr. Gladstone and Bonn . . . . 557 1

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Ecclesiastical Music . . . . 558 Two Concise Reasons why every good Christian should Vote for the Recovery of the Plain Chant 558 Anglicans and Donatists . . . . 559 Denominational Schools and Re

Legislation.. .. . . . . 559 R ome :— Letter from our own Cor­

respondent . . . . . . 561 R ecord of G erm an P er secution :

The Queen-Mother of Bavaria . . 562 Fictions of the Liberal Press . . 562 Posen .. . . . . . . .. 563 Regulation of Catholic Parishes .. 563 Pastoral of the Archbishop of

Cologne . . . . .. . . 563 D io c e s a n N ews

Catholic University College . . 563

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Westminster.................................... 563 Southwark . . . . . . .. 564 Beverley .. . . . . ,. 564 Hexham and Newcastle . . . . 564 Liverpool . . . . .. .. 564 Salford . . . . . . . . 56 Shrewsbury . . .. . . .. 564 Scotland— Western District . . 565 Scotland— Eastern District . . 565 I r e l a n d . . . . , , . . . . 565 F oreign N ews :

France................................................565 Prussia . . . . . . . . 567 Austria . . . . . . t . 567 The Civil War in Spain . . .. 567 M em oranda :—

Religious . . . . . . . . 569 Literary . . . . . , . . 569 G en e r a l N ews . . . . .. 569

CHRONICLE OF THE WEEK.

TITE ARNIM DESPATCHES. W

HERE are the documents over which Prince Bismarck and Count von Arnim are quarrelling? It has been asserted that they are in the custody of .a Hungarian magnate, and this has been denied ; it has been rumoured that they are somewhere in England ; it has been confidently announced that they are in a place of safety, and that they will be produced as evidence at the trial; and lastly— strangest report of all— it has been stated that they have been placed in the hands of the Emperor William himself. This is scarcely credible, if it be true that Count von Arnim’s case requires that they should be forthcoming at the trial, unless his friends have a most ingenuous confidence in the Emperor’s power of resistance to the Chancellors will. These are, of course, the documents which Count von Arnim admits that he has retained, and they are the subject of the civil action which he demands as a matter of right, in order that it may be legally decided whose property they are. It must be admitted that he has from the very first courted an authoritative judgment on this point. .He originally proposed to refer the matter to the Emperor, but Herr von Biilow replied that, as an Ambassador on halfpay he was responsible, not directly to the Emperor, but to the Foreign Office. Prince Bismarck is said, however, to have directed a report to be made to the Emperor, and the Emperor ordered that the whole affair should be remitted to the law authorities. The latter, either acting on private instructions, or, as they affirm, entirely of their own accord— in which case they displayed no little over zeal— proceeded to treat the ex-Ambassador as a criminal taken in flagranti delicto, because he declined to give up the papers before it was legally decided that he had not aright to keep them. And first the lower Court, and now the SupremeTribunal, have rejected .his demand to be released before trial on this ground ; so that it follows that he is first to be tried, and perhaps sentenced, for abstracting the documents, and afterwards it io to be settled whether he had or had not a right to retain them. But while the higher Court confirms this decision it seems to think that the inferior Court would have done well to follow the advice given by a celebrated English personage to a newly-appointed Colonial judge— “ Never give your “ reasons ; your judgment will, probably, be right; your ■“ reasons for it almost certainly wrong.” The Kammergericht had based its decision on two considerations; one that Count Arnim, if convicted, washable to from one to three years’ imprisonment, so as to allow, we suppose, a margin for preliminary confinement, which the Superior Tribunal admits to be no reason at a l l ; and the second that, if liberated be might “ obscure the facts of the case," which the higher

New Series. V ol. XII. No. S12.

Court curtly observes is a point that would have to be established by evidence into which it is not its business to enter. But as there is no technical flaw in the judgment, and the “ principles of law ” have not been “ violated,” Count von Arnim will remain in custody till his trial, when the Government will rest its case on the fact that the missing despatches were addressed to him as Ambassador, and entered in the Journal of the Embassy, and the Count his on the intrinsic character of those despatches, which he maintains to be necessary for his defence against the charge of diplomatic misconduct brought against him, and also unfit to be left for succeeding Ambassadors, and even subordinate officials, to see.

But besides these there are other documents claimed which Count von Arnim does not addocuments.. to be in his possession. He had himself,

while at Paris, complained of the abstraction of official documents, and the Morning Post reminds us that there has been a good deal of this kind of thing lately, and that, in these days of surprises, when every State is alive to the danger of having a mine sprung upon it, it may be well worth a thief’s while to get into his hands confidential despatches which would fetch a heavy price. That such papers are going about is evident from the offer made by a Dr. Lang to the Neue Fremdenblatt of Vienna of important official documents connected with the ecclesiastical struggle in Germany. The inspired press at Berlin has been making a great fuss about the matter, and has done its best to make the world believe that Count Arnim was the real culprit. But the responsible editors of the Vienna paper have just been subjected to a legal interrogatory, and have sworn that the offer was really made, and that it was rejected by them because Dr. Lang “ was known to them as an agent of Prince “ Bismarck ”— a supplementary piece of evidence for which the Berlin Foreign Office was probably not prepared. Herr Lang is about to make a tour in France among the French Catholics, whose interests he is said now to have much at heart, and is going to visit the principal places of pilgrimage, such as Lourdes, Issoudun, and Paray-le-Monial. We can only hope that the Catholics of France will imitate the laudable caution of the editors of the Neue Fremdenblatt.

the hunt Not satisfied with the failure to implicate after evi- Count Arnim in the offer made to this paper,

dence. the Prussian authorities have taken up also the case of the Vienna Presse, in which the diplomatic revelations respecting the differences between the Chancellor and the Count first appeared, together with Count Arnim’s vote sent to Prince Bismarck, when he was Minister at Rome. The editor of the Presse, Dr. Lauser, has consequently been examined at Vienna, in compliance with the requisition of the Berlin Municipal Court, But on being