THE TABLET
A IVeekly Newspaper and Review.
D u m VOBIS GRATULAMUR, ANIMOS ETIAM ADDIMUS UT IN INCCEPTIS VESTRIS CONSTANTER MANEATIS.
F r om th e B r ie f o j H is H o lin e ss to The Tablet, J u n e 4, 1870.
Vol. 38 . No. 1645. L ondon, October 2 1 , 18 7 1 .
price Sd. by post 5 % [Registered at the General Post Office as a Newspaper. Chronicle of the Week : The Flank Movement.—The League and Denominational Schools.— Catholic Education.— Since the Strike.—The Emperor William’s Speech. — The Franco-German Conventions.—The Programme of the “ Old Catholics.” — The Church and the Government in Bavaria.—The Mainz Congress and Bavaria. — Italian Catholid Congress. — The Convents in .Rome.—Conversion of the Pontifical Debt.—The Roman University.—The French Sees and the Embassy at Rome.—The Austrian-Germans and the Bohemians. —The Eastern Christians.—The North-Western Fires . . . 5 1 3 C O N T L eaders : The Convocation of the Queen’s University in Ireland . . . 517 Arbitration Instead of War.—X . 5x8 The Archbishop of Westminster on “ Progress ” .... 519 The Anglican Movement: Questions which call for an A n s w e r .....................................5 23 R eviews : The History of Napoleon the F i r s t .............................................. 524 Works of the Right Rev. Bishop Hay of Edinburgh . . . 525 . Unity in Variety .... 526 Short Notices1: The Collegiate Church of Tamworth . . . 526 Correspondence : Catholic Education . . . 526 E N T S . Correspondence (continued) : The Pontifical Loan of i860 and 1 8 6 4 ................................................ 527 The Ratisbon “ Gradual ” . . 527 The Catholic Deaf and Dumb In stitution, Sheffield . . . 527 R ome : Letter from Rome . . . 529 Breaking open the Convents of S. Antony and Sta. Maria Allé Quattro Fontane. . . . 530 Peter’s Pence....................................... 530 Diocesan News : Westminster....................................... 530 S o u t h w a r k ....................................... 5 3 1 B e v e r l e y ....................................... 5 3 1 Liverpool . . . .531 Newport and Menevia . . . 5 3 1 Salford—Opening of the Church of the Holy Name, Manchester . 5 3 1 ' Ireland : Letter from our Dublin Corre spondent ..................................... 532 F oreign News : Germany—Protestant Congresses . 533 Memoranda : Religious : The Miracle of Soriano . . 533 Recent Letters of the Shep herdess of La Salette . . 534 Predictions of the V. Anna Maria Taigi .... 534 The Mission assigned to S. Joseph’s College of the Sacred Heart, and the first Departure of Missioners .... 534 Educational—Catholic Education. 535 Fine A r t s ..................................... 535 General News . . . . 536 C H R O N I C L E O F T H E W E E K . THE FLANK MOVEMENT. T 'H E topic of the week has been the hunt after what appears to be an enormous mare’s nest. The first to start on the chase was the D a i ly T e leg raph , which brought to light a kind of treaty b e tween certain Conservative peers and members o f Parliament on the one hand, and certain representatives of the artizan class on the other. It was supposed to be intended as a flank movement by which the Conservative party hoped to turn the position of Government. It was stated that Mr. Scott Russell had submitted to these leading Conservatives a scheme of legislation embodying the aspirations of those in whose interest he was acting, and that the gentlemen consulted, among whom were Lord Salisbury, Lord Carnarvon, Sir John Pakington, Sir Stafford Northcote, and Lord John Manners, together with Lord Lom e and Lord Lichfield representing the Whigs, drew up a programme which was communicated to the council of skilled workmen, o f which Messrs. Potter, Howell, Leicester, and Applegarth are members, and adopted by it. We print elsewhere the propositions which this programme contains. A detailed examination of them would be superfluous, for in the course of the week, Lord Salisbury, Lord Carnarvon, Sir Stafford Northcote, Lord Lome, Lord Derby, and the Duke of R ichmond, have all repudiated the details of the scheme, and denied their own participation in any such arrangement as that which had been alleged to exist. th e league The agitation against the payment of fees and DENOMi- to Denominational Schools continues. The national National Education League has been holding schools. a Conference at Birmingham on Tuesday and Wednesday, at which Mr. Dixon, Sir Charles Dilke, and Mr. Miall, were the principal speakers. All the usual arguments were brought into play, and the hardship o f being forced to contribute to denominational education was dwelt upon as much as ever, while the hardship of forcing Catholic parents, under pain of imprisonment, to send their children to secular schools was passed over as lightly as is the rule on these occasions. “ A Liberal ” writes to the T im es, and very naturally asks why it is a greater hardship for secularists to be forced to contribute to religious schools whose denominational education they disapprove, than for denominationalists to be forced to contribute to secularist schools, whose undenominational education they disapprove. Neither arguments such as this, however, nor Mr. Baines’ sensible remarks deprecating the conversion o f the cry for religious equality into an engine for the oppression of consciences seem to have had much effect on the enthusiasts o f the League. Their bitter hostility to everything denominational will hear of no compromise, and the form which the bugbear takes in their minds is
New Series. Vol. VI. No. 154 .
the fear that the whole education of England will be handed over to “ two dominant Churches,” “ the Churches “ of England and of Rom e .” Ireland too furnishes a special text for declamation. They protest against the national system, which has produced such satisfactory results, being sacrificed to Ultramontane denominationalism. This line of argument seems to have specially aroused Mr. Chichester Fortescue’s sense of the rid iculous ; and no one is a more competent witness to the facts of the case than the late Secretary for Ireland. In a speech which he has just made at a Workmen’s Institute at Radstock, near Lady Waldegrave’s property in Somersetshire, Mr. Fortescue said that “ it amused him to see resolutions passed at public “ meetings, and articles written in newspapers, calling upon “ the people of England to insist upon unsectarian religious “ teaching in all schools aided by public money, and to pro“ tect the national system of education in Ireland, where “ unsectarian education was almost unknown. In that “ country,” he said, “ the State had tried— first a system “ under which the Bible was read in all schools, ‘ without “ ‘ note or comment,’ and that failed to reach the mass of “ the Roman Catholic population. They then tried the “ celebrated national system, about which so much had “ been said and so little known in this country, professing “ at its foundation to provide ‘ united, secular, and separate “ ‘ religious ’ instruction for all. That theory, beyond ex“ ceptional cases, principally the great Government schools, “ was never realized, and the system which had covered “ Ireland with schools and carried the schoolmaster into “ the remotest com er of the land was one mainly denomi“ national, guarded by a stringent ‘ Conscience Clause ’ and “ by Government inspection. The great majority o f Irish “ national schools were under the management of clergy“ men, Roman Catholic or Presbyterian, without whom “ they could have had at this day nothing which could be “ called a national system.” Reverting to the question now raised in England, Mr. Fortescue said that he was sure that no unsectarian education could be made so generally acceptable to all denominations as to dispense with the parent’s right of withdrawing his child. “ Take the case “ of the Roman Catholics, who form in some cities a class
!: so numerous, so poor, and so ignorant. To them this “ notion of unsectarian education was utterly inapplicable ; “ they must have their own denominational instruction or “ no religious teaching at all.” The justice, in fact, of the view which we have advocated is distinctly admitted by the two statesmen who have spoken at length on the subject, Mr. Forster and Mr. Chichester F o r te scu e ; as well as by Mr. Baines, who is the representative of the more moderate Dissenters. A supplementary argument in its favour has been contributed by a Protestant clergyman, Mr. West, o f S. Mary Magdalen’s, Paddington, who observes— “ That in
