THE TABLET

A IVeekly Newspaper and Review.

D u m VOBIS GRATULAMUR, ANIMOS ETIAM ADDIMUS UT IN INCCEPTIS VESTRIS CONSTANTER MANEATIS.

From the Brief of His Holiness to T h e T a b l e t , June 4, 1870.

V o l . 4 1 . N o . 1 7 1 0 . L o n d o n , J a n u a r y 1 8 , 1 8 7 3 .

P r ice 5d. B y P ost s xA

[R egistered a t th e General P ost O ffice a s a N ew spaper.

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C hronicle of th e W e e k : Funeral

•of the Emperor Napoleon.—The •Cause of his Death.—The Press on the Emperor.— The Prince Imperial.— The Royal Princes at the Lying in State.— Russia, Khiva, and Persia.— Mr. Lowe aud the Surplus.— The Strike.—The Prussian Crisis. — The Ecclesiastical Bills.— M Thiers and the Commiittee of Thirty.— M. de Corcelles's Appointment.— The Deputation from the Right.—The Reli-

ious Corporations Bill.—The Due e Gramont and Austria.— The United States and Cuba.— The Puerto Rico Emancipation Question . . .0 . . . 6 1

L eaders :

CONTENTS

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Short N otices (continued) :

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The Political Position of Catholics 65 The Emperor Napoleon . . 6 6 The Fulda Memorial and Infalli­

bility ...... 67 Religious Reaction in France . 67 “ A Priori and à Posteriori ” . 68 Our Protestant Contemporaries:

the Use of the Clergy.—Decrees of the Provincial Councils of Westminster.— Half an Hour with a Good Author. — Mrs. Montague Jones’s Dinner Party.— Mr. Gladstone’s Address . . . . 7 4 N ew Music ;

What is Protestantism ?—A Theological Mare’s Nest.—A Roman Correspondent.—A Contrast , . 69 R eview s :

Sermons on Ecclesiastical Subjects 70 Passion Flower . . . . 7 3 Four Lectures on the Athanasian

C r e e d ........................................74 S hort N otices : Meditations for

S. Patrick at Tara . . . . 7 4 C orrespondence:

The Pope and Bishops . . . 7 5 Protestant Missions in Rome . 75 The Distress in South Wales . 75 A Contradiction . . . . 7 5 Ro m e .................................................77

Peter’s Pence ..... 77

R ecord of German P ersecution,

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&c.............................................. 77 Project of Law against the Church . 78 D io cesan N ews : Westminster..................................79 I reland:

Letter from our Dublin Corre­

spondent ........................................ 80 Foreign N ews :

France

80

M emoranda :

Catholic Union . . . . 8 1 L i t e r a r y ..................................81 L e g a l ........................................... 81 G eneral N ews .... 8

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

N W ednesday one who three short years ago was perhaps the greatest sove-

empekor reign in Europe was laid to rest napoleon, under heaps o f flowers in the little church o f

S. M ary at Chislehurst. N ever was such an instance o f the vicissitudes o f human destiny. Born in th e purple, in h is earlier life a conspirator, a prisoner, an d a patient and studious exile by turns, he rose by rapid steps to the height o f power, so as to becom e at one time the arbiter o f Continental E u ro p e ; to be cast down again by a ligh tn ing blow, and to linger and die in a foreign though friendly land. W e have dwelt elsewhere a t some length on the great public fault o f his •career, his abandonment o f the H o ly Father to his enem ie s ; in m itigation o f which, now that the grave has •closed over his errors, it may be urged that his intentions were not wholly bad, that he resisted for ten years the to ta l spoliation o f the H o ly See, and that he was rather weak and vacillating than deliberately treacherous. T h e misfortunes which for the last two years have clouded his life, and perhaps a measure o f that clearer vision which sometim es precedes the end, appear to have caused him to take a ju ster v iew o f the events for which he was in part responsible, and to g ive firmer expression to the faith which he had never lost. A Catholic and Imperialist correspondent writes to the Univers an account o f a conversation which he had w ith the Emperor in M arch last. “ T h e “ Emperor,” he says, “ declared in the most formal terms “ that he adhered in heart and soul, without any restriction, “ to the definition o f the dogma o f Infallibility, and ex■“ pressed his bitter regret that he allow ed h im self to be “ circum vented by several persons opposed to the definition. “ ‘ A submissive son o f the Catholic and Roman Church, I “ ‘ believe/ said his M ajesty, ‘ beforehand all that it teaches, “ ‘ and in spite o f all the bad theology with which I have “ ‘ been wearied in the last years o f my reign, I have always “ ‘ promised m yself to yield lik e a child as soon as the “ ‘ Church had spoken. I have never had any taste for the “ ‘ Gallican subleties, while the Roman doctrine satisfies my “ ‘ in tellect with its beautiful clearness.’ ‘ Since the Catholic “ 1 Church is one, she needs a head, a monarch: this king o f “ “ the Church is the Pope. Some great minds, like Bossuet, “ ‘ did not sufficiently understand this spiritual m onarchy; “ ‘ and we laymen, im perfectly instructed, whom the “ ‘ authority o f this great name o f Bossuet has too “ 1 long misled, deserve some indulgence. M ay the “ ‘ Catholic Church grant us a mother’s pardon.’ ” T h e Emperor then expressed his profound sorrow for the measures adopted against the Encyclical and the Syllabus, and fo r the “ Memorandum ” o f Count D a r u ; and enquiring

New Series. V ol, IX . No. 219.

with great emotion about what was known in F rance o f the present state o f things iti Rom e , declared that everything proved to demonstration the necessity o f the T em poral Power, and that his most poignant grief was his im potence to deliver “ the H e ad o f the Church— the godfather o f his “• son that the story o f his having written from Germany to compliment V ic to r Emmanuel on his seizure o f R om e was a pure invention, and that, as to ratifying accomplished facts, he could only repeat M . Rouher’s word— “ Jamais ! ” Further, that this condemnation, “ while it applied prin“ cipally to the invasion o f Rom e , comprised also all that “ had been done since i860 against the in tegrity o f the “ T em poral Power.” T h e Univers also states on the authority o f a letter from Chislehurst that during the latter part o f his life Napoleon I I I . was in the habit o f attending Mass several times during the week, and we have reason to believe not only that he confessed and communicated before subm itting to the operation, but that he retained his consciousness when he received the last sacraments before his death. M ay he rest in peace !

T h e autopsy o f the Emperor Napoleon estab-

™ - h- se lished that all the conjectures which had been d e a th . hazarded as to the cause o f death were base­

less. H e d id not succumb to any direct con-

quences o f the operation, which had been perform ed with the utmost skill and success; nor to the effects o f chloroform , as seems to have been at one tim e believed in Paris, nor to any disease o f the h e a r t ; nor to a c lo t arresting the circulation, known in medical language as “ embolism .” But there was grave organic disease, which had arrived at such a point as to produce collapse and death, which must have occurred very soon whether the patient had been operated on or not. And the existence o f this disease “ was not suspected, nor “ had it been suspected could it have been ascertained.” I t comes to this, that even in a case like this, where the resources o f science are sure to be stretched to their utmost power, and where the physicians and surgeons in attendance are the first in Europe, a man may have a mortal disease which will carry him off suddenly without anybody suspecting it, or being capable o f ascertaining it i f they did. In this, as in other branches o f knowledge, the more a man knows the more clearly heperceives howbarren are th e lim itso f his knowledge. A story published in the Union Medicale, on the authority o f Professor Lea, hasbeen since contradicted. I t was to the effect that this physician, with Drs. Ndlaton, Fauvel, R ico rd , and Corvisart, exam ined the Emperor and recommended an operation about two years and a half ago, and that D r. Conneau was commissioned to inform the Empress o f their opinion, but that the recommendation was suppressed for political reasons. I t is now positively stated, that no medical examination ever took p lace previously to that made by Sir H enry Thompson in O ctober last. N o doubt, i f the