Roman Catholic subjects in England are benefited spiritually by the abandonment of the ancient system : and be it remarked, that the system of vicars apostolic is not a system confined to heathen countries, but is the recognised mode of administering the spiritual affairs of the Roman Catholic body in such European States as are not in ecclesiastical communion, or at least, under treaty-engagements with the Holy See; but this subject will be considered more fully in a subsequent place.

As far as the Roman Catholic laity is concerned, the change is likely to prove in a temporal point of view most inconvenient to them. Hitherto the Roman Catholic body in England has, under its peculiar constitution, been favoured with an exemption from many of the provisions of the Canon Law which were at variance with the institutions of the country. They now become subject to it in its totality; and a legal writer, a Roman Catholic member of the House of Commons, has already called attention to the fact, that it would appear, in the present state of the law, to be almost impossible for the delegated power of the new cardinal and his suffragans "to be so exercised as not to affect the temporalities of the Roman Catholic Church, and consequently the legal rights of persons whether spiritual or lay."

The greatest caution, according to Mr. Anstey, will be necessary in this instance; "since the legislative authority" (conveyed by the Pope in his brief to the archbishop and his suffragans) "being conferred directly by Rome, any excess, such as the Court of Chancery may be called upon to set aside, is not only an offence against the temporal supremacy of the Queen, but is within the express letter of the Præmunire Act."

Thus much for the internal change effected in the condition of the Roman Catholic body in England by the brief. In a spiritual point of view, the brief is quite inoperative for the advantage of the laity *; and in a temporal point of view, it is positively prejudicial to their best interests. It remains that we should consider whether the change contemplated by the brief is or is not fraught with political inconvenience and even danger to the State.

Dr. Wiseman in his "Appeal" states, that it was a point of no light weight and of no indifferent interest to Catholics, to have the sarcasm of Anglican writers silenced, "that the Pope durst not name ordinary bishops in England, because conscious of not having authority to do so." Now the sarcasm would have been more safely and more effectively silenced by Dr. Wiseman, had he established by argument that the Pope had authority to name ordinary bishops, because, as far as Dr. Wiseman's position in the controversy with Anglican writers is concerned, he has only cut away an unsound portion of ground from their feet, in order to compel them to find a firmer footing. It would not have been very difficult for Dr. Wiseman to have shown that the argument of his controversial opponents, although rhetorically effective, was logically unsound. They, that is, the Roman Catholics, were told, it is said, "that the very

* Dr. Wiseman very justly observes in his first lecture, "The change does not consist in this, that up till lately (Roman) Catholics had no bishops, and now have them; for their Vicars Apostolic were bishops with foreign titles,” — and again, "It has been merely a change of title. Bishops who before bore foreign titles, under which spiritually to govern British Catholics (that is, Roman Catholics in England and Wales), have now received domestic titles."

outlandish names of their Sees proved them to be foreigners, and that they were not even real Bishops." Surely Dr. Wiseman himself entertained no doubt of the reality of his episcopal office, and if his title of Bishop of Melipotamus sounded outlandish to English ears, that of Cardinal Priest of the Church of St. Pudenziana in Rome grates even more harshly upon them; and, if names can have any weight, must prove him still to be a foreigner. Measures of so sweeping a kind have assuredly not been adopted by the Pope on the suggestion of the Vicars Apostolic, in order to enable Dr. Wiseman to contend with more effect in argument against the sarcasm of his opponents. "The Catholics must have a Hierarchy," is the language of the Appeal; "the Canon Law is inapplicable under Vicars Apostolic, and besides many points would have to be synodically adjusted, and without a metropolitan and suffragans, a Provincial Synod was out of the question."

Dr. Wiseman has here furnished us with the true key, which will explain the otherwise unaccountable proceeding of the Holy See. It is clear that all the spiritual wants of the members of the Roman Catholic communion in England were satisfied under the existing organisation of the Mission. The Roman Catholic laity in England had complete religious liberty, but the Roman Catholic clergy, it must be admitted, had not complete ecclesiastical power. They wanted the means of organising themselves for united action; they had no power, under the system of Vicars Apostolic, to meet in a Provincial Council. Nothing, however, is suggested by Dr. Wiseman as to the nature of the points, which, as he states, required to be synodically adjusted. If it could be made out that there were spiritual anomalies under the existing system

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of Vicars Apostolic, which the Pope was unable, though desirous, to remove, and which pressed upon the consciences of the Roman Catholic subjects of her Majesty, it is reasonable for the English people to ask that these anomalies should be set forth, and that a Provincial Synod should be shown to be necessary, and alone adequate, for their removal. Unity of practice as well as of belief could surely, if they were wanting, have been enforced by the power which radiated from a common centre through the Vicars Apostolic to every part of the Mission. Dr. Wiseman has, indeed, in the second of his Lectures on the new Hierarchy explained most clearly the distinction between the old and new systems. "For in a country divided into Vicariates, however numerous, each has a perfectly free and independent action, as much as if each were situated in a different country; there is no organic bond of union between them, no one who can convoke them into a Synod, no power to give their joint acts a general authority. Hence great diversity in matters of practice might prevail among them without any regulating or adjusting power. But in a Hierarchy this is at once corrected: the Bishops of the Sees are connected together through a metropolitan, or primate, if there be more than one Archbishop; he can unite them, and from their combined decisions, canonically approved and sanctioned, emanate rules and principles of conduct, which bind all and secure uniformity."

Now it is precisely in respect of its organic bond of union that the new system, as compared with the old, is fraught with political danger; and it is precisely in regard to its power of combined decision and uniform action, that the new Hierarchy is an institution opposed to the genius of the constitution of the realm,

which allows of no rival legislative body within the realm, whose decrees shall conflict with and prevail against those of the Queen and her Parliament. For it must be remembered, that the sphere of what is held to be ecclesiastical action by the Roman Catholic Church embraces much which, by the law of the land, is considered to be within the precincts of the supreme legislature. Of this fact the late edict of the Synod of Thurles in Ireland is evidence. There, indeed, at a council of Roman Catholic prelates, convened by the nominee of the Pope, in whose appointment as the Roman Catholic Archbishop in Armagh, the Irish Roman Catholic subjects of her Majesty had, for the first time, no voice, it was carried by a majority of one that a statute of the land which had been voted for by the leading Roman Catholic members of the legislature, should, as far as possible, be frustrated in its execution and rendered inoperative; yet it is evident from the fact that thirteen episcopal members of the council are reported to have entered a protest, that no spiritual question could have been involved in the resolution. Yet under the system. of Provincial Synods this decision of the majority becomes binding on the minority, and thirteen Roman Catholic Bishops in Ireland are constrained, against their conscience, to oppose and thwart the execution of the law. If the desire to possess this power -to have a Hierarchy — through which alone it can be given, "is," as Dr. Wiseman states, "essentially a Catholic purpose and a Catholic object," then Catholic objects and Catholic purposes are not those which the law of the land can be expected to further; and Catholic organisation, in the manner in which it is provided for by the Letters Apostolic, and in the sense in which it is intended, according to Dr. Wise