said archdiocese and diocese, that "their beloved country has received a place among the fair churches, which, normally constituted, form the splendid aggre gate of Catholic Communion; and that Catholic England has been restored to its orbit in the ecclesiastical firmament, from which its light had long vanished, and begins now anew its course of regularly adjusted action round the centre of unity," &c. &c. He concludes with enjoining, that his pastoral letter shall be publicly read in all the churches and chapels of the archdiocese of Westminster and the diocese of Southwark, on the Sunday after its being received.

The language of this remarkable pastoral was not calculated to soothe any alarm which might have been already caused by the contents of the brief; and it is not unreasonable that the subjects of her Majesty should have taken the Cardinal at his word, and believed him to be in earnest, when he announced that, by virtue of the Letters Apostolic of his Holiness Pope Pius IX., he claimed and intended to exercise, as Ordinary, over eight English counties and the adjacent islands, magisterial functions well known to the law of England.

It is needless to refer to the excitement which the circulation of the Papal brief and of the various pastoral letters of the newly created bishops has produced. We may proceed to consider the argument which has been put forth by authority in behalf of the new hierarchy by Mr. Bowyer. The position which Mr. Bowyer lately held of Reader of Law at one of the Inns of Court, would entitle a treatise which proceeds from his pen on the legal character of the late act of the Pope to respectful consideration; but his argument of itself merits attention from its temperate tone, at the same time that the mys

terious words "by authority" on the title-page, announce the writer to speak as the legal organ of the new hierarchy.

Mr. Bowyer's argument divides itself into two heads, the first having relation to the supremacy of the Crown of England, the second to its sovereignty; the one bearing upon the duty of her Majesty's Roman Catholic subjects in England and Wales, the other upon the relations of the Pope himself to the imperial Crown of England.

Mr. Bowyer's legal acumen could not fail to recognise the distinction involved in the two questions, which Dr. Wiseman has strangely confused in his Appeal, where the latter infers, that "if the act of a subject of her most gracious Majesty, which by law he is perfectly competent to do, be not an infringement of her royal prerogative, then that prerogative has not been violated by this new creation of Catholic bishops." There is in reality no parallelism between the acts of a subject of her Majesty and the acts of the Pope, who is not her subject. For instance, it might be perfectly true that the municipal law of England does not expressly forbid her Majesty's Roman Catholic subjects to take the style and title of bishops of English sees erected by the Pope without the consent of the Crown of England, yet it may be against the public law of Europe for the Pope to erect a bishop's see within the realm of a Sovereign Prince, without having previously obtained the consent of the Prince. If this latter fact should be established as against the recent proceedings of Pope Pius IX., then we shall have to consider a very different question from that which has been so much discussed, namely, whether the act of the Pope, although it may not touch the supremacy of the British

crown in spiritual matters, does not constitute an invasion of its temporal superiority within the realm of England.

Mr. Bowyer's pamphlet has been followed by "An Appeal to the English People," on the part of Cardinal Wiseman. This is a production of a very dif ferent character from Mr. Bowyer's, both in its mode of treating the subject, which is more rhetorical, and its tone, which is replete with irony and sarcasm; but some allowance must in fairness be made for the writer, smarting for the moment under the revival of mediæval indignities directed against the memory of the system, which he seeks to revive.

Dr. Wiseman's position naturally constitutes him the legitimate exponent of the proceedings of the Holy See; and it may reasonably be presumed that we have now before us, in his Appeal, and in Mr. Bowyer's pamphlet, all that is thought advisable to put forth in the way of statement, in explanation of the brief. And here it may be necessary to say a word upon the use of certain expressions by both the above writers. They persist in distinguishing the spiritual and temporal power of the Pope, and also of the Queen of England. And they say that they admit the spiritual power of the Pope, and the temporal power of the Queen, but reject the temporal power of the Pope and the spiritual power of the Queen. Now, there is a real distinction between spiritual or moral influence and obligation on the one hand, and temporal power, civil or ecclesiastical, on the other. But there is a distinction of degree, not of kind, between the powers by which outward regulations are enforced. The Apostles, for instance, had a great moral and spiritual influence in foro conscientiæ, but no ecclesiastical power

in foro externo confirmed by any laws civil or otherwise. The Pope, on the other hand, does not exert a mere moral influence, but exercises an ecclesiastical power, regulated by the Roman Catholic law, which is a foreign law, but not recognised by the laws of the realm. Mr. Bowyer is, therefore, not quite accurate, when he speaks of the erection of episcopal sees in England as an exercise of the spiritual power of the see of Rome: it is an exercise of its ecclesiastical jurisdiction, and although it may not touch the spiritual supremacy of the Crown of England, it by no means follows that it does not affect its temporal superiority.

To return to Mr. Bowyer's argument. It appears from the contents of the brief itself, that ever since the settlement of the Reformation of the English Church, in the reign of Queen Elizabeth, England has been considered by the Holy See as a country in partibus infidelium, and the Roman Catholic subjects of the Crown of England have been regarded as under the immediate spiritual authority of the Pope, as Bishop of Rome. In the year 1623, memorable for the arrival in England of Henrietta Maria of France, the Roman Catholic bride of Prince Charles, the Pope, for the first time, delegated his episcopal authority over the Roman Catholics in England to the Bishop of Chalcedon, as his vicar apostolic resident in England.

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The Puritan outburst in the following reign, fact never to be lost sight of in studying the religious features of the English character, -swept away the successor of the first vicar apostolic; nor was it until the accession of the last of the Stuarts, in 1685, that Innocent III. ventured to revive the office in the person of the Bishop of Adrumetum. Three years afterwards, in an evil day for King James II., the apostolic Nuncio landed in England; and in the

most memorable, perhaps, of all years in English history (A.D. 1688), three additional vicars apostolic were associated with the Bishop of Adrumetum in administering the spiritual affairs of the Roman Catholics in England. The period which followed the accession of William and Mary is one of comparative obscurity as to the organisation of the Roman Catholic clergy. Thus much, however, is certain, that no step in advance of 1688 has been made by the Holy See until very recent times, when the number of vicars apostolic was further increased from four to eight (A.D. 1840).

It would thus appear, from the practice, that the system of administering the spiritual affairs of the Roman Catholic body in England by vicars apostolic had been sanctioned by an usage of more than two centuries, and as it seems to have been capable of expanding itself so as to meet any increase in the spiritual wants of that body, there could be no religious necessity for its abandonment. It might doubtless have certain inconveniences, which however may be inseparable from the position of the Roman Catholic clergy in a country where their church is only tolerated; and they do not appear to have been considered by Mr. Bowyer or Dr. Wiseman as worthy of notice, or as furnishing a sufficient explanation of the change. On the contrary, when it is considered that the vicars apostolic in England possessed the powers of ordinary bishops, and other powers delegated to them by the Pope beyond those of an ordinary bishop, it may well be doubted whether the system of an hierarchy will be in this respect so convenient to the Roman Catholic body at large as the system of vicars apostolic, even if the Cardinal-archbishop should be furnished with general legantine authority, as legate à Latere of the Holy See.