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 UCT 25° 1928 
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 Studies in the “oa, as 
 Problem of Sovereignty 
 
 
 
 
 By 
 HAROLD J. LASKI 
 
 Of the Department of History in Harvard University 
 Sometime Exhibitioner of New College, Oxford 
 
 
 
 NEW HAVEN: YALE UNIVERSITY PRESS 
 
 LONDON: HUMPHREY MILFORD 
 OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS 
 
 MDCCCCXXIV 
 
Copyright, 1917, by Yale University Press 
 First published, March, 1917 
 
 Second printing, May, 1918 
 Third printing, April, 1924 
 
 Printed in the United States of America 
 
Your business as thinkers is to make 
 plainer the way from something to the whole 
 of things; to show the rational connection 
 between your fact and the frame of the 
 universe. 
 
 Speeches of Mr. Justice Holmes. 
 
Digitized by the Internet Archive 
 in 2022 with funding from 
 Princeton Theological Seminary Library 
 
 https://archive.org/details/studiesinproblemOOlask_0O 
 
TO 
 H. A. L. FISHER AND ERNEST BARKER 
 FELLOWS OF NEW COLLEGE 
 WITH AFFECTIONATE GRATITUDE 
 
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PREFACE 
 
 This volume is the first of a series of studies in 
 which I hope to discuss in various aspects the 
 theory of the State. Its starting point is the belief 
 that in such a theory, the problem of sovereignty 
 is fundamental, and that only in the light of 
 its conception can any satisfactory attitude be 
 adopted. It is essentially a critical work, and it 
 is only in the most tentative fashion that I have 
 hinted at what seems to me the right avenue of 
 approach. When I have finished similar studies in 
 the political theory of the Catholic Reaction in 
 France during the nineteenth century, and of the 
 Conciliar Movement in the fifteenth, it may be that 
 I shall be able to attempt a more constructive 
 discussion. But it has not seemed to me entirely 
 purposeless to point out the dangers of an attitude 
 fraught with consequences so momentous to the 
 character of our political institutions. 
 
 How much it owes to Maitland and Saleilles 
 and Dr. Figgis, I dare not estimate; but if it 
 sends anyone to their books (and particularly 
 to Maitland’s) I shall be well content. I owe 
 much, too, to the work of my friend and colleague, 
 Professor McIlwain, from whose ‘High Court of 
 Parliament’ I have derived a whole fund of 
 valuable ideas. Nor have I, as I hope, failed to 
 learn the lesson to be learned from the constitu- 
 
x PREFACE 
 
 tional opinions with which Mr. Justice Holmes 
 has enriched this generation. I would add that 
 it was from Mr. Fisher that I first learned to 
 understand the value of individuality, as it was 
 from Mr. Barker that I first learned the meaning 
 of community. 
 
 I should like, too, to associate whatever there is 
 of good in the thought of this book, with the name 
 of my friend, Alec Rowan Herron, Scholar of New 
 College and second-lieutenant in the King’s Royal 
 Rifles, who fell at Givenchy in the first year of war. 
 What we have lost in him only those of us who 
 had the rare privilege of his intimate friendship 
 ean tell; but I may be permitted to say that it was 
 the opinion of those with the right to judge that 
 a very brilliant career lay before him. 
 
 This book could never have been written were 
 it not for the constant and splendid sympathy of 
 my friend, Professor Frankfurter of the Harvard 
 Law School. If I mention that, and the debt it 
 of course owes to my wife, it is not in repayment, 
 but in recognition. They, I know, will understand. 
 
 I have to thank the editors of the American 
 Political Science Review, the Canadian Law 
 Times, the New Republic, and the Journal of 
 Philosophy, Psychology and Scientific Methods 
 for leave to use material already printed in their 
 pages. 
 
 : lok, APS by 
 September 28, 1916. 
 Harvard University. 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 PAGE 
 Preface . : , : Bs Ne ep eX. 
 Chapter I. The Sovereignty of the State  . 1 
 Chapter II. The Political Theory of the Dis- 
 
 ruption 27 
 Chapter III. The Political Theory of the Ore 
 
 ford Movement 69 
 Chapter IV. The Political Theory of the ent 
 
 olic Revival . a aa 
 Chapter V. De Maistre and Bismarck . 5 SAS aE 
 Appendix A. Sovereignty and Federalism . 267 
 
 Appendix B. Sovereignty and Centralisation . 277 
 ibikelesc) ae : ; : é es) 
 
ih hy We pia 
 
 ale 
 
 
 
CHAPTER I 
 THE SOVEREIGNTY OF THE STATE’ 
 
 EGELIANWISE, we can not avoid the 
 
 temptation that bids us make our State a 
 unity. It is to be all-absorptive. All groups 
 within itself are to be but the ministrants to its 
 life; their reality is the outcome of its sovereignty, 
 Since without it they could have no existence. 
 Their goodness is gained only through the over- 
 shadowing power of its presence. It alone, so to 
 speak, eternally is; while they exist but to the 
 extent to which its being implies them. The 
 All, America, includes, ‘implicates’ in James’ 
 phrase, its constituent states. They are one with 
 it and of it—one and indivisible. Each has its 
 assigned place and function in the great Whole 
 which gives them life. This is essential; for other- 
 wise we should have what Mr. Bradley calls ‘a 
 plurality of reals’; which is to destroy the predi- 
 eated unity. 
 
 Of the exaltation of such unity a long history 
 could be written. To speak only of medieval 
 times, it would have to tell of Dante with his 
 maxime unum as the maaime bonuwm; nor dare we 
 
 1 Read at the Fourth Conference on Legal and Social Philosophy, at 
 Columbia University, November 27, 1915. 
 
2 PROBLEM OF SOVEREIGNTY 
 
 repaint the picture he drew of that world state 
 which is one because its law is one and its spirit 
 also. State must be, Gregory VII will tell us, ab- 
 sorbed in Church; and so the eighth Boniface, 
 perhaps with some lingering thought of Aquinas 
 in his mind, will declare the heresy of dualism and 
 straightway make claim to the lordship of the 
 world. Binarius numerus mfamis—so it was 
 Aquinas wrote; and so it is that your pope must 
 have the plenitudo potestatis and your emperor be 
 legibus solutus. Thus will they embody all and 
 transcend the shifting variety of an inconvenient 
 multiplicity. 
 
 Your medieval thinker deals in worlds; with the 
 Renaissance is born the national State. But only 
 the perspective is altered. Still the problem is 
 this monistic reduction. How to make of many 
 one was surely the problem Henry VIII confronted 
 when he declared the realm of England to be an 
 empire; for if it is capable of such promotion then 
 is its king imperial, and he may work his will with 
 recalcitrant chancellors who look vainly Rome- 
 wards. So, too, with the Stuart. He mistakes the 
 popular basis of the Tudor throne, and thinks a 
 sovereignty in practice theoretical also. It is his, 
 he urges, by a right divine. Like another Richard 
 IT he feels that the laws are in his own breast; 
 while non-juring Hickes will preach solemnly of 
 the Stuart rectitude as he lays down the gospel of 
 non-resistance. 
 
 It seems far off; yet in truth it is very near to us. 
 
SOVEREIGNTY OF THE STATE 3 
 
 It would be no inapt definition of politics in our 
 time to term it the search for social unity. What- 
 ever political problems we may consider upon this 
 fundamental question, we shall always ultimately 
 be driven back. How far, and in what way, is our 
 society one? How far is there an interest of the 
 Whole, a monistic interest, which transcends the 
 interests of the Many who compose that whole? 
 It is a fundamental question; therefore—as the 
 ‘Parmenides’ bears witness—it is amazingly 
 subtle and difficult. We shall find, I think, that 
 ~ there is one best method of considering our prob- 
 lem. Suppose that on the one hand we adopt the 
 monist solution, what concrete difference will that 
 make to our political life? If we are pluralists, 
 how does that affect our activities? What, in 
 short, are the consequences of our attitude? It is 
 from them we may deduce its truth. 
 
 And at the outset, let us note that we tend, in 
 our political thinking, to adopt a sort of mystic 
 monism as the true path of thought. We repre- 
 sent a State as a vast series of concentric circles, 
 each one enveloping the other, as we move from 
 individual to family, from family to village, 
 from village to city, to county, thence to the all- 
 embracing State. We talk of England, Greece, 
 Rome, as single personal forces, transcending the 
 men and women who compose them. We person- 
 alise, that is to say, the collective body. ‘Rome,’ 
 writes Lord Bryce, ‘sacrificed her domestic free- 
 dom that she might become the mistress of others.’ 
 
4 PROBLEM OF SOVEREIGNTY 
 
 
 
 Here is a Rome beyond her citizens, a woman 
 terrible in the asceticism of her supreme sacrifice. 
 
 Clearly the reality of the State’s personality is 
 a compulsion we may not resist. But the habit is 
 common to other things also. To the American, 
 New York has a personality no less real than that 
 of the Republic. To the shipowner, Lloyds is not 
 the mere sum of its individual underwriters. When 
 we take any group of people leading a common 
 life, to whom some kindred purpose may be as- 
 cribed, we seem to evolve from it a thing, a per- 
 sonality, that is beyond the personalities of its 
 constituent parts. For us that personality is real. 
 Slowly its reality has compelled the law, when 
 dealing with associations, to abandon the theory 
 of fiction. A man who looks at the battlefield of 
 Europe will assuredly not deny that certain per- 
 sonalities, England, France, Germany, are real to 
 the soldiers who die for them. A man who would 
 remain cold to an appeal to stand by Englishmen 
 waxes eloquent over the splendour of England; 
 from all Englishmen he synthesises a thing greater 
 than they. Think of the momentous consequences 
 of such personalising and then ask if we dare 
 attribute fiction to its nature. ‘Our fellowship,’ 
 wrote Maitland, ‘is no fiction, no symbol, no piece 
 of the State’s machinery, but a living organism 
 and a real person, with body and members and will 
 of its own.’ If this be true, there are within the 
 State enough of these monistic entities, club, trade- 
 union, church, society, town, county, university, 
 
SOVEREIGNTY OF THE STATE 5 
 
 each with a group-life, a group-will, to enrich the 
 imagination. Their significance assuredly we may 
 not deny. 
 
 Yet, so we are told, the State itself, the society 
 of which they form part, is mysteriously One 
 above them. ‘Everywhere the One comes before 
 the Many. All Manyness has its origin in Oneness 
 and to Oneness it returns. Therefore all order 
 consists in the subordination of Plurality to Unity, 
 and never and nowhere can a purpose that is 
 common to Many be effectual unless the One rules 
 over the Many and directs the Many to the 
 goal... . Unity is the root of all, and therefore 
 of all social existence.’ Here is no mystic thought 
 from the East, but a sober German jurist dealing 
 with the essential political thought of the medieval 
 world. Unity, it is clear, there finds laudation 
 enough. And the State as the expression of that 
 unity enjoys a similar benediction. It, too, must 
 be one and indivisible. Trade-unionists and capi- 
 talists alike must surrender the interests of their 
 smaller and antithetic group-persons to the larger 
 demands of that all-embracing One, the State. Of 
 that One it is first that you are part; only in 
 secondary fashion do you belong to church or class 
 or race. In the One differences become har- 
 monised, disappear. There are no rich or poor, 
 * Protestants or Catholics, Republicans or Demo- 
 erats, but all are members of the State. The 
 greatest of ideas takes all others to itself. ‘AI 
 
6 PROBLEM OF SOVEREIGNTY 
 
 Manyness has its origin in Oneness, and to One- 
 ness it returns.’ 
 
 So may be described the monistic theory of the 
 State. It is a theory of which the importance may 
 not be minimised in our time. That this view— 
 largely perhaps from its evident relation to the 
 dominant philosophy of Hegel—has triumphed 
 not only in modern Germany, but also, in some 
 lesser degree, in modern Europe, is the merest 
 platitude in a world where Treitschke furnishes 
 the theme of drawing-room conversation. A time 
 of crisis unifies everywhere what before bore the 
 appearance of severalty. The exclusive State 
 makes an easy triumph.’ 
 
 We have to admit, so your monist philosopher 
 tells us, that all parts of the State are woven 
 together to make one harmonious whole. What 
 the Absolute is to metaphysics, that is the State 
 to political theory. The unity is logically neces- 
 sary, for were there independence, one group, as 
 Lotze argued, could never act upon another. Were 
 there independence there would be impenetrability. 
 Yet nothing is so evident as the supreme fact of 
 mutual influence. Pluralism, in an ultimate sense, 
 is therefore impossible; for it would make unin- 
 telligible any rational interpretation of society. 
 
 Certain implications of this doctrine are worth 
 noting before we attempt any criticism of it. If 
 it be conceded that the analogy of State and 
 
 2On Bismarck and Hegel the reader can consult an admirable paper 
 by Mr. William Clarke in the Contemporary Review for January, 1899. 
 
SOVEREIGNTY OF THE STATE 7 
 
 Absolute be justified, clearly just as in meta- 
 physics we can condemn the world as a whole, or 
 praise it as a whole, so must the State be good or 
 bad as a totality. It can not be good or bad in its 
 Separate parts. Pessimistic or optimistic, you may 
 be in regard to it, but melioristic you have no right 
 to feel so far as the State is concerned. For that 
 which distinguishes your State must be impled 
 in its parts, however various, 1s in its parts, could 
 we but see it, and an evil part is evil, be it capitalist 
 or labor agitator, only if the State as a totality 
 is evil. We bridge over, in fact, the distinction 
 between right and wrong, between good and bad. 
 It is due only to the limitations of our finite 
 political intelligence. It is not, so to speak, in the 
 State-in-itself. It is only the appearance below 
 which we must penetrate if we would grasp politi- 
 eal reality. That is why Mr. Bradley can regard 
 his Absolute—for us the State—as the richer for 
 every disharmony; for that seeming pain is in 
 truth but a minister to joy. 
 
 And here clearly enough Sovereignty emerges. 
 The State must triumph and has need of some 
 organ whereby its end may be attained. If we 
 anywhere preach a gospel of non-resistance it is 
 here. Wegotowar. We must fight with the State 
 whether or no we feel the justice of its cause. 
 When in 1870 the Vatican Council defined papal 
 infallibility Mr. Gladstone was quick to observe 
 that Roman Catholic loyalty was endangered. Did 
 not Sir Robert Peel oppose Catholic emancipation 
 
8 PROBLEM OF SOVEREIGNTY 
 
 because that sect could not in his view unify its 
 allegiance? Was not the Kulturkampf but the 
 expression of Bismarck’s conviction that your 
 sovereign must be one and know no fellow? When 
 M. Combes aids in the separation of Church and 
 State, on what other grounds does he base his 
 attack than this,—that only State-rights are real? 
 Corporations—wormlike Hobbes called them— 
 cause but troublesome disease. Forthwith let them 
 disappear that the sovereignty of the State may 
 be unique. 
 
 What for us is here of deepest significance is the 
 claim that what the State wills has therefore moral 
 pre-eminence. We pass, if I may be old-fashioned 
 and use Rousseau’s terms, from the Will of All to 
 the General Will, and assume their identity. So 
 that force gains a moral sanction because the 
 76 ev (nv is thereby to be achieved. What the 
 State ordains begins to possess for you a special 
 moral sanction superior in authority to the claim 
 of group or individual. You must surrender your 
 personality before its demands. You must fuse 
 your will into its own. It is, may we not without 
 paradox say, right whether it be right or wrong. 
 It is lack of patriotism in a great war to venture 
 criticism of it. It has the right, as in this sover- 
 eign view it has the power, to bind your will into 
 its own. They who act as its organ of government 
 and enforce its will can alone interpret its needs. 
 They dictate; for the parts there is no function 
 save silent acquiescence. 
 
SOVEREIGNTY OF THE STATE 9 
 
 For practical politics there seems no moral 
 rightness in such an attitude as this. We have, 
 in fact, to deem acts right and wrong. We do 
 point to groups within the State, or parallel to it, 
 and urge that they are really harmful and really 
 beneficent. We judge them in reference to them- 
 selves. We take what may be appearance as 
 actually constituting reality. We credit, in short, 
 human knowledge. We say that there is some- 
 thing in appearance. If we can not credit it, 
 assuredly there is nothing in which belief is at all 
 possible. Its finite character we freely admit. 
 We can not know all things. We have to be con- 
 tent with a certain specialism, leaving omniscience 
 to the Absolute. 
 
 If, as I urge, we know not all things, but some 
 things, if we know not America and Germany, but 
 England and France, nothing of Julius Caesar, 
 but much of Napoleon, then we claim the right to 
 make judgments upon them. They stand by them- 
 selves, can be known, that is to say, independently. 
 I do not mean that Julius Caesar is not ultimately 
 connected with Napoleon or that there is no rela- 
 tion between England and America, but simply 
 that there is no necessary relevance between them. 
 Applying this to politics, I mean that we do not 
 proceed from the State to the parts of the State 
 on the ground that the State is more fundamentally 
 unified than its parts, but we, on the contrary, 
 admit that the parts are as real and as self- 
 sufficient as the whole. I do not know England 
 
10 PROBLEM OF SOVEREIGNTY 
 
 before I know, say, Berkeley Square and London; 
 from Berkeley Square and London I come to know 
 England. But in James’ phrase, ‘everything 
 you can think of, however vast or inclusive, has, 
 on the pluralistic view, a genuinely ‘‘external’’ 
 environment of some sort or amount. Things are 
 ‘‘with’’? one another in many ways, but nothing 
 includes everything or dominates everything. The 
 word ‘‘and’”’ trails along after every sentence. 
 Something always escapes... the pluralistic 
 world is thus more like a federal republic than an 
 empire or a kingdom. However much may be 
 collected, however much may report itself as 
 present at any effective centre of consciousness 
 something else is self-governed and absent and 
 unreduced to unity.’ 
 
 We are urging that because a group or an indi- 
 vidual is related to some other group or individual 
 it is not thereby forced to enter into relations with 
 every other part of the body politic. When a 
 trade-union ejects one of its members for refusing 
 to pay a political levy it is not thereby bringing 
 itself into relations with the Mormon Church. A 
 trade-union as such has no connection with the 
 Mormon Church; it stands self-sufficient on its 
 own legs. It may work with the State, but it need 
 not do so of necessity. It may be in relations with 
 the State, but it is one with it and not of it. The 
 State, to use James’ terms once more, is ‘dis- 
 tributive’ and not ‘collective.’ There are no 
 essential connections. 
 
SOVEREIGNTY OF THE STATE 11 
 
 
 
 We are not taking up the position that the 
 State has no relations with these groups. Weare 
 simply denying that the parts must be judged by 
 the State,—the individual German, let us say, by 
 the conduct of Germany. We have not to judge 
 of all things in their State-context. Such a rela- 
 tion is a forced relation. It is charging to the 
 account of your individual German things which 
 are really accountable to Germany. We judge his 
 conduct in life in reference to himself and not in 
 reference to the State of which he is part. In the 
 monistic theory of the State he derives his mean- 
 ing from his relations; in the pluralistic theory, 
 while his relations may be of the deepest signifi- 
 cance, it is denied that they are the sole criterion 
 by which a man ought to be judged. So in the 
 pluralistic view of the State, there are, as James 
 said of the pluralist world, ‘real losses and real 
 losers,’ in the clashing of its parts; nor do these 
 add mysteriously to the splendour of the whole. 
 
 How, then, it will be asked, is the will of the 
 State to be made manifest? If the State is but 
 one of the groups to which the individual belongs, 
 there is no thought of unity in his allegiance. The 
 answer to that is the sufficiently simple answer 
 that our allegiance is not as a fact unified. In the 
 event of a great war, for example, as a member 
 of the State you may be called upon to fight; as 
 a member of another group, the Quakers, you may 
 be called upon to resist that demand. It seems 
 clear that little is gained by talk of ‘over-riding 
 
12 PROBLEM OF SOVEREIGNTY 
 
 demands,’ of saying, for instance, that the demands 
 of the State are all-important. They are all- 
 important only to the State. The history of 
 societies fatally contradicts the view that in a 
 crisis only the State will have power of compulsion. 
 What of certain miners in South Wales? What 
 of certain Unionists in Ulster? Of militant 
 suffragists? Did not to them the wills of certain 
 groups other than the State conflict with it and 
 prove more intense in their demand? Such mar- 
 ginal cases will in all probability be rare, but there 
 is no sort of guarantee that they will not occur. 
 Then, it will be protested, you will abolish what 
 lawyers mean by sovereignty. You justify resist- 
 ance to the State. You deny that each state must 
 possess a legally determinate superior whose will 
 is certain of acceptance. But it is surely evident 
 that no such instrument does exist. We have 
 nowhere the assurance that any rule of conduct 
 ean be enforced. For that rule will depend for its 
 validity upon the opinion of the members of the 
 State, and they belong to other groups to which 
 such rule may be obnoxious. If, for example, 
 Parliament chose to enact that no Englishman 
 should be a Roman Catholic, it would certainly 
 fail to carry the statute into effect. We have, 
 therefore, to find the true meaning of sovereignty 
 not in the coercive power possessed by its instru- 
 ment, but in the fused good-will for which it 
 stands. Men accept its dictates either because 
 their own will finds part expression there or 
 
SOVEREIGNTY OF THE STATE Le 
 
 because, assuming the goodness of intention which 
 lies behind it, they are content, usually, not to 
 resist its imposition. But then law clearly is not 
 a command. It is simply a rule of convenience. 
 Its goodness consists in its consequences. It 
 has to prove itself. It does not, therefore, seem 
 wise to argue that Parliament, for example, is 
 omnipotent in a special sense. The power Parlia- 
 ment exerts is situate in it not by law, but by 
 consent, and that consent is, as certain famous 
 instances have shown, liable to suspension. An 
 omnipotence that Cardinal Wiseman can over-i 
 throw in 1851, that J. H. Newman can smilingly 
 dissolve in 1875, that constitutes in the Judicial 
 Committee of the Privy Council a tribunal for 
 ecclesiastical causes which clergymen of repute 
 will regard as of no authority, and, therefore, 
 neglect, seems to represent an abstraction of the 
 facts. Where sovereignty prevails, where the 
 State acts, it acts by the consent of men. 
 
 What guarantee have we, then, in the pluralist 
 view that the will of the State will prevail? It 
 may seem that this view gives a handle to anarchy. 
 It does not, I believe, give any more handle to 
 anarchy than it at present possesses. If we 
 become inductive-minded and make our principles 
 grow out of the facts of social life we shall admit 
 that the sanction for the will of the State is going 
 to depend largely on the persons who interpret it. 
 The monarchs of the ancien régime were legally 
 the sovereign power in France, but their will was 
 
14 PROBLEM OF SOVEREIGNTY 
 
 not the will of the State. It did not prevail 
 because of. the supreme unwisdom of the manner 
 in which they chose to assume that their good was 
 also the popular good. They confused what 
 Rousseau would have called their ‘private good’ 
 with the ‘common good’ and Louis XVI paid the 
 penalty on the scaffold. The will of the State 
 obtains pre-eminence over the wills of other groups 
 exactly to the point where it is interpreted with 
 sufficient wisdom to obtain general acceptance, and 
 no further. It is a will to some extent competing 
 with other wills, and, Darwin-wise, surviving only 
 by its ability to cope with its environment. Should 
 it venture into dangerous places it pays the pen- 
 alty of its audacity. It finds its sovereignty by 
 consent transformed into impotence by disagree- 
 ment. 
 
 But, it may be objected, in such a view sover- 
 eignty means no more than the ability to secure 
 assent. I can only reply to the objection by admit- 
 ting it. There is no sanction for law other than 
 the consent of the human mind. It is sheer illusion 
 to imagine that the authority of the State has any 
 other safeguard than the wills of its members. 
 For the State, as I have tried to show, is simply 
 what Mr. Graham Wallas calls a will-organisation, 
 and the essential feature of such a thing is its 
 ultimate dependence upon the constituent wills 
 from which the group will is made. To argue that 
 the State is degraded by such reduction in nowise 
 alters, so far as I can see, the fact that this is its 
 
SOVEREIGNTY OF THE STATE wks 
 
 essential nature. We have only to look at the 
 realities of social existence to see quite clearly that 
 the State does not enjoy any necessary pre- 
 eminence for its demands. That must depend 
 entirely upon the nature of the demand it makes. 
 I shall find again and again that my allegiance is 
 divided between the different groups to which I 
 belong. It is the nature of the particular difficulty 
 which decides my action. 
 
 Nor is this view invalidated by the consideration 
 that the purpose of the State is larger than that 
 of any other conceivable group, does, in fact, com- 
 prehend it. J am not at all certain that this is the 
 ease. A State may in theory exist to secure the 
 highest life for its members. But when we come 
 to the analysis of hard facts it becomes painfully 
 apparent that the good actually maintained is that 
 of a certain section, not the community as a whole. 
 I should be prepared to argue, for instance, that 
 in the England before the war the ideal of the 
 trade-unions was a wider ideal than that which 
 the State had attained, one is tempted to say, 
 desired to attain. It is possible, again, to say of 
 the Roman Catholic Church that its purpose is 
 wider than that even of a conceivable world-state 
 in the future; for the State concerns itself with 
 the lives of men on earth, while the Roman Catho- 
 lic Church concerns itself also with their future 
 existence. And, moreover, it is not so much great- 
 ness of purpose that seems important as the 
 capacity to secure intensity of affection. This, as 
 
16 PROBLEM OF SOVEREIGNTY 
 
 I argued earlier, is surely the explanation of the 
 attitude of those who resist the State. The 
 purpose of their organisation is not more vast, 
 but it comes nearer home to what the individual 
 immediately desires; so it has for him a greater 
 momentary validity. He subordinates the will of 
 the State to the will of his group because the latter 
 -accords with his desire or his conscience. I think 
 that any one who reflects on the history of 
 opposition to the State will find that this is, 
 psychologically, the most fruitful source of its 
 understanding. 
 
 Now I admit quite freely that I have been dis- 
 cussing a sovereignty far wider than that which 
 lawyers are accustomed to recognise. When a 
 distinguished jurist thinks that ‘sovereign power 
 is that which within its own sphere is absolute and 
 uncontrolled,’ and when another equally distin- 
 guished legal thinker argues that law rests on 
 sovereignty, I can only throw up my hands. For 
 while, for example, in England, the sovereign 
 power is Parliament, and, broadly speaking, only 
 the rules laid down by it will be enforced by the 
 courts, yet Parhamentary opinion, Parliamentary 
 statute, are the result of a vast complex of forces 
 towards which men and groups, within and 
 without the State, make often enough valuable 
 contributions. It seems to me that you can never 
 find in a community any one will which is certain 
 of obedience. That is why Korkunov is pro- 
 foundly right when he urges that its phenomena 
 
SOVEREIGNTY OF THE STATE 1G 
 
 can not be regarded as the manifestation of such 
 unity. I can not too greatly emphasise the impor- 
 tance of a phrase used by John Chipman Gray. 
 ‘The real rulers of a society,’ he says in a striking 
 sentence, ‘are undiscoverable.’ But with the real 
 rulers must go sovereignty; and if you can not 
 find them it too must be beyond the reach of human 
 insight. When you come to think of it, the sover- 
 eignty of legal theory is far too simple to admit 
 of acceptance. The sovereign is the person in the 
 State who can get his will accepted, who so domi- 
 nates over his fellows as to blend their wills with 
 his. Clearly there is nothing absolute and un- 
 qualified about it. It is a matter of degree and 
 not of kind that the State should find for its 
 decrees more usual acceptance than those of any 
 other association. It is not because of the force 
 that lies behind its will, but because men know that 
 the group could not endure if every disagreement 
 meant a secession, that they agree to accept its will 
 as made manifest for the most part in its law. 
 Here, at any rate, we clear the air of fictions. We 
 do not bestow upon our State attributes it does not 
 possess. We hold it entitled to ask from its 
 members that which conduces to the achievement 
 of its purpose not because it has the force to exact 
 their consent, but because what it asks will in the 
 event prove conducive to that end. Further than 
 this we can not go. 
 
 There are, in this view, things the State can not 
 demand from its members. It could not, for 
 
18 PROBLEM OF SOVEREIGNTY 
 
 instance, demand from one of them that he assas- 
 sinate a perfectly blameless man; for so to demand 
 is to violate for both men the whole purpose for 
 which the State exists. It would have, on the 
 other hand, a clear right to ask from each member 
 such contribution as he can afford to a system of 
 national education, because the modern State has 
 decided that the more educated are its members 
 the more are they likely to fulfil its end. What 
 I mean by ‘right’ is something the pragmatist will 
 understand. It is something the individual ought 
 to concede because experience has proved it to be 
 good. So when the State demands from one of its 
 members toleration for the religious belief of 
 another as a right each should enjoy, it means that 
 the consequences of toleration are more coincident 
 with the end of the State than the consequences of 
 religious persecution. Our rights are teleological. 
 They have to prove themselves. That is why, I 
 confess, one of the main comforts I derive from 
 the study of Aristotle is the conviction that he 
 attempted to delineate a pragmatist theory of the 
 State. He gave to his rights the rich validation 
 of experience; and surely a right that has no 
 consequences is too empty to admit of worth. 
 The view of the State I am endeavouring to 
 depict may perhaps be best understood by refer- 
 ence to a chemical analogy. The chemist draws 
 a picture of his molecule—it is a number of atoms 
 erouped together by certain links of attraction 
 each possesses for the other. And when a mole- 
 
SOVEREIGNTY OF THE STATE 19 
 
 cule of, say, hydrogen meets a molecule of oxygen 
 something new results. What is there may be 
 merely hydrogen plus oxygen; but you must treat 
 it as something different from either. So I would 
 urge that you must place your individual at the 
 centre of things. You must regard him as linked 
 to a variety of associations to which his person- 
 ality attracts him. You must on this view admit 
 that the State is only one of the associations to 
 which he happens to belong, and give it exactly 
 that pre-eminence—and no more—to which on the 
 particular occasion of conflict, its possibly superior 
 moral claim will entitle it. In my view it does not 
 attempt to take that pre-eminence by force; it wins 
 it by consent. It proves to its members by what 
 it performs that it possesses a claim inherently 
 greater than, say, their Church or trade-union. It 
 is no dry a priort justification which compels their 
 allegiance, but the solidity of its moral achieve- 
 ment. So, I shall fight for England because I can 
 genuinely accept the rightness of its cause; not 
 because when the call comes I must unheedingly 
 and, therefore, unintelligently obey it. 
 
 Surely, too, that State will be the stronger which 
 thus binds to itself its members by the strength 
 of a moral purpose validated. When, for example, 
 your miners in South Wales go on strike, rather 
 than attempt their compulsion by Munitions Acts 
 to obey that for which they feel no sympathy, and 
 thus produce that feeling of balked disposition of 
 which Mr. Graham Wallas has written so wisely, 
 
20 PROBLEM OF SOVEREIGNTY 
 
 you seek means of finding common ground between 
 their group and yours, you will have done better. 
 Is there not a tremendous danger in modern times 
 that people will believe the legal sovereignty of a 
 State to be identical with its moral sovereignty ? 
 Right is a dangerous word—for it is political no 
 less than ethical, and in the hands of a skilful 
 statesman the meaning may be insensibly fused. 
 So it will be preached eventually that where a 
 State, from this theoretic conception of Oneness, 
 has a legal right, it has also a moral right which 
 passes so easily into a moral obligation. Govern- 
 ment, then, stands above the moral code applied 
 to humbler individuals. It is almost unconsciously 
 exalted into tyranny. It gains the power to crush 
 out all that conflicts with its own will, no matter 
 what the ethical implication of that will. I can 
 then well understand why to an historian like 
 Treitschke power can be the end of all things. For 
 then power is moral and becomes more profoundly 
 moral as it grows in extent. Is there the slightest 
 historical justification for such a conclusion ? 
 The thing of which I feel afraid, if the State 
 be admitted limitless power, Professor Dewey has 
 expressed felicitously in a single phrase, ‘It has 
 been instructed [he is speaking of the German 
 State] by a long line of philosophers that it is the 
 business of ideal right to gather might to itself 
 in order that it may cease to be merely ideal.’ Nor 
 is what he urges true of Germany alone. When 
 you hear in Great Britain of unamiable retired 
 
SOVEREIGNTY OF THE STATE 21 
 
 colonels on half-pay writing from the comfortable 
 seclusion of a London club that the working-classes 
 must be compelled to do certain things because the 
 existence of the State is threatened, the voice may 
 be the voice of an English colonel, but verily! the 
 spirit of a certain retired German cavalry officer 
 creeps into that voice. The State may ask the 
 workers for their aid; but the condition must 
 assuredly be, that when it fights, their good, no 
 less than its own, is bound up with victory. It 
 seems to me, frankly, that when many of us use 
 the term ‘State’ at the present time we are per- 
 forming a mental operation of which the content 
 is essentially different. The State is not the same 
 thing, for instance, to the Kaiser and to Herr 
 Karl Liebknecht. When the former asks for the 
 support of Germans that the State may not perish, 
 he has in mind a thing almost antithetic to what 
 it means for Herr Liebknecht. Is anything gained 
 by ignoring this difference, and urging that this 
 State, so fundamentally different to both men, is 
 to have for both an equally valid claim? Assur- 
 edly, as the event proves, that can not be the case. 
 
 I have tried to show that the monistic theory of 
 the State, making it sovereign and, therefore, 
 absolute, runs counter to some of the deepest 
 convictions we can possess. I have urged that it 
 will ask from us sacrifices it is against our con- 
 sciences to give. It may of course be said that 
 such a sacrifice has in it a discipline it is well for 
 men to undergo. But when men begin, at the cost 
 
22 PROBLEM OF SOVEREIGNTY 
 
 of suffering, to surrender their convictions with 
 a monotonous regularity they will end by surren- 
 dering them without a pang. May we not here 
 apply that stinging aphorism of Coleridge— He 
 who loves Christianity better than truth, will love 
 his sect or Church better than Christianity, and 
 end by loving himself best of all’? 
 
 In the realm of philosophy, the last forty years 
 have seen the consistent disruption of absolutisms. 
 In the sphere of politics they are assuredly but 
 the expression of what our rulers are fain to 
 believe from half-instinctive desire. The history 
 of recorded experience seems to show that this kind 
 of dogma is the stumbling-block in the way of all 
 progress. The State has sovereign rights; and 
 those who manipulate it will too often cause it to 
 be used for the protection of existing rights. The 
 two get identified; the dead hand of effete ances- 
 tralism falls with a resounding thud on the living 
 hopes of to-day. I said earlier that such abso- 
 lutism bridges over the distinction between right 
 and wrong. Is it not clearly so? Is it not claimed 
 in Germany that an act is justified when State 
 necessity compels it, and that without reference 
 to the accepted criteria of moral action? In the 
 South African War were there not statesmen who, 
 because they condemned it, were adjudged morally 
 degenerate? Is there not in the United States a 
 tendency to approximate criticism of the consti- 
 tution to original sin? Please observe that I am 
 only asking questions. 
 
SOVEREIGNTY OF THE STATE 23 
 
 How ever are we to get any worth out of his- 
 torical experience if such absolutism is to be held 
 valid? Every state then becomes exalted above 
 the moral law. Spain was right in its attack on 
 the Netherlands, and the Netherlands wrong in 
 resisting the attack. Great Britain was right 
 absolutely in the American War of Independence. 
 Truly there is point in Mr. Chesterton’s remark 
 that only logic drives men mad. 
 
 Such difficulties as this the pluralistic theory of 
 the State seems to me to remove. As a theory it 
 is what Professor Dewey calls ‘consistently experi- 
 mentalist,’ in form and content. It denies the 
 rightness of force. It dissolves—what the facts 
 themselves dissolve—the inherent claim of the 
 State to obedience. It insists that the State, like 
 every other association, shall prove itself by what 
 it achieves. It sets group competing against 
 group in a ceaseless striving of progressive expan- 
 sion. What it is and what it becomes it then is and 
 becomes by virtue only of its moral programme. 
 It denies that the pursuit of evil can be made good 
 by the character of the performer. It makes 
 claim of the member of the State that he under- 
 take ceaseless examination of its moral founda- 
 tions. It does not try to work out with tedious 
 elaboration the respective spheres of State or 
 group or individual. It leaves that to the test of 
 the event. It predicates no certainty because his- 
 tory, I think fortunately, does not repeat itself. 
 It recognises the validity of all wills to exist, and 
 
24 PROBLEM OF SOVEREIGNTY 
 
 argues no more than that in their conflict men 
 should give their allegiance to that which is 
 possessed of superior moral purpose. It is in fact 
 an individualistic theory of the State—no plural- 
 istic attitude can avoid that. But it is individual- 
 istic only in so far as it asks of man that he should 
 be a social being. In the monist theory of the 
 State there seems no guarantee that man will have 
 any being at all. His personality, for him the 
 most real of all things, is sacrificed to an idol which 
 the merest knowledge of history would prove to 
 have feet of clay. 
 
 I am well enough aware that in any such volun- 
 tarism as this room is left for a hint of anarchy. 
 To discredit the State seems like enough to 
 dethroning it. And when the voice of the State 
 is viewed as the deliberate expression of public 
 opinion it seems like the destruction of the one 
 uniquely democratic basis we have thus far at- 
 tained. But the objection, like the play queen in 
 Hamlet, protests too much. It assumes the 
 homogeneity of public opinion, and of that homo- 
 geneity not even the most stout-hearted of us could 
 adduce the proof. Nor is its absence defect. On 
 the contrary, it seems to me that it is essentially 
 a sign that real thought is present. A community 
 that can not agree is already a community capable 
 of advance. And if public opinion is not homo- 
 geneous where and how is it constituted? How will 
 it prevail? I have already raised these questions. 
 I have urged that the proof is not general, but 
 
SOVEREIGNTY OF THE STATE 25 
 
 particular, les in each special occasion as it arises. 
 And that is to postulate a State far from uniquely 
 sovereign, since on occasion it will not prevail as 
 on occasion it may not be right. 
 
 I imagine the absolute Hobbes, who has seen 
 internal dissension tear a great kingdom in pieces, 
 hold up hands of horror at such division of power. 
 Maybe I who write in a time when the State enjoys 
 its beatification can sympathise but too little with 
 that prince of monistic thinkers. And the reason 
 is simple enough. It is from the selection of 
 variations, not from the preservation of uniformi- 
 ties, that progress is born. We do not want to 
 make our State a cattle-yard in which only the 
 shepherd shall know one beast from another. 
 Rather we may hope to bring from the souls of 
 men and women their richest fruition. If they 
 have intelligence we shall ask its application 
 to our problems. If they have courage we shall 
 ask the aid of its compelling will. We shall make 
 the basis of our State consent to disagreement. 
 Therein shall we ensure its deepest harmony.’ 
 
 3QOn this whole subject see Mr. Barker’s paper in the Political 
 Quarterly for February, 1915. 
 

 
CHAPTER II 
 
 THE POLITICAL THEORY OF THE 
 DISRUPTION’ 
 
 fi 
 
 4 F political principles,’ says a distinguished 
 authority,’ ‘whether they be those of order 
 
 or of freedom, we must seek in religious, and quasi- 
 theological writings for the highest and most 
 notable expressions.’ No one, in truth, will deny 
 the accuracy of this claim for those ages before 
 the Reformation transferred the centre of political 
 importance from Church to State. What is too 
 rarely appreciated is the modernism of those 
 writings in all save form. Just as the medieval 
 State had to fight hard for relief from ecclesiastical 
 trammels, so does its modern exclusiveness throw 
 the burden of a kindred struggle upon its erst- 
 while rival. The Church, intelligibly enough, is 
 compelled to seek the protection of its liberties 
 lest it become no more than the religious depart- 
 1 No adequate history of the secession of 1843 has yet been written. 
 What exists is for the most part pietistic in form and content. Perhaps 
 the least unsatisfactory work is that of R. Buchanan, The Ten Years’ 
 Conflict, Edinburgh, 1850. The Rev. W. Hanna’s Life of Chalmers, 
 Vol. IV, will be found to contain much material of value, though 
 
 naturally of a biassed and edifying kind. 
 2J. N. Figgis, From Gerson to Grotius, p. 6. 
 
28 PROBLEM OF SOVEREIGNTY 
 
 ment of an otherwise secular organisation. The 
 main problem, in fact, for the political theorist is 
 still that which lies at the root of medieval con- 
 flict. What is the definition of sovereignty? Shall 
 the nature and personality of those groups of 
 which the State is so formidably one be regarded 
 as in its gift to define? Can the State tolerate 
 alongside itself churches which avow themselves 
 societates perfectae, claiming exemption from its 
 jurisdiction even when, as often enough, they 
 traverse the field over which it ploughs? Is the 
 State but one of many, or are those many but parts 
 of itself, the One? 
 
 There has been no final answer to these ques- 
 tions; it is possible that there is no final answer. 
 Yet the study of the problems they raise gives 
 birth to certain thoughts which mould in vital 
 fashion our theory of the State. They are old 
 enough thoughts, have, indeed, not seldom been 
 deemed dead and past praying for; yet, so one may 
 urge, they speak with living tongues. At certain 
 great crises in the history of the nineteenth century 
 they have thundered with all the proud vigour of 
 youth. A student of modern ultramontanism will 
 not fail to find its basis in the stirring phrases of 
 an eleventh century Pope; just as he will find set 
 out the opposition to it in the stern words of a 
 fifteenth century Chancellor of Paris University. 
 Strikingly medieval, too, is the political theory no 
 less of the Oxford Movement than of that Kultur- 
 kampf which sent a German prince a second time 
 
POLITICAL THEORY OF DISRUPTION 29 
 
 to Canossa. And in a piece of Scottish eccle- 
 siastical history the familiar tones may without 
 difficulty be detected. 
 
 II 
 
 On the eighteenth of May, 1843, Dr. Welsh, the 
 Moderator of the General Assembly of the Estab- 
 lished Church of Scotland, took a course unique in 
 the history of his office. He made no formal 
 address. Instead, there came the announcement 
 that as a protest against an illegal usurpation of 
 the rights of the Church, and in order to maintain 
 that freedom of action essential to the Assembly, 
 two hundred and three of its members were com- 
 pelled to sever their connexion with it... With a 
 large number of lay and clerical followers he then 
 withdrew to a hall that had been prepared near by. 
 Prayer was offered up; the moderatorship of the 
 seceding members was offered to, and accepted by, 
 Dr. Chalmers; and the Assembly then proceeded 
 to constitute itself the governing body of the Free 
 Church of Scotland.* 
 
 To the adequate understanding of this striking 
 event some brief survey of early Scottish eccle- 
 siastical history from the time of Knox’s invasion 
 is necessary. Recognised as the State Church in 
 1567,° from the first a conflict of authority arose. 
 The first General Assembly had approved the 
 
 3 Buchanan, IT, 594. 
 
 4 Buchanan, IT, 607. 
 
 5 Calderwood, II, 388-389. Innes, Law of Creeds in Scotland, p. 14. 
 I can not too fully acknowledge my debt to this admirable book. 
 
30 PROBLEM OF SOVEREIGNTY 
 
 
 
 Book of Discipline of the Church, but the Council 
 from the outset was unwilling to sanction it. As 
 a result, the General Assembly proceeded to act 
 as though this approval, having reference to an 
 ecclesiastical matter, was unnecessary. The Book 
 was made an essential part of the Church’s doc- 
 trinal constitution; and from the first the concep- 
 tion of a societas wperfecta was of decisive 
 importance.” On the threshold, therefore, of 
 ecclesiastical history in Reformation Scotland a 
 problem arises. For while the State never ac- 
 corded the desired recognition, it is at least equally 
 clear that the Church was in nowise dismayed by 
 that refusal. Jurisdiction, indeed, was awarded 
 to it by the State in the same year;* but in terms 
 ominous of future discord. To ‘declaration’ no 
 objection could be raised; but the insertion of a 
 power to ‘grant’ clearly cut away the ground from 
 under the feet of Knox’s contention that the power 
 of jurisdiction was inherent without parliamentary 
 enactment.® Yet, in a sense, the Church’s desire 
 for the recognition of its complete spiritual 
 powers may be said to have received its fulfilment 
 in 1592, when it was declared that an Act of 
 Supremacy over Estates Spiritual and Temporal” 
 ‘shall nowise be prejudical nor derogate anything 
 
 6 Innes, op. cit., p. 20. 
 
 7 As is apparent in Melville’s famous sermon before James I. Cf. 
 Innes, p. 21. 
 
 8 Acts of Parliament of Scotland, ITT, 24. 
 
 9 Knox, History of Reformation, p. 257, and ef. McCrie’s History of 
 
 the Scottish Church, p. 44. 
 10 1584, ec. 129. The so-called ‘Black Acts,’ Calderwood, IV, 62-73. 
 
POLITICAL THEORY OF DISRUPTION 31 
 
 
 
 to the privilege that God has given to the spiritual 
 office-bearers in the kirk, concerning the heads of 
 religion ... or any such like essential censures 
 specially grounded and having warrant of the 
 word of God.”* Here, at any rate, was the clear 
 admission that in the ecclesiastical sphere the 
 Church possessed powers no less than divine; 
 and it may not unjustly be assumed that when 
 the State affixed civil punishment to eccle- 
 siastical censure, it stamped those powers with 
 its approval.” 
 
 What pain the Church had to endure in the 
 next century of its history it lies outside’, our 
 province to discuss; for our purpose its relation 
 to the Revolution Settlement is the next halting 
 place. An Act of 1669 had asserted the ‘royal 
 supremacy over the Church; this was rescinded, * 
 and another statute, passed simultaneously, 
 adopted the Westminster Confession as part of 
 the law.” At the same time the abuse of lay 
 patronage—complained of from the outset—was 
 abolished, and the right of ministerial appoint- 
 ment was practically vested in the full congre- 
 gation.” 
 
 Clearly, there was much of gain in this settle- 
 
 111592, c. 116. Acts Par. Scot., III, 541. Calderwood, V, 162. 
 
 12 1593, c, 164. 
 
 13 Acts Par. Scot., VII, 554. 
 
 1416905 ¢, 1. 
 
 15 1690, ¢. 5. 
 16 McCrie, op. cit., p. 418. 
 
32 PROBLEM OF SOVEREIGNTY 
 
 ment, though about its nature there has been 
 strenuous debate. ‘To Lord President Hope, for 
 instance, the Act of 1690 was the imposition of 
 doctrine on the Church by the State, and so the 
 recognition of the latter’s supremacy.” But it is 
 surely clear that what actually was done was to 
 recognise the Church practice without any dis- 
 cussion of the difficult principles involved;* and 
 even that silent negligence did not pass uncriticised 
 by the General Assembly.” Yet, whatever the 
 attitude of the State, it is certain that the Church 
 did not conceive itself either by this Act, or in the 
 four years’ struggle over subscription to its 
 formularies, to have surrendered any part of its 
 independence.” 
 
 The next great epoch in the history of the 
 Scottish Church was, naturally, its connexion with 
 the Act of Union in 1707. So securely was it 
 deemed to be settled that the Commissioners ap- 
 pointed in 1705 to treat with the English Parla- 
 ment were expressly excluded from dealing with 
 the Scottish Church ;* and the Act of Security was 
 deemed fundamental to the Union. The Act 
 pledged the Crown to the maintenance of the Acts 
 
 17 See his judgment in the Auchterarder case. Robertson’s Report, 
 TI 3) 
 
 18 This is well brought out by Mr. Innes, op. cit., p. 45. 
 
 19 Innes, p. 46. 
 
 20 Buchanan, I, 136. Of. Hetherington’s Hist. of Ch. of Scotland, 
 p. 555; and for some strenuous criticism of William’s attitude, Mr. 
 
 McCormick’s Life of Carstares, pp. 43-44. 
 21 McCrie, op. cit., 440. 
 
POLITICAL THEORY OF DISRUPTION 83 
 
 of 1690 and 1693 in terms as solemn as well may 
 be;” and it may reasonably be argued that Parlia- 
 ment conceived itself as then laying down some- 
 thing very like a fundamental and irrevocable 
 law.** These may, indeed, have been.no more than 
 the recognition of a specially solemn occasion, for 
 it is certainly difficult otherwise to understand 
 why in 1712 Parliament should have restored that 
 lay patronage which the Act of 1690 abolished.” 
 The measure was carried through with indecent 
 haste by the Jacobite party, and a spirit of revenge 
 seems to have been its chief motive.” From this 
 time until almost the close of the eighteenth cen- 
 tury the General Assembly protested against the 
 measure; but Parliament could not be moved.” 
 
 That such a course was a violation of the Act 
 of Security is, of course, evident without argu- 
 ment; but the chief significance of the repeal lay 
 rather in the future than in the past. ‘The British 
 legislature,’ Macaulay told the House of Com- 
 mons,” ‘violated the Articles of Union and made 
 a change in the constitution of the Church of 
 Scotland. From that change has flowed almost all 
 the dissent now existing in Scotland. ... year 
 after year the General Assembly protested against 
 
 22 Mathieson, Scotland and the Union, p. 183. Innes, op. cit., p. 58. 
 
 23 See Sir H. W. Moncrieff, Churches and Creeds, p. 19. 
 
 2410 Anne, ec. 12. 
 
 25 Woodrow’s Correspon., 1, 77, 84. Carstares’ State Papers, 82. 
 Burnet, VI, 106-107. 
 
 26 Innes, op. cit., p. 60. 
 27 Speeches, IT, 180. 
 
34 PROBLEM OF SOVEREIGNTY 
 
 
 
 
 
 the violation, but in vain; and from the Act of 
 1712 undoubtedly flowed every secession and 
 schism that has taken place in the Church of 
 Scotland.’ This is not the exaggeration of rhet- 
 oric, but the moderation of sober truth. For what 
 the Act of 1712 did, in the eyes at least of the 
 Church, was essentially to deal with a right funda- 
 mentally ecclesiastical in its nature, and so to 
 invade the Church’s own province. It became 
 clear to the leaders of the Church that so to be 
 controlled was in fact to sacrifice the Divine 
 Supremacy to which they laid claim. Christ 
 could no longer be the Supreme Head of the 
 Presbyterian Church of Scotland if that Church 
 allowed lay authority to contravene His commands. 
 So that when it came, as they deemed, to a choice 
 between His Headship and freedom on the one 
 hand, and endowment and State control on the 
 other, they could not hesitate in their duty. 
 
 IIL 
 
 The Disruption takes its immediate rise in an 
 Act of the General Assembly in 1834. There had 
 long been signs in the Church of a deep dissatis- 
 faction with the Establishment. It meant, so, at 
 least, the voluntarists urged, enslavement to the 
 civil power; and to the answer that the Church 
 had spiritual freedom, the existence of civil 
 
 28 Buchanan, I, 280 ff. 
 
POLITICAL THEORY OF DISRUPTION 385 
 
 patronage was everywhere deemed a sufficient 
 response.” If voluntaryism was to be combated, 
 some measures against intrusion must be taken; 
 and it was upon the motion of Lord Moncrieff, 
 himself a distinguished lawyer, that it was de- 
 elared, ‘a fundamental law of the Church that no 
 pastor shall be intruded on any congregation 
 contrary to the will of the people.’ Patronage, 
 in fact, was not abolished; but, clearly, the need 
 for congregational approval deprived it of its 
 sting. It is important to note that not even among 
 the opposition to the measure was any sort of 
 objection urged against the competency of the 
 General Assembly to enact it.” 
 
 The challenge, however, was not long coming. 
 Within six months of the decision of the General 
 Assembly, a vacancy occurred in the parish of 
 Auchterarder in Perthshire. Lord Kinnoull, the 
 patron, made his presentation to a Mr. Robert 
 Young, and the congregation promptly rejected 
 him by an overwhelming majority.” The Pres- 
 bytery then took steps to carry out the Veto Law.” 
 
 Lord Kinnoull was not long in deciding to 
 contest his rights in the Courts. Into the history 
 of the struggle it is unnecessary to go in any 
 detail; the merest outline of its history must here 
 
 29 [bid., I, 282. : 
 
 30 [bid., I, 293. The motion was carried by 184 votes to 138. Ibid., 
 p. 307. 
 
 81 Ibid., I, p. 325. 
 
 82 Buchanan, I, 399. 
 33 I[bid., I, 408. 
 
36 PROBLEM OF SOVEREIGNTY 
 
 suffice.** The Court of Session refused to accept 
 the defence of the Presbytery that the rejection 
 of a presentee for unfitness concerned only the 
 ecclesiastical authorities, and laid it down that the 
 Church was dependent upon the State.* To this 
 the General Assembly rephed almost immediately 
 in a resolution which bound the Church ‘to assert, 
 and, at all hazards, to defend’ not only the freedom 
 of the Church from outside interference but also 
 its determination to exact obedience to the Veto 
 Law.* The consequence of this defiance was 
 the Strathbogie cases. A Presbytery, following 
 the decision of the Court of Session, neglected 
 the Veto Act of 1834 and was suspended by the 
 General Assembly.” The Court of Session at once 
 protected it,* and ordained that the vetoed minister 
 should be received.*® The Presbytery of Auchter- 
 arder was condemned in damages to Lord Kin- 
 noull and Mr. Robert Young;* a minority of the 
 Presbytery opposed to the Veto Act was declared 
 to be capable of acting as the Presbytery proper 
 and the majority was inhibited from any interfer- 
 ence.” The rejected presentee was forced upon 
 
 84 The reader will find full details in Buchanan and the cases noted 
 ae First Auchterarder case. Robertson’s report. 
 
 86 Buchanan, II, 479. 
 
 37 Ibid., II, 284. 
 
 88 1840, 2 Dunlop, p. 585. 
 
 39 1840, 3 Dunlop, p. 282. 
 
 40 1841, 3 Dunlop, p. 778. This is the second Auchterarder case. 
 411843, 5 Dunlop, p. 1010. This is the third Auchterarder case. I 
 
POLITICAL THEORY OF DISRUPTION 37 
 
 
 
 the Presbytery; and the condemnation of the 
 Presbytery by the General Assembly for disregard 
 of the Veto Act was put on one side.* Truly the 
 outcome of Knox’s nationalism had been different 
 from the conception of its founder.“ 
 
 Attempted interference by statesmen proved of 
 no avail. Upon so fundamental a problem the 
 Church could not compromise, since it was her 
 independence as a society that was at stake. 
 Parliament would not surrender the position taken — 
 up by the Court of Session and the House of Lords. 
 ‘No government would recommend,’ Mr. Bruce 
 told the House of Commons,* ‘and no Parliament 
 would ever sanction the pretensions of the Church 
 of Scotland, because if those claims were granted, 
 they would establish a spiritual tyranny worse and 
 more intolerable than that of the Church of Rome 
 from which they had been delivered.’ If it was 
 less outspoken, the government, in the persons of 
 Sir James Graham and Sir Robert Peel, was 
 equally emphatic." The Assembly took the only 
 step that lay in its power. It presented a formal 
 Claim of Right in 1842” which set out the theory 
 of its position. This refused, the adherents to that 
 have not discussed the judgments of Brougham and Cottenham L. C. in 
 the Lords, as they add nothing to the Scottish opinions. 
 
 421840, 3, D. 283. 
 
 43 1843, 5 Dunlop, p. 909. 
 
 44 Buchanan, II, 194. 
 
 45 Hansard, 3d Series, Vol. LX VII, p. 442, March 8, 1843. 
 
 46 Hansard, 3d Series, Vol. LX VII, pp. 382, 502. See also below. 
 47 Buchanan, II, 633. 
 
38 PROBLEM OF SOVEREIGNTY 
 
 _ Claim presented their Protest* in the following 
 year, and withdrew from the Assembly to form the 
 Free Church of Scotland. 
 
 IV 
 
 The party of which Dr. Chalmers was the dis- 
 tinguished leader had, whatever its deficiences, the 
 merit of maintaining a consistent and logical 
 position. The Church to them was a society itself 
 no less perfect in form and constitution than that 
 of the State. To the latter, indeed, they acknowl- 
 edged deference in civil matters, ‘a submission,’ 
 Chalmers himself said, which was ‘unexcepted and 
 entire.”* That to which they took so grave an 
 objection was the claim laid down by the authori- 
 ties of the State, to an absolute jurisdiction over 
 every department of civilised life. They admitted, 
 in brief, her sovereignty over her own domain; it 
 was when she entered a field they held to be with- 
 out her control that the challenge was flung down. 
 ‘The free jurisdiction of the Church in things 
 spiritual, the Headship of Christ, the authority of 
 His Bible as the great statute book not to be 
 lorded over by any authority on earth, a deference 
 to our own standards in all that is ecclesiastical... 
 these are our principles.”° To them, therefore, the 
 hand which was laid upon the Church was an un- 
 
 48 Innes, Appendix K. 
 
 49 Life of Chalmers, Vol. IV, p. 199. 
 50 Life of Chalmers, loc. cit. 
 
POLITICAL THEORY OF DISRUPTION 39 
 
 hallowed hand; for when it thus struck at the 
 foundation of her life it insulted the word of God. 
 
 The position of the Free Church is not different 
 from that advocated by all who have accepted the 
 principles of the Presbyterian system. It is a 
 State of which the sovereignty is vested in the 
 General Assembly. It acknowledges no superior 
 in the field with which it deals. That sovereignty 
 is sanctioned by a right which even in high pre- 
 rogative times would have seemed to its adherents. 
 a thousand times more sacred than its kingly 
 analogue.” 'The sovereignty of the State over its 
 own concerns is not denied; but its universality 
 would never have been admitted. The distinction 
 between the societies must be maintained, other- 
 wise the grossest absurdities would follow.” So 
 Chalmers can make his striking claim. ‘In things 
 ecclesiastical,’ he told a London audience in 1838,” 
 ‘we decide all. Some of these things may be done 
 wrong, but still they are our majorities which do 
 it. They are not, they can not, be forced upon us 
 from without. We own no head of the Church 
 but the Lord Jesus Christ. Whatever is done 
 ecclesiastically is done by our ministers as acting 
 in his name and in perfect submission to his 
 authority . . . even the law of patronage, right or 
 wrong, is in force not by the power of the State, 
 but by the permission of the Church, and, with all 
 
 51 Cf. Figgis, Divine Right of Kings, ed. 2, p. 267. 
 
 52 Jus Divinum, p. 42, quoted in Figgis, op. cit., p. 275. 
 
 53 Life of Chalmers, Vol. IV, p. 54. Mr. Gladstone was present at 
 and deeply impressed by these lectures. Morley (Pop. ed.), I, 127. 
 
40 PROBLEM OF SOVEREIGNTY 
 
 its fancied omnipotence, has no other basis than 
 that of our majorities to rest upon. It should 
 never be forgotten that in things ecclesiastical, the 
 highest power of our Church is amenable to no 
 higher power on earth for its decisions. It can 
 exclude; it can deprive; it can depose at pleasure. 
 External force might make an obnoxious individual 
 the holder of a benefice; it could never make him 
 a minister of the Church of Scotland. There is not 
 one thing which the State can do to our independent 
 and indestructible Church but strip her of her 
 temporalities. Nec tamen conswmebatur—she 
 would remain a Church notwithstanding, as strong 
 as ever in the props of her own moral and inherent 
 greatness; and although shrivelled in all her 
 dimensions by the moral injury inflicted on many 
 thousands of her families, she would be at least as 
 strong as ever in the reverence of her country’s 
 population. She was as much a Church in her days 
 of suffering, as in her days of outward security 
 and triumph; when a wandering outcast with 
 naught but the mountain breezes to play around 
 her, and naught but the caves of the earth to shelter 
 her, as when now admitted to the bowers of an 
 Establishment. The magistrate might withdraw 
 his protection and she cease to be an establishment 
 any longer; but in all the high matters of sacred 
 and spiritual jurisdiction she would be the same as 
 before. With or without an establishment, she in 
 these is the unfettered mistress of her doings. The 
 king by himself or by his representative might be 
 
POLITICAL THEORY OF DISRUPTION 41 
 
 the spectator of our proceedings; but what Lord 
 Chatham said of the poor man’s house is true in 
 all its parts of the Church to which I have the 
 honour to belong; ‘‘in England every man’s house 
 is his castle; not that it is surrounded with walls 
 and battlements; it may be a straw-built shed; 
 every wind of heaven may whistle round it; every 
 element of heaven may enter it; but the king can 
 not—the king dare not.’’’ 
 
 A more thoroughgoing rejection of the royal 
 supremacy on the one hand, and the legal theory 
 of parliamentary sovereignty on the other, could 
 hardly be desired. It is clear that an invasion of 
 the Church’s rights is not contemplated as possible. 
 The provinees of State and Church are so different 
 that Parliament could only interfere if the rights 
 it touched originated with itself. Such a general 
 theory of origin the adherents of Presbyterianism 
 strenuously repudiated. ‘Our right,’ Professor 
 McGill told the General Assembly of 1826,* ‘flows 
 not from Acts of Parliament. . . . I maintain the 
 powers and rights of the Church of Scotland .. . 
 to determine the qualifications of its members; 
 that their right in this matter did not originate 
 with Parliament; that Parliament left this right 
 untouched and entire to the courts of this Church— 
 nay, that of this right it is not in the power of 
 Parliament to deprive them. . . . The religion of 
 Scotland was previously embraced by the people 
 on the authority of the word of God, before it was 
 
 54 Quoted in Moncrieff, The Free Church Principle (1883), p. 35. 
 
42 PROBLEM OF SOVEREIGNTY 
 
 sanctioned by Parliament.’ It is obvious that the 
 relation of State to Church is, in this view, that 
 of one power to another. Nor did Professor 
 McGill stand alone in his opinion. When, in 1834, 
 Lord Moncrieff considered the competency of the 
 General Assembly to enact the Veto Law, he 
 expressly repudiated the contention that any part 
 of the ecclesiastical constitution except its estab- 
 lishment was derived from the civil power.” The 
 establishment, indeed, they regarded as no more 
 than a fortunate accident.” They were even accus- 
 tomed to point to the distinction between their own 
 position, and that of the Church of England. 
 ‘The Scottish Establishment,’ said Chalmers in 
 1830,” ‘has one great advantage over that of 
 England. It acknowledges no temporal head, and 
 admits of no civil or parliamentary interference 
 with its doctrine and discipline. The State helps 
 to support it, but has nothing to do with its 
 ministrations.’ Nor did he shrink from the 
 obvious conclusion to such a situation. ‘They may 
 call it an imperium in imperio,’ he said, thirteen 
 years later,” ‘they may say that we intrude upon 
 the legitimate power of the civil courts or the civil 
 law. It is no more an intrusion on the civil law 
 than Christianity is an intrusion on the world.’ 
 He resented the suggestion that the Church was 
 
 55 See Moncrieff, The Free Church, p. 37. 
 
 56 Buchanan, I, 367. 
 
 87 Life, III, 270. 
 
 58 March 16, 1843. Moncrieff, op. cit., p. 111. The remark is all the 
 more significant since it is made on the eve of the Disruption. 
 
POLITICAL THEORY OF DISRUPTION 43 
 
 dependent on the State. ‘We are not,’ he told the 
 General Assembly of 1842,” ‘eating the bread of 
 the State. When the State took us into connexion 
 with itself, which it did at the time of the Union, 
 it found us eating our own bread, and they 
 solemnly pledged themselves to the guarantees, or 
 the conditions, on which we should be permitted 
 to eat their bread in all time coming.’ ‘To the 
 Church, clearly, the Act of Security was the 
 conclusion of an alliance into which Church and 
 State entered upon equal terms. It was an 
 alliance, as Lord Balfour of Burleigh pointed 
 out,’ ‘with the State as a State in its corporate 
 capacity,’ the union for certain purposes of one 
 body with another. But it certainly was not con- 
 ceived by the Church that its acceptance of an 
 Establishment was the recognition of civil su- 
 premacy. Otherwise, assuredly, it could not have 
 been argued, as in the resolution of the General 
 Assembly of 1838,” that ‘her judicatories possess 
 an exclusive jurisdiction founded on the word of 
 God,’ which power ecclesiastical ‘flows imme- 
 diately from God and the Mediator Jesus Christ.’ 
 
 Such, in essence, is the basis, as well of the 
 Claim of Right in 1842, as of the final Protest in 
 the following year. The one is a statement of the 
 minimum the Church can accept; the other is the 
 explanation of how acceptance of that minimum 
 
 59 Moncrieff, op. cit., p. 102. 
 
 60 Hansard, 5th Series, Vol. XIII, February 12, 1913, p. 119. 
 61 Innes, op. cit., p. 73. 
 
44 PROBLEM OF SOVEREIGNTY 
 
 has been denied. In ecclesiastical matters, the 
 function of the civil courts was neither to adjudi- 
 cate nor to enquire, but to assist and protect the 
 liberties guaranteed to the Church.” The mainte- 
 nance of those liberties is essential to its existence, 
 since without them, it cannot remain a true 
 Church. Were it to admit any greater power in 
 the civil courts, it would be virtually admitting 
 the supremacy of the sovereign; but this is impos- 
 sible since only Jesus Christ can be its head. Not 
 only, so the Claim holds, can the admission not be 
 made, but the State itself has admitted the right- 
 ness of the Church’s argument.* Already in 1842 
 the Claim foreshadows the willingness of the 
 Church to suffer loss of her temporalities rather 
 than admit the legality of the Courts’ aggression.™ 
 The protest of the following year does no more 
 than draw the obvious conclusion from this claim. 
 An inherent superiority of the civil courts, an 
 inhibition of the ordinances of the General 
 Assembly, the suspension or reduction of its cen- 
 sures, the determination of its membership, the 
 supersession of a Presbyterian majority, all of 
 these decisions of the Court of Session, ‘incon- 
 sistent with the freedom essential to the right 
 constitution of a Church of Christ, and incom- 
 patible with the government which He, as the 
 
 62 Buchanan, II, 633. 
 
 63 Buchanan, II, 634, ‘the above-mentioned essential doctrine and 
 fundamental principle . . . have been by diverse and repeated Acts of 
 
 Parliament, recognised, ratified and confirmed.’ 
 64 Buchanan, II, 647. 
 
POLITICAL THEORY OF DISRUPTION 45 
 
 
 
 Head of his Church, hath therein appointed dis- 
 tinct from the civil magistrate,”’ must be repu- 
 diated. So that rightly to maintain their faith, 
 they must withdraw from a corrupted Church that 
 they may reject ‘interference with conscience, the 
 dishonour done to Christ’s crown, and the rejec- 
 tion of his sole and supreme authority as king in 
 his Church.’ 
 
 It is worthy of remark that this is the position 
 taken up by counsel for the Church in the Auchter- 
 arder case. ‘If the Call be shown to be a part of 
 the law of the Church,’ Mr. Rutherford argued 
 before the Court of Session,” it is necessarily a 
 part of the law of the land,—because the law of the 
 Church is recognised by the State: and if the Veto 
 Act, in regulating that call, has not exceeded the 
 limits within which the legislature of the Church 
 is circumscribed, it is impossible, in a civil court, 
 to deny the lawfulness of its enactments.’ From 
 the standpoint of the Church it is clear that this 
 is theoretically unassailable. If the Church has 
 the right to regulate her own concerns, she must 
 have the right to regulate appointment of minis- 
 ters. If, as a Rutherford of two centuries earlier 
 argued,” ‘the Church be a perfect, visible society, 
 house, city and kingdom, Jesus Christ in esse et 
 operari; then the Magistrate, when he cometh to 
 be Christian, to help and nourish the Church, as 
 
 65 Ibid., II, 649. 
 
 66 Buchanan, loc. cit., 650. 
 
 67 Robertson’s Report, I, 356. 
 
 68 Quoted in Figgis, Divine Right of Kings, p. 278. 
 
46 PROBLEM OF SOVEREIGNTY 
 
 a father he can not take away and pull the keys 
 out of the hands of the stewards.’ The State 
 admitted her law to be its law in the Act of 
 Security. The only question, therefore, that called 
 for decision was the problem of whether the 
 principle of non-intrusion was ecclesiastical or 
 not. If it was, then clearly it was not ultra vires 
 the General Assembly, and, unless the Act of 
 Security were to be rendered nugatory, the civil 
 court must uphold the Church’s plea. In that 
 event, to remedy the wrongs of the Church does 
 not lie with the civil court. ‘The question is,’ so 
 Mr. Rutherford urged,” ‘whether an abuse by the 
 Church of her legislative powers will justify the | 
 interposition of this court. It has been main- 
 tained on the other side that it will in all cases. 
 I maintain the reverse of the proposition, that 
 however competent it may be for the State, by the 
 power of the legislature, to withdraw their recog- 
 nition of a jurisdiction which is no longer exercised 
 so as to warrant the continuance of the confidence 
 originally imposed, it is not within your province.’ 
 ‘In matters ecclesiastical,’ he said again,” ‘even if 
 the Church acts unjustly, illegally, ultra vires, 
 still the remedy does not lie with this court—nor 
 ean your lordships give redress by controlling the 
 exercise of ecclesiastical functions when in the 
 course of completing the pastoral relation.’ Mr. 
 Bell, the junior counsel, even went as far as to 
 
 69 Robertson, I, 382. 
 70 Loc. cit., I, 383. 
 
POLITICAL THEORY OF DISRUPTION 47 
 
 
 
 urge the Court not to hazard its dignity ‘by 
 pronouncing a judgment you can not enforce.”* 
 It is to be observed that the Presbyterian theory 
 is not the assertion of a unique supremacy. It did 
 not claim a sovereignty superior to that of the 
 State. Rather, indeed, did they take especial care 
 to explain the precise limitations of their demand. 
 ‘He was ready to admit,’ Sir George Clerk told the 
 House of Commons in 1842,” ‘the Church of Scot- 
 land is ready to admit, that in all civil matters 
 connected with that Church, the legislature had a 
 right to interfere. The Church of Scotland did 
 not refuse to render unto Caesar the things that 
 were Caesar’s, but it would not allow of an inter- 
 ference with its spiritual and ecclesiastical rights.’ 
 Mr. Buchanan, the historian of the Disruption, 
 and one of its leading figures, explained at length 
 the difference between the two organisations. ‘It 
 is,’ he wrote of the Church,” ‘no rival power to 
 that. of the State—its field is conscience; that of 
 the State is person and property. The one deals 
 with spiritual, the other with temporal things, and 
 there is therefore not only no need, but no possi- 
 bility of collision between the two, unless the one 
 intrude into the other’s domain.’ Mr. Fox Maule, 
 who was the authorised spokesman of the General 
 Assembly in Parliament, went so far as to say 
 that even a claim to mark out the boundaries 
 
 71 Loc. cit., I, 124. 
 
 72 Hansard, 3d Series, Vol. XX XV, pp. 575-581. 
 73 Buchanan, II, 25. 
 
 74 Ibid., II, 572. 
 
48 PROBLEM OF SOVEREIGNTY 
 
 
 
 between the civil and the ecclesiastical provinces 
 he would repudiate ‘because it was fraught with 
 danger to the religious as well as the civil liberties 
 of the country.””’ ‘He was aware,’ he remarked,” 
 ‘that it was difficult at all times to reconcile con- 
 flicting jurisdictions; but for one he would never 
 admit that when two Courts, equal by law and by 
 the constitution, independent of each other, came 
 into conflict upon matters however trifling or how- 
 ever important, so that one assumed to itself the 
 right to say that the other was wrong, there was 
 no means of settling the dispute. As he read the 
 constitution, 1t became Parliament, which was the 
 supreme power, to interfere and decide between 
 them.’”” The separation of the two powers is, 
 finally, distinctly set forth by the Claim of Right 
 in 1842. ‘And whereas,’ it states,” ‘this juris- 
 diction and government, since it regards only 
 spiritual condition, rights and privileges, doth not 
 interfere with the jurisdiction of secular tribunals, 
 whose determinations as to all temporalities con- 
 ferred by the State upon the Church, and as to all 
 civil consequences attached by law to the decisions 
 of Church Courts in matters spiritual, this Church 
 hath ever admitted, and doth admit, to be exclusive 
 and ultimate as she hath ever given and inculeated 
 
 75 Hansard, 3d Series, Vol. LX VII, p. 356, March 7, 1843. 
 
 76 Ibid., p. 367. 
 
 77 Yet a doubt must be permitted whether the Free Church party 
 would have accepted an hostile decision even of Parliament. Chalmers, 
 
 certainly, had not such doubts of his position as to think of mediation. 
 78 Buchanan, II, 634. 
 
POLITICAL THEORY OF DISRUPTION 49 
 
 implicit obedience thereto.’ Than this no state- 
 ment could well be more plain. 
 
 Mr. Figgis, indeed, has doubts of this conclusion. 
 ‘Presbyterianism,’ he has written,” ‘as exhibited 
 in Geneva or Scotland, veritably claims, as did the 
 Papacy, to control the State in the interests of an 
 ecclesiastical corporation.’ Certainly this fairly 
 represents the attitude of Knox; and it is the 
 basis of the able attack on that system by Leslie 
 and Bramhall in the seventeenth century.” Yet 
 the vital conception of the two kingdoms, separate 
 and distinct, was put forward in the first epoch of 
 Scottish Presbyterian history by Andrew Mel- 
 ville ;* and it is safe to say that the attempt thus 
 to define the limits of authorities basically con- 
 ceived as distinct is the special contribution of 
 Presbyterianism to the theory of political free- 
 dom. The difference is of importance since it 
 constitutes the point of divergence between ultra- 
 montanism and the Scottish system. The one 
 teaches the supremacy of the ecclesiastical power, 
 the other its co-ordination with the civil. Cardinal 
 Manning, indeed, in the course of those contro- 
 versies arising out of the definition of papal 
 infallibility in which he played so striking a part,” 
 
 79 Divine Right of Kings, p. 186. But in the preface to his second 
 edition Mr. Figgis considerably modifies his conclusion. 
 
 80 Cf. Works, IV, 539. 
 
 81 Cf. Leslie, The New Association and Bramhall’s A Warning to the 
 Church of England. 
 
 82 As Mr. Figgis notes, Divine Right of Kings, p. 286. 
 83 See his Caesarism and Ultramontanism, 1874. 
 
50 PROBLEM OF SOVEREIGNTY 
 
 
 
 went so far as to claim that every Christian Church 
 makes the same demand of the State as the com- 
 munion to which he belonged, and urged that the 
 theories.of Presbyterian writers are in substance 
 papalist.“ But Mr. Innes, in a very brilliant 
 essay, was able most conclusively to dispose of this 
 claim.” A theory of mutual independence is as 
 far as possible removed from papalism.* The 
 conscience of the State and that of the Church are 
 kept as separate in Presbyterian theory as they 
 have been combined in that of Hildebrand and his 
 successors. Cardinal Manning, indeed, was 
 (probably unconsciously), a fervent upholder of 
 the Austinian theory of sovereignty ; and he found 
 his sovereign in the will of the Universal Church 
 as expressed by its pontiff. But not even the 
 boldest opponent of Presbyterianism can accuse 
 it, outside its own communion,” of an Austinian 
 bias. It is the antithesis of what Mr. Innes well 
 terms the ‘centralised infallibility’ of the Roman 
 system.* 
 
 Not, indeed, that contemporaries were wrong 
 
 84 See his article in the Contemporary Review for April, 1874. 
 
 85 See his paper ‘Ultramontanism and the Free Kirk’ in the Con- 
 temporary Review for June, 1874. 
 
 86 Though the Encyclical Immortale Det of 1885 in Denziger’s 
 Enchiridion, pp. 501-508, and Newman’s Letter to the Duke of Norfolk 
 are, as I hope to show in a later paper, very akin to the Presbyterian 
 theory; and the Jesuits of the seventeenth century worked out a similar 
 claim. 
 
 87 I say outside because the General Assembly claims a control that 
 is very like that of an Austinian. 
 
 88 Contemporary Review, Vol. 24, p. 267. 
 
POLITICAL THEORY OF DISRUPTION 51 
 
 who judged that, equally in 1843 as in 1870, the 
 implicitly Austinian doctrines of Erastianism were 
 at stake. ‘We can not,’ said the Catholic Tablet, 
 ‘avoid seeing that on this question they have taken 
 their stand on the only principles which, as Catho- 
 lics, we can respect ... their cry is down with 
 Erastianism, and so is ours.’ ‘When the Civil 
 Courts,’ said the North British Review,” ‘assumed. 
 the power of determining the whole matter, .. . 
 the controversy was forced to assume its true 
 character as in reality involving the very essence 
 of the spiritual independence of the Church.’ 
 And Macaulay, who fought Edinburgh in the 
 election of 1841, regretted that he could not teach 
 the anti-Erastians some straightforward whig 
 doctrine.” 
 
 Vv 
 
 Not less firm than that of Chalmers and his 
 party was the stand taken by the opponents of 
 the Scottish Church. It is, indeed, possible to find 
 two, and perhaps three, different theories of the 
 relations between Church and State in the various 
 judicial opinions upon the Auchterarder and its 
 connected cases; but all of them, with a single 
 exception,” are traceable to a single basic prin- 
 ciple. The judges found a conflict between two 
 
 89 Quoted in Fraser’s Magazine for July, 1843. 
 
 90 North British Review, 1849, p. 447. 
 
 91 Trevelyan’s Life (Nelson ed.), II, 57. 
 92 That of Lord Medwyn, see below. 
 
52 PROBLEM OF SOVEREIGNTY 
 
 societies—the Church and the State. Which was 
 to prevail? Was the State to be deemed inferior 
 to the Church, since the latter was grounded upon 
 divine authority? ‘Such an argument,’ said Lord 
 MacKenzie,” ‘can never be listened to here.’ In 
 general, the attitude of the Courts seemed to imply 
 an acceptance of the argument used by the Dean 
 of Faculty in his speech against the Presbytery 
 of Auchterarder. ‘What rights,’ he asked,* ‘or 
 claims had any religious persuasion against the 
 State before its establishment. ... When he 
 (Mr. Whigham) described the establishment of 
 the National Church as a compact ... he took 
 too favourable a view of the matter for the 
 defenders. For any such compact implies the 
 existence of two independent bodies, with previous 
 independent authority and rights. But what 
 rights had the Church of Scotland before its 
 establishment by Act of Parliament to assert or 
 surrender or concede?’ He put forward, in fact, 
 the concession theory of corporate personality.” 
 There were no rights save those which the State 
 chose to confer; and the Church of Scotland was 
 merely a tolerated association until the Act of 
 Security legalised its existence. This seems to 
 have been the judicial attitude. Lord Gillies 
 emphatically denied the possibility of looking upon 
 93 Middleton v. Anderson, 4 D. 1010. 
 94 Robertson, I, 185. 
 
 95 See my paper on ‘The Personality of Associations’ in the Harvard 
 Law Review for February, 1916. 
 
POLITICAL THEORY OF DISRUPTION 53 
 
 
 
 the Act of Security as a compact. ‘I observe,’ he 
 said,* ‘. . . that it is an improper term. There 
 ean be no compact, properly speaking, between 
 the legislature and any other body in the State. 
 Parliament, the king, and the three Estates of the 
 Realm are omnipotent, and incapable of making a 
 compact, because they cannot be bound by it.’ 
 Even Lord Cockburn, in his dissenting judgment, 
 based his decision rather on the supposed historic 
 basis for the Veto Law than on the co-equality of 
 Church and State.” The Lord President went 
 even further in his unqualified approval of Eras- 
 tian principles. The Church, he held, has no 
 ‘liberties which are acknowledged ... swo jure, 
 or by any inherent or divine right, but as given 
 and granted by the king or any of his prede- 
 cessors. . . . The Parliament is the temporal head 
 of the Church, from whose acts and from whose 
 acts alone, it exists as the national Church, and 
 from which alone it derives all its powers.’* He 
 would not for a moment admit that a conflict of 
 jurisdiction between Church and State might 
 occur, for, ‘an Establishment can never possess an 
 independent jurisdiction which can give rise to a 
 conflict . . . it is wholly the creation of Statute.’ 
 The General Assembly possessed no powers, but 
 
 96 Robertson, II, 32. 
 
 97 Robertson, II, 359. 
 
 98 Robertson, II, pp. 2, 4, 5, 10. 
 
 99 Cuninghame vy. Lainshawe, Clark’s report of the Stewarton case, 
 1843, p. 53. 
 
54 PROBLEM OF SOVEREIGNTY 
 
 only privileges. It could not be a supreme 
 legislature, for there could only be one such body 
 ina State. Any other situation ‘would be irrecon- 
 cilable with the existence of any judicial power in 
 the country.” 
 
 To Lord Meadowbank the Church of Scotland 
 seemed comparable to a corporation to which as an 
 ‘inferior and subordinate department’ of itself the 
 State had given the right to make bye-laws. But 
 its power was limited. It was a statutory creation 
 which could exercise only the powers of its found- 
 ing Act. ‘The civil magistrate,’ he said,’ ‘must 
 have authority to interpose the arm of the law 
 against what then becomes an act of usurpation on 
 the part of the ecclesiastical power. Were it 
 otherwise, anarchy, confusion and disaster would 
 inevitably follow.’ So, too, did Lord MacKenzie 
 urge the final supremacy of the legislature, though, 
 very significantly, he admitted that a churchman 
 might think differently. ‘The subjection of the 
 Assembly,’ he said,** to the State, ‘is not owing 
 to any contract between Church and State, but 
 simply to the supreme power of the legislature, 
 which every subject of this country must obey... . 
 I repeat therefore that when the question is 
 whether anything is illegal as being contrary to 
 Act of Parliament, it is utterly vain to cite any act 
 of the Assembly as supporting it in any degree.’ 
 
 100 Robertson, II, 23. 
 101 Loc. cit. 
 
 102 Robertson, II, 88. 
 103 Robertson, II, 121. 
 
POLITICAL THEORY OF DISRUPTION 55 
 
 
 
 Here, of a certainty, was the material for eccle- 
 siastical tragedy. The difficulty felt by the 
 majority of the Court is one that lies at the root 
 of all discussion on sovereignty. Anarchy, so the 
 lawyer conceives, must follow unless it be clearly 
 laid down at the outset that beyond the decision 
 of Parliament as interpreted by the Courts there 
 can be no question. It is not a question of spheres 
 of respective jurisdiction. The legislature of the 
 State, the king in Parliament, exercises an un- 
 limited power.” If the legislature be sovereign, 
 then comparison between its powers and those of 
 any other body becomes impossible since it follows 
 from the premise that what Parliament has 
 ordained no other organisation can set aside. 
 Clearly, therefore, to the jurist, the claim of the 
 Presbyterian Church to be a societas perfecta was 
 ab initio void; for that claim would involve the 
 possession of a sovereignty which theory will 
 admit to none save king in Parliament.” That 
 was what the Lord President meant by his asser- 
 tion that the Church possessed not rights but 
 privileges; for rights it could hold only by virtue 
 of an unique supremacy, whereas privilege empha- 
 sised the essential inferiority of its position. The 
 Courts, in fact, were denying the doctrine of the 
 
 104 This is of course the simple doctrine of parliamentary sovereignty 
 discussed by Professor Dicey in the first chapter of his Law of the 
 Constitution. It is very effectively criticised in the last chapter of 
 
 Professor McIlwain’s High Court of Parliament. 
 105 Cf, ‘The Sovereignty of the State,’ supra. 
 
56 PROBLEM OF SOVEREIGNTY 
 
 
 
 two kingdoms. Where the Presbyterian saw two 
 States within society one of which happened to be 
 his Church, the lawyer saw no distinction between 
 society and the State and held the Church to be but 
 an arm of the latter. By grace of Parliament 
 the Church might legislate on matters purely 
 ecclesiastical and a certain comity would give 
 respect to its decisions. But the power was of 
 grace and the respect was merely courtesy; for 
 the definition of ecclesiastical matters in no way 
 lay with the Church’s jurisdiction.” Clearly 
 between such an attitude as this, and the theories 
 of Dr. Chalmers there could be no compromise. 
 The premises of the one denied the axioms of the 
 other. The Church dare not admit what Lord 
 Fullerton called ‘the supposed infallibility of the 
 Court of Session” without destroying its own 
 independence. Nor could there be grounds for 
 such a course. ‘No church,’ the pious Buchanan 
 told the General Assembly of 1838,*°° ‘could ever 
 be justified in obeying another master than Christ.’ 
 It was useless to contend that if state-endowed the 
 Church must be unfree, for it was on the basis of 
 freedom that endowment had been accepted. The 
 demands of the Court of Session would make the 
 oath of ministerial obedience a mockery.*” So 
 was the issue joined. 
 106 Robertson, II, 37. Per Lord Gillies. 
 107 Buchanan, I, 465. 
 
 108 [bid., I, 472. 
 109 Ibid., I, 478. 
 
POLITICAL THEORY OF DISRUPTION 57 
 
 VI 
 
 The attitude ot the ministry was in an important 
 way different from that of the Court of Session. 
 It was, indeed, very akin to that of the Moderate 
 Party in the Church itself, of which the able Dr. 
 Cook was the leader.*° To him the Church was 
 not the creature of the State. It was independent. 
 There were the two provinces, civil and eccle- 
 siastical, but where a difference arose between the 
 two powers the ultimate decision must rest with 
 the Courts of Law. ‘When any law,’ he urged in 
 1838," ‘is declared by the competent (civil) 
 authorities to affect civil right, the Church can not 
 set aside such a law... so to do would be to 
 declare ourselves superior to the law of the land.’ 
 To him the claim of the Church seemed little less 
 than an attempt at the erection of a new popery, 
 and he refused from the outset to identify it with 
 liberty of conscience.” The acceptance of an 
 establishment made, in his view, a vital difference. 
 It meant that the Church accepted the secular 
 definition of its powers, and that resistance to such 
 definition was tantamount to rebellion.** He did 
 not deny the Headship of Christ. But he did 
 believe, ‘that there may be ground for diversity of 
 
 110 The reader of Mr. Buchanan ’s work should be warned that the 
 writer’s prejudices lead him consistently to misrepresent Dr. Cook’s 
 attitude. 
 
 111 Buchanan, I, 481. II, 21. 
 
 112 Ibid., II, 24. 
 113 [bid., II, 261. 
 
58 PROBLEM OF SOVEREIGNTY 
 
 
 
 opinion as to what is comprehended under that 
 Headship in all cases,’ and the decision, in an 
 ambiguous case where conflict arose between 
 Church and State, seemed to him to belong to the 
 State."* He was impressed, as the Court of 
 Session was impressed, with the impossibility of 
 arriving at a decision if the co-ordination of 
 powers be admitted, and it was clearly upon their 
 grounds that he urged the Church to give way. 
 It was this difference between established and 
 voluntary churches which finally weighed with 
 Sir Robert Peel. The right of the Roman Catho- 
 lics or the Protestant Dissenters absolutely to 
 control those who choose to submit to their juris- 
 diction was unquestionable. The State would 
 attempt no interference with it. ‘But if,’ he 
 pointed out,’ ‘a Church chooses to have the 
 advantage of an establishment and to hold those 
 privileges which the law confers—that Church, 
 whether it be the Church of Rome, or the Church 
 of England, or the Presbyterian Church of Scot- 
 land, must conform to the law.’ To him the 
 position taken up by the Church was inadmissible 
 since it involved the right to determine the limits 
 of its jurisdiction. That could be done only by 
 ‘the tribunal appointed by Parliament, which is 
 the House of Lords.’ Nor did Sir James Graham, 
 ‘upon whom the defence of the government’s 
 
 114 [bid., II, 516. Cf. this with Manning’s view that the power 
 to fix the limits of its own power was essentially the right of the Church. 
 The Vatican Decrees (1875), p. 54. 
 
 115 Hansard, 3d Series, Vol. LXVII, p. 502, March 8, 1843. 
 
POLITICAL THEORY OF DISRUPTION 59 
 
 attitude mainly rested, offer any greater conso- 
 lation to the Church. ‘They declare,’ he told the 
 House of Commons,” ‘that any Act of Parliament 
 passed without the consent of the Church and 
 nation shall be void and of none effect... . I 
 think that to such a claim... no concession 
 should be made.’ Since the sphere of jurisdiction 
 between Church and State had not been defined, 
 to admit the Presbyterian claim would be to admit 
 ‘the caprice of a body independent of law,’ with 
 the result that no dispute could ever admit of 
 settlement. The Church was established by the 
 State and was spiritually bound by the terms of 
 its establishment. If it was not the creature of 
 the State, ‘still the state employs the Church on 
 certain terms as the religious instructor of the 
 people of Scotland,’ and the employé was vir- 
 tually demanding the right to lay down the con- 
 ditions of its employment. That demand could 
 not be admitted; for those conditions were em- 
 bodied in statutes of which the interpretation 
 must rest with the supreme civil tribunal. The 
 Church was definitely inferior, as a source of 
 jurisdiction, to the House of Lords. ‘These pre- 
 tensions,’ he said,’ ‘of the Church of Scotland 
 as they now stand, to co-ordinate jurisdiction, and 
 the demand that the government should by law 
 recognise the right of the Church to determine in 
 doubtful cases what is spiritual and what is civil, 
 
 116 Tbid., March 7, 1843, pp. 382 ff. 
 117 [bid. 
 
60 PROBLEM OF SOVEREIGNTY 
 
 
 
 and thereby to adjudicate on matters involving 
 rights of property, appears to me to rest on expec- 
 tations and views so unjust and unreasonable, that 
 the sooner they are extinguished the better.’ 
 Some points of importance deserve to be noted 
 in this connexion. The Church, certainly, did not 
 claim the right to decide the nature of its juris- 
 diction.”* What in fact it claimed was the essen- 
 tially historic grant of a right to control its own 
 affairs. To itself, that right, admitted in 1690, 
 and doubly confirmed in 1705, was wantonly 
 violated in 1712; and the Church was compelled to 
 regard that Act as a nullification of the funda- 
 mental law made but seven years previously. The 
 real head and centre of the whole problem was thus 
 the theory of parliamentary sovereignty. The 
 Church could not conceive an inherent right in 
 Parliament to disregard an obligation assumed 
 with such solemnity. Nor, equally, was it within 
 the competence of the courts to disregard an Act 
 which the Church, wrongly or rightly, condemned. 
 For them there was no such thing as a fundamental 
 law. They could not, with the Act of 1712 before 
 them, announce that patronage was an eccle- 
 siastical question and therefore within the compe- 
 tence of the General Assembly for so to do would 
 be not merely to question the sovereignty of 
 Parliament, but also to admit that the General 
 Assembly was a co-ordinate legislature with Par- 
 
 118 See above the references at notes 60 and 61. 
 
POLITICAL THEORY OF DISRUPTION 61 
 
 liament. A new theory of the State was required 
 before they would admit so startling a proposition. 
 
 A second point is of interest. In the judgment 
 of Lord Medwyn there is a theory of Church and 
 State, which, impliedly at least, was also the theory 
 of Sir Robert Peel.“° A voluntary Church pos- 
 sesses the authority and the rights claimed by the 
 Church of Scotland; but when the alliance with the 
 State was made the rights must be regarded as 
 surrendered. All that the Church can do is to 
 break the agreement, should it feel dissatisfied 
 with the results of the alliance. But, as a fact, it 
 was not law in 1838, and it is not now law, that 
 a voluntary association is independent of the State 
 in the degree claimed by the Scottish Church. If 
 our antagonism to such societies has not found 
 such open expression as in France,’”’—if, in brief, 
 we have had no loi le Chapelier*"*—that is rather 
 because by implication the power of control is 
 already to hand. For, in the view of the State, 
 immediately a Church receives property upon 
 condition of a trust the State is the interpreter of 
 that trust, and will interfere even with an unes- 
 tablished Church to secure its enforcement.” 
 Lord Medwyn and Sir Robert Peel were claiming 
 
 119 Cf, Innes p. 74 and the interesting note on that page. 
 
 120 Cf. Combes, Une Campagne taique, p. 20—the citation from the 
 Due de Broglie. 
 
 121 And article 29 of the Code Pénale forbids associations of more 
 than twenty persons even for social purposes. Seilhac, Syndicat Ouvriers 
 (1902), p. 64. 
 
 122 See my paper, ‘Trusts in favour of Religious Bodies’ in the 
 Canadian Law Times for March-April, 1916. 
 
62 PROBLEM OF SOVEREIGNTY 
 
 for the State a sovereignty far less than that of 
 orthodox legal doctrine.*” For if the Church once 
 take any step which involves property-relations, 
 it brings itself within the scope of the civil law; 
 and its own inherent rights can not be a ground 
 of contest against the supremacy of Parliament.” 
 Allegiance to the law is absolute, since the law does 
 not admit degrees of acceptance. What Lord 
 Justice Clerk Hope said as to the effect of statute 
 remains as true in relation to a voluntary body as 
 in relation to the Established Church of which he 
 spoke. ‘Their refusal to perform the ecclesiastical 
 duty is a violation of a statute, therefore a civil 
 wrong to the party injured, therefore cognisable 
 by Courts of Law, therefore a wrong for which the 
 ecclesiastical persons are amenable to law, because 
 there is no exemption for them from the ordinary 
 tribunals of this country if they do not perform 
 the duties laid upon them by statute.””’ Clearly, 
 Disruption was the one outlet from this impasse. 
 
 VIL 
 
 One last judicial theory deserves some consid- 
 eration. In his brilliant dissenting judgment, 
 Lord Jeffrey took a ground very different from 
 that of his brethren.”* His whole conception of 
 
 123 Sir F. Pollock has protested (10 L. Q. R., 99) that English 
 lawyers do not accept this view; it is certainly the theory of the Courts. 
 
 124 Robertson, II, 121. 
 
 125 Kinnoull v. Ferguson, March 10, 1843, 5 D. 1010. Innes, p. 82. 
 126 See Robertson, II, 380 ff. 
 
POLITICAL THEORY OF DISRUPTION 63 
 
 
 
 the problem was based on his belief that once Lord 
 Kinnoull had presented Mr. Young to the living 
 of Auchterarder, the proceedings became eccle- 
 siastical in nature; and for the Court of Session 
 to force Mr. Young upon the Presbytery was to 
 intrude ‘in the most flagrant manner almost that 
 can be imagined on their sacred and peculiar 
 province. It would be but a little greater profa- 
 nation if we were asked to order a Church Court 
 to admit a party to the Communion Table,” whom 
 they had repelled from it on religious grounds, 
 because he had satisfied us that he was prejudiced 
 in the exercise of his civil rights by the exclu- 
 sion.” Lord Jeffrey, in fact, argues that there is 
 a method of discovering the right province of any 
 action of which the exact nature is uncertain. The 
 result of the action ought to be considered, and if 
 that result be fundamentally ecclesiastical rather 
 than civil, the Courts ought to treat the case as 
 the concern of an independent and co-ordinate 
 jurisdiction—the Church Court. He pointed out 
 that practically every action has in some sort a 
 civil result. ‘When the General Assembly,’ he 
 said,” ‘deposes a clergyman for heresy or gross 
 immorality, his civil interests, and those of his 
 family suffer to a pitiable extent. But is the act 
 of deposition the less an ecclesiastical proceeding 
 
 127 But this has now been done in the Church of England. See 
 Bannister v. Thompson [1908], pp. 362, and on the rule for Prohibition 
 R. v. Dibden [1912], A. C., 533. 
 
 128 Robertson, II, 372. 
 129 Robertson, II, 362. 
 
64 PROBLEM OF SOVEREIGNTY 
 
 
 
 on that account?’ He adopts, it is clear, a prag- 
 matic test of the ownership of debatable ground. 
 The limits of jurisdiction are not, as in Chalmers’ 
 view, so clearly defined at the outset as to make 
 collision impossible. Rather is its possibility 
 admitted and frankly faced. What Jeffrey then 
 suggested as the true course was to balance the 
 amount of civil loss Lord Kinnoull would suffer 
 against the ecclesiastical loss of the Church; if 
 that were done, he urged that the Church would 
 have suffered more, and he therefore gave his 
 decision in its favour. The argument is a valuable 
 contribution to that pragmatic theory of law 
 of which Professor Pound has emphasised the 
 desirability.*” 
 
 VIIL 
 
 It was a dictum of Lord Acton’s that from the 
 study of political thought above all things we 
 derive a conviction of the essential continuity of 
 history. Assuredly he who set out to narrate the 
 comparative history of the ideas which pervade 
 the Disruption of 1843 would find himself studying 
 the political controversies of half a thousand 
 years. For than the questions the Disruption 
 raised it is difficult to find more fundamental 
 problems; nor has there been novelty in the 
 
 180 27 Harvard Law Review, 735. For a splendid example of the way 
 
 in which the theory can be worked out see his paper in 29 Harvard Law 
 Review, 640. 
 
POLITICAL THEORY OF DISRUPTION 65 
 
 answers that then were made. The theory of those 
 who opposed the Free Church has its roots far 
 back in the Reformation. It can be paralleled 
 from Luther and Whitgift, just as the theory of 
 Chalmers and his adherents is historically con- 
 nected with the principles with which Barclay 
 confronted Ultramontanism, and the Jesuits a 
 civil power that aimed at supremacy.’ 
 
 The Presbyterians of 1843 were fighting the 
 notion of a unitary state. To them it seemed 
 obvious that the society to which they belonged 
 was no mere cog-wheel in the machinery of the 
 State, destined only to work in harmony with its 
 motions. They felt the strength of a personality 
 which, as they urged, was complete and self- 
 sufficient, just as the medieval state asserted its 
 right to independence when it was strong enough 
 not merely to resent, but even to repudiate, the 
 tutelage of the ecclesiastical power. They were 
 fighting a State which had taken over bodily the 
 principles and ideals of the medieval theocracy. 
 They urged the essential federalism of society, the 
 impossibility of confining sovereignty to any one 
 of its constituent parts, just as Bellarmine had 
 done in the seventeenth century and Palmieri and 
 Tarquini in even later times.’ If there seems 
 something of irony in such a union, the Miltonic 
 identification of priest and presbyter will stand 
 
 131 Figgis, From Gerson to Grotius, p. 63. 
 132 Cf, Figgis, op. cit., p. 184. 
 
66 PROBLEM OF SOVEREIGNTY 
 
 as voucher for it.’ The problem which Presby- 
 terian and Jesuit confronted was, after all, at 
 bottom fundamentally identical. We must not 
 then marvel at the similarity of the response each 
 made. 
 
 Nor was the attitude of the Court of Session less 
 deeply rooted in the past. Historically, it goes 
 back to that passionate Erastianism of Luther 
 which was the only answer he could make to the 
 Austinianism of Rome.** If, in the nineteenth 
 century, the divinity he claimed for civil society 
 has disappeared, the worship of a supposed logical 
 necessity in unified governance—itself a medieval 
 thing’*’—has more than taken its place. Lord 
 President Hope seems to have been as horrified at 
 the implicit federalism of the Free Church as was 
 good Archbishop Whitgift at the federalism of 
 Cartwright.** He does not understand the notion 
 of the two kingdoms and so falls back on the stern 
 logic of parliamentary sovereignty. The State, 
 so it is conceived, can not admit limitations to 
 its power; for from such limitation anarchy is 
 eventually the product. Therefore the societies 
 
 133 Jt is a matter of great interest that the Presbyterians, like the 
 Jesuits, should have had two quite distinct theories of the State. In 
 the seventeenth century one has to distinguish sharply between that of 
 men like Cartwright and that of the Presbyterians in the Parliaments of 
 Charles I. The latter was definitely Erastian and it was against that 
 theory that Milton intelligibly inveighed. Cf. Figgis, Divine Right 
 of Kings, Chapter IX. 
 
 134 Works, Jena ed., 12, 339. 
 
 135 Cf. Maitland’s Gierke, p. 102. 
 
 186 Shype, Life of Whitgift, II, 22 ff. 
 
POLITICAL THEORY OF DISRUPTION 67 
 
 
 
 within the State can exist only on sufferance; and 
 if the England of 18438 did not emulate the France 
 of sixty years later, it was from no want of 
 theorising about the rights of congregations." It 
 is one of the curiosities of political thought that 
 just as in the medieval Church insistence on the 
 unity of allegiance should ultimately have led to 
 the Reformation, yet its consequence should have 
 been the creation of an organism demanding no 
 smaller rights than its predecessor. The State, 
 like the Church of past days, is set over against 
 the individual, and stout denial is given to the 
 reality of other human fellowships. 
 
 Between two such antithetic ideals compromise 
 was impossible. The assertion of the one involved 
 the rejection of the other. If the State, theoreti- 
 cally, was in the event victorious, practically it 
 suffered a moral defeat. And it may be suggested 
 that its virtual admission in 1874 that the Church 
 was right” is sufficient evidence that its earlier 
 resistance to her claims had been mistaken. If its 
 resistance was mistaken, the source of error is 
 obvious. A state that demands the admission that 
 its conscience is supreme goes beyond the due 
 bounds of righteous claim. It will attain a theo- 
 retic unity only by the expulsion of those who 
 doubt its rectitude. It seems hardly worth while 
 
 137 Mr. Figgis, both in his From Gerson to Grotius and Churches in 
 the Modern State attacks very bitterly the Austinianism of M. Combes 
 as seen in his Campagne Laique but I do not feel that he understands the 
 
 provocations to which the Republic was subjected. 
 138 Innes, p. 113. 
 
68 PROBLEM OF SOVEREIGNTY 
 
 to discuss so inadequate an outlook. The division 
 of power may connote a pluralistic world. It may 
 throw to the winds that omnicompetent State for 
 which Hegel in Germany and Austin in England 
 have long and firmly stood the sponsors. Yet 
 insofar as that distinction is achieved will it the 
 more firmly unite itself to reality. 
 
CHAPTER IIT 
 
 THE POLITICAL THEORY OF THE 
 OXFORD MOVEMENT’ 
 
 I 
 
 F, in its broader aspects, Tractarianism is no 
 more than the English side of that reactionary 
 romanticism which, on the Continent, drove men 
 like Schlegel back to the ideals of the Roman 
 Church,’ in a more narrow sense, it is to certain 
 great political causes that we must look for its 
 origin.” The Church of England ceased to derive 
 benefit from that indifference which, in an age of 
 benevolent complacency, had shielded it from 
 criticism. ‘The Church of England,’ Bentham 
 remarked with a calm joy,* ‘is ripe for dissolution.’ 
 The famous Black Book which John Wade flung 
 
 1 For the purposes of this paper I have regarded the movement as 
 ending with the conversion of Manning rather than of Newman. There 
 is, of course, a sense in which the movement has not yet ended. In that 
 view Mr. Figgis’ Churches in the Modern State might be read as the 
 lineal successor to Pusey’s tract on the royal supremacy. 
 
 2Cf. V. F. Storr, Development of English Theology During the Nine- 
 teenth Century, pp. 126 ff. 
 
 3 Cf. Church, The Oxford Movement, p. 1, n. 1. 
 
 4 Church of Englandism, Works, II, 199. Cf. Stanley, Life of Arnold, 
 I, 326. Fraser’s Magazine, March, 1835, p. 247. Quarterly Review 
 (1834), Vol. 50, p. 509. 
 
70 PROBLEM OF SOVEREIGNTY 
 
 in 1820 at an outraged aristocracy’ did much to 
 reveal a state of affairs with which not even the 
 most comfortable could express contentment. 
 There had been for some time signs of movement 
 from within. The evangelism of Knox and 
 Simeon, of Milner and of Wilberforce, had been 
 essentially a protest of spiritual insight against 
 political worldliness;’ and if the movement was 
 distinguished rather by its moral, than by its 
 mental strength, there was good reason to see in 
 men like Daubeny and Knox the hope of a great 
 intellectual renaissance.’ 
 
 Simultaneously with the hopes of this revival, 
 the growth of liberal ideas in the second and third 
 decades of the nineteenth century did much to 
 destroy the privileged position of the English 
 Church. The repeal, in 1828, of the Test and 
 Corporation Acts placed the Dissenters on an 
 equal political level with Anglicans. In the next 
 year Roman Catholic emancipation followed; and 
 when, in 1832, the Reform Bill was forced upon a 
 reluctant House of Lords, it must have seemed 
 to indignant Tories that the flood gates of democ- 
 racy had been opened.* It was certainly possible 
 
 5D, N. B., Vol. 58, p. 416. 
 
 6 Cf. Storr, op. cit., p. 63 ff. 
 
 7Mr. Storr, indeed, contends that Knox anticipated most of the 
 characteristic ideas of the Tractarians, op. cit., p. 85. 
 
 8 Sir John Walsh is an admirable index of this attitude. See his 
 voluminous pamphlets especially Popular Opinions on Parliamentary 
 Reform Considered (London, 1832), pp. 7, 12, 16, and Colonel Stewart’s 
 
 Eaamination of the Principles and Tendencies of the Ministerial Plan 
 of Reform (Edinburgh, 1831). Scarlett, Letter to Lord Milton (London, 
 
THEORY OF OXFORD MOVEMENT 71 
 
 
 
 no longer to see Church and State as convertible 
 terms. The State was accepting as its fully quali- 
 fied members men who by no possible stretch of 
 the imagination could be deemed Anglican in 
 outlook. There were even thinkers of repute, like 
 Arnold, to whom the peculiar identity of the 
 Church of England counted as nothing,’ but who 
 simply desired a vague, generalised Christianity 
 as the best of citizenship.” 
 
 It was scarcely remarkable that there should be 
 deep apprehension for the future. ‘The Church 
 of England,’ wrote the Quarterly Review in 1834,” 
 ‘is as a beleaguered city.’ Even the placid Greville 
 was convineed that its reform must be under- 
 taken ;* and an able writer in the next year went 
 so far as to maintain that ‘the only point worthy 
 of consideration was how that reform may be 
 effected so as at once to occasion the least amount 
 of hazard to the party about to be reformed,” 
 while James Mill complacently speculated as to 
 how best the Church might be transformed into 
 a kind of gigantic mechanics institute.” 
 
 1831), p. 37, ‘I hold it as a maxim that every government which tends 
 to separate property from constitutional power must be liable to per- 
 petual revolutions.’ 
 
 9 Cf. Newman’s question as to Arnold, Apologia (ed. Wilfrid Ward), 
 ‘i Ge Stanley, Life of Arnold, Vol. I, pp. 205, 207, 333. II, p. 133, 
 and his consequent opposition to Jewish emancipation, II, p. 40, 44. 
 
 11 Vol. 50, p. 509. 
 
 12 Greville, III, 206. 
 
 18 Fraser’s Magazine, March, 1835, p. 247. 
 
 14 London Review, July, 1835. Cf. L. Stephen, English Utilitarians, 
 II, 57. 
 
72 PROBLEM OF SOVEREIGNTY 
 
 It was into such an atmosphere that the Ministry 
 of Lord Grey flung their bombshell of Irish 
 Church Reform. The English Church in Ireland 
 had long been the object of fierce and bitter attack. 
 The establishment of a small minority, it was 
 supported by the tithes of an alien community. 
 It had means that were, unquestionably, more 
 than sufficient to its end. The collection of its 
 revenues had long been one of the plagues of the 
 Home Secretary. At last the ministry decided 
 upon a drastic reform. If State support was 
 continued, nevertheless ten of the bishoprics were 
 suppressed; and it was perhaps even more 
 striking that in his admission of its abuses,” Lord 
 John Russell went out of his way to state that 
 where Church funds could be more profitably 
 utilised they should be confiscated.“ It was long 
 since the Church had received so thoroughgoing 
 a challenge. 
 
 Newman has told* us how bitter was his resent- 
 ment against the Liberals when news of the event 
 travelled out to Italy. It was not the Bill itself 
 so much as the movement of which it was the 
 striking manifestation that angered him. ‘It was,’ 
 he wrote,” ‘the suecess of the Liberal cause which 
 
 15 Brodrick and Fotheringham, History of England from 1801-1837, 
 if ane (ed. of 1874), Vol. III, pp. 9, 267. Lord Grey had already 
 warned the bishops to set their house in order. Storr, op. cit., p. 250. 
 
 17 Walpole, Life of Lord John Russell, I, 197. 
 
 18 Apologia (Ward’s ed.), p. 134. 
 19 Loe. cit. 
 
THEORY OF OXFORD MOVEMENT Us 
 
 fretted me inwardly. I became fierce against its 
 instruments and its manifestations.’ He hurried 
 home to England with the perception clearly in his 
 mind that a great work had been committed to his 
 charge.” Five days later Keble, already famous 
 as the author of the Christian Year, from his 
 pulpit in the University Church, attacked the 
 impious hands of the government in his famous 
 sermon on ‘National Apostasy.’ From that utter- 
 ance the Oxford Movement takes its rise.* It was 
 a protest not merely against a particular measure. 
 The Oxford group felt that ‘the Government’s real 
 object was to gratify the priests by the abolition 
 of the hierarchy of the Church of England as a 
 first step to the entire destruction of the Church’s 
 status and property, and the formation of a 
 Roman Catholic establishment; but they did not 
 venture to avow this motive and pretended that 
 the measure was for the purpose of reforming and 
 strengthening the Church itself... the shock 
 upon the introduction of this sacrilegious bill was 
 electric. The bill called upon Newman and his 
 friends to resist as one man the enactment of 
 laws contrary to the first principles of the Church’s 
 discipline, divesting Christians of spiritual privi- 
 leges not originally bestowed by the State, and 
 which the State could not take away.’ It was 
 
 20 Op. cit., p. 135. 
 
 21 Loc. cit., p. 136. 
 
 22 Palmer, Narrative of Events, p. 45. It is difficult to say how much 
 
 truth there is in his story of a contemplated Roman Catholic establish- 
 ment. Peel had certainly considered the idea. Life, Vol. I, p. 369. 
 
74 PROBLEM OF SOVEREIGNTY 
 
 obvious that some measure of protection must be 
 taken. Palmer, Froude, Newman and Keble 
 founded the Association of Friends of the Church 
 of which the object was to preserve ‘pure and 
 inviolate’ its identity.” In the British Magazine, 
 then under the able guidance of Hugh James 
 Rose, with whom at this time Newman became 
 acquainted, they already had an organ for their 
 opinions.* Newman himself, with the strong 
 approval of Froude and Keble, had begun the 
 publication of the famous Tracts for the Times; 
 he was writing on Church reform in the religious 
 journals.” Care was taken to secure their circu- 
 lation among the clergy where they seem to have 
 met with a large measure of approval.” In 1834 
 the important adhesion of Pusey—already Regius 
 Professor—was gained.” The confidence of the 
 Tractarians was high. ‘It would be,’ wrote New- 
 man,” ‘in fact a second Reformation:—a better 
 reformation, for it would be a return not to the 
 sixteenth but to the seventeenth century.’ 
 
 But the movement was not to meet without 
 opposition. From the outset it was bitterly anti- 
 Erastian. ‘With Froude,’ Newman tells us,” and 
 it must be remembered that by Froude, Newman 
 was above all influenced, ‘Erastianism was the 
 
 23 Ibid., p. 49. 
 
 24 Apologia, p. 140. 
 
 25 Apologia, p. 144. 
 
 26 See Appendix A to Palmer’s Narrative. 
 
 27 Palmer, p. 60. 
 28 Apologia, p. 141. 
 
THEORY OF OXFORD MOVEMENT 75 
 
 parent, or if not the parent, the serviceable and 
 sufficient tool of Liberalism.’ But anti-Erastian- 
 ism was not likely to meet with approval among 
 the political ecclesiastics of London. It drew its 
 inspiration, at any rate, in its Tractarian expres- 
 sion, from the Middle Ages; and to admire the 
 medieval popes was already to conceive of a 
 Church infinitely superior to the secular state. 
 It was as passionately opposed to the latitudi- 
 narian spirit of the politicians; Sir Robert Inglis 
 with his uncompromising orthodoxy was its politi- 
 eal ideal. The Oxford Movement set its face 
 firmly towards the past. It did not desire a 
 charitable breadth of view. The truth was to be 
 found in the writings of the fathers, and of the 
 divines of the seventeenth century.*” The Church 
 was to purge itself of heresy and to build itself 
 around the essential doctrine of the Apostolic 
 succession.” The identity of the Church, in fact, 
 was to be found not in its life but in its tradition.” 
 It thus relied essentially upon authority, and for 
 its source it went back to the ages when, as it 
 deemed, the Church was untrammelled by a State- 
 connexion. Clearly, it had thus no sympathy from 
 the outset with the notion of a royal supremacy— 
 ‘that blighting influence upon our Upas-tree’ as 
 
 29 Apologia, p. 154. 
 
 30 Cf. Storr, op. cit., p. 258. 
 
 31 Cf, Tract 4. 
 
 32 Hence, in Tract 90, Newman logically endeavours to read the 
 
 Tridentine tradition, i.e., to him the pre-Reformation tradition, into the 
 Thirty-Nine Articles. 
 
76 PROBLEM OF SOVEREIGNTY 
 
 Hurrell Froude termed it**—and was naturally 
 alien in spirit to those who, like Arnold, looked 
 upon Christianity essentially as a spirit and not 
 a body of doctrine. It was, in brief, a Catholic and 
 not a Protestant conception,” and was thus bound 
 to challenge dissent from its conclusions. 
 
 For to the majority of men, and certainly to the 
 majority of influential men, the Church was not 
 the Church, but the Establishment.” What it was, 
 perhaps, even more, what it might become, was 
 essentially a matter of parliamentary enactment. 
 With Newman’s keen sense of a separate clerical 
 order,’ and his challenging demand for independ- 
 ence, it was impossible for them to feel any 
 sympathy. To men like Lord John Russell, for 
 instance, the Church was no more than one among 
 many national institutions, and, equally with 
 James Mill, though unconsciously, he was pre- 
 pared to apply to its revenues the criterion of 
 social utility.” Sir James Graham did not hesi- 
 tate to affirm that the State might re-distribute 
 Church property in any manner it thought fit, ‘as 
 long as it was distributed for purposes strictly 
 Protestant.”* ‘The Church of England,’ John 
 
 83 Remains, I, 405. 
 
 34 The reader may note how in Dr. Figgis’ Churches and the Modern 
 State this attitude is, perhaps a little vaguely, implied. Cf. especially 
 pp. 43-47, 
 
 35 Cf. Church, The Ozford Movement, p. 51. 
 
 36 Cf. the startling commencement of the first tract—Ad clerum. 
 
 37 Cf. Hansard, New Series, Vol. XXIV, p. 802, June 23, 1834, 
 
 38 Hansard, New Series, Vol. XXVII, March 30, 1835, p. 423. 
 
THEORY OF OXFORD MOVEMENT Ved 
 
 Cam Hobhouse told the House of Commons,” ‘is 
 emphatically the offspring and child of the law, 
 and the parent may deal with the child.’ Even 
 Sir Robert Peel could only defend the right of the 
 Church to the increment-value of its improved 
 property by urging that no distinction should be 
 introduced between its possessions and those of 
 other corporations.” Clearly such an attitude was 
 virtually antithetic to that of the Tractarians. 
 It explains the appointment of Dr. Hampden to 
 the Regius Professorship of Divinity; for Hamp- 
 den was at least a Liberal and had shown no notions 
 of high prerogative in regard to the Church. And 
 it was precisely on the ground of his liberalism 
 that his appointment provoked so vehement an 
 opposition.” 
 
 From the moment of that conflict the story 
 possesses a tragic inevitability. The Tractarians 
 went to extremes in their effort at least to neutralise 
 the appointment ;* and Dr. Hampden did not 
 forget the part they played when the opportunity 
 for return arose. The contest turned the inchoate 
 band of sympathisers into a party; and its mem- 
 bers began to understand their responsibilities not 
 
 89 Loc. cit., p. 5384, March 31, 1835. 
 
 40 Gladstone noted that Peel was wholly anti-Church and unclerica] 
 and largely undogmatic. Morley, I, 132. Hansard, New Series, Vol. 
 XVII, April 16, 1833, p. 1002. 
 
 41 Cf. Church, The Oxford Movement, p. 168 ff. 
 
 42 Church, op. cit., p. 170. Palmer, Narrative, p. 131. Mr. Palmer 
 makes it clear that the Tractarians were only a small number of the 
 
 opposition. 
 43 Church, op. cit., p. 320. 
 
78 PROBLEM OF SOVEREIGNTY 
 
 less than the need for giving them expression.“ 
 Into the story of its growth it is not now possible 
 to enter ;* but it is permissible to point out that 
 few movements have been so admirably served by 
 their leaders. They were tireless with pen and 
 with tongue. The Tracts flowed on without end. 
 The four o’clock sermons at St. Mary’s drew 
 audiences which, if never very large, contained 
 much of what was best in the University. There 
 was endless thinking and endless investigation 
 into the one fundamental question—What is the 
 Church? Enquiry began to be made into that 
 most fascinating and dangerous of questions its 
 origins. Quite early in its history the necessity 
 of defining the relation of the movement to the 
 Church of Rome became apparent, and the conse- 
 quent change of emphasis in the tone adopted to 
 that organisation was the point of disruption 
 between the Tractarians and the Evangelicals.” 
 The arrival of Monsignor Wiseman on his mission 
 served also to emphasise the need for a right 
 understanding of Catholic doctrine.” The Tracta- 
 rians were already astutely aware that they were 
 working out a midway between two extremes; but 
 they saw, too, that in certain decisive fundamen- 
 tals Catholicism and Anglicanism were in essential 
 
 44 Apologia, p. 166. 
 
 45 It is needless, perhaps, to refer to Dean Church’s incomparable 
 Oxford Movement. 
 
 46 Apologia, p. 163. 
 47 Op. cit., p. 164. 
 
THEORY OF OXFORD MOVEMENT 79 
 
 
 
 agreement. Little by little they drew further 
 along the road. Newman notes the first rumblings 
 of the storm in 1838." By 1841 it is clear that 
 accusations against Rome had lost their former 
 significance. Tract 90 was essentially an attempt 
 to exclude Protestantism from the Thirty-Nine 
 Articles—‘they were tolerant,’ he wrote,’ ‘not 
 only of what I called ‘‘Catholic teaching,’’ but 
 of much that was Roman.’ The authorities treated 
 the Tract in the one way that was bound to create 
 difficulties. It was met, writes Dean Church, ‘not 
 with argument, but with panic and wrath.” The 
 acrimony of the atmosphere was intensely aggra- 
 vated; suspicion of Rome set in everywhere. 
 Every question was made a theological question. 
 The Tractarian candidate to the poetry chair was 
 defeated; Dr. Hampden obtained an ignoble, if 
 curious revenge; Pusey was suspended in absurd 
 fashion by the Vice-Chancellor from preaching.” 
 In the midst of difficulties a man born to intensify 
 them plunged precipitately into the conflict. Mr. 
 W. G. Ward seems to have had all the logical 
 remorselessness of Hurrell Froude with a physical 
 vigour of which the latter was deprived. His 
 Ideal of a Christian Church was tantamount to 
 an admission that Rome had always been right.” 
 
 48 Op. cit., p. 169. 
 
 49 Op. cit., p. 175. 
 
 50 Op. cit., p. 182. 
 
 51 Church, op. cit., p. 290. 
 
 52 Church, op. cit., 312-335. 
 531¢ is hardly needful for me to remark here how greatly I am 
 
80 PROBLEM OF SOVEREIGNTY 
 
 
 
 
 
 That would have been harmless enough at another 
 time. As it was, the condemnation it invited only 
 drove Newman steadily along the road upon which 
 it was now, as it seemed, inevitable* he should 
 travel. He gave up his college position and retired © 
 to Littlemore to work and to think. Of the mental 
 struggle through which he vainly lived he has 
 himself written matchlessly, nor dare another 
 retell the story.” In October, 1845, there occurred 
 that event of which Mr. Gladstone so rightly said 
 that ‘it had never yet been estimated at anything 
 like the full amount of its calamitous importance.’” 
 
 For a time there was peace. If Newman and 
 Ward had gone, Keble and Pusey remained and 
 they devoted themselves with singular courage to 
 the task of repairing the breach that had been 
 made.” Yet the Church had by no means com- 
 pleted its time of travail. In 1847 Lord John 
 Russell precipitated a further controversy by 
 making Dr. Hampden a bishop—‘an indication,’ 
 Lord Morley comments,” ‘. . . of a determination 
 to substitute a sort of general religion for the 
 doctrines of the Church.’ Certainly, it was not 
 the type of appointment which might reassure 
 those whom the secession of Newman had caused 
 indebted to Mr. Wilfrid Ward’s brilliant W. G. Ward and the Oxford 
 ercenes: ’3 Gladstone, I, 230. Apologia, p. 293. 
 
 55 See especially Part VI of the Apologia. 
 
 56 Morley, I, 234. 
 
 57 Church, op. cit., p. 406. Palmer, op. cit., p. 240. 
 58 Life of Gladstone, II, 280. 
 
THEORY OF OXFORD MOVEMENT 81 
 
 
 
 to waver. But worse was to follow. In the year 
 1850 Bishop Philpotts refused to institute to the 
 living of Bampford Speke the Reverend George 
 Gorham on the ground of uncertain doctrine in 
 ‘ regard to baptism. Mr. Gorham sued the bishop 
 in the Court of Arches; but the court decided 
 against him. He thereupon took his case on appeal 
 to the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council— 
 a purely lay body in which the two archbishops and 
 the bishop of London sat as assessors. This latter 
 Court reversed the proceedings of the Court of 
 Arches by a majority verdict and Mr. Gorham 
 took the living. But the decision was a disastrous 
 one.” Everyone knew that the Court had been 
 instituted to satisfy the restless ambition of Lord 
 Brougham ;*’ and the latter himself testified in the 
 House of Lords that it had not been intended that 
 the Court should deal with such a class of cases.” 
 It was urged that political causes had not been 
 without their influence on the judgment ;” certainly 
 it asserted in a striking manner the inherent right 
 of the Crown to settle matters of faith. Pusey and 
 Keble no less than Gladstone and Manning were 
 horrified. ‘The case of the Church of England at 
 this moment,’ wrote Mr. Gladstone to Lord 
 
 59 See the special report by Moore. The facts of the case and 
 Lord Langdale’s judgment are given conveniently in Brooke’s Six Privy 
 Council Judgments. It is noteworthy that Bishop Blomfield, the most 
 ecclesiastically minded of the three prelates, should have refused to 
 concur in the judgment, 
 
 60 Greville, I, 18. 
 
 61 Hansard, 3d Series, Vol. III, p. 629. 
 
 62 Palmer, Narrative, p. 245. Purcell’s Manning, I, p. 523. 
 
82 PROBLEM OF SOVEREIGNTY 
 
 
 
 Lyttleton,” ‘is a very dismal one, and almost leaves 
 men to choose between a broken heart and no heart 
 at all. But at present it is all dark or only twilight 
 which rests upon our future.’ A declaration of 
 protest was issued by all the leaders of the High 
 Church movement. It was clear to Manning that 
 the parting of the ways had come. Mr. Gladstone 
 tried to urge delay, but to him the implications 
 of the judgment were irresistible.” He tried to 
 stimulate the clergy to an attack on the extension, 
 as he deemed it, of the royal supremacy to eccle- 
 siastical affairs, but met with little or no response.” 
 A letter to his bishop was equally unavailing. 
 His friends, men like Dodsworth and Maskell,” 
 could do nothing by their protests. The govern- 
 ment seemed determined to stand by the judgment. 
 In the end Manning felt himself compelled to give 
 up the struggle. ‘I gradually came to see,’ he 
 wrote, ‘that there was no intermediate position 
 between the Catholic faith and an undogmatie 
 pietism.’ By September, 1850, it is clear that he 
 was convinced,” and when he was called upon to 
 protest against the Papal Aggression of 1851 he 
 found it impossible to do so.” On the sixth of 
 April, 1851, he was received into the Roman 
 
 63 Morley, I, 283. 
 
 64 The document in Purcell’s Manning, I, 532. 
 
 65 Purcell, I, 539 ff. 
 
 66 Op. cit., I, 543-545. 
 
 67 The great authority on liturgy. 
 
 68 Purcell, I, 558, n. 1. 
 
 69 See the letter of S. Wilberforce to Gladstone, Purcell, I, 568. 
 70 Purcell, I, 578. 
 
THEORY OF OXFORD MOVEMENT 83 
 
 
 
 Catholhe Church. His conversion was the last of 
 those which may be directly traced to the influence 
 of the Oxford Movement. 
 
 aa] 
 
 No one ean read the Tracts for the Times with- 
 out realising how far removed is their atmosphere 
 from one of contented acceptance of State inter- 
 ference. They do not, indeed, specifically reject 
 the establishment ;” but they point out with 
 unhesitating directness the distinction between 
 their position and that of the world at large. The 
 Church does not depend upon the State. Its 
 property is its own. It will not submit to the test 
 of utility. The clergy must choose whether they 
 will be for the Church or against it; they must 
 magnify their office. They must protest against 
 what seems ‘a most dangerous infringement on 
 our rights on the part of the State.’ They must 
 not be content to be its creation. ‘No one can say 
 that the British legislature is in our communion, 
 or that its members are necessarily even Chris- 
 tians. What pretence then has it for, not merely 
 advising, but superseding the Ecclesiastical 
 power?” The Church must resist such encroach- 
 ment on its rights. ‘You may keep it before you 
 as a desirable object that the Irish Church should 
 
 71 The first tract actually points out ‘how miserable is the state of 
 religious bodies not supported by the State.’ 
 
 72 Tract 1, p. 4. 
 73 Tract 2, p. 2. 
 
84 PROBLEM OF SOVEREIGNTY 
 
 
 
 at some future day meet in Synod, and protest 
 herself against what has been done; and then 
 proceed to establish or rescind the State injunction 
 as may be thought expedient.” Here, clearly, is 
 a high sense of prerogative. Its origin is equally 
 obvious. It is not from a secular legislature that 
 change must derive. ‘When corruptions,’ says 
 the fifth tract,” ‘prevalent among the professedly 
 Christian world render it necessary for her to 
 state the substance of her faith in articles (as was 
 done in A. D. 1562), or when circumstances appear 
 to require any change or variation either in the 
 Forms of her Liturgy, or in her general internal 
 government, the king has the constitutional power 
 of summoning the houses of convocation, a sort of 
 ecclesiastical parliament composed of Bishop or 
 clergy, from whom alone such changes can fitly 
 or legally emanate.’ But the king is only the 
 temporal head of the Church. ‘We are not thence 
 to infer that she gave, or could give to an earthly 
 monarch, or to his temporal legislature, the right 
 to interfere with things spiritual.”* It was natural 
 that a protest should in this sense be made against 
 the re-arrangement of dioceses by a Royal Com- 
 mission in 1836" ‘without confirmation of their 
 acts on the part of the Church.’”” 
 
 74 Tract 2, p. 4. 
 
 75 P, 13, 
 
 76 Loc. cit., p. 13. 
 
 77 The reference is apparently to the Ecclesiastical Commissioners’ 
 
 Act, 1836, 6 and 7 William IV, ¢. 77, but the protest is written in 1839, 
 78 Tract 33, note on p. 7. 
 
THEORY OF OXFORD MOVEMENT 85 
 
 It is clearly against a presumed supremacy of 
 the State over the Church that protest is made; 
 and it is this which constitutes the key to the 
 political theory of Tractarianism. Starting as it 
 does in a movement against an invasion of what 
 Keble deemed its prerogatival right to self- 
 reformation, it was inevitable that this should be 
 the case. Indeed seven years before the com- 
 mencement of the Oxford Movement, Whately, in 
 his Letters on the Church,” had emphasised the 
 idea of the Church as a perfect and self-sufficing 
 society of divine institution, and had argued from 
 that conception first to its rights of jurisdiction 
 over all who voluntarily become its members;” 
 and next to the need for a complete separation of 
 Church and State since the idea underlying each 
 of the societies was essentially distinct. Nor was 
 he alone in this attitude. Almost at the end of the 
 eighteenth century Bishop Horsley of St. David’s 
 had insisted that to think of the clergy as State- 
 servants is self-excommunication.” The work of 
 Whately, as we know, profoundly influenced New- 
 man and Froude. ‘What he did for me in point 
 of religious opinion,’ wrote the former,” ‘was, first, 
 to teach me the existence of the Church as a 
 
 79It is simply stated to be by ‘an Episcopalian’ and Whately, I 
 believe, never acknowledged the authorship. But it is usually ascribed 
 - as the third letter. 
 
 81 See the fourth letter. 
 
 82 Cf, Storr, Development of English Theology, p. 84. 
 83 Apologia, p. 115. 
 
86 PROBLEM OF SOVEREIGNTY 
 
 substantive body or corporation; next to fix in me 
 those anti-Erastian views of Church polity which 
 were one of the most prominent features of the 
 Tractarian movement.’ For if once it was ad- 
 mitted that Church and State were distinct, and 
 that the former possessed Apostolic succession, to 
 admit the superiority of the latter would be 
 intolerable. That had been the importance of 
 Keble’s sermon. The nation had apostatised 
 itself; it was no longer the Church. ‘This hateful 
 circumstance it was,’ Lord Morley has written,™ 
 ‘that inevitably began in multitudes of devout and 
 earnest minds to produce a revolution in their 
 conception of a church, and a resurrection in 
 curiously altered forms of that old ideal of 
 Milton’s austere and lofty school,—the ideal of 
 a purely spiritual association that should leave 
 each man’s soul and conscience free from ‘‘secular 
 chains’’ and ‘‘hireling wolves.’’’ Once a new con- 
 ception of the Church was needed it was inevitably 
 upon dogma and orthodoxy that the Tractarians 
 were driven back.” ‘To find out what the Church 
 was they were compelled to discover what it had 
 been. They sought to know it in the days of 
 its purity—in its Catholic time. Hence the 
 necessity for a rigid exclusiveness; since it could 
 not claim to be a branch of the Church Catholic 
 
 84 Life of Gladstone, I, 115. 
 
 85 In our own day an eloquent and brilliant defence has been made 
 of this position by Dr. Figgis in his Churches in the Modern State from 
 
 the Anglican standpoint and Dr. Forsyth in his Theology in Church and 
 State from the Nonconformist. 
 
THEORY OF OXFORD MOVEMENT 8&7 
 
 
 
 and Apostolic unless that steady and decisive 
 continuity of unimpaired doctrine had _ been 
 maintained. 
 
 It is this notion of a Church as a societas per- 
 fecta, founded upon a definite and statutable creed, 
 which so clearly lies at the basis of the Tractarian 
 antagonism to the State. For the State had 
 become non-Anglican, or, as they would have said, 
 non-Christian, and they could not submit to a 
 reform they knew to be inevitable at the hands 
 of men whose doctrines they abhorred.* They had 
 an uncomfortable suspicion that, as J. A. Froude 
 remarked,” ‘the laity would never allow the Church 
 of England to get on stilts . . . the State would 
 remain master, let Oxford say what it pleased.’ 
 Inevitably, therefore, the central point of their 
 attack was the royal supremacy since in it, as they 
 were to learn,” was involved the notion that the 
 State was supreme no less in spiritual than in 
 temporal affairs. Their object from the outset 
 was, if not to free the Church from the trammels 
 of an Establishment, at any rate to minimise its 
 consequences in the direction of secular control. 
 ‘Churchmen,’ said Dean Church many years 
 later,*° ‘believe the Church to be a religious society 
 
 86 Cf. Froude—The Oxford Counter-Reformation in Short Studies 
 (ed. of 1883), Vol. IV, p. 154. 
 
 87 Op. cit., p. 164. 
 
 88 I say ‘were to learn’ since it is clear from a variety of sources, 
 é.g., Purcell’s Life of Manning, I, 541, that many of the clergy did not 
 understand the royal supremacy in this broad sense. 
 
 89 Life and Letters of R. W. Church, p. 289. He is speaking of the 
 Church Boards Bill. 
 
88 PROBLEM OF SOVEREIGNTY 
 
 
 
 as much as a congregational body, as much so as 
 the Roman Catholic body. It has also become in 
 England an Established Church; but it has not 
 therefore ceased to be a religious society with 
 principles and laws of its own.’ The claim is that 
 of the Presbyterians in 1848” and, repudiated in 
 both cases by the State, it led to the foundation of 
 the Free Church of Scotland in one event as to the 
 revival of Roman Catholicism in the other. 
 
 It was emphatically against Erastianism that 
 the Tractarians were contending. ‘Lord Grey,’ 
 Mr. Froude has reported,” ‘had warned the bishops 
 in England to set their houses in order, and was 
 said to have declared in private that the Church 
 was a mare’s nest.’ Bishop Wilberforce—assur- 
 edly no enemy to the Establishment—quoted in 
 the House of Lords an extraordinary example of 
 contemporary opinion. ‘The Church of England,’ 
 so the Globe asserted,” ‘as by law established, is 
 emphatically a creature of this world. It is 
 impossible to affix any intelligible character to her 
 profession or practice unless we bear steadily in 
 mind that she is essentially a machine for embody- 
 ing the spiritual element in the changing public 
 opinion of the day, and not a contrivance for 
 transmitting sacraments, or defining creeds.’ 
 The doughty Mr. Faithfull was urging in the 
 House of Commons that Church and nation were 
 
 90 See my paper on The Political Theory of the Disruption printed 
 in this volume. 
 
 91 The Oxford Counter-Reformation in Short Studies, IV, 185. 
 
 92 Hansard, 3d Series, Vol. CX VIII, p. 552. 
 
THEORY OF OXFORD MOVEMENT 89 
 
 Synonymous terms, and that the nation might 
 dispose freely of its property; he had no high 
 conception of office-bearers in the Church who 
 were merely ‘the arbitrary choice of the Crown or 
 of certain individuals who had the right of 
 appointing them.’ To assert that the Church 
 had any ‘absolute and unalienable rights,’ Lord 
 Brougham told the House of Lords, was a ‘gross 
 and monstrous anomaly’ since it would make 
 impossible the supremacy of Parliament. The 
 argument of Dr. Arnold against the admission of 
 ‘Jews or any other avowed unbelievers in Christ’ 
 into Parliament was based on the fact that in such 
 an event ‘Parliament can not be the legislature 
 of the Church, not being an assembly of Chris- 
 tians; and as there is no other Church legislature 
 to be found under our actual constitution, the 
 government of the Church will be de jure ex- 
 tinct,’”*°—an unqualified acceptance, even if on high 
 grounds, of the fullest Erastianism. ‘The House,’ 
 Joseph Hume complacently remarked in 1823,” 
 ‘. . . must be well aware that there was no precise 
 authority in the Scriptures for any particular 
 
 93 Hansard, New Series, Vol. XVIII, p. 185, April 16, 1833. One 
 imagines how this would have been greeted by Newman and Hurrell 
 Froude. 
 
 94 Hansard, New Series, Vol. XIX, p. 991, July 19, 1833. 
 
 95 Quoted in Wilfrid Ward, W. G. Ward and the Oxford Movement, 
 p. 378. 
 
 96 Hansard, New Series, Vol. VIII, p. 368, March 4, 1823. He is 
 speaking of the Irish church, but he would of course have applied the 
 doctrine to that of England, and doubtless he was speaking with the 
 support of the Utilitarians. 
 
90 PROBLEM OF SOVEREIGNTY 
 
 establishment; it was altogether a civil institution, 
 the creature of the law; and by every rule of 
 reason, the same authority that created could 
 alter, nay! could even annul it altogether.’ Nor 
 was the purport of such doctrines mistaken by the 
 more high-minded bishops of the time. ‘The 
 legislature, in fact,’ wrote Lloyd of Oxford to his 
 old pupil, Sir Robert Peel,” ‘say to the Church of 
 England: so long as we guarantee you your prop- 
 erty, we will take for ourselves the right of 
 controlling your discipline, and of preventing you 
 from exercising any spiritual power over your own 
 members.’ It is a villainous argument, and as 
 oppressive as it is mean.’ 
 
 It is sufficiently clear that between such an atti- 
 tude as this, and that of the Tractarians, there 
 could be no compromise. If the Church of England 
 was to fulfil the function assigned to it by the 
 Globe, and do no more than mirror in itself the 
 shifting gusts of popular opinion on religious 
 questions the notion of a dogmatic basis must be 
 abandoned. What to men like Newman were its 
 very roots would have to be torn up. There would 
 be room for the continuous exercise of private 
 judgment and influence—to the Tractarians essen- 
 tially a dangerous thing.** There would be ‘frater- 
 nisation’ with ‘Protestants of all sorts’ which, in 
 the matter of the Jerusalem bishopric Newman 
 
 97 Memoirs of Sw Robert Peel, Vol. I, p. 84. 
 
 98 Cf. Newman’s Correspondence, Vol. II, p. 310. The letter to a 
 ‘lady of excitable temperament.’ 
 
THEORY OF OXFORD MOVEMENT 91 
 called ‘a fearful business.” It would have preju- 
 diced what they deemed the essential thing in 
 Anglicanism—the title to be a branch of the 
 Apostolic Church.*” State control to them was 
 essentially a handle to novelty—itself among the 
 most deadly of religious sins. ‘If the Knglish 
 Church,’ wrote Newman to the Bishop of Ox- 
 ford,’ ‘is to enter upon a new course and assume 
 a new aspect, it will be more pleasant to me here- 
 after to think that I did not suffer so grievous an 
 event to happen without bearing witness against 
 it.’ They were anxious, moreover, to emphasise 
 their complete dissociation from temporal con- 
 cerns, even such as were concerned with the pos- 
 sessions of the Church.” Their only reason, 
 indeed, for not ‘dreading’ alliance with the State 
 was the fact that they simultaneously emphasised 
 their determination to maintain ‘the integrity of 
 the Church’s rights and privileges.” Their 
 relations were being continuously altered by the 
 civil power and it was ‘the duty of the Church to 
 demand corresponding alterations’ in favour of 
 -the prevention of any extra-ecclesiastical inter- 
 ference.* So eager are they for the rigid defi- 
 nition of doctrine that, as they urge,” ‘the 
 
 99 Correspondence, II, 315, letter to J. W. Bowden. 
 
 100 Cf, Correspondence, II, 323, letter to the Bishop of Oxford. 
 
 101 Loc, cit. 
 
 102 Correspondence, II, 4. 
 
 103 Tbid., II, 16. 
 
 104 Op. cit., II, p. 23. The reference to Warburton’s Alliance between 
 Church and State in this letter is very significant. 
 
 105 Op. cit., II, 77. 
 
92 PROBLEM OF SOVEREIGNTY 
 
 abandonment of State prosecutions for blas- 
 phemy, etc. . . . and the disordered state of the 
 Christian Knowledge Society, where books are 
 taken cognisance of and condemned, render it 
 desirable that there should be some really working 
 
 Court of heresy and false doctrine . . . the chief 
 advantage of this would be its practical curb upon 
 the exercise of the king’s power . . . the whole 
 
 Church would be kept in order . . . the theological 
 law of the Church must be revived, and eccle- 
 siastical law, moreover.’ They are anxious to take 
 patronage out of the hands of the Crown, on the 
 ground that it encroaches on the action of the 
 Archbishops." They expect the probable aban- 
 donment of Church by State and ask how it may 
 best be builded in the hearts of the people; for 
 the Church is essentially a divine institution ‘with 
 nothing to hope or fear from Whig or Conservative 
 governments, or from bishops, or from peers, or 
 from courts, or from other visible power. We 
 must trust our own 70os—that is, what is unseen, 
 and its unseen Author.”** Where people shrink 
 from the Catholicity of their doctrine as ‘implying 
 want of affection for our National Church’ they 
 are bidden ‘remind them that you take the Na- 
 tional Church, but only you do not take it from 
 the Reformation. In order to kindle love of the 
 National Church and yet to inculeate a Catholic 
 
 106 Loc. cit., II, 160, letter to Keble. 
 107 Op. cit., II, 166. 
 108 Op. cit., II, 216. 
 
THEORY OF OXFORD MOVEMENT 93 
 
 tone, nothing else is necessary but to take our) 
 Church in the Middle Ages”*°—that is, to take the | 
 Church at a time when the Tractarians believed it 
 to be pure from the corruption of the State control 
 introduced by Henry VIII. They object to an 
 effort after Church comprehension which does not 
 include ‘public revocation’ by dissenters, ‘of their 
 wicked errors.”*° Even should the State Church 
 remain there would be special and peculiar ground 
 for its retention. It would be because a visible 
 Church existed upon earth upon which all States 
 should depend and by which they should be 
 guided. Within her sphere the Church would 
 retain her independence and the State would 
 refuse to assist those who were hostile to her 
 claims. It was an alliance of two kingdoms;™ 
 nor were there wanting those who were prepared 
 to assert that the Church was far from being the 
 inferior power.” So moderate a man as Dean 
 Church thought that it might urge the deposition 
 of kings, and in a choice between a weak church 
 system and one with the pretensions of Gregory 
 
 109 Op. cit. II, 308. 
 
 110 Op, cit., IT, 329. 
 
 111 So at least I would summarise Mr. Gladstone’s State in its Rela- 
 tions with the Church—though, as Bagehot (Collected Works, III, 294) 
 whimsically said, he defended it ‘mistily.? I assume it more or less met 
 with Tractarian approval. It was mainly influenced by James Hope and 
 W. Palmer of Worcester; and Newman thought that it would do good. 
 Morley, I, 135. 
 
 112 Cf, Ward, Ideal of a Christian Church, p. 49; and compare the 
 
 remarkable letter to Manning written in 1844 by Dean Church. Purcell, 
 I, 696, 
 
94 PROBLEM OF SOVEREIGNTY 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 VII and Innocent ITI, he approves of the latter’s 
 decision.*** 
 
 It is a tremendous and brilliant plea for eccle- 
 siastical freedom that is clearly born from the 
 passionate sense of a corporate church. The 
 Tractarians were anxious, so to speak, to delimit 
 its boundaries that the exclusiveness of its char- 
 acter might become the more apparent. They 
 _ insist on a rejection of all doctrine that encroaches 
 upon its independence. They desire to proclaim 
 definitely the character of its doctrine and to insist 
 on the acceptance of that doctrine so that none 
 save those who felt as they did might be its 
 members. They were eager to control Church 
 patronage and Church discipline’ for the same 
 reasons as those urged by Presbyterian theorists— 
 because the Church only can deal effectually with 
 ecclesiastical matters. Since they do not possess 
 the safeguards which make possible such self- 
 control, ‘it may obviously be the duty of church- 
 men in mere self-defence to expose and protest 
 against their destitute and oppressed condition.”” 
 They need these things because the Church must 
 possess unity, and unity can not be obtained if 
 they allow the play of private fancy about its 
 dogmas.** Everywhere, too, the Tractarians 
 magnify the clerical office and depreciate what- 
 ever in the liturgies or doctrine seems traceable 
 
 118 See the letter quoted in the last note. 78 
 114 Cf, Tract 59. 
 
 115 The closing words of Tract 59. 
 
 116 Tract 60. 
 
THEORY OF OXFORD MOVEMENT 95 
 
 to lay influence.“ Nor do they admit the possi- 
 bility of change save in the limited degree that 
 expansion may take place ‘only as to whatsoever 
 is read in Holy Scripture, or may be proved 
 thereby’;** and it is rather to the declaration of 
 old truth than the determination of new that they 
 desire men’s energies to be directed. 
 
 That such an unconscious theory of the State 
 was at the bottom of much Tractarian speculation 
 becomes the more obvious when one examines those 
 times at which the leaders of the movement judged 
 themselves to have special cause for resentment 
 against the government of the day. Keble’s 
 Sermon in 1833 was nothing so much as the casting 
 off of a nation which by following false gods had 
 been guilty of grave heresy.” Mr. Golightly, 
 having urged Newman to arouse an indignant 
 activity among the Irish clergy, goes on to beseech 
 him not to be too moderate in what he says of the 
 Establishment. ‘One of your principles,’ he 
 wrote,’ ‘I own I do not like; you protest ‘‘against 
 doing anything directly to separate Church and 
 State.’’ I would do the same, perhaps, in ordinary 
 times; but, when the State takes upon herself to 
 
 117 Cf, for instance Tract 71, the discussion of the liturgy and the 
 account of the quarrel between the Upper and Lower Houses of Con- 
 vocation in 1689. It is perhaps significant that the stoutest Erastian of 
 recent times, Sir William Harcourt, should have been the firm upholder 
 of lay influence. See his Lawlessness in the National Church (1899). 
 
 118 See Pusey’s Letter to the Bishop of Oxford, p. 19; though in 
 Newman’s Essay on Development this becomes capable of formidable 
 modification. 
 
 119 The very title of his sermon seems to express this feeling. 
 
 120 Newman’s Correspondence, Vol. I, p. 392. 
 
96 PROBLEM OF SOVEREIGNTY 
 
 decide, and that without consulting the Church, 
 how many bishops are necessary for the superin- 
 tendence of the clergy, and the clergy are cowardly 
 or ignorant enough to submit to her decisions, it 
 appears to me that the time for separation is come.’ 
 Though Newman is eager for the retention of the 
 Establishment he writes to F. Rogers that ‘the 
 State has deserted us,’ and that ‘if the destructives 
 go much further in their persecution of us—e.g., if 
 they made Arnold a bishop—I might consider it 
 wrong to maintain that position longer, much as I 
 should wish to do so.”** ‘They who are no Chris- 
 tians themselves,’ wrote Mr. Rickards to New- 
 man,” ‘must not legislate on matters of religion 
 for those who are Christians.’ It was the events of 
 these past few months, so he told Hurrell Froude,” 
 which brought to Newman the realisation that with 
 most Englishmen ‘the Church is essentially a 
 popular institution, and the past English union 
 of it with the State has been a happy anomaly.’ 
 How passionate was the sense of resentment 
 against the State the reader of Mr. Palmer’s 
 fascinating narrative will not fail to detect.** The 
 Address to the Archbishop of Canterbury, for 
 which he was responsible, was well understood to 
 have no other significance than this.” 
 
 121 Ibid., I, 396. 
 
 122 Tbid., I, 399. 
 
 128 Ibid., I, 403. 
 
 124 See his Narrative of Events, pp. 44-46. 
 
 125 In this connexion the letter quoted in Mr. Palmer’s appendix 
 at p. 217 is of deep interest. 
 
THEORY OF OXFORD MOVEMENT 97 
 
 Not less clearly does this vivid corporate sense 
 appear on the two occasions when Dr. Hampden 
 was made a protagonist in the drama. It has 
 already been noted that his appointment it was 
 which made the Tractarians from a scattered band 
 of enthusiasts into a party.” For whatever merits 
 Dr. Hampden may have possessed, he represented 
 in the highest possible degree those latitudinarian 
 principles against which the Oxford Movement 
 was the incarnate protest. ‘He had just re- 
 asserted,’ wrote Church,” ‘that he looked upon 
 creeds, and all the documents which embodied the 
 traditional doctrine, and collective thought of the 
 Church, as invested by ignorance and prejudice 
 with an authority which was without foundation.’ 
 He had, in fact, no sense whatever of its corporate- 
 ness, and no respect for its history. He regarded 
 its creeds and dogmas as matter not for belief but 
 for speculation. He did not realise, as Dean 
 Church so strikingly said,” ‘that the Church is 
 so committed to them that he can not enter on his 
 destructive criticism without having to excuse, 
 not one only, but all these beliefs, and without 
 soon having to face the question whether the whole 
 idea of the Church, as a real and divinely ordained 
 society, with a definite doctrine and belief is not 
 a delusion.’ That Dr. Hampden did answer that 
 question in the affirmative does not admit of 
 
 126 Above, p. 6. 
 127 The Oxford Movement, p. 158. 
 128 Op. cit., p. 163. 
 
98 PROBLEM OF SOVEREIGNTY 
 
 doubt; but he was suspect because, Scripture 
 apart, all other authority was to him matter for 
 human inference. The appointment, however well 
 meant, was a mistaken one; but what was far 
 more significant was the way in which, despite 
 almost unanimous protest in Oxford, Dr. Hamp- 
 den was forced upon the University.” ‘Again,’ 
 said Newman,” ‘the Ministry will be at open war 
 with the Church.’ The idea of a petition to the 
 king—which frightened the Archbishop—called 
 forth a protest from a nettled Prime Minister who 
 unwarily betrayed the realities behind a legal fic- 
 tion.* Convocation protested against the appoint- 
 ment, though the Proctors vetoed the proposal.” 
 Almost immediately, and very significantly, New- 
 man writes of the ‘probability of the whole subject 
 of Church authority, power, claims, etc., ete., being 
 re-opened.”** ‘It was,’ said Dean Church of the 
 appointment,’ ‘a palpable instance of what the 
 Church had to expect’ when her guardianship was 
 taken from her own hands. Eleven years later 
 Lord John Russell, neglecting the obvious warning 
 of 1836, and, seemingly, with the thought of paying 
 a tribute to the liberalism of Arnold in his mind,*” 
 appointed Hampden to the bishopric of Hereford. 
 
 129 Cf, Church, op. cit., p. 169. 
 
 130 Correspondence, Vol. II, p. 150. 
 
 131 Op. cit., 161 (letter of Archdeacon Froude). 
 
 182 Letters of J. B. Mozley, p. 54. 
 
 133 Op. cit., I, 166. 
 
 134 The Oxford Movement, p. 177. 
 135 Liddon, Life of Pusey, Vol. II, p. 158. 
 
THEORY OF OXFORD MOVEMENT 99 
 To accept it, protested Pusey,**® ‘was to connive 
 at heresy.’ They attempted to open up the whole 
 question of Dr. Hampden’s orthodoxy but in vain. 
 Yet they learned certain important lessons. ‘It 
 is certainly humbling enough,’ Pusey wrote,” 
 ‘. . . if there is no help whatever, if any person, 
 however unfit, whether on moral or doctrinal 
 grounds, be chosen by the Minister of the day for 
 a Bishop, except in a resistance to the law.’ ‘The 
 injury therefore to the Church of England,’ said 
 Mr. Baddeley in arguing for a mandamus in the 
 Court of King’s Bench,’ ‘if its pastors are thus 
 to be forced upon it at the mere beck of the Prime 
 Minister of the day, will be incalculable.’ For the 
 Church would lose its identity unless some means 
 were taken to remove it from control by the chance 
 turns of the political wheel. That, surely, was 
 what Newman had meant in 1836 when he asked 
 Pusey if it were not ‘very clear that the English 
 Church subsists in the State, and has no internal 
 consistency (in matter of fact, I do not say in 
 theory), to keep it together, is bound into one by 
 the imposition of articles and the inducement of 
 State protection, not by 700s and a common 
 faith? If so, can we regret very much that a deceit 
 should be detected.” 
 Certain parliamentary legislation dealing with 
 136 Life, II, 160. 
 137 Life, II, 165. 
 138 See Jelf, Report of R. v. Canterbury (Archbishop). The whole 
 
 case is most instructive. 
 139 Life of Pusey, Vol. I, p. 368. 
 
100 PROBLEM OF SOVEREIGNTY 
 
 the Church at this time called forth opinions of — 
 some importance. They protested against using 
 the churches for the announcement of dissenters’ 
 marriages.” When, in 1836, it was proposed to 
 abolish the ancient bishopric of Sodor and Man, 
 they urged not merely that it was an unjustifiable 
 interference with established ecclesiastical right, 
 but also that the Commission was acting in tyranni- 
 eal fashion*’—the fact that the see did not carry 
 with it membership in the House of Lords they 
 regarded as a valuable precedent.**” In 1838, Phil- 
 potts of Exeter protested against the Church 
 Discipline Bill of that year in significant fashion. 
 He condemned it because ecclesiastical authority 
 seemed to him independent of the sanction of the 
 temporal laws ‘which merely adds temporal conse- 
 quences to the ecclesiastical censures, the infliction 
 of which is part of the power of the Keys, vested 
 in the Church by its divine founder, and exercised 
 by it in the earliest ages. It follows that the State, 
 though it may refuse to add a civil sanction to the 
 exercise of the spiritual authority, can not either 
 grant that authority, which does not spring from 
 any human source, or take it away from any one 
 in whom the divine constitution of the Church has 
 vested it;”* and it is in a similar sense that the 
 Bishop of London protested against the Church 
 140 Newman’s Correspondence, II, 27, 78. 
 141 Op. cit., If, 170-171. 
 
 142 Op. cit., I, 169. 
 143 Hansard, 3d Series, Vol. XLVIII, June 4, 1839, p. 1338. 
 
THEORY OF OXFORD MOVEMENT 101 
 
 Discipline of 1850.*** The consistency of these 
 protests is beyond all question. They connect as 
 closely with the 760s of the Oxford Movement 
 as the Claim of Right in 1842 with the whole 
 character of Presbyterian history. 
 
 But nowhere is the whole nature of that 70s 
 So apparent as in the controversy which raged 
 round the Gorham judgment. ‘It is,’ Mr. Glad- 
 stone wrote to Manning,” ‘a stupendous issue.’ 
 Here was a definite declaration on the part of the 
 State as to what must be taken to be the true doc- 
 trine of the Church of England. The judgment 
 caused widespread consternation. It seemed to 
 make the Church what an able writer later termed 
 ‘simply a religious body to which the State con- 
 eedes certain rights, dignities and possessions not 
 enjoyed by non-established churches, and over 
 which the State, in return for this concession, 
 exercises an authority from which non-established 
 Churches are free.”** It was a denial of the 
 Church’s right to declare its own belief to which, 
 so Pusey urged, Magna Charta was the pledge; 
 ‘if the State,’ he told a great London audience, 
 ‘will not, as Magna Charta pledges it, allow that 
 ‘the Church should have liberties inviolate,’’ we 
 must ask that the State will set us free from itself.’ 
 A striking protest was drawn up against the right 
 of the Privy Council ‘practically to exercise in 
 
 144 Hansard, 3d Series, Vol. III, June 3, 1850, p. 600. 
 
 145 Morley, I, 280. 
 
 146 See an able essay in the Guardian for October 12, 1887. 
 147 Life, II, 249. 
 
102 PROBLEM OF SOVEREIGNTY 
 
 spiritual matters a jurisdiction for which they are 
 utterly incompetent, and which never has been, 
 nor even can be, confided to them by the Church.” 
 Mr. Maskell, the well-known liturgical scholar, 
 wrote a pamphlet urging that not even a bench of 
 bishops could deal with the matter, so long as their 
 authority was not derived from the Church.” 
 ‘It was now,’ writes Pusey’s biographer,*”, ‘defi- 
 nitely asked whether the changes which had been 
 assented to on the part of the Church of England 
 three centuries ago were such as to forfeit her 
 claim to be a part of the Church of Christ.’ Pusey 
 himself wrote a laborious tract to prove, as he 
 hoped, that ecclesiastical authority alone could 
 decide doctrine. A priest, so he urged, who appeals 
 to a lay court from his bishop’s decision is degrad- 
 ing his office. Manning, Robert Wilberforce and 
 Mill of Cambridge, drew up a protest which 
 repudiated all acceptance of the royal supremacy 
 in any save a strictly temporal sense. Gladstone 
 repudiated all idea of a commission to decide 
 doctrine which did not originate with, and depend 
 upon, the Church.*” Philpotts of Exeter actually 
 renounced communion with the Archbishop of 
 Canterbury for his share in the judgment.’* 
 
 The reason for this indignation is perfectly 
 
 148 Life of Pusey, II, 254. 
 
 149 Life of Pusey, II, 256. 
 
 150 Loc. cit. 
 
 151 Life of Manning, I, 540. 
 
 152 Life of Manning, I, 534. 
 153 Morley’s Gladstone, 1, 281. 
 
THEORY OF OXFORD MOVEMENT 103 
 
 
 
 clear. The Church of England would cease to be 
 a separate society did she permit such invasions 
 of her proper sphere. ‘There can be no doubt,’ 
 wrote Mr. Henry Drummond,™ ‘that the Church 
 of England is not organised as the Church and 
 Kingdom of Christ ought to be; that she has ever 
 been, and is now more than ever, trampled upon 
 by the civil power; that having recognised fully 
 only two sacraments, one of these has been pro- 
 nounced by the civil power to be useless, in other 
 words, no sacrament at all, and that consequently 
 she is almost unchurched altogether.’ ‘Hither the 
 governing power in the State must allow the 
 objectionable decision to be reviewed by proper 
 authority and the usurpation to be abated for the 
 future,’ wrote the gentle Keble,’ ‘or the governing 
 power in the Church must at all hazards demur to 
 the State’s interference and disregard its enact- 
 ments.’ ‘To all. calling themselves churchmen,’ 
 he urged again,** ‘we may say, is there not a 
 treasure of Sacred Truth, and a living Body 
 entrusted with that treasure? And ean it be right 
 for any consideration to make over the trust to 
 those who are not of the Body? Again, to all 
 candid persons of every creed we may say, Is it 
 not a part of Religious Liberty for a Religious 
 Body to declare its own doctrine; or, if its civil 
 
 154 Remarks on Dr. Wiseman’s sermon on the Gorham case, London, 
 1850. 
 
 155 Church Matters in 1850: A Call to’Speak Out, p. 8. 
 156 Loc. cit., p. 31. 
 
104 PROBLEM OF SOVEREIGNTY 
 
 and social position equitably interfere with its 
 freedom in this respect, to be allowed at least a 
 choice which of the two it will forego?’ ‘The 
 imposition of any doctrine by such an evidently 
 human institution as that (the Crown),’ wrote 
 Mr. W. J. E. Bennett to Lord John Russell,*” 
 ‘would be the very severest of tyranny.’ ‘Men 
 have not yet learned,’ the same clergyman com- 
 plained again,** ‘to separate the spiritual power 
 of the Church from the temporal .. . the royal 
 supremacy in civil matters, as well as in eccle- 
 siastical matters, as long as they are merely 
 ecclesiastical and not spiritual; also in all temporal 
 matters, causes and trials, arising out of them we 
 cheerfully acknowledge: but the royal supremacy 
 in the doctrines of our Blessed Lord, in the dis- 
 cipline of the Church within, in the regulation of 
 her pastors, in the enunciation of her doctrines, 
 we utterly and explicitly deny.’ ‘If the decision 
 of the Judicial Committee be the voice of the 
 English Church,’ protested Mr. J. M. Neale,**® ‘she 
 is actively committed to heresy.’ 
 
 Of the meaning of such an attitude there can be 
 no question; it is simply the assertion of the 
 sovereignty of the Church over its own concerns. 
 Naturally, this is even more vehemently asserted 
 by those whom the decision drove into the Roman 
 
 157 A letter to the Rt. Hon. Lord J. Russell on the Present Persecu- 
 tion of a certain portion of the English Church, London, 1850, p. 11. 
 
 158 Op. cit., p. 49. 
 
 159 4 Few Words of Hope on the present Crisis in the English Church, 
 London, 1850, p. 5. 
 
THEORY OF OXFORD MOVEMENT — 105 
 
 Catholic Church. ‘He found,’ wrote Mr. Allies,’ 
 ‘that supremacy of the civil power to consist in a 
 Supreme jurisdiction over the Establishment in 
 matters both of faith and of discipline, and in the 
 derivation of Episcopal mission and jurisdiction— 
 not as to their origin indeed, but as to their exer- 
 cise—from the Crown or the nation. The writer 
 at once felt that he must repudiate either that 
 supremacy, or every claim of the Church, that is 
 the one divinely-constituted society to which the 
 possession of the truth is guaranteed, ... the 
 royal supremacy and the Church of God are two 
 ideas absolutely incompatible and contradictory.’ 
 For assuredly a Church that claims to derive its 
 character from divine institution can not admit of 
 human interference. What she is, she is by virtue 
 of her origin, nor does she need the aid of the 
 State to complete her social powers. This was 
 very distinctly proclaimed by Manning. ‘The 
 Church of England,’ he said,** ‘then being thus an 
 integral whole, possesses within itself the fountain 
 of doctrine and discipline, and has no need to go 
 beyond itself for succession, orders, mission, juris- 
 diction and the office to declare to its own members 
 in matters of faith, the intention of the Catholic 
 Church.’ He emphasised the fact that the royal 
 supremacy was in no sense ‘spiritual or eccle- 
 siastical—understanding the word ecclesiastical 
 160 The See of St. Peter, London, 1850, p. 8. 
 
 161 A letter to the Rt. Rev. Ashurst Turner, Lord Bishop of Chi- 
 chester, London, 1850, p. 5. 
 
106 PROBLEM OF SOVEREIGNTY 
 
 to mean anything beyond a civil power accidentally 
 applied to ecclesiastical persons or causes. To 
 make this as clear as I can, I would further add 
 that I know of no supremacy in ecclesiastical 
 matters inherent in the civil power or prince but 
 either (1) such power as all princes, Christian or 
 heathen, alike possess; or, (2) such as has been 
 received by delegation from the Church itself.” 
 The claim to complete independence could hardly 
 be more incisively stated. Nor would he have any 
 compromises. ‘It seems to me,’ he wrote of Mr. 
 Gladstone’s proposal,** ‘a plan to amuse and lull 
 real intentions.’ He felt himself compelled to 
 admit that laws he held divine had been violated. 
 ‘My contest now,’ he told his sister,** ‘is with the 
 State and the world, with secular churchmen, and 
 those who of a divine would make it a human 
 society, or at the best a Protestant Communion.’ 
 ‘A body,’ he said again,’ ‘which teaches under the 
 authority of human interpretation descends to the 
 level of a human society,’ and he felt keenly that 
 the whole 60s of the Church would disappear 
 were the bishops to betray their trust and admit 
 the judgment. He felt that ‘all Divine authority 
 in England is at stake,’ and urged to Robert 
 Wilberforce the necessity of bearing witness 
 ‘against the whole Reformation schism, which is 
 162 Op. cit., p. 6. 
 168 Life, I, 539. 
 
 164 Life, I, 547. 
 165 Letter to Rev. Ashurst Turner, p. 15. 
 
THEORY OF OXFORD MOVEMENT — 107 
 
 a national and corporate private judgment.”** 
 Obviously his mind turned more and more against 
 the Erastian nature of the sixteenth century settle- 
 ment. ‘Surely,’ he wrote a little later,” ‘the 
 Reformation was a Tudor statute carried by 
 violence and upheld by political power; and now 
 that the State is divorcing the Anglican Church, 
 it is dissolving.’ The Reformation had shut out 
 ‘the authority of the living and universal church’ 
 for three hundred years until it was no longer a 
 Church of Christ. And it was essentially the 
 implicit Erastianism of the Gorham judgment 
 which for him was decisive. ‘The violation of the 
 doctrine of baptism,’ he wrote in his diary nearly 
 forty years later,’ ‘was of less gravity to me than 
 the violation of the divine office of the Church by 
 the supremacy of the Crown in Council.’ 
 
 This same feeling clearly underlay the con- 
 version of Dodsworth.” The attitude of the 
 Establishment he held to be ‘simply one of non- 
 resistance, of acquiescence in what the State pleases 
 to dictate to it,” and therefore was no part of the | 
 Church at all. It is plain, he argued,*” ‘that the 
 whole spiritual supremacy over the Church, en- 
 
 166 Life, I, 555. 
 
 167 Loc. ctt., I, 556. 
 
 168 Loc. cit., I, 565. 
 
 169 Loc. cit., I, 558, n. 1. 
 
 170 For Manning’s opinion of him see Purcell’s Life, I, 547. For 
 Pusey’s relations with him see Liddon’s Life of Pusey, III, 263 ff. 
 
 171 See his Anglicanism Considered in its Results, p. 5, London, 1851. 
 
 It was written after he became a Roman Catholic. 
 172 [bid., p. 56. 
 
108 PROBLEM OF SOVEREIGNTY 
 
 joyed by the Pope before the Reformation .. . 
 has been transferred to the Crown and is now 
 exercised by it, or rather by the State of which the 
 Crown is the executive.’ It does not matter that 
 this power is exercised constitutionally since ‘this 
 would not relieve men’s consciences, which are 
 compelled to reclaim against the spiritual juris- 
 diction of the Crown, or of the State, in whatever 
 way exercised.”* It is to enter the one society 
 which can claim the possession of Catholic prin- 
 ciples that he is compelled to leave the Church 
 of England. The Church has lost its 700s as it 
 has lost its constitution and its freedom.™ 
 
 1B) 
 
 The Oxford Movement, so far as the working 
 out of the principles of 1833 are concerned, ended 
 with the defection of Manning. Yet because the 
 principles for which it stood lie buried as deeply 
 as the origins of the Church itself they are no less 
 living to-day. If the State has ceased to invade 
 the functions of the Church with the ruthless 
 determination of the last century, Erastianism 
 is far from dead, and so long as it remains 
 Tractarianism can not die. For, in its essence, 
 Tractarianism is essentially the plea of the cor- 
 porate body which is distinct from the State to a 
 separate and free existence. It is a denial that 
 
 173 Ibid., p. 61. 
 174 Ibid., p. 65 ff. 
 
THHKORY OF OXFORD MOVEMENT — 109 
 
 the members of the Church are as its members 
 no more than individuals, living under the all- 
 inclusive sovereignty of the Crown. Certain 
 churchmen have striven increasingly to stress its 
 corporateness, its sense of a real life to which it 
 is of right entitled. The Church has striven to 
 free itself from Newman’s reproach that it is 
 ‘nothing more nor less than an establishment, a 
 department of government, or a function or opera- 
 tion of the State—without a substance, a mere 
 collection of officials, depending on and living on 
 the supreme civil power. Its unity and person- 
 ality are gone...” Where the hand of the 
 State has seemed to imperil the right of the 
 Church to its own life, distinguished churchmen, 
 willing to repudiate the State-connexion have not 
 been wanting. ‘Once free from State-control,’ 
 wrote Father MacKonochie,*” ‘we shall begin, I 
 trust, to feel as a body and not merely as indi- 
 viduals, that we belong to a ‘kingdom which is not 
 of this world.’ Our bishops will know that their 
 power is that of servants of Christ, not Lords of 
 Parliament. We of the clergy shall be free from 
 the temptations to worldly gain and ambition with 
 which an Establishment surrounds men; and our 
 people will receive or reject us for Christ’s sake, 
 not as ministers appointed by the State.’ 
 
 175 Ward, Life of Newman, Vol. I, p. 234. The quotation is from the 
 
 Lectures on the Difficulties of Anglicans. 
 176 See a letter in the London Times, January 11, 1869. 
 
110 PROBLEM OF SOVEREIGNTY 
 
 
 
 A similar spirit is to be observed among those 
 who have been responsible for the growth of 
 ritualism in the English Church. It was Dean 
 Church who condemned what he called the ‘short 
 and easy’ method of dealing with the ritualists on 
 the ground that ‘English clergymen are ministers 
 of an Established Church, and are therefore as 
 much bound to submit to all that Parliament 
 orders as any other public functionary.’ ‘If the 
 Church be supposed to have an existence and 
 powers of its own,’ he said,*” ‘besides what the 
 State gives it, and, however closely joined with 
 the State, to be something which the State, though 
 it may claim to regulate, may neither create nor 
 destroy—then the debate is open whether the 
 conditions of union and co-operation have been 
 observed on either side.” The Royal Commission 
 on Ecclesiastical Discipline of 1906 contains a 
 series of comments on the Erastianism of the 
 Supremacy of the Crown which might well date 
 back to 1833. Clergyman after clergyman unhesi- 
 tatingly rejected the right of the Judicial Com- 
 mittee to deal with matters of ritual. ‘I deny,’ 
 is the usual formula,” ‘the. competence of that 
 tribunal as a court of final appeal in matters 
 relating to the doctrine, discipline, and ceremonial 
 of the Church.’ Lord Hugh Cecil, in his very 
 remarkable evidence, insisted on the distinction 
 between Church and State. ‘It is untruthful 
 
 177 Life and Letters of R. W. Church, p. 284. 
 178 Report, Vol. I, e.g., pp. 15, 18, 27, 44, 48, 53, ete. 
 
THEORY OF OXFORD MOVEMENT 111 
 
 and pernicious,’ he said,” ‘to go on making 
 believe that the Church and the State are one 
 set of people considered in different aspects. They 
 must be now thought of as distinct bodies.” From 
 that unhesitating rejection of Arnoldism, he drew 
 the obvious conclusion. ‘I could not, so far 
 as I am concerned, approve of any settlement 
 which still left it possible for any one except the 
 bishops to define the doctrine of the Church in the 
 course of an ecclesiastical judgment and to make 
 that definition binding upon the whole body of the 
 Church.”* ‘For my action as a priest of the 
 Church,’ one witness informed the Commission,” 
 ‘I am responsible to the bishop alone, to whom I 
 am ready at all times to give account, not to the 
 Privy Council.’ Mr. G. J. Talbot, one of the most 
 distinguished of ecclesiastical lawyers, urged that 
 the Judicial Committee as an ecclesiastical tribunal 
 was theoretically indefensible and practically a 
 failure.*’ The Bishop of Exeter drew an interest- 
 ing distinction between the legal and moral sover- 
 eignty of Parliament. ‘While according to our 
 constitution,’ he said,*** ‘Parliament has unlimited 
 power, the effect of its legislation must depend on 
 the moral power behind it, and churchmen gener- 
 ally will distinguish between legislation invited by 
 the Church, and legislation merely forced upon 
 
 179 Report, Vol. II, p. 216, Q. 10510. 
 
 180 Report, Vol. II, p. 221, Q. 10587. 
 
 181 Report, Vol. I, p. 36, Letter of Rev. G. Tremenheere. 
 
 182 Report, Vol. II, p. 447, Q. 14120. 
 183 Report, Vol. II, p. 484, Q. 14706. 
 
112 PROBLEM OF SOVEREIGNTY 
 
 the Church from without.’ The Bishop of Bir- 
 mingham repudiated the sovereignty of the State 
 outside the temporal sphere in no less uncom- 
 promising fashion. ‘The Church,’ he said, 
 ‘... has become only one of many religious 
 bodies in the State ... and in consequence the 
 legislative and judicial authorities of the State 
 have ceased to be in any real sense . . . capable 
 of claiming the allegiance of churchmen in spiritual 
 matters.’ The attitude was that of Bishop Blom- 
 field in 1850. ‘I rest my case,’ he said,* ‘on the 
 inherent and indefeasible right of the Church to 
 teach and maintain the truth by means of her 
 spiritual pastors and rulers, a right inherent in 
 her original constitution.’ We are clearly dealing 
 again with the notion of a perfecta societas set 
 over against the State. There is no room in such 
 conception for that stern Erastianism of Sir 
 William Harcourt when he urged, with reference 
 to this controversy, ‘if there is to be such a 
 (national) church, it must be based upon national 
 authority, and the only national authority which 
 we recognise is that of the Crown and of Parlia- 
 ment.’ The very strength of such contrast is a 
 measure of the Tractarian achievement. 
 
 It is not a little curious that more attention 
 should not have been paid to the remarkable 
 analogy between the Oxford Movement and the 
 
 184 Vol. II. Cf. Report, p. 499, Q. 14953. 
 
 185 See Lord H. Cecil’s evidence. 
 186 Lawlessness and the National Church, 1899, p. 18. 
 
THEORY OF OXFORD MOVEMENT = 113 
 
 Disruption of 1848 in the Established Church of 
 Seotland.*” Each was essentially an anti-Erastian 
 movement. It was against an all-absorptive State 
 that each group of men was contending. There is 
 a striking temporal parallel between the two move- 
 ments. That of Oxford, in the narrower sense, 
 begins in 1833 and ends with the conversion of 
 Newman in 1845; that of which Chalmers was the 
 distinguished leader begins in 1834 with the 
 abolition by the General Assembly of lay patron- 
 age, and ends in 1843 with the secession of those 
 who refuse to accept what they term an invasion 
 of their peculiar province by the State. In each 
 case, aS was well enough admitted by contempo- 
 raries, the attempt was made—and in the case, 
 particularly of Presbyterianism, this lay at the 
 very root of its theory—to work out a doctrine of 
 the Church which, neglecting the State, gave the 
 Church the general organisation of a _ perfect 
 society. In each case, that attempt was resisted by 
 Parliament on the one hand, and by the Courts on 
 the other. The State claimed a sovereignty against 
 which, as it deemed, no part of itself might contend. 
 But to this it was in each case retorted that 
 Church and State were in essence distinct from 
 one another, that each was a self-sufficing society, 
 into the province of which the other might not 
 wander. Both to Chalmers and Newman it seemed 
 very clear that to admit a right of control on the 
 part of the State was to deny that divine consti- 
 187 See the Political Theory of the Disruption, supra. 
 
114 PROBLEM OF SOVEREIGNTY 
 
 tution to which their churches laid claim. They 
 would have urged, with Warburton, that the two 
 societies are ‘sovereign and independent of each 
 other ;’ but they would have denied his conclusion 
 that ‘their joint forces must co-operate thus to 
 apply and enforce the influence of religion”® if in 
 that union the sovereignty of the Church was 
 impaired. If, as seems probable, the effort of 
 Chalmers was more logical and more consistent 
 than the somewhat chaotic antagonism of the 
 Tractarians, that was rather because he had 
 inherited a definite theory of Church and State, 
 which Newman and his followers had to hammer 
 out for themselves. Both Chalmers and Newman 
 believed in a purified Establishment; but each 
 also asserted roundly that the benefit was derived 
 by the State rather than the Church. It was when 
 it was conceived that the fact of a statutory 
 alliance involved also the idea of a statutory 
 control, that they found themselves compelled to 
 abandon the Church of their origin.*” 
 
 It was a definition of the Church that the 
 Tractarians attempted, and they. found almost 
 immediately that to define its identity was to assert 
 
 188 See his Alliance of Church and State, p. 86. 
 
 189 Chalmers himself actually lectured on their benefits in London in 
 1838, 
 
 190 Though of course Newman claimed that in 1845 he was joining 
 the true Catholic Church, just as Chalmers looked upon the Free Church 
 as the true Presbyterian Church. The other had abandoned the Head- 
 
 ship of Christ in his view and had therefore lost its identity with the 
 Church of Knox and Melville which he still represented. 
 
THEORY OF OXFORD MOVEMENT 115 
 
 its exclusiveness. If it was created by God it could 
 not be controlled by man; if it was created by God, 
 it was not subject to the ordinances of a man- 
 created institution like the State. They would 
 never have accepted the federalism of Nicholas of 
 Cusa, with its implied admission that the State 
 might reform the Church; between jus publicum 
 and jus sacrum they drew a firm distinction. In 
 reality, their position is singularly medieval: it is 
 almost an adequate description of their attitude 
 to the State to say that it is a Guelfic attitude. It 
 was against the pretensions put forward in the 
 name of the Prince by men like John of Paris’ 
 that they were contending, of Wyclif,** of Hus,*”* 
 and of Gregory of Heimberg.*” For, in all these 
 cases, the position of the controversy between Pope 
 and Emperor had led the imperialists to assume 
 the superiority of kingly power, and, as a conse- 
 quence, the right of the Crown to deal as it would 
 with the Church; just as Lord John Russell in 
 1833 implicitly assumed the right of the State to 
 deal with the Irish Church. Marsilio of Padua’s 
 claim that the Church is no more than an institu- 
 tion within the State,**”* was exactly the expression 
 of the Whig government’s attitude. With him it 
 
 191 Works, De Concordantia Catholica, 11. e. 40. 
 
 192 See his Tractatus de potestate regia et papalt in Goldast, II, p. 
 108 ff., esp. ¢. 21. 
 
 193 Cf, De Officio Regis, esp. pp. 34-36, 137, 138. 
 
 194 Goldast, I, 232-242. 
 
 195 Goldast, I, 559-560. 
 196 Cf, Defensor Pacis, ec. 5-6, 
 
116 PROBLEM OF SOVEREIGNTY 
 
 would have said that the ecclesiastical sovereign 
 was the body of the faithful, just as he would, 
 with their approval, identify the faithful with 
 the nation as a whole. The whole foundation of 
 Tractarianism lies in the fact that this had ceased 
 to be the case. They argued, therefore, that the 
 change meant logically the impossibility of con- 
 fiding the government of the Church to those 
 without its fold. This sense they felt so passion- 
 ately is already fully developed in Thomas 
 Aquinas,” and in him, as in them, this led to the 
 common notion of the Church itself as a State; 
 and in the Middle Ages not even the stoutest 
 imperialist denied the truth of this, even when he 
 repudiated its connexion with worldly concerns.” 
 So that it is not difficult to understand the medie- 
 valism of the Oxford Movement. It is therein but 
 seeking its natural affiliations. If it goes back 
 for its atmosphere to those beginnings of the con- 
 troversy it so strikingly illustrates, that is because 
 it is itself the continuator of that controversy. 
 The Reformation had decided the battle in favour 
 of the State, but it had secured rather independ- 
 ence than sovereignty for the State and sover- 
 elgnty the Church could still, and does still, 
 challenge. If it seems, as with the Tractarians, 
 to have put aside the dreams of men like Gregory 
 
 197 #.g., Summa Cont. Gent., IV, 76. 
 
 198 .g., the Gloss on C. 3. X. I, 41. and Hostiensis. Summa, I, 1, nr. 4. 
 
 199 The Somnium Vidarii, I, ec. 1-16. Ockham. Dialog., I, 6, ce. III. 
 
 John of Paris, Tract, Introd. and ¢. 13-14. The references can be 
 multiplied almost indefinitely. 
 
THEORY OF OXFORD MOVEMENT 117 
 
 VII with his absorption of Church in State,’” that 
 is, as the work of W. G. Ward makes very clear, 
 rather from necessity than from desire. They 
 realised that the time for a world-church had 
 passed away. It seemed then natural to demand 
 that what remained of her mighty dominion she 
 should have the right to cultivate undisturbed.” 
 
 It is in one significant sense alone that they have 
 advanced beyond the prevalent conceptions of 
 medieval thought. Where, to men like Baldus and 
 Innocent IV, the Corporation of the State— 
 whether that State be lay or ecclesiastical—is 
 essentially a fictitious thing, the Tractarians had 
 transcended the limited conception of personality 
 as associated only with the individual life. One 
 who reads the sermons of Newman, above all that 
 most eloquent and most tragic of farewells before 
 his Hegira to Littlemore, will not doubt that to 
 him than the Church there is no life more real or 
 more splendid. She is his mother; it is for her 
 infinite woes that above all he has concern. Jn her 
 is all the richness of his life, and her injury brings 
 to him what is worse than desolation. Nor is that 
 sense less keenly felt, even if it finds a less eloquent 
 expression, in Pusey and Keble. To all of 
 
 200 Cf. the striking phrases in the Registrum, Bk. IV, ep. II (1076), 
 pp. 242-243. 
 
 201 The introductory lecture of Dr. Figgis, From Gerson to Grotiws 
 works out this conception most admirably. I should say that the sub- 
 stantial difference lies in the fact that the Church has become separate 
 
 from the State to the Tractarians whereas to the medieval publicist the 
 State was, in Dr. Figgis’ phrase, the ‘police-department of the Church.’ 
 
118 PROBLEM OF SOVEREIGNTY 
 
 them to be members of a Church was to be of 
 a fellowship the more precious because in its life 
 they found the mysterious oneness of a vivid 
 personality.*” 
 
 ify 
 
 It is becoming more and more clear that the 
 future trend of political theory is away from that 
 attitude which bids us read all things in their 
 relation to the State. Certain things that body 
 will not undertake because it is not competent to 
 undertake them. It will cease to attempt the 
 control of religious doctrine. The tribunals of the 
 State no less than its legislature only interfere 
 with the most precious part of corporate freedom 
 when, though an alien organisation, they attempt 
 a perilous invasion. The Church has its history, 
 its laws, its doctrines; the State can not, from a 
 stunted theory of its sovereign power, attempt the 
 fusion of her customs with its own.” It will 
 rather leave her free to work out, as she best may, 
 the grave and complex problems that confront her. 
 From her own sense of righteousness it will wel- 
 come the good. From her own right to freedom 
 it will cherish the beneficent product. From a new 
 
 202 Dr. Figgis, in the brilliant little essay on Newman which he has 
 printed as an appendix to his Fellowship of the Mystery has made this 
 very clear. It is of course merely one result of that realism which 
 Gierke and Maitland have taught us to understand. 
 
 203 As in Rev. v. Dibden [1910], P. Q. 57; Thompson v. Dibden 
 
 [1912], A. C. 533. The whole mass of ritual cases is of course another 
 aspect of the same problem. 
 
THEORY OF OXFORD MOVEMENT — 119 
 
 world, moreover, that has been perhaps untram- 
 melled by the struggles of the old, it will learn 
 certain great and significant lessons. Where civil 
 right is not directly concerned, it will, as in 
 America, maintain that it has no jurisdiction. 
 It will say that Church membership is a Church 
 right not a civil right,” Church discipline a matter 
 for the ecclesiastical tribunal. It will realise that, 
 should the Church use her powers ill, she and she 
 only, will suffer. She will forfeit her privileges 
 not because they are conditional, and therefore 
 subject to revocation,’ but because where men are 
 wronged they will renounce their membership of 
 the State, be its nature lay or clerical. And the 
 State will understand that the degree of her free- 
 dom will be the measure of her progress.. In that 
 event the tragedies of Oxford will not have been 
 vain. 
 
 204 Fitzgerald vy. Robinson, 112 Mass. 371. Shannon vy. Frost, 3 B. 
 Mon. (Ky.), 253, 258. Dees v. Moss Point Baptist Church, 17, So. 1 
 (Miss.). Waller v. Howell, 20 Misc., 236, 45 N. Y. Supp., 790. 
 
 205 Grosvenor v. United Society of Believers, 118 Mass., 78; and even 
 more striking, Fitzgerald v. Robinson, 112 Mass. 371. Farnsworth v. 
 Storrs, 5 Cush. (Mass.), 412, 416. 
 
 206 Tt is, I think, the natural deduction from Jarves and Hatheway, 
 3 Johns. (N. Y.), 180; ef. Konkle v. Haven, 140 Mich. 472, 478. 
 

 
CHAPTER IV 
 
 Ee COULTICAT ATE hYe © He ELH: 
 CATHOLIC REVIVAL’ 
 
 I 
 
 ITH the passage of the Roman Catholic 
 Relief Act of 1829, a body of men who had 
 been for too long excluded from political privilege 
 became once more citizens of the State.* The 
 grounds for their exclusion had been, for the most 
 ; ; 
 part, based upon a single fact. ‘The modern 
 theory,’ writes Lord Acton,* ‘which has swept 
 away every authority except that of the State, and 
 has made the sovereign power irresistible by 
 multiplying those who shared it, is the enemy of 
 that common freedom in which religious freedom 
 is included. It condemns, as a State within the 
 State, every inner group and community, class or 
 corporation, administering its own affairs; and, 
 by proclaiming the abolition of privileges, it 
 1The best general work on the Catholic Revival in England is that 
 of M. Thureau-Dangin: ‘la Renaissance Catholique en Angleterre au 
 XIXme siécle.’? This has been translated. To M. Thureau-Dangin, 
 however, the movement is entirely non-political. 
 2The story of the emancipation may now be consulted in Monsignor 
 Bernard Ward’s Eve of Catholic Emancipation. It is, however, weak on 
 
 the non-religious side. 
 3 History of Freedom, p. 151. 
 
de PROBLEM OF SOVEREIGNTY 
 
 
 
 emancipates the subjects of every such authority, 
 in order to transfer them exclusively to its own.’ 
 The divine right of kings, was, in fact, replaced 
 by a right divine inherent in the State; and it was 
 argued that men owed to it an allegiance that 
 should be undivided. But the Pope was a temporal 
 sovereign, and to him, as the head of their Church, 
 the Catholics owed a full allegiance. They were 
 a close and united body, the typical imperium wm 
 imperto of which Lord Acton wrote; and it was 
 perhaps logical, even if it was ungenerous, that 
 men should deem it impossible for such allegiance 
 to be compatible with loyalty to the British Crown.* 
 That argument had, during the previous half- 
 century, prevailed no less against the calm and 
 splendid philosophy of Burke, than against the 
 annual eloquence of Grattan.’ Sir H. Parnell had 
 summed up their unanswerable case in a single 
 sentence, when he asked if Catholic emancipation 
 could have other than beneficent effect. ‘What,’ 
 he demanded,’ ‘can be its certain and practical 
 effect on the Catholic body at large but universal 
 content and unqualified gratitude to the legislature 
 that granted it?’ Yet the musty prejudices of two 
 centuries, and the unthinking obstinacy of George 
 III proved too strong for the principles of political 
 
 4See, for example, Lord Redesdale in Hansard, New Series, Vol. 
 XXXIV, p. 1251. 
 
 5 See Charles Butler’s tribute to him in Historical Memoirs, Vol. IV, 
 
 p. 392. 
 6 Hansard, 2d Series, Vol. XXXI, p. 477. 
 
PHHORY OF CATHOLIC REVIVAL 123 
 
 reason, until the genius of Daniel O’Connell per- 
 ceived the value of militant agitation.’ 
 
 It was, prejudice apart, emphatically a question 
 of unity of allegiance which had lain at the root 
 of the Catholic difficulty. To the majority of 
 statesmen and ecclesiastics—there are certain 
 noble exceptions—Great Britain was still the 
 country of 1688,° essentially a Protestant country 
 of which the identity would be destroyed by the 
 admission of Catholics to political power. The 
 practical unanimity of the bishops on this ques- 
 tion is little less than amazing. They seemed 
 united in what Andrew Marvell—confronted by 
 a not dissimilar problem—gaily called ‘pushpin 
 theology ’—the theory that ‘there can not be a pin 
 pulled out of the Church, but the State imme- 
 diately totters.” ‘The reason for adhering to 
 this principle in this country,’ the Bishop of 
 Worcester told the House of Lords,” ‘was par- 
 ticularly forcible, as the Protestant religion was 
 So intimately woven with the whole system of the 
 Constitution.’ ‘Be allegiance what it will,’ said 
 the Bishop of Norwich,” ‘if that allegiance is 
 divided between the king of the country and the 
 foreigner, the king of the country has not the 
 
 7 Monsignor Ward, op. cit., Vol. III, Chapters 40, 43, 46, adds much 
 to our knowledge of this part of the history. 
 
 8 Cf. Mr. Russell Smith’s valuable little work, Religious Liberty 
 under Charles II and James IT, especially Chapter 2. 
 
 9 Rehearsal Transposed, p. 132. 
 
 10 Hansard, 2d Series, Vol. XL, p. 390, May 17, 1819. 
 11 Op, cit., p. 395. 
 
124 PROBLEM OF SOVEREIGNTY 
 
 share he ought to have and which in this country 
 he really has from members of the Established 
 Church.’ ‘Such exclusion,’ urged the Bishop of 
 Llandaff,” ‘may be justified on grounds of civil 
 delinquency ... the allegiance of the church- 
 man is entire—he acknowledges the king as 
 supreme in matters ecclesiastical as well as 
 civil . . . but if a Church is governed by a for- 
 eigner who has neither dependence on, nor a 
 common interest with, the king of the country, 
 the civil allegiance of those who belong to that 
 Church can not fail to be weakened by their eccle- 
 siastical allegiance. . . . They are not so good and 
 so useful members of the State as members of the 
 Establishment.’ It was in a similar vein that the 
 Bishop of Ossory argued that by their principles 
 the Catholics must attempt the destruction of the 
 Established Church, which would place the State 
 in grave danger. ‘Pushpin theology’ may be; but 
 it was keenly felt. ‘They were,’ he said,” ‘so 
 intimately connected that whatever tended to 
 injure the one must infallibly injure the other.’ 
 The principle of Lord Liverpool’s uncompromis- 
 ing antagonism was in no wise distinct from this 
 episcopal opposition. The State had need of the 
 Church, and the Revolution of 1688 had ‘settled 
 that the principle of our government in all its 
 parts was Protestant . . . the moment you throw 
 open your door to equal and general concession... 
 
 12 Hansard, 2d Series, Vol. XXXVI, p. 616, May 16, 1817. 
 13 Hansard, loc. cit., p. 642. 
 
THEORY OF CATHOLIC REVIVAL = 125 
 
 Parliament will cease immediately to be a Prot- 
 estant Parliament.”* Nor did the pamphleteers 
 feel otherwise. The government, ‘Julius’ told the 
 people of England,” ‘is not only essentially, but 
 vitally Protestant. And it is thus that the admis- 
 sion of persons professing Catholic tenets to 
 political power, either now or at any time here- 
 after becomes a thing literally impossible.’ 
 
 The supporters of the Catholics realised quite 
 clearly that the fundamental question was that of 
 the nature of the State. Plunkett urged that their 
 exclusion on religious grounds ‘was calculated to 
 impress an opinion that religion was only an 
 instrument for State purposes.”* The constitu- 
 tion was to him essentially secular in its nature. 
 His attitude was very like that of Penn and the 
 Tolerationists of the seventeenth century. As to 
 the latter it seemed evident that ‘religion is no part 
 of the old English government,” so to Plunkett 
 the law enjoined certain duties, and whoever per- 
 formed those duties was entitled to the privileges 
 of citizenship.” Canning admitted that there had 
 been a time when Catholic and Protestant had 
 struggled ‘to see which should wed the State and 
 make her exclusively its own. But the time of 
 combat had passed—the Catholics tendered a 
 
 14 Hansard, loc. cit., p. 647. 
 
 15 See his able little pamphlet, First Letter to the People of England 
 on the Catholic Question, London, 1829. 
 
 16 Hansard, 2d Series, Vol. V, p. 965, February 28, 1821. 
 
 17 Penn, England’s Present Interest Discovered, p. 32 (1675). 
 17 Hansard, New Series, Vol. V, p. 969, February 28, 1821. 
 
126 PROBLEM OF SOVEREIGNTY 
 
 willing submission... the Protestant religion 
 and the Constitution were inseparably united’ so 
 that no danger need be apprehended from Catholic 
 antagonism to the Church of England.”® And 
 Sidney Smith, who perhaps more than any other 
 writer made plain to humble men the Catholic 
 argument,” went directly to the charge of divided 
 allegiance as the root of the matter. The Catho- 
 lics were charged with owing allegiance to one who 
 might dethrone kings, and were themselves bound 
 to destroy heretics. ‘To all of which,’ wrote 
 Smith,” ‘may be returned this one conclusive 
 answer that the Catholics are ready to deny these 
 doctrines upon oath. And as the whole contro- 
 versy is whether the Catholics shall by means of 
 oaths be excluded from certain offices in the State, 
 those who contend that the continuation of these 
 excluding oaths is essential to the public safety, 
 must admit that oaths are binding upon Catholics, 
 and a security to the State that what they say is 
 true.’ Nor did he fear the fact that the Catholics 
 owed an allegiance no less to the Pope than to the 
 British Crown. The one was spiritual, and not 
 even distantly connected with the second, which 
 was concerned with civil policy. ‘What is meant 
 by allegiance to the crown,’ he said,” ‘is, I pre- 
 sume obedience to Acts of Parliament and a 
 
 19 Hansard, New Series, Vol. VII, p. 517, May 10, 1822. 
 
 20Tt is a pity that Monsignor Ward in his three volumes should not 
 have paid Sidney Smith the tribute his Letters of Peter Plymley merit. 
 
 21 Collected Works, p. 250. 
 22 Collected Works, p. 684. 
 
THEORY OF CATHOLIC REVIVAL — 127 
 
 resistance to those who are constitutionally pro- 
 claimed to be the enemies of the country. I have 
 seen and heard of no instance for this century 
 and a half past, where the spiritual sovereign 
 has presumed to meddle with the affairs of the 
 temporal sovereign. The Catholics deny him 
 such power by the most solemn oaths which the 
 wit of man can devise. In every war the army 
 and navy are full of Catholic soldiers and sailors; 
 and if their allegiance in temporal matters is 
 unimpeachable and unimpeached, what matter to 
 whom they choose to pay spiritual obedience, and 
 to adopt as their guide in genuflexion and psal- 
 mody? Suppose these same Catholics are foolish 
 enough to be governed by a set of Chinese moralists 
 in their diet, this would be a third allegiance; and 
 if they were regulated by Brahmins in their dress, 
 this would be a fourth allegiance; and if they 
 received the directions of the Patriarchs of the 
 Greek Church in educating their children, here is 
 another allegiance; and as long as they fought 
 and paid taxes, and kept clear of the Quarter- 
 Sessions ‘and Assizes, what matter how many 
 fanciful supremacies and frivolous allegiances 
 they choose to manufacture or accumulate for 
 themselves?’ Here, at any rate, Sidney Smith was 
 as irresistible in his logic as in his humour. 
 
 The attitude of the Catholic authorities was in 
 no wise different from that of their Protestant 
 supporters. Irom the early days of the struggle, 
 they tried to make it plain that, whatever their 
 
128 PROBLEM OF SOVEREIGNTY 
 
 
 
 connexion with the Church of Rome, the loyalty 
 they owed the British Crown in civil affairs was 
 unexcepted and entire. ‘We acknowledge,’ wrote 
 the Vicars Apostolic of England in 1813,” ‘that 
 we owe to the State a proof of our civil allegiance 
 and security against all treasonable designs. 
 You (the Catholic laity) in common with us... 
 have given to our country the strongest proofs 
 of civil allegiance, and an abhorrence of all trea- 
 sonable designs by the profession of your religious 
 principles, by the solemn oaths you have taken 
 with unquestionable sincerity, and by the known 
 loyalty of your conduct. . . . We are all British- 
 born subjects, and as such we feel an interest and 
 a glory in the security and prosperity of our 
 country. We can no more betray our country 
 than our religion.’ This is a sufficiently clear 
 pronouncement. Yet two years later O’Connell 
 made an even more striking repudiation of any 
 claim of the Pope to temporal allegiance. ‘I 
 deny,’ he said,* ‘the doctrine that the Pope has 
 any temporal authority, directly or indirectly, in 
 Ireland, we have all denied that doctrine on oath, 
 and we would die to resist it.’ ‘I know of no 
 foreign prince,’ he went on to assert,” ‘whom, in 
 temporal matters the Catholics of Ireland would 
 more decidedly resist than the Pope.’ Nor did 
 Charles Butler—whose great legal powers give to 
 23 Ward, op. cit., Vol. II, p. 65. 
 
 24 Ward, II, 143. 
 25 Op. cit., II, p. 148. 
 
PAHBORYRORSCATHORICOREVIVAL” 129 
 
 his declaration a peculiar value—speak otherwise. 
 ‘If the Pope,’ said the pamphlet reprinted by him,” 
 ‘should pretend to dissolve or dispense with his 
 Majesty’s subjects from their allegiance, on ac- 
 count of heresy or schism, such dispensation 
 would be vain and null; and all Catholic subjects 
 notwithstanding such dispensation or absolution, 
 would still be bound in conscience to defend their 
 king and country at the hazard of their lives and 
 fortunes (as far as Protestants would be bound) 
 even against the Pope himself, in case he should 
 invade the nation.’ To the same effect was the 
 petition of the Catholic Board to the king. ‘To 
 your Majesty,’ it says,” ‘they swear full and 
 undivided allegiance; in your Majesty alone they 
 recognize the power of the civil sword within this 
 realm of England. They acknowledge in no prince, 
 prelate, State, or potentate, any power or author- 
 ity to use the same within the said realm, in any 
 matter or cause whatever, whether civil, spiritual 
 or ecclesiastical.’ Dr. O’Hanlon of Maynooth told 
 Lord Harrowby’s commission that the college 
 virtually taught Gallicanism. ‘We teach in May- 
 nooth,’ he said,” ‘that the Pope has no temporal 
 power whatever, direct or indirect. We have 
 affirmed that doctrine upon our solemn oaths, and 
 we firmly maintain it.... We hold the same 
 
 26 Op. cit., II, 302. The author of the pamphlet is unknown, but it 
 was reprinted by Butler with emphatic approval, as an appendix to his 
 Historical Memorials in the later editions, 
 
 27 Ward, op. cit., II, 302. 
 28 Quarterly Review, 1875, p. 494. 
 
130 PROBLEM OF SOVEREIGNTY 
 
 doctrine in regard to the Church.’ In 1826, all 
 the Catholic bishops united in a declaration that 
 in civil matters ‘they hold themselves bound in 
 conscience to obey the civil government of this 
 realm ... notwithstanding any dispensation or 
 order to the contrary to be had from the Pope or 
 any authority of the Church of Rome.” And Dr. 
 Doyle, the most influential, if the youngest, of the 
 Irish Catholic bishops, assured Lord Liverpool 
 that ‘Papal influence will never induce the Catho- 
 lies of this country either to continue tranquil or 
 to be disturbed, either to aid, or to oppose the 
 Government; and that your lordship can con- 
 tribute much more than the Pope to secure their 
 allegiance or to render them disaffected.” 
 
 It is obviously a political question as to the 
 nature of sovereignty that is at the bottom of this 
 discussion; and the attitude of Parliament, on the 
 one hand, and of the Catholics on the other, to the 
 problem of security against Roman aggression 
 throws this aspect of emancipation into very 
 striking relief. The fear clearly is that the nature 
 of their religious allegiance will compel Catholics 
 to endanger the Protestant nature of the State. 
 Means must therefore be had to make the govern- 
 ment sufficiently in control of Catholic loyalty as 
 to guard against that risk. In Grattan’s Bill of 
 1813 a long oath of loyalty was inserted by Can- 
 
 29 Declaration of the Catholic Bishops, etc., London, 1826, p. 14. 
 
 30 See the amusing opinion expressed of him by the voluble and 
 excitable Milner. Ward, op. cit., III, 153. 
 
 31 Letter to Lord Liverpool on the Roman Catholic Claims, p. 115. 
 
THEORY OF CATHOLIC REVIVAL 131 
 
 ning intended to secure Great Britain against 
 Roman interference. A Board of Commission, 
 selected from distinguished Catholics, was to be 
 chosen and was to accept all appointees to vacant 
 bishoprics in the Roman Church, and to examine 
 all documents from Rome before admitting them 
 into the country.” But this measure raised in its 
 turn a curious problem. While it did not hurt the 
 implicit Gallicanism of men like Butler, it was 
 unalterably opposed by the redoubtable Milner 
 and by the Irish bishops. It was, said the latter,” 
 ‘utterly incompatible with the discipline of the 
 Roman Catholic Church and with the free exercise 
 of our religion,’ since it involved the admission 
 that the State had the right to interfere with the 
 internal affairs of the Church. The bill, said 
 Milner,** ‘was contrived with a heart and malice 
 which none but the spirits of wickedness in high 
 places ... could have suggested to undermine 
 and wither the fair trees of the English and Irish 
 Catholic Churches.’ Nor would he admit the 
 rescript of Monsignor Quaranotti, the sub-prefect 
 of Propaganda, who, in the enforced absence of 
 the Pope as Napoleon’s prisoner, approved the 
 proposal.** O’Connell even went so far as to 
 assert that not even the Pope himself would make 
 
 32 The text of these amendments is given in Parliamentary Debates, 
 Vol. XXVI, pp. 88 seq. 
 
 33 Ward, IT, 37. 
 
 34 Ward, II, 41. The ‘heart and malice’ is that of Charles Butler 
 
 to whose Gallicanism Milner was unalterably opposed. See Ward, passim. 
 35 Ward, II, pp. 71 seq. 
 
132 PROBLEM OF SOVEREIGNTY 
 
 him admit such an invasion of Catholic integrity.” 
 ‘The Catholics of Ireland,’ said the Dublin Daily 
 Chronicle,” ‘will not recognise any of its acts as 
 binding and obligatory ... they have distinctly 
 and on their solemn oaths protested against the 
 recognition of any foreign temporal authority.’ 
 By 1817, it was clear that Catholic opinion would 
 tolerate neither the royal approval of bishops, 
 nor the regulation of ecclesiastical intercourse with 
 Rome.** 
 
 The reason is sufficiently plain. The Roman 
 Catholic Church has always claimed that the 
 Church is itself a perfect society, and as such it 
 could hardly acknowledge the supremacy of the 
 State. Milner, indeed, from this standpoint in- 
 sisted, and logically, that no Catholic could swear 
 undivided allegiance to the temporal sovereign 
 ‘as there might always be occasions when the 
 authority of the State might be at variance with 
 that of the Church’; and he seems to have 
 objected to the limited sense in which the Catholics 
 interpreted allegiance. Securities of any kind 
 seemed to him ‘Bills of Pains and Penalties’ 
 which struck at the root of Catholic independence, 
 and he actually organised a petition against a 
 Relief Bill of Plunkett’s on this ground.” His 
 
 36 Life and Speeches, Vol. II, 178. Ward, II, 143. 
 
 37 Ward, II, 150. 
 
 38 See the abortive resolutions proposed by Bishop Poynter. Ward, 
 II, 242. 
 
 39 Ward, ITI, 58. 
 40 Ward, III, 63. 
 
THEORVAOR, CALTHOLICOREVIVAL ” 133 
 
 position seems to have won the support of the 
 Roman authorities, who expressed surprise and 
 sorrow that the laity of the Church should have 
 presented a petition to the king ‘in which they 
 have protested that they acknowledge in no one 
 but himself any power or authority, either civil, 
 spiritual or ecclesiastical’ and emphasised their 
 opinion that such an attitude would be ‘unlawful 
 and schismatical.”* The reason of this attitude 
 becomes clear from a note of Bishop Milner’s on 
 what he understood allegiance to mean under the 
 laws of England. It is not to allegiance itself 
 ‘which means nothing more than the duty which a 
 subject owes to the Prince or State under which 
 he lives’ that he objected, but, ‘as it is gathered 
 from the laws of the country which invested the 
 king with the power of excommunication, or cut- 
 ting off from the body of Christ, and of reforming 
 all heresies, and, therefore, of judging of them.” 
 It was thus against the theoretical limitations 
 upon all bodies not the State which is implied in 
 the doctrine of parliamentary sovereignty that he 
 made his protest. He could owe allegiance to the 
 State only so far as it did not conflict with the 
 loyalty his Church had the right to demand. 
 
 A twofold tendency within the Catholic fold was 
 clear thus early. Men like Butler were Gallican 
 in their attitude,* willing to combine with the 
 
 41 Ward, III, 77. 
 
 42 Ward, III, 158. 
 
 43 Manning’s attacks on the Gallicanism of the old Catholics are 
 well known. See Purcell, II, pp. 217, 308. 
 
134 PROBLEM OF SOVEREIGNTY 
 
 Unitarians to secure emancipation on the broad 
 basis of a general religious toleration;** while 
 others, like Milner, were profoundly Ultramontane 
 in temper. It was with the first body of thought 
 that general English sentiment allied itself. ‘You 
 will consider,’ said the Speech from the throne 
 announcing the Relief Bill,” ‘whether the removal 
 of these disabilities can be effected consistently 
 with the full and permanent security of our estab- 
 lishments in Church and State.’ It was the 
 knowledge at Rome that this feeling must be 
 respected which had prevented the recognition of 
 the Jesuits in England; and when, in 1815, 
 Cardinal Gonsalvi had visited England he had, in 
 deference to public sentiment, not only put aside 
 the ordinary robes of his office, but had been most 
 careful to avoid all questions of precedence.” 
 For the old prejudices were far from dead. As 
 late as 1827, Arthur Hallam told Mr. Gladstone 
 how the gibes in ‘King John’ against the Pope had 
 met with eager applause; and the Oxford bed- 
 makers thought separation might be preferable to 
 emancipating the Catholics.* When the Bill 
 actually came, the concession to this sentiment was 
 apparent. The oath was of the most drastic 
 nature, and prevented any Catholic from attempt- 
 ing to secure a change in the character of the 
 
 44 Ward, III, 168. 
 
 45 Ward, III, 247. 
 
 46 Ward, III, 21. 
 
 47 Nielson’s History of the Papacy, I, 350. 
 48 Morley, I, 40. 
 
THEORY OF CATHOLIC REVIVAL = 185 
 
 State.“ The Catholics were forbidden to take the 
 names of Protestant sees for their bishoprics—a 
 clause which, ignored in Ireland, was in England 
 to lead to serious trouble.” Catholics were for- 
 bidden from religious celebration outside a church 
 or private house, and from wearing the habits of 
 their orders.” The Jesuits were prohibited from 
 entrance into England.” On the more negative 
 side, Catholics were not to hold certain offices, nor 
 were they to have direct concern with religious 
 appointments.” Gifts to religious orders were 
 made void,” and the rule against tracts for super- 
 stitious purposes was sufficient to invalidate such 
 bequests as one for masses or prayer for the 
 repose of souls.” It is perhaps worth noting that 
 in the year before the passage of the Relief Act, 
 a bequest for inculcating the doctrine of the Pope’s 
 supremacy was declared illegal;°° and it was not 
 until 1836 that a Roman Catholic marriage became 
 valid in the eyes of the law.” 
 
 The Relief Act clearly bears upon its face the 
 marks of the difficult circumstances under which 
 
 49 Ward, III, 362, and see his comment at pp. 254-255. 
 
 50 Ward, III, 257, and see below. 
 
 51 This has practically been inoperative. 
 
 52 This again has been inoperative. 
 
 S210 1G. 
 
 54 SS. 12, 17, 18; and in connexion with his ownership of an advow- 
 son, see 3 Jac. I, c. 5. s. 18. and I, W. & M. C. 26.8. 2. 
 
 55 This is of old standing, see e.g., Adams v. Lambert (1602), 4 Co. 
 Rep. 104. West v. Shuttleworth, (1835), 2 My. & K., 684. Heath v. 
 Chapman (1854), 2 Drew, 417, 425. 
 
 56 De Themmines vy. De Bonneval (1828), 5 Russ. 288. 
 57 Dicey, Law and Public Opinion (Second ed.), p. 345. 
 
136 PROBLEM OF SOVEREIGNTY 
 
 
 
 it was passed. It is evident that most Englishmen 
 suspected the Catholic religion of sapping the 
 foundations of civic loyalty; and the Act rather 
 lulled than removed that suspicion. The securities 
 were plainly enough the mark of a fear that the 
 sovereignty of the Crown might suffer impair- 
 ment; for if, as Plunket had stated fifteen years 
 before, the ‘true principles of the Constitution’ 
 were ‘the safety of the Established Church and of 
 the Protestant throne,’* and if no concession not 
 consistent with these could be yielded, it was clear 
 not only that religious proselytisation must be 
 circumscribed but also that enthusiasts would 
 hesitate to suffer such a limitation of religious 
 freedom as was here implied. Certainly Bishop 
 Doyle’s way out of the impasse was more casuis- 
 tically ingenious than politically logical.” 
 
 The fact of the matter is that, as is usually the 
 case, English practice was better than English 
 theory. The Irish difficulty apart”’—and only 
 complete emancipation could be its solution—to 
 the attitude of men like Charles Butler it was 
 scarcely possible even for the most bigoted of 
 Protestants to take political exception. He ad- 
 mitted the authority of common law and statute 
 law, both of which he had himself illuminated by 
 his profound learning. He did not hesitate to 
 accept the claims of constituted jurisdiction in all 
 
 58 See his collected speeches, ed. Hoey (1855), p. 117. 
 
 59 Life, Vol. II, p. 126. 
 
 60 Plunket has stated its nature very eloquently and unanswerably. 
 Collected Speeches, pp. 111-135. 
 
THEORY OF CATHOLIC REVIVAL 187 
 
 civil and religious matters that did not touch his 
 conscience. He repudiated the temporal suprem- 
 acy of the Pope. To have excluded him from the 
 exercise of political power when, without its 
 possession, he had been for so long loyal to the 
 British Crown, would have been to create an 
 allegiance which no thinking man could accept. 
 The Catholic had been ‘a marked man and a plot- 
 ting sectary”’ in the eyes of the populace for more 
 than two hundred years, yet he had not attempted 
 the destruction of an oppressive State. Emanci- 
 pation came as the half-unwilling and _half- 
 accomplished recognition of the error inherent 
 in a theory of sovereignty which, because it makes 
 political outcasts of those whose intimate beliefs 
 it fails to control, is at war with all the deeper 
 realities of human life. 
 
 10! 
 
 If the Papacy, as Thomas Hobbes so scornfully 
 remarked, be no more than the ‘ghost of the Holy 
 Roman Empire sitting crowned upon the ruins 
 thereof,’ it has not seldom possessed sufficient 
 substantiality to cause Englishmen some vigorous 
 tremors. Whatever its defects, Ultramontanism 
 has, at any rate in its broader form, the merit of 
 a respectable pedigree. Nor has the attitude of 
 England to its demands changed very greatly in 
 the centuries since the Reformation Parliament 
 
 61 The phrase is Plunket’s. Collected Speeches, p. 217. 
 
abet PROBLEM OF SOVEREIGNTY 
 
 bestowed on the omnivorous Henry the attributes 
 of papal sovereignty.” But an Anglican usurpa- 
 tion was not likely to decrease the pretensions of 
 that organism of which changelessness was the 
 proud boast. The claims of Gregory VII and 
 Boniface VIII may have slumbered ; but dead they 
 were not. Certainly to the divines of the seven- 
 teenth century it was the supreme merit of the 
 Reformation that it prevented an allegiance to 
 the sovereign which had been heretofore precarious 
 because divided.” But the condition of its removal 
 was a narrow and uncritical antagonism to what- 
 ever savoured of Roman practice. The penalisa- 
 tion of the Catholic religion turned it once more 
 into a secret society—mistakenly since the Armada 
 had sufficiently proved the implicit Gallicanism 
 of the English Catholics. Nevertheless it was true 
 that they owed allegiance to an ecclesiastical 
 monarch who claimed the deposing power. Men 
 never forgot the Bull of Pius V, and they were 
 determined not to endure a repetition of his 
 offence. So that when an enlightened opinion at 
 leneth admitted of a fair measure of toleration, 
 it was upon conditions that the boon was extended. 
 The fear of Rome was far from dead; it was 
 rather the suspicion of the English Catholics that 
 had been removed and the latter were to find how 
 62 For some striking remarks on the Byzantinism of Henry VIII 
 see Maitland’s English Law and the Renaissance, especially pp. 14 ff. 
 63 This is the essential argument of such works as Leslie’s A Battle 
 
 Royal, Barrow on the Pope’s Supremacy, Jackson on Christian Obedience, 
 and the like. 
 
THEORY OF CATHOLIC REVIVAL 139 
 
 easily the lightest indiscretion might fan those 
 suspicions once more into flame. 
 
 The twenty years succeeding emancipation were 
 used by the Catholics in reaping the harvest that 
 had been so long and so painfully sowing.“ They 
 were not unfortunate in their position. English- 
 men discovered that the Catholic gentry had 
 virtues very similar to their own. The reputation 
 of statesmen like Montalembert, the history of 
 thinkers like Schlegel, and, from 1846, the sus- 
 pected liberalism of Pius IX, but, above all, the 
 influence of the Oxford Movement and the skilful 
 social ability of Cardinal Wiseman, were all bound 
 to add greatly to the prestige of their situation. 
 People began with interested amazement to hear 
 O’Connell declare that the Catholic Church had 
 ever been on the side of democracy,” and the 
 corrosive sublimate of which Hurrell Froude’s 
 mind was mainly composed assisted in the disso- 
 lution of Newman’s evangelical suspicions.” The 
 Napoleonic adventure, moreover, had done much 
 to check men’s fears of a Catholic revival. The 
 political edifice of the temporal power seemed less 
 secure than at any former time in modern history. 
 The things of which De Maistre did not lightly 
 
 64JIn his two recent volumes, The Sequel to Catholic Emancipation, 
 Monsignor Bernard Ward has related the internal history of the Catholic 
 Body in England to the re-establishment of the hierarchy. See also Mr. 
 Wilfrid Ward’s able Life of Cardinal Wiseman. 
 
 65 Cf. Acton, History of Freedom, p. 190. 
 
 66 See Newman, Difficulties of Anglicans (ed. of 1908), Vol. I, pp. 
 37 ff. 
 
140 PROBLEM OF SOVEREIGNTY 
 
 dream, the Symbolik of Mohler, the grave charm 
 of the Miinich reaction—all these might logically 
 lead to a reformulation of the Catholic political 
 system, but it was a reformation of which men had 
 ceased to be afraid.” Newman, Manning, Glad- 
 stone—all of them visited Rome in the full vigour 
 of early manhood; but if they were historically 
 impressed, they were in nowise religiously con- 
 vinced.** And even the rosy optimism of Pius IX 
 was quite early to expect the fall of the temporal 
 power.” 
 
 Then, suddenly, there came a change. From an 
 attitude of watchful waiting, Wiseman, who in 
 1847 had become pro-Vicar Apostolic of the London 
 district, assumed a critical offensive. In the 
 Dublin Review he had an admirable means of 
 propaganda—and that the more important since 
 it was an age when men still read theology with 
 interested acumen. A skilful controversialist, he 
 followed the fortunes of the Oxford Movement 
 with unfailing eagerness; nor had he failed to 
 contribute his observations. An article on the 
 Donatist schism in 1839 had perhaps done more 
 than any other single event to convince Newman 
 that the ‘via media’ was untenable.’” He perhaps 
 
 67 Indeed, as Acton pointed out in 1858, it was doubtful if there was 
 a Catholic political system at all. See his essay, ‘ Political Thoughts on 
 the Church’ in the History of Freedom. 
 
 68 Cf. Newman’s Apologia (ed. Ward), p. 133, and Morley’s Glad- 
 stone, (Pop. ed.), I, 65. 
 
 69 See the preface to Dollinger’s Kirche und Kirchen, where he gives 
 an account of this prophecy made to the Archbishop of Rheims. 
 
 70 Ward, Life of Wiseman, I, 321. 
 
THEORY OF CATHOLIC REVIVAL 141 
 
 did more, as Mr. Ward reminds us, to reawaken 
 Englishmen to the historic significance of his 
 Church than any other Catholic of the age.” It 
 was the beginning of the Romeward movement. 
 The folly of Oxford completed in W. G. Ward a 
 process that logic had already begun. Dalgairns, 
 St. John and Richard Stanton followed, while 
 Newman, as Dean Stanley caustically put it, ‘had 
 recourse to whispering, like the slave of Midas, his 
 secret to the reeds.”” Then he, too, went and with 
 his conversion a flood-gate of proselytisation 
 seemed open. The secession, says Mr. Lecky,” 
 ‘was quite unparalleled in magnitude since that 
 which had taken place under the Stuarts.’ It was 
 no wonder that Wiseman rejoiced. The accession 
 of so strong a body of intelligence seemed to 
 synchronise naturally with his plans for broaden- 
 ing the basis of English Catholic culture.“ Then 
 in 1846 came the election of the new pope and the 
 dawn, as men thought, of a new liberal Catholicism. 
 It seemed clear to Wiseman and his colleagues that 
 this was a time for action. On a visit to Rome in 
 1847,” he first broached his plans for the restora- 
 tion of the Catholic hierarchy in England. There 
 were good reasons for his plan; though at the time 
 the antagonism of Cardinal Acton and the excite- 
 ment of the crisis at Rome was sufficient to delay 
 
 71 Op. cit., I, 330. 
 
 72 Op. cit., I, 425. 
 
 73 History of Rationalism, I, 159. 
 
 74 Life, I, 440. 
 75 Ibid., I, 474 ff. 
 
142 PROBLEM OF SOVEREIGNTY 
 
 any action, Wiseman himself was able to secure 
 the exercise of Lord Palmerston’s influence against 
 Austria and the despatch of an unofficial but 
 important envoy—Lord Minto—to the papal 
 Curia.” Though the negotiations for the hier- 
 archy were in abeyance, they were by no means 
 forgotten. By 1848 the Papacy was convinced; 
 and Lord John Russell, on behalf of the English 
 government, had made public announcement that 
 though he would not assist, at any rate he would 
 not interfere.” In 1850 the expected event took 
 place. Wiseman was created Cardinal-Archbishop 
 of Westminster and the Pope’s brief of September 
 29 re-established the hierarchy.” In his famous 
 Pastoral of October 7, ‘from out of the Flaminian 
 Gate’ Wiseman, dramatically perhaps, but with an 
 intelligible pride, announced the event to the 
 Catholics of England. 
 
 He had anticipated no storm. It had seemed to 
 him that the matter was one of no more than 
 Catholic concern, the announcement of a metro- 
 politan that the method of internal ecclesiastical 
 administration had been changed. Yet he had, 
 perhaps, been supremely unfortunate in the method 
 of reporting he chose to adopt. Himself a man of 
 exuberant temperament, it was with some genial 
 bombast that the good news was told. ‘So that 
 at present’ ran the Pastoral,” ‘and till such time 
 
 76 Ibid., I, 480 ff. 
 77 Ibid., I, 492-494. 
 78 Ibid., I, 529. 
 
 79 Ibid., I, 543. 
 
THEORY OF CATHOLIC REVIVAL 143 
 
 
 
 as the Holy See shall think fit otherwise to provide, 
 we govern, and shall continue to govern, the 
 counties of Middlesex, Hertford and Essex as 
 Ordinary thereof, and those of Surrey, Sussex, 
 Kent, Berkshire and Hampshire, with the islands 
 annexed, as Administrator with Ordinary juris- 
 diction.” He was, of course, doing no more than 
 marking the confines of his ecclesiastical jurisdic- 
 tion. But it was not thus that his action was 
 interpreted. The claim of government was at once 
 taken in its fullest and most literal sense. The 
 Pope was claiming to supersede Queen Victoria; 
 nothing less than her supersession was intended. 
 He was the new Hildebrand aiming at a new 
 Canossa. ‘We can only receive it,’ said the Tumes,” 
 ‘as an audacious and conspicuous display of pre- 
 tensions to resume the absolute spiritual dominion 
 of this island, which Rome has never abandoned.’ 
 Nor did the Times alone fan the flame of popular 
 resentment. In an extraordinary letter to the 
 Bishop of Durham, Lord John Russell gave full 
 rein to his feelings. ‘There is an assumption of 
 power in all the documents which have come from 
 Rome,’ he wrote,” ‘a pretension to supremacy over 
 the realm of England, and a claim to sole and 
 undivided sway which is inconsistent with the 
 Queen’s supremacy, with the rights of our bishops 
 and clergy, and with the spiritual independence of 
 the nation as asserted even in Roman Catholic 
 
 80 October 19, 1850. 
 81 Life of Wiseman, I, 548. 
 
144 PROBLEM OF SOVEREIGNTY 
 
 times.’ But the pretensions would be resisted. 
 ‘No foreign prince or potentate will be permitted 
 to fasten his fetters upon a nation which has so 
 long and so nobly vindicated its right to freedom 
 of opinion.’ The legal position of Dr. Wiseman 
 would be considered and due steps taken to enforce 
 the law. 
 
 For four months England luxuriated in a 
 recrudescence of all its ancient prejudices. The 
 Lord Chancellor quoted King John at the Guild- 
 hall. Bishops vied with one another in the choice 
 of extravagant epithets and addressed a petition 
 of loyalty and remonstrance to the Queen. In 
 reply the sovereign was made to assure them of her 
 ‘determination to uphold alike the rights of my 
 crown and the independence of my people against 
 all aggressions and encroachments of any foreign 
 power.” Meetings of protest were held all over 
 the country ; everywhere, too, since Russell’s letter 
 happily coincided with Guy Fawkes’ Day, Pope 
 and Cardinal were committed in effigy to the 
 flames. Crowds broke the windows of Roman 
 Catholic churches. So serious did the feeling 
 become that the Catholic authorities were doubtful 
 if it was wise for Wiseman to return.” 
 
 But the Cardinal was equal to the occasion. He 
 hurried back to England and immediately issued 
 an able ‘Appeal to the English Nation’ which not 
 only did much to quieten public sentiment but even 
 
 82 Ibid., I, 551. 
 83 [bid., I, 553. 
 
THEORY OF CATHOLIC REVIVAL 145 
 
 was successful in procuring a reluctant retracta- 
 tion from the Times.” Ina skilful letter Disraeli 
 sneered gracefully at the whole affair, while Mr. 
 Roebuck publicly rebuked Russell as the successor 
 of Lord George Gordon.* Wiseman himself, in 
 certain lectures at St. George’s Cathedral, ex- 
 plained the decree in detail and in circumstance. 
 What, perhaps, did most to assuage popular 
 indignation was the passage of the Ecclesiastical 
 Titles Bill which received the Royal Assent in 
 August, 1851. The declaration that Roman Catho- 
 lics should not assume titles of bishoprics under 
 penalty of fine nor publish papal bulls seemed to 
 act like a soothing charm.* By the end of 1851 
 the excitement had entirely disappeared. _ 
 
 The episode is perhaps more theoretically than 
 practically important. It is clear that to the 
 majority of Englishmen the effect of the new 
 Ultramontanism was to invade the integrity of 
 English sovereignty. ‘The day is coming,’ said 
 the Edinburgh Review," ‘when either the Ultra- 
 montane theory, as developed by such writers as 
 De Maistre, will be universal and paramount, or 
 the theory of the infallibility and supremacy of 
 the Church of Rome will crumble to atoms. The 
 theory of a divided allegiance the nations will at 
 length find untenable.’ Lord Shaftesbury seems 
 particularly to have feared the introduction of the 
 
 84 Tbid., I1, 3. 
 
 85 Tbid., II, 6-9. 
 
 86 The text of the Act is given in the Life of Wiseman, Vol. II, p. 585. 
 87 April, 1851, p. 574. 
 
146 PROBLEM OF SOVEREIGNTY 
 
 
 
 Roman Canon law. ‘Do you know what the Canon 
 law is?’ he asked a great meeting.” ‘It is a law 
 incompatible with the civil law of this realm; it 
 is subversive of all religious liberty; it permits— 
 nay, enjoins—persecution of heresy, it elevates 
 the Pope as God, and asserts that he is superior 
 to all human and national laws. We deny synodal 
 action to our own Church—shall we allow it to a 
 rival and hostile body?’ A section of Catholic 
 opinion seems to have concurred in these views. 
 ‘The late bold and clearly expressed edict of the 
 Court of Rome,’ wrote Lord Beaumont,” ‘can not 
 be received or accepted by English Roman Catho- 
 lics without a violation of their duties as citizens.’ 
 ‘IT should think,’ said the Duke of Norfolk,” ‘that 
 many must feel, as we do, that Ultramontane 
 opinions are totally incompatible with allegiance 
 to our Sovereign and with our Constitution.’ 
 Though Macaulay himself had no fear of the Bull, 
 some of his friends were ‘angry and alarmed’ and 
 he did not regret their fright ‘for such fright is 
 an additional security for us against that execrable 
 superstition.”* Mr. Gladstone seems to have 
 disapproved with vehemence of the papal action 
 but desired to draw a distinction between the 
 action of Rome and the attitude of the English 
 Catholics.” 
 
 88 Hodder, Life of Shaftesbury, Vol. II, p. 332. 
 
 89 Life of Wiseman, IT, 15. 
 
 90 Ibid. 
 
 91 Trevelyan’s Life (Nelson’s ed.), Vol. II, p. 275. 
 92 Morley, Life, I, 304 ff. 
 
THEORY OF CATHOLIC REVIVAL 147 
 
 
 
 It is clearly the old argument against Catholic 
 emancipation clothed in a newer garb. The 
 demand from Catholics is for an undiluted loyalty, 
 and it is believed that such loyalty is incompatible 
 with their spiritual allegiance. The answer made 
 by the Catholics is masterly alike in form and 
 substance. It is admitted by Wiseman that for 
 the Pope to appoint Catholic bishops in England 
 is a virtual denial of the royal supremacy in eccle- 
 siastical affairs. But he correctly pointed out that 
 this denial was not confined to members of the 
 Catholic faith. ‘The royal supremacy,’ he wrote,” 
 ‘is no more admitted by the Scotch Kirk, by 
 Baptists, Methodists, Quakers, Independents, 
 Presbyterians, Unitarians and other Dissenters 
 than by the Catholics.’ He quoted Lord Lynd- 
 hurst to the effect that so long as no mischievous 
 temporal consequences ensue from Catholic recog- 
 nition of the papal supremacy, it was lawful for 
 them to hold that belief. ‘If the law,’ said Lord 
 Lyndhurst,” ‘allowed the doctrines and discipline 
 of the Roman Catholic Church, it should be allowed 
 to be carried on perfectly and properly.’ Not to 
 do so was a practical refusal of religious toleration. 
 ‘Tio have told Catholics,’ Lord Lyndhurst added,” 
 ‘“‘vou have perfect religious liberty, but you shall 
 not teach that the Church can not err; or, you have 
 complete toleration but you must not presume to 
 
 93 Life of Wiseman, I, 560. 
 
 94 Hansard, 2d Series, Vol. LXXXVIII, p. 1261, Speech of April 20, 
 1846. 
 
 95 Ibid. 
 
148 PROBLEM OF SOVEREIGNTY 
 
 believe holy orders to be a sacrament’’ would have 
 been nugatory and tyrannical.’ Wiseman was 
 able to show that Lord John Russell himself had 
 admitted that the introduction of papal bulls was 
 essential to Church discipline. ‘There are certain 
 Bulls of the Pope,’ Russell had told the House 
 of Commons,” ‘which are absolutely necessary for 
 the appointment of Bishops and pastors belonging 
 to the Roman Catholic Church. It would be quite 
 impossible to prevent the introduction of such 
 Bulls.’ But this was all that Wiseman had 
 brought. And his case was strengthened by the 
 fact that in Canada the local governments admitted 
 the titular creations of the colonial hierarchy and 
 had incorporated them by name in acts of Parla- 
 ment.” He very pertinently enquired what dis- 
 tinction existed between the papal act of 1850 and 
 the creation by Act of Parliament of the Anglo- 
 Prussian bishopric of Jerusalem. ‘Suppose,’ 
 asked Wiseman,” ‘his Majesty of Abyssinia or the 
 Emir Beshir had pronounced this to be an intru- 
 sion ‘‘inconsistent with the rights of bishops and 
 clergy and with the spiritual independence of the 
 nation’’ how much would this country have cared ?’ 
 The ground he took in the St. George’s Cathedral 
 lectures was exactly similar. People complained 
 that ‘it was the State in every department which 
 was invaded . . . the Crown was wounded in its 
 96 Hansard, 2d Series, Vol. LXXXVIII, p. 362. 
 
 97 Life of Wiseman, II, 566. 
 88 Appeal, ete., p. 23. 
 
THEORY OF CATHOLIC REVIVAL 149 
 
 prerogative, its supremacy, its right to allegiance, 
 its very sovereignty . . . suppose that any one had 
 told you six months ago that the Bishop of Rome 
 had it in his power to throw this vast empire into 
 convulsions; to upheave by the breath of his 
 nostrils the granite foundations of the noble 
 British constitution; to shake to its basis the 
 throne of our gracious Queen . . . you would have 
 laughed to scorn the man who would have pre- 
 sumed to tell you that he had such tremendous 
 power. And if, by way of jest, or through 
 curiosity, you had asked the fanatic who told you 
 so by what wonderful machinery, by what magical 
 agency he could do all this; and he had answered 
 you ‘‘by a scrap of paper, wherein he should desire 
 the Catholic districts of England to be henceforth 
 called dioceses, and the Bishop of Trachis to be 
 called Bishop of Beverley and the Bishop of Tloa 
 to be called Bishop of Liverpool,’’ you would, I 
 am sure, have considered the man little better than 
 an idiot who asserted or believed in such effects 
 from such a cause.”’ Nor was he alone in his 
 contempt for this agitation. Roebuck pointed out 
 to Lord John Russell that if Catholic allegiance 
 was divided as he asserted, the issue of a papal 
 bull dividing England into dioceses would in 
 nowise alter their situation. ‘Let us, if we will,’ 
 he wrote,’ ‘fulminate an Act of Parliament 
 against the Catholics; does any one suppose that 
 
 99 Life of Wiseman, II, 17 ff. 
 100 Tbid., II, 3. 
 
150 PROBLEM OF SOVEREIGNTY 
 
 their faith will be in the slightest affected thereby ? 
 We can not make people loyal by Act of Parlia- 
 ment; we can not by excluding certain names, keep 
 out the doctrines of the Catholic religion.’ This 
 practical limitation on a theoretical power was 
 ably insisted upon by the Westminster Review. 
 It pointed out that the claim of the Catholic 
 Church to be a heaven-appointed body made it 
 theoretically impossible for a human organisation 
 to live upon amicable terms with it. ‘Those who 
 wield the sceptre of the Most High,’ it urged,” 
 ‘will pay small heed to the baton of the constable. 
 Where the Almighty reigns what room will there 
 be for the police magistrate? and where Omnis- 
 cience directs, for debates in Parliament? What 
 natural function can fail to undergo eclipse where 
 the mystic shadow of the supernatural traverses 
 the air?’ But the wide claims of the imagination 
 suffer diminution amid the stress of everyday life. 
 ‘De jure,’ as it wisely suggested,’ ‘the divine 
 commission extends to everything and might absorb 
 this planet into the Papal State; de facto it 
 includes what it can, and stops where it must.’ 
 And amid its gibes and protests the Edinburgh 
 was constrained to admit’*” that ‘we do not for a 
 moment question either the loyalty or the patriot- 
 ism of the mass of our Roman Catholic fellow- 
 subjects. We believe that, whether consistently or 
 101 Westminster Review, 1851, Vol. LIV, p. 450. 
 
 102 Tbid., p. 454. 
 103 Hdinburgh Review, April, 1851, p. 538. 
 
THEORY OF CATHOLIC REVIVAL = 151 
 
 
 
 not, they would be as ready as were their Roman 
 Catholic ancestors, or as are their Protestant con- 
 temporaries, to resist any aggression on the civil or 
 political supremacy of England.’ But, as Pro- 
 fessor Dicey has admitted,” no absolute theory of 
 sovereignty can ever be consistent since it is always 
 subject to the opinions of those it commands. 
 And it is immensely difficult to understand why 
 the Catholics should have been subject to a political 
 logic which never has and never will be put into 
 operation. 
 
 The argument for the Roman Catholic upon the 
 basis of toleration seems well-nigh unanswerable. 
 ‘It is a mockery of toleration,’ said the West- 
 minster Review,” ‘to permit people to believe in 
 a divine corporation, and then to refuse them their 
 corporate offices.’ Sir George Bowyer, in an 
 exceedingly able pamphlet, pointed out that ‘the 
 Pope has only created certain offices in a Church 
 which is, in the eye of the law a dissenting body, 
 and as much a voluntary society as any other 
 incorporated body enjoying no legal privileges or 
 franchises. And the theological claims of our 
 Church do not alter the case. They belong to 
 religion, and are within the inviolable rights of 
 liberty of conscience over which no human power 
 can exercise jurisdiction.”*” They were doing no 
 more than attend to the internal organisation of 
 
 104 See his Law of the Constitution (7th ed.), pp. 74-82. 
 
 105 Westminster Review, 1851, Vol. LIV, p. 458. 
 
 106 The Cardinal Archbishop of Westminster and the New Hierarchy, 
 London, 1851, p. 20. 
 
152 PROBLEM OF SOVEREIGNTY 
 
 the Church. They submitted to the law ‘as good 
 Englishmen and loyal subjects . . . but we claim 
 full liberty so long as we do not infringe the law 
 and the rights of our fellow-countrymen.”” It 
 was ridiculous to talk of toleration if this was not 
 the case. ‘If we are not allowed by law to hold 
 a doctrine,’ he said,’* ‘without which we should 
 cease to be Roman Catholics, it obviously and 
 inevitably follows that the law does not permit us 
 to be Roman Catholics at all, which is absurd. 
 Persecute us, drive us out of the realm altogether 
 and into perpetual banishment, but do not hold out 
 to us the delusive phantom of an apparent tolera- 
 tion, and then deny us the liberty to hold that 
 doctrine on which the very existence of our Church, 
 as the Catholic Church ... most undeniably 
 depends.’ And Roebuck pointed out that dan- 
 gerous consequences would ensue from this lack 
 of toleration. ‘Will not Catholics in Ireland,’ he 
 asked," ‘assert their own pre-eminence in that 
 country and insist upon equality at least in the 
 baneful right of persecution?’ Mr. Bright had no 
 doubts about the policy of Russell’s government. 
 Lord John’s speech, he said, would have been ‘very 
 good if delivered some three hundred years ago,’ 
 and he denounced the measure as ‘nothing better 
 than a sham.’”° But he opposed it on higher and 
 107 Ibid., p. 36. 
 108 [bid., p. 18. 
 
 109 Life of Wiseman, Vol. II, p. 9. 
 110 Trevelyan, Life of Bright, 193. 
 
THEORY OF CATHOLIC REVIVAL = 153 
 
 more splendid grounds. ‘The course on which the 
 noble Lord has been so recklessly dragging us,’ 
 he told the House of Commons,” ‘is fruitful in 
 discord, hatred, religious animosities—it has sepa- 
 rated Ireland from this country, has withdrawn 
 her national sympathies from us, and has done an 
 amount of mischief which the legislation of the 
 next ten years can not entirely, if at all, abate. 
 The noble Lord has drawn up an indictment 
 against eight millions of his countrymen; he has 
 increased the power of the Pope over the Roman 
 Catholics, for he has drawn closer the bonds 
 between them and their Church, and the head of 
 their Church. The noble Lord has quoted Queen 
 Elizabeth and the great men of the Commonwealth, 
 as though it were necessary now to adopt the 
 principles which prevailed almost universally two 
 hundred years ago. Does the noble Lord forget 
 that we are the true ancients, that we stand on the 
 shoulders of our forefathers and can see further ?’ 
 It was, however, reserved for Mr. Gladstone in a 
 speech which Lord Morley has placed among his 
 ‘three or four most conspicuous masterpieces’ to 
 make plain the essential wrongness of the govern- 
 ment measure. ‘Recollect,’?’ he reminded the 
 House,”’ ‘that Europe and the whole of the 
 civilised world look to England at this moment 
 not less, no, but even more than ever they looked 
 to her before, as the mistress and guide of nations 
 
 111 [bid., 194, Speech of May 12, 1851. 
 112 Morley, I, 306. 
 
154 PROBLEM OF SOVEREIGNTY 
 
 in regard to the great work of civil legislation. . 
 
 Show, I beseech you—have the courage to show 
 the pope of Rome, and his cardinals, and his 
 Church, that England, too, as well as Rome has her 
 semper eadem, and that when she had once 
 adopted some great principle of legislation, which 
 is destined to influence the national character, to 
 draw the dividing lines of her policy for ages to 
 come and to affect the whole nature of her influence 
 and her standing among the nations of the world— 
 show that when she has done this slowly and done 
 it deliberately, she has done it once for all; and 
 that she will no more retrace her steps than the 
 river which bathes this giant city can flow back 
 upon its source. The character of England is in 
 our hands. Let us feel the responsibility that 
 belongs to us, and let us rely on it; if to-day we 
 make this step backwards it is one which hereafter 
 we shall have to retrace with pain. We can not 
 change the profound and resistless tendencies of 
 the age towards religious liberty. It is our busi- 
 ness to guide and control their application; do 
 this you may, but to endeavour to turn them back- 
 wards is the sport of children, done by the hands 
 of men, and every effort you may make in that 
 direction will recoil upon you in disaster and 
 disgrace.’ Rarely have the principles of religious 
 toleration been more splendidly vindicated with a 
 more profound sense of the issues at stake. ‘O’u 
 se réfugiera la liberté religieuse,’ wrote de 
 
THEORY OF CATHOLIC REVIVAL = 155 
 
 Tocqueville to Senior,*” ‘si on la chasse de 1’ Angle- 
 terre?’ It was fortunate for the good sense of 
 Englishmen that their practice was an advance 
 upon their precept. The act was never put into 
 operation. ‘The weapon that had been forged in 
 this blazing furnace by these clumsy armourers 
 proved blunt and useless; the law was from the 
 first a dead letter, and it was struck out of the 
 statute book in 1871 in Mr. Gladstone’s own 
 administration.”™* 
 
 It is of interest to go back to the summer of 
 1850, when the first of English theologians was 
 explaining to the Church he had deserted the 
 principles of that which had gained his powerful 
 allegiance. The essential point of his effort was 
 the demonstration that Church and State ought to 
 be separate organisations, that the one tan not 
 rightly invade the province of the other. ‘The life 
 of a plant,’ he wrote,” ‘is not the same as the life 
 of an animated being, and the life of the body is 
 not the same as the life of the intellect; nor is the 
 life of the intellect the same as the life of grace; 
 nor is the life of the Church the same as the life 
 of the State.’ It was this distinction the movement 
 of 1833 had endeavoured to emphasise; but, as he 
 conceived it was foreign to the spirit of the 
 National Church. For that organisation is not its 
 
 113 De Tocqueville, ‘Correspondence,’ III, 274, quoted in Morley’s 
 Life. 
 
 114 Morley, I, 308. 
 115 Difficulties of Anglicans (ed. of 1908), I, 44. 
 
156 PROBLEM OF SOVEREIGNTY 
 
 own mistress, it is nothing but the creature of the 
 State. Itis not, like the Catholic Church, a perfect 
 society living a life of its own. When the test of 
 Separateness is applied, it is seen at once to fail. 
 What is the test? ‘We know,’ he argued,” ‘that 
 it is the property of life to be impatient of any 
 foreign substance in the body to which it belongs. 
 It will be sovereign in its own domain, and it 
 conflicts with what it can not assimilate into itself, 
 and is irritated and disordered until it has expelled 
 it.’ The Church of Rome fulfils this test of 
 separate identity, for over itself it is essentially 
 sovereign. It has, as Mohler argued, its own 
 special character and genius, stamped infallibly in 
 its every act.” With the heresy of Erastus which, 
 politically, is the Royal Supremacy, it can make 
 no alliance of any kind. ‘Erastianism, then,’ he 
 said,* ‘was the one heresy which practically cut 
 at the root of all revealed truth. . . . dogma would 
 be sacrificed to expedience, sacraments would be 
 rationalised, perfection would be ridiculed, if she 
 was made the slave of the State.’ It was here that 
 Anglicanism essentially was distinguished from 
 the ideals of Rome as the Oxford Movement gave 
 expression to them. For while the Establishment 
 desired nothing more than to be ‘the creature of 
 Statesmen,’ the ambition of the Tractarians was 
 to force it to self-action. It was not ‘contented 
 
 116 [bid., I, 52. 
 
 117 The reference is to the Symbolik (Robertson’s translation), II, 
 36-39. 
 
 118 Difficulties of the Anglicans, I, 102. 
 
THHORY OF CATHOLIC REVIVAL. 157 
 to be the mere creation of the State, as school- 
 masters and teachers may be, as soldiers or magis- 
 trates, or other public officers.” The Roman 
 Church could not but regard the question of 
 ecclesiastical liberty as the fundamental question. 
 Her independence was no theological question to 
 be proved by theological argument. ‘If the 
 Church is independent of the State in things 
 spiritual,’ he scornfully said,” ‘it is not simply 
 because Bishop Pearson has extolled her powers 
 in his exposition of the Creed, though divines are 
 brought forward as authorities too; but by reason 
 of ‘‘the force of that article of our belief, the one 
 Catholic and Apostolic Church.’’’ The source of 
 her power is a divine mystery which, because 
 reason may not penetrate it, that reason may never 
 resolve. She has her unvarying principles and 
 dogmas which do not change with the shifting 
 sands of time. Nor is the Catholic Church a 
 national church since that must, man’s nature 
 being what it is, be necessarily Erastian. For if 
 the Church be Erastian it can not be independent; 
 yet her independence is the very root of her nature. 
 ‘You hold and rightly hold,’ he told his audience,™ 
 ‘that the Church is a sovereign and self-sustaining 
 power in the same sense in which any temporal 
 State is such. She is sufficient for herself; she is 
 absolutely independent in her own sphere; she has 
 
 119 Ibid., I, 107. 
 
 120 [bid., I, 131. 
 121 Ibid., I, 173. 
 
158 PROBLEM OF SOVEREIGNTY 
 
 irresponsible control over her subjects in religious 
 matters; she makes laws for them of her own 
 authority, and enforces obedience on them as the 
 tenure of their membership with her.’ He admits 
 that membership of the Church will coincide, in 
 many cases, with membership of the State; but the 
 distinction is nevertheless clear. ‘There is no 
 necessary coincidence in their particular appli- 
 cation and resulting details, in the one and the 
 other polity, just as the good of the soul is not 
 always the good of the body; and much more so 
 is this the case, considering there is no divine 
 direction promised to the State, to preserve it from 
 human passion and human weakness. ”” 
 Difficulties, of course, abound ; and Newman does 
 not fail to recognise their existence. ‘It is not 
 enough,’ he says,” ‘for the State that things 
 should be done, unless it has the doing of them 
 itself; it abhors a double jurisdiction, and what 
 it calls a divided allegiance; aut Caesar aut nullus 
 is its motto, nor does it willingly accept of any 
 compromise. All power is founded, as it is often 
 said, on public opinion; for the State to allow the 
 existence of a collateral and rival authority is to 
 weaken its own.’ Clearly, if the State desires to 
 be an Austinian sovereign, collision is inevitable, 
 and Newman admits that the State is physically 
 the superior power. The problem then becomes 
 the search for means whereby the Church ‘may be 
 
 122 [bid. 
 123 Ibid., I, 175. 
 
THEORY OF CATHOLIC REVIVAL 159 
 
 able to do her divinely appointed work without let 
 or hindrance’ from an organisation that has been 
 ‘ever jealous of her, and has persecuted her from 
 without and bribed her from within.’ One way, 
 he decides can alone be found. ‘If the State would 
 but keep within its own province, it would find 
 the Church its truest ally and best benefactor.’ 
 Her principles are the principles of the State. 
 ‘She upholds obedience to the magistrate; she 
 recognises his office as from God; she is the 
 preacher of peace, the sanction of law, the first 
 element of order, and the safeguard of morality, 
 and that without possible vacillation or failure; 
 she may be fully trusted; she is a sure friend, for 
 she is defectible and undying.”* He urges this 
 the more strongly since the Church is anxious to 
 avoid collision. The quarrel of Becket and Henry, 
 with its appeals and counter appeals, its legatine 
 commission, its papal rebukes of the Saint, seems 
 to him the proof of its forbearance.*” He contrasts 
 that humility and patience with what seems to 
 him the proud Gallicanism of Louis XTV and the 
 insolent Byzantinism of Joseph II.*” They recog- 
 nised the value of controlled religion to the State. 
 ‘The State wishes to make its subjects peaceful 
 and obedient; and there is nothing more fitted to 
 effect this object than religion.” For the Church 
 that aims at universality this is, of course, an 
 
 124 Ibid., I, 175. 
 125 Ibid., I, 181 f. 
 126 Ibid., I, 185. 
 127 Ibid., I, 187. 
 
160 PROBLEM OF SOVEREIGNTY 
 
 impossible attitude. However disguised, it is still 
 Erastianism; and it is the nature of the Catholic 
 Church to be proof against that heresy.* He 
 reinforces that conclusion by urging that the 
 Church has a mission fundamentally distinct from 
 that of any other society. It is on the ground of 
 ‘tangible benefits’ that the State claims the loyalty 
 of its subjects;*® but the Church is the sole 
 guardian of a truth which none but her children 
 may understand. ‘She is the organ and oracle, 
 and nothing else, of a supernatural doctrine, which 
 is independent of individuals, given to her once 
 and for all, . . . and which is simply necessary to 
 the salvation of every one of us... hence, 
 requiring, from the nature of the case, organs 
 special to itself, made for the purpose, whether 
 for entering into its fulness, or carrying it out 
 in deed.”*° 
 
 Here, surely, is the basis upon which the Hier- 
 archy of 1851 was-re-established. The bare state- 
 ment does less than the merest justice to the 
 splendid eloquence with which it was adumbrated. 
 The theory is not original with Newman; its 
 origins are to be found in the fifth century of the 
 Christian era. Confronted by difficulties which 
 were not in essence distinct from those which had 
 ealled forth the Durham letter from Russell, 
 Gelasius I had constructed a theory of Church and 
 
 128 [bid., T, 196. 
 
 129 Ibid., I, 213. 
 130 [bid., I, 218. 
 
THEORY OF CATHOLIC REVIVAL 161 
 
 State of which the main characteristic is the 
 dualism for which Newman had argued. Felix II 
 had already urged the Emperor Zeno to leave 
 ecclesiastical affairs to the ecclesiastical authori- 
 ties ;*** and Gelasius added, as Newman would have 
 added, that while the imperial authority was 
 divine, it does not extend to control of the 
 Church.” Gelasius points out that there was a 
 time—witness Melchisedech and the Pontifex 
 Maximus—when Church and State were capable 
 of identification; but with the coming of Christ, 
 the two were separated and to each distinct fune- 
 tions were assigned.** Within its sphere each 
 power is supreme, nor should it suffer interference 
 with its independence. The theory exercised a 
 profound influence upon medieval thought. In 
 the ninth century it was the basis of the episcopal 
 definition sent to Lewis the Pius; it was accepted 
 by Hinemar of Rheims.’ But already the inci- 
 dence of the theory had changed. Where Gelasius 
 found the two societies in the world, the bishops 
 saw but one Church,” and the obvious inference, 
 when there came the struggle between Papacy and 
 
 131 Ep, Felix II, Ep. VIII, 5. in Thiel. Hpistolae Romanorum Pon- 
 tificum. 
 
 132 Gelasius, I, Ep. X, 9. and I, 10. in Thiel., op. cit. 
 
 1383 Tractatus, IV, 11. 
 
 134 Monument, Germ. Hist., See. 11, Vol. II, No. 196. 
 
 135 Ad. Episcop. De Inst. Carol, cap. 1 in Migne, Patrolog, Vol. 
 CXXV. 
 
 136 Cf, the emphatic words in the document referred to above, ‘Quod 
 eiusdem eclessiae corpus in duabus principaliter dividatur eximiis 
 personis,’ ete. 
 
162 PROBLEM OF SOVEREIGNTY 
 
 
 
 empire, was to argue the inferiority of the secular 
 branch. This is, of course, but fitfully apparent 
 in the ninth century, when papal pretensions are 
 almost at their minimum ;*” but when it is apparent 
 in the letters of court favourites like Alcuin,’* its 
 reality is hardly to be doubted. And in the claim 
 that the priest is responsible to God for the acts 
 of kings there is room for illimitable expansion.” 
 And when the problem of delimitation becomes 
 difficult it was inevitable that use should be made 
 of the implicit elasticity of the Gelasian theory. 
 Mr. Carlyle has pointed out the irony with which 
 Stephen of Tournai repeats the tradition he had 
 inherited.” We can not here narrate the trans- 
 formation which the views of Gelasius were to 
 undergo in the hands of men like Hildebrand and 
 Boniface VIII. Certainly the attempt at dualism 
 was given up. The Church wins its victory only 
 to promote a return, fostered by the revival of the 
 study of Roman law in the eleventh century,** and 
 the birth of nationalism in the fifteenth, to the older 
 and better conception.*” Newman’s attitude, as it 
 
 1387 As evidence, for example, in the purgation of Leo IIT; the clause 
 about his freewill is clearly the merest sop to his dignity. 
 
 138 Cf. for instance Mon. Germ. Hist. Ep., IV. Alcuin, Ep. XVIII, 
 ie te Carlyle, Med. Pol. Theory, I, 281. Mr. Carlyle quotes from Jonas 
 of Orleans with whose work, however, I am not acquainted. 
 
 140 Carlyle, II, 199. 
 
 141 Cf, the important remarks of Mr. Sidney-Woolf in his brilliant 
 essay on Bartolus, pp. 101-107. 
 
 142 Ag pointed out by Mr. Figgis in the essay, ‘Respublica Chris- 
 
 tiana,’ which he has reprinted as an appendix to his Churches in the 
 Modern State. 
 
THEORY OF CATHOLIC REVIVAL 163 
 
 was evinced in his Difficulties of Anglicans seems 
 to represent the end of the reaction against Hilde- 
 brandinism—the end, because, with the revival of 
 the Jesuit power, the official theory of the papal 
 Curia becomes once more monistic in character.“ 
 
 A rigid adherence to Newman’s attitude was 
 compatible enough with the utmost loyalty the 
 English crown could have desired. If it is true, 
 as a Catholic historian a little maliciously reports, 
 that when Queen Victoria read Cardinal Wise- 
 man’s Pastoral she remarked, ‘Am I Queen of 
 England or am I not?’, she showed a lamentable 
 misunderstanding of the nature of sovereignty. 
 Hume had long ago emphasised the dependence 
 even of the most despotic power on public opinion; 
 and the wise remark of the Westminster reviewer 
 that the divine commission ‘includes what it can 
 and stops where it must”*” might have suggested 
 the obvious limits to Wiseman’s claims. As a fact, 
 it is clear enough that the Cardinal did not himself 
 intend—whatever he may ultimately or secretly 
 have desired—any more than the fullest spiritual 
 jurisdiction permitted by the peculiar organisation 
 of the papal Curia. The English challenge to that 
 claim was, in effect, a denial of the right of private 
 judgment in religious matters. It was an old 
 
 143 T assume that nobody now doubts that the Jesuits were respon- 
 sible for the Syllabus of 1864 and the Decree of 1870. Of. Acton, 
 History of Freedom, p. 498 ff., and Janus’ The Pope and the Council, 
 passim. ; 
 
 144 Sequel to Catholic Emancipation, II, 287. 
 145 See above, note 102, 
 
164 PROBLEM OF SOVEREIGNTY 
 
 objection. Underlying it was the ancient desire 
 for unity, perhaps, also, for uniformity, of which 
 Dante’s De Monarchia is so supreme an expression. 
 To the Protestant statesman of the mid-Victorian 
 age, the single society which Hildebrand envisaged 
 had become the English State. The ecclesiastical 
 ideal Cavour had embraced seemed to him open to 
 the most grave theoretical advantages even while 
 he practically admitted its completest conse- 
 quences. But a genius for political abstractions 
 is perhaps no part of the English heritage. 
 
 U1 
 
 The establishment of the Hierarchy in England 
 coincided with perhaps the greatest change in the 
 character of the Papacy since the Council of 
 Trent.*° The failure of Rosmini’s mission and 
 the murder of Rossi™ seem to have convinced the 
 Pope that the Jesuits might, after all, be right, 
 and henceforward there were but fitful gleams of 
 his ancient liberalism. The assassination of the 
 minister was followed by the flight to Gaéta and 
 
 the attainment of Antonelli to supreme power. 
 
 146 The best general work on the Papacy during the nineteenth cen- 
 tury is that of Bishop Nielsen. Friedrich’s Life of Dollinger contains 
 a mass of information upon what is perhaps its most important episode. 
 The historical perspective will always be set by Janus’ The Pope and 
 the Council. 
 
 147 Rosmini’s Della Missione a Roma is our best authority on this 
 critical episode. For his interpretation of Rossi’s appointment, see op. 
 cit., p. 53. 
 
THEORY OF CATHOLIC REVIVAL 165 
 
 The use of the latter synchronised with the con- 
 demnation of Rosmini which Antonelli seems to 
 have thought essential to his security.“* Pius’ 
 interest in reform seemed almost immediately to 
 vanish. It was said openly by the Pontiff and his 
 minister that there was no compatibility possible 
 between the spiritual supremacy of Rome and the 
 eift of a free constitution to the Papal States.” 
 As the Romans mockingly but truly said, it was a 
 Pio nono secondo who returned to Rome.*” Simul- 
 taneously the General of the Jesuit Order, Father 
 Roothaan, came back from a voluntary exile, and 
 the publication of the notorious Civilta Cattolica 
 was begun.** Within six months, the restoration 
 of the English hierarchy followed. The imprison- 
 ment of Franceso Madiai and the prohibition of 
 a new edition of Muratori showed clearly how 
 thoroughgoing was the reaction.” Two years 
 later Pius, already more bold than his reactionary 
 predecessor, promulgated the dogma of the 
 Immaculate Conception,*” which Schrader was 
 later to interpret as the inferential claim of papal 
 
 148 Nielsen, II, 173. 
 
 149 See the very interesting note of Antonelli in Bianchi’s Storia 
 documentata della diplomozia Europea in Italia, Vol. VI, p. 238, seq. 
 
 150 Nielsen, II, 181. 
 
 151 Nielsen, II, 182. For Dollinger’s opinion of the change, cf. his 
 Kleinere Schriften, p. 582 ff. 
 
 152 Nielsen, II, 184. Lord Palmerston obtained his release in charac- 
 teristic fashion by threatening to send some English warships to the 
 Mediterranean. 
 
 153 Nielsen, II, 191 f. For the attitude of Gregory XVI, see op. cit., 
 LI 76'f: 
 
166 PROBLEM OF SOVEREIGNTY 
 
 infallibility.** Pius had already embarked on the 
 path which led directly to the catastrophe of 1870. 
 
 It was inevitable that English Catholicism 
 should respond to the eddies of this reaction. Nor 
 was the ground unprepared. W.G. Ward’s genial 
 remark that he would ‘like a new Papal Bull every 
 morning with my Times at breakfast”” was in fact 
 symptomatic of a whole philosophy. It is possible 
 to trace two, and perhaps three, definite schools 
 of thought among English Catholics of the time. 
 Ward himself, and Manning also when he came 
 to a position of influence in the Church of his 
 adoption, was thoroughly in sympathy with the 
 reactionary ideas of continental Ultramontan- 
 ism.”* It seemed to him that between thorough- 
 going skepticism on the one hand, and an equally 
 uncompromising conservatism on the other there 
 could be no alternative. His political philosophy 
 was that of De Maistre, and he would have asserted 
 with the latter that it was Rome which gave its 
 stability to the Christian world.” De Maistre 
 identified sovereignty with infallibility,”* and 
 Ward would have followed him blindly in that 
 striking claim. He himself, in the Dublin Review 
 of which in 1859 he became editor,’” devoted his 
 
 154 Schrader, Pius IX als Papst und als Konig, 12. 
 
 155 Wilfrid Ward, W. G. Ward, and the Catholic Revival, p. 14. I 
 owe much to this able and fascinating book. 
 
 156 Cf. W. Ward, op. cit., Chapter V, for a general discussion of his 
 father’s position. 
 
 157 Cf, Du Pape (ed. of 1837), Vol. I, p. 345. 
 
 158 Ibid., I, 23. 
 
 159 Wilfrid Ward, op. cit., p. 141. 
 
THEORY OF CATHOLIC REVIVAL 167 
 
 
 
 
 
 energies to combating religious liberalism in every 
 shape and form. He believed whole-heartedly 
 ‘in shutting the intellect within the sacred in- 
 fluences which the Church supplies, in order to 
 preserve it from error. The freedom which leads 
 to anarchy is the danger; the surrender to restraint 
 and authority is the safeguard.” It is obvious 
 that such an attitude must have led very easily 
 and naturally to Ultramontanism. It was the 
 more inevitable where the thinker was, once his 
 premises had been reached, so rigorous a logician 
 as Ward. Nor did he confine his doctrine to 
 religion alone. He could not separate out the 
 realms of thought. The world had to be drummed 
 into subjection and the universal supremacy of 
 the Pope was the weapon with which the change 
 was to be effected. Few men have had so genuine 
 and whole-hearted a belief in the medieval theoc- 
 racy as Mr. Ward. A friend called him a ‘theo- 
 politician’ and the epithet was literally true.™ 
 The Holy Roman Empire most nearly achieved 
 his ideal. He admired the ‘civil intolerance of 
 heresy.’ In that time ‘it was the civil ruler’s 
 highest function to co-operate with the Church in 
 preserving unshaken the firm conviction of Catho- 
 lic truth, and in preserving unsullied the purity 
 and unearthliness of Catholic sentiment.’ But 
 that day has passed and the Church has lost its 
 hold on the minds and hearts of men. ‘They give 
 
 160 Op. cit., p. 133, 
 161 Op. cit., p. 134. 
 
168 PROBLEM OF SOVEREIGNTY 
 
 far more of their obedience to the Church than of 
 their loyalty and affection; they give to her, and 
 to God whose representative she is, but a divided 
 allegiance.” So the unity of the Church’s sover- 
 elgnty is broken with the onset of liberalism. An 
 ageressive campaign was essential if the enemy 
 was to be defeated.** In the true ethics of Catholi- 
 cism it could bear no part. 
 
 The school of ecclesiastical thought most antago- 
 nistic to Ward was nobly represented by Lord 
 Acton. To the study of a man who so strenuously 
 devoted a whole life to the understanding of 
 liberty it is difficult to approach without emotion. 
 Acton’s life was spent in repelling at once the 
 claims either of Church or State to a unique 
 sovereignty over the minds of men. He saw that 
 a State which attempts the control of ecclesiastical 
 authority is virtually denying the right of religious 
 freedom.** He no less equally and thoroughly 
 condemned the whole effort of the Catholic Church 
 after religious uniformity.” He saw the inevita- 
 bility of a certain convergence between Church 
 and State. ‘She can not,’ he wrote of the Church,** 
 ‘permanently ignore the acts and character of the 
 State or escape its notice. While she preaches 
 submission to authorities ordained by God, her 
 
 162 Op. cit., 176. 
 
 163 Op. cit., p. 186. 
 
 164 History of Freedom, p. 151. 
 
 165 This is apparent in the famous essay on the massacre of Saint 
 
 Bartholomew. 
 166 History of Freedom, p. 246. 
 
THEORY OF CATHOLIC REVIVAL _ 169 
 
 nature, not her interest, compels her to exert an 
 involuntary influence upon them. The jealousy so 
 often exhibited by government is not without 
 reason, for the free action of the Church is the 
 test of the free constitution of the State, and 
 without that free constitution there must neces- 
 sarily be either persecution or revolution. Between 
 the settled organisation of Catholicism and every 
 form of arbitrary power there is an incompati- 
 bility which must terminate in conflict. In a State 
 which possesses no security for authority or 
 freedom, the Church must either fight or succumb.’ 
 The Catholic Church was thus a weapon in the 
 search for liberty. Toleration was an essential 
 part of its method. ‘Persecution is the vice of 
 particular religions,’ he argued;*” ‘and the mis- 
 fortune of particular stages of political society. 
 It is the resource by which States that would be 
 subverted by religious liberty escape the more 
 dangerous alternative of imposing religious disa- 
 bilities. The exclusion of a part of the community 
 by reason of its faith from the full benefit of the 
 law is a danger and disadvantage to every State, 
 however highly organised its constitution may 
 otherwise be. But the actual existence of a 
 religious party differing in faith from the majority 
 is dangerous only to a State very imperfectly 
 organised. Disabilities are always a danger. 
 Multiplicity of religions is only dangerous to 
 States of an inferior type.’ Ultimately and funda- 
 
 167 Ibid., p. 250. 
 
170 PROBLEM OF SOVEREIGNTY 
 
 mentally the object of the Church and the State 
 was not dissimilar. It was this essentially which 
 prohibited the possibility of intolerance. Nor 
 should the Church attempt to enslave the secular 
 organ. ‘The direct subservience of the State to 
 religious ends,’ he said, ‘would imply despotism 
 and persecution just as much as the pagan 
 supremacy of civil over religious authority.’ 
 These, it is clear, are the watchwords of liber- 
 alism. Nor did he hesitate to draw from them 
 certain obvious conclusions. The Papacy must 
 suit its activities to the needs of the age. The 
 plenitudo potestatis of Boniface VIII was no 
 universal right which defied the problem of time. 
 ‘The political power of the Holy See,’ he wrote,*” 
 ‘was never a universal right of jurisdiction over 
 States, but a special and positive right, which it 
 is as absurd to censure as to fear or to regret at 
 the present time. Directly, it extended only over 
 territories which were held by feudal tenure of 
 the Pope, like the Sicilian monarchy. Elsewhere 
 the authority was indirect, not political but reli- 
 gious, and its political consequences were due to 
 the laws of the land.’ He points out that the Pope 
 can not interfere between the Crown and its sub- 
 jects. ‘The idea of the Pope stepping between a 
 State and the allegiance of its subjects is a mere 
 misapprehension. The instrument of his authority 
 is the law, and the law resides in the State.’ The 
 
 168 [bid., p. 251. 
 169 [bid., p. 256. 
 
THEORY OF CATHOLIC REVIVAL 171 
 
 old notion of a right to depose was fundamentally 
 at variance with the nature of ecclesiastical 
 authority. ‘A moral, and, a fortiori, a spiritual 
 authority moves and lives only in an atmosphere 
 of freedom.’ A control over every sphere of life 
 it was not possible for the Church to claim. The 
 spiritual world was hers; ‘but the ethical and 
 intellectual offices of the Church, as distinct from 
 her spiritual office, are not hers exclusively or 
 peculiarly.” The worlds of politics and intelli- 
 gence move on lines parallel to that of the spirit. 
 The latter dare not challenge their right. ‘A 
 political law or a scientific truth may be perilous 
 to the morals or the faith of individuals, but 
 it can not on this ground be resisted by the 
 Church. . . . A discovery may be made in science 
 which will shake the faith of thousands, yet 
 religion can not refute it or object to it.’ ‘Within 
 their respective spheres,’ he said again,*” ‘politics 
 can determine what rights are just, science what 
 truths are certain . . . they have become, not tools 
 to be used by religion for her own interests, but 
 conditions which she must observe in her actions 
 and arguments.’ The attempt to put truth into 
 blinkers which W. G. Ward so vehemently con- 
 doned seemed to him a profound mistake. It was 
 making principles of no more than temporary 
 value. Nor, in the end, was anything gained. 
 170 Ibid., p. 257. 
 
 171 Ibid., p. 448. 
 172 Ibid., p. 453. 
 
172 PROBLEM OF SOVEREIGNTY 
 
 ‘They have betrayed duties more sacred than the 
 privileges for which they fought,’ he said in 
 eloquent condemnation of the Ultramontane 
 School,” ‘they have lied before God and man; 
 they have been divided into factions by the sup- 
 posed interests of the Church, when they ought to 
 have been united by her principles and her doc- 
 trines; and against themselves they have justified 
 those grave accusations of falsehood, insincerity, 
 indifference to civil rights, and contempt for civil 
 authorities which are uttered with such profound 
 injustice against the Church.’ ‘Modern Society,’ 
 he urged,” ‘has developed no security for freedom, 
 no instrument of progress, no means of arriving 
 at truth, which we look upon with indifference or 
 suspicion.’ 
 
 It is clearly a concordat with modern society 
 that he is proposing, and perhaps no finer defence 
 of religious liberty has ever been penned.*” No 
 less is it obvious that the proposal was utterly out 
 of harmony with the dominant Catholicism of the 
 time. Acton’s own journalistic experiences were 
 sufficient proof of the antithesis.“° The very 
 article in which his most eloquent defence of 
 liberalism appeared was itself an announcement 
 
 173 Tbid., p. 455. 
 
 174 [bid., p. 457. 
 
 175 What freedom meant to Acton the reader can gather—his own 
 writings apart—from the famous passage in Lord Bryce’s Contem- 
 porary Biography. Cf. also Figgis, Churches in the Modern State, pp. 
 
 253-265. 
 176 Cf, the introduction to Gasquet’s Lord Acton and His Circle. 
 
THEORY OF CATHOLIC REVIVAL 173 
 
 that those enterprises were concluded.” For the 
 alliance between scholarship and Catholic theology 
 for which his whole life was so moving a plea was 
 exactly the antithesis of that which the eccle- 
 siastical authorities were willing to admit. His 
 liberalism dethroned the Church from its position 
 of universal sovereignty. It asked that control be 
 surrendered over all save the sphere of the spirit. 
 But this was to make an end of the ‘intellectual 
 captivity’ which Ward and Manning deemed so 
 essential. It was to expose the Catholic to dis- 
 turbing influences he was perhaps unfitted to 
 encounter. It gave a loophole to that ‘thatige 
 skepsis’ of which the consequences could be seen 
 in men like Darwin and Huxley. But its intel- 
 lectual dangers apart, it contained implications 
 which could never be admitted. The papal 
 dominions apart, it entirely nullified the dream 
 of a territorial sovereignty for Rome. It suggested 
 that there was a system of rights in which heretics 
 might be entitled to share. It drew a distinction 
 between religious and political salvation. It im- 
 plied the existence of a moral code to which the 
 Roman Church, as any ordinary, and human, 
 institution was subject. It gave to the laws of men 
 a validity in their own sphere no less absolute than 
 that which the Church had urged its own dogmas 
 could alone enjoy. It was, in fact, the negation of 
 every dogma of the Ultramontane belief. Nor did 
 Acton take pains to conceal his antagonism. 
 177 ‘Conflicts with Rome,’ Home and Foreign Review, April, 1864. 
 
174 PROBLEM OF SOVEREIGNTY 
 
 
 
 
 
 Ultramontanism seemed to him politically dan- 
 gerous and—he would perhaps have identified the 
 two—morally corrupt. ‘A speculative Ultramon- 
 tanism,’ he wrote many years later,’” ‘separate 
 from theories of tyranny, mendacity, and murder, 
 keeping honestly clear of the Jesuit with his lies, 
 of the Dominican with his fagots, of the Popes with 
 their massacres, has not yet been brought to light.’ 
 It was obviously no more than a moral influence 
 in the sphere of politics that Acton desired for his 
 religion. He seems to have regarded it, in England 
 at least, as a voluntary and dissenting sect, which, 
 if in his eyes it enshrined the truth, might yet be 
 held by others untrue, and could not force itself 
 upon an unwilling people.*” But so to believe in 
 the age of Pius IX was to invite the onset of 
 ecclesiastical tragedy. 
 
 The position of Newman is most difficult, at any 
 rate before 1870, to understand.*” The implicit 
 liberalism of his Difficulties of Anglicans has 
 already been noted. He was sympathetic towards 
 Acton in his journalistic difficulties. Huis struggle 
 for a freer Catholic education suggests an accept- 
 ance of some of the most fundamental of liberal 
 ideas.** His antagonism to Manning is one of the 
 
 178 Letters of Lord Acton to Mary Gladstone (2d ed.), p. 104. 
 
 179 This, I take it, is the basic thought of the ‘ Political Thoughts on 
 the Church,’ History of Freedom, p. 188, seq. 
 
 180 Cf. the comments of Lord Acton in Letters to Mary Gladstone, 
 
 pp. 35 and 107, especially p. 35. 
 181 Cf, Wilfrid Ward, Life of Newman, Chapters XXI and XXIV. 
 
THEORY OF CATHOLIC REVIVAL 175 
 
 most famous episodes in his career. Yet his 
 liberalism is always wavering and hesitant, hedged 
 about by subtle reservations and implied doubts 
 so that it is dangerous to affix to him the label of 
 any party. The attitude of W. G. Ward he 
 stigmatised as ‘preposterous,”*’ yet he did not 
 hesitate to accept the Encyclical of 1864. He 
 believed in papal infallibility because, seemingly, | 
 he did not deem it could be dangerous; ‘I am 
 confident,’ he told Pusey,**” ‘that it must be so 
 limited practically that it will leave things as they 
 are.’ To the latter he defended the Jesuits—the 
 main weapon in the service of reaction.“ He had 
 written a famous article in the Rambler on the 
 place of the laity in the Catholic Church which 
 struck a serious blow at the notion of despotic 
 ecclesiasticism.*’ He hated passionately the ex- 
 treme Ultramontane views of. Ward and Louis 
 Veuillot,“*° which seemed to him to commit 
 Catholic theology to a view entirely out of accord 
 with historic tradition. Yet he insisted always on 
 the necessity of implicit loyalty to the Pope. ‘As 
 a matter of Principle,’ he wrote to Pusey,” ‘the 
 Pope must have universal jurisdiction’ because 
 otherwise there would be no bond of unity in the 
 
 182 Wilfrid Ward, Life of Newman, II, 101. 
 
 183 [bid., II, 101. 
 
 184 [bid., II, 114. 
 
 185 Cf. Life, Vol. II, Chapter XXV, for an account of the Curia’s 
 attitude to it. 
 
 186 Cf, the impressive comment of Mr. Wilfrid Ward, Life, II, 213. 
 187 Life, II, 223. 
 
176 PROBLEM OF SOVEREIGNTY 
 
 Church. ‘An honorary head,’ he said,” ‘call him 
 primate, or premier duke, does not affect the real 
 force, or enter into the essence of a political body 
 and is not worth contending about.’ Yet at the 
 same time that he endorsed this virtual Austin- 
 ianism he noted the limitations in practice. ‘His 
 abstract power is not a practical fact. . . . I ob- 
 serve it is not so much even an abstract doctrine 
 as it is a principle; by which I mean something 
 far more subtle and intimately connected with our 
 system itself than a doctrine, so as not to be con- 
 tained in the written law, but to be, like the 
 common law of the land, or rather the principles 
 of the Constitution, contained in the very idea of 
 our being what we are.” It is perhaps not 
 difficult to understand why the abstractly logical 
 mind of Ward should have been puzzled by the 
 tortuous subtleties of Newman’s attitude. He 
 does, in fact, seem, on occasion, to have been rather 
 the master, than the servant of truth. 
 
 IV 
 
 At Rome there were few hesitations. The 
 dogmatisation of the Immaculate Conception was 
 essentially a Jesuit victory,” and it was the Jesuits 
 who were the main upholders of papal infalli- 
 
 188 Jbid. and cf. his emphatic protest against the idea that he was a 
 minimiser, Life, II, 218. 
 
 189 Life, II, 218. 
 
 190 Nielsen, II, 195. 
 
THEORY OF (CATHOLIC REVIVAL | 277 
 
 bility.** Ten years after its promulgation, on the 
 eighth of December, 1864, came the Encyclical 
 Quanta Cura, and its accompanying Syllabus of 
 errors.” In these Pius virtually declared war on 
 modern society. The encyclical condemned the 
 application of naturalism to civil society, liberty of 
 conscience, the right of public worship, the free- 
 dom of the press. Communism was condemned 
 as a ‘destructive error’; excommunication was 
 launched against those who should attack either 
 the rights or the property of the Church.” But 
 striking as was the papal brief, it was almost weak 
 by the side of the formidable Syllabus. Theologi- 
 eal questions apart, the denunciations wandered 
 boldly into the civil sphere. It was no longer 
 permissible to argue that either popes or councils 
 had exceeded their power ;* that the Church could 
 not avail herself of force or of direct or indirect 
 temporal power;’” that National Churches could 
 be established ;** that the civil law ought to prevail 
 in a contest between Church and State; that 
 Church and State should be separated ;** that the 
 civil authority may pronounce marriages dis- 
 
 191 Acton, History of Freedom, p. 496. 
 
 192 The authoritative exposition on the papal side is Schrader, Die 
 Encyclika (1865). 
 
 193 Cf, Nielsen’s comment, op. cit., II, 259. 
 
 194 Syllabus section 23, 
 
 195 Section, 24. 
 
 196 Section, 37. 
 
 197 Section 42. 
 198 Section 55. 
 
178 PROBLEM OF SOVEREIGNTY 
 
 
 
 
 
 solved ;*” that a civil contract can constitute a true 
 marriage; that the Catholic religion need no 
 longer be the only religion of the State;’" and, 
 finally, there came the last and most tremendous 
 of anathemas against the thought that the Roman 
 Pontiff could or should reconcile himself with 
 progress, liberalism and modern civilisation.*” 
 
 The promulgation of this tremendous indict- 
 ment had not been made without opposition or 
 careful thought. The task had occupied four able 
 theologians of the Curia almost ten years.*” 
 Dupanloup had urged Antonelli to withhold it on 
 the ground that trouble would be bound to follow 
 its publication; and the Archbishop of Tours had 
 piven similar advice.” It was probably the 
 growth of liberal Catholicism in France and 
 Belgium which finally provoked its promulgation. 
 In the Congress of Malines in 1863, Montalembert 
 had read a brilliant essay on a ‘Free Church in a 
 Free State’ and had been immediately delated to 
 Rome.”” The publication of most of the Syllabus 
 in France was actually prohibited by the French 
 government.” In England, Newman insisted that 
 
 199 Section 67. 
 
 200 Section 73. 
 
 201 Section 79. 
 
 202 Section 30. 
 
 203 Nielsen, II, 262. 
 
 204 Dupanloup’s protest is very striking. See the life by Lagrange, 
 II, 279. 
 
 205 The essay was published in 1865. For the charge of heresy, see 
 
 Oliphant, Memvir of Montalembert, II, 268. 
 206 Nielsen, II, 265. 
 
THEORY OF CATHOLIC REVIVAL 179 
 
 the document did not come from the Pope; but 
 W.G. Ward immediately accepted it as infallible, 
 and seems to have rejoiced in the variety of sub- 
 jects with which it dealt.’ It seems probable that 
 Newman’s view was the more correct; for Lord 
 Acton has pointed out that the officials of the Curia 
 emphasised the informality of the Syllabus and 
 that Pius himself did not dare to repudiate the 
 minimising interpretations.” But when all the 
 explanations had been made, the document still 
 remained as a forcible and thoroughgoing chal- 
 lenge. 
 
 A yet more striking determination was to come. 
 Even before the issue of the Syllabus, his decision 
 to effect the restoration of the papal power had 
 made Pius convinced of the necessity of a General 
 Council.** The need of the Church, doctrinally, 
 politically, intellectually, was immense, and the 
 decision was in a high degree intelligible. Nor 
 was care lacking to obtain a general consensus of 
 ecclesiastical opinion before any decisive step was 
 taken.** By 1867, Pius had finally made up his 
 mind; and some of the bishops who were at Rome 
 for the celebration of the eighteenth celebration 
 of St. Peter urged the need for a definition of papal 
 
 207 Life, II, 101. 
 
 208 W. G. Ward and the Catholic Revival, p. 248. 
 
 209 History of Freedom, p. 496. Lord Acton’s testimony is the more 
 important since he probably had access to what he called the ‘esoteric’ 
 sources, 
 
 210 History of Freedom, p. 492. 
 211 Nielsen, II, 291. 
 
180 PROBLEM OF SOVEREIGNTY 
 
 infallibility. ‘To proclaim the Pope infallible,’ 
 says Lord Acton,’ ‘was their compendious secu- 
 rity against hostile States and Churches, against 
 human liberty and authority, against disintegrat- 
 ing tolerance, and rationalising science, against 
 error and sin.’ Even at the time when the dogma 
 of the Immaculate Conception had been promul- 
 gated, the idea of infallibility had been in Pius’ 
 mind.”* Manning, then in Rome, had taken a vow 
 to devote his utmost efforts to secure the publica- 
 tion of the new dogma; and on his return to Eng- 
 land he began to move Catholic opinion in that 
 direction.”* The Jesuits, of course, were whole- 
 heartedly enthusiastic; and the presence of three 
 of their leading members upon the dogmatic 
 commission seemed to point to the direction in 
 which affairs would trend.” 
 
 The determination was not made known without 
 grave misgivings on the part of those outside 
 the Ultramontane party. Manning tells us that 
 Baron Hiibner, then Austrian ambassador at 
 Rome, felt it would injure the Church;** even the 
 ecclesiastically minded Ollivier feared that the 
 omission of an invitation to the sovereigns of 
 Europe was tantamount to the separation of 
 
 212 History of Freedom, p. 495. Cf. Manning, True Story of the 
 Vatican Couneil, p. 53. 
 
 213 Friedrich, Tagebuch, p. 294. 
 
 214 Purcell, Life of Manning, II, 420. 
 
 215 History of Freedom, p. 500. 
 216 Purcell, II, 457. 
 
THEORY? OF CATHOLICVREVIVAL \) 181 
 
 Church and State.” Prince Hohenlohe, then 
 foreign minister of Bavaria, urged the govern- 
 ments of Europe to intervene; and the publica- 
 tion of Janus’ Pope and the Council gave the 
 liberal Catholics possession of an overwhelming 
 historical indictment against the projected defini- 
 tion which neither the action of the Index nor the 
 reply of Hergenrother could adequately efface. 
 Hefele, greater as a historian than as a bishop, 
 condemned infallibility in a stinging phrase.” In 
 England, Newman did not conceal his fears. He 
 stimulated Father Ryder to write a trenchant 
 attack on Ward’s extremism, and personally 
 identified his views with those of the pamphlet.” 
 He urged a friend to discuss the condemnation of 
 Pope Honorius, one of the crucial cases in the argu- 
 ment against infallibility.“* The dogma itself he 
 regarded not as certain but as probable and ‘any- 
 how it . . . must be fenced round and limited by 
 conditions.” While he did not doubt that what 
 the General Council pronounced would be the 
 word of God, ‘still we may,’ he wrote to Canon 
 Walker,” ‘well feel indignant at the intrigue, 
 trickery and imperiousness which is the human 
 side of its history—and it seems a dereliction of 
 
 217 Nielsen, II, 296. 
 
 218 Ibid., II, 301. 
 
 219 Ibid., II, 310. 
 
 220 Life, II, 224. 
 
 221 Ibid., II, 235. 
 
 222 Ibid., II, 236. 
 223 Ibid., II, 240. 
 
182 PROBLEM OF SOVEREIGNTY 
 
 
 
 duty not to do one’s part to meet them.’ He 
 criticised with scornful indignation the ‘vBpus op 
 Jiov kvadddrov, the arrogant tpse dixit of various 
 persons who would crush every opinion in theology 
 which is not theirs,”** and elsewhere he stigmatised 
 the extreme Ultramontanes as an ‘insolent and 
 aggressive faction.”” He prayed ‘those great 
 early Doctors of the Church . . . to avert so great 
 a calamity. If it is God’s will that the Pope’s 
 infallibility should be defined, then it is his blessed 
 will to throw back the times and moments of that 
 triumph He has destined for His Kingdom.” 
 What is done, he told Ambrose de Lisle,” ‘I will 
 accept as His act; but until then, I will believe it 
 impossible.’ Nor did he like the atmosphere in 
 which the proposed definition was enshrouded. 
 ‘To outsiders like me,’ he told Father Whitty,” 
 ‘it would seem as if a grave dogmatic question was 
 being treated merely as a move in ecclesiastical 
 polities,’ and he pointed out its effect in causing 
 a recrudescence of anti-Catholic sentiment in 
 England. It is clear that Newman was absolutely 
 convinced of the impolicy of the Jesuits’ decision 
 even while he was prepared loyally to abide by its 
 consequences. 
 
 Protests of all kinds, were, however, unavailing ; 
 and after some stormy scenes the Council passed 
 
 224 Ibid., IT, 241. 
 
 225 For the curious history of this epithet see the Life, II, 289-290. 
 
 226 Life, II, 288. 
 
 227 Ibid., II, 298. 
 228 Ibid., II, 298. 
 
THEORY OF CATHOLIC REVIVAL 183 
 
 the dogma on the eighteenth of July, 1870.7 Amid 
 the horrors of the Franco-German War and the 
 almost immediate fall of Rome men perhaps 
 hardly realised that the event had come to pass. 
 It had, of course, its tremendous consequences. 
 The excommunication of Dollinger deprived the 
 Church of its greatest living historian; and if 
 Hefele submitted it was permissible to doubt 
 whether he believed.** Infallibility did not pre- 
 vent the confiscation of Church property in Italy,” 
 and in Germany it gave birth to the famous Falck 
 Laws. Bavaria did not permit the publication of 
 the Bull which announced the definition on the 
 ground that priests could no longer be loyal sub- 
 jects. of the Crown.’ France was too occupied 
 with its internal reconstruction to pay much atten- 
 tion to the change; and, in any case, nationalistic 
 sentiment would probably have been sufficient to 
 prevent any action similar to that of Germany. 
 It was on political and diplomatic grounds that the 
 publication of Veuillot’s paper, L’Univers, was 
 forbidden.*** 
 
 In England, for the moment, the definition made 
 little stir. Statesmen were more interested in the 
 Franco-German War, and its possible relation to 
 
 229 Nielsen, II, 371 f. History of Freedom, p. 549. 
 
 230 A very beautiful little volume translated in England as Letters 
 and Declarations on the Vatican Decrees gives the history of Dollinger’s 
 relation to the Church after the definition. 
 
 231 Cf. Schulte, Die Altakatholicismus, pp. 222, 223-228. 
 
 232 Nielsen, II, 431. 
 
 233 Nielsen, II, 431. 
 
 234 Nielsen, II, 449. 
 
184 PROBLEM OF SOVEREIGNTY 
 
 Belgium to give heed to the politics of ecclesias- 
 ticism. Measures like the Education and Land 
 Bills were more than sufficient to absorb their 
 attention. But in 1873, Mr. Gladstone’s Irish 
 University Bill failed and the Irish Catholic 
 bishops were mainly responsible for its failure.” 
 In the next year Mr. Gladstone retired from the 
 leadership of the Liberal party, and, in his leisure, 
 had the opportunity to renew his acquaintance 
 with Dr. Dollinger. Not unnaturally he studied 
 anew the problem of infallibility and he could not 
 help being moved to indignation at the sufferings 
 of a man whose only faults were his scholarship 
 and his honesty. With Mr. Gladstone, thought 
 was commensurate with action. On his return to 
 England he launched a bitter attack on the Ritual- 
 ist movement in the Anglican Church. He traced 
 its existence to the new and vaunting pretensions 
 of the Roman Curia. It has, he wrote,” ‘substi- 
 tuted for the proud boast of semper eadem a 
 policy of violence and change of faith . . . when 
 no one can become her convert without renouncing 
 his moral and mental freedom, and placing his civil 
 loyalty and duty at the mercy of another.’ 
 
 These were hard words, and it was perhaps not 
 unnatural that they should have aroused keen 
 resentment.’ But it was not Mr. Gladstone’s 
 
 235 So Ward in the Life of Newman, II, 401, and Gladstone, Vatt- 
 canism, p. 41. 
 
 236 Contemporary Review, 1874, p. 671. 
 
 237 Vatican Decrees, p. 7. I use an edition of 1874 published in New 
 York by Appletons. 
 
THEORY OF CATHOLIC REVIVAL 185 
 
 
 
 
 
 habit to shrink from justifying his conclusions. 
 In his Vatican Decrees in their bearing on Civil 
 Allegiance he explained at length the causes which 
 had led to his angry outburst. The Church of 
 Rome, he argued, occupied a position essentially 
 different from all other churches. While they 
 loyally accepted the sovereignty of the State in 
 return for their religious freedom, the Church of 
 Rome, like the medieval Church, desired to lord it 
 over the world.** That desire might be resisted 
 as of old were not Rome now fighting with new 
 weapons; for she had made a claim to the accept- 
 ance of her demands incompatible either with 
 civil right or the duty of obedience.*” He urges 
 that in the Syllabus of 1864, ‘Rome has refurbished 
 and paraded anew every rusty tool she was fondly 
 thought to have disused.” The effect of this 
 novelty is to bring once more into the field of 
 discussion certain civil questions which must be 
 answered differently from the reply given at the 
 time of Catholic emancipation. He points out that 
 the strength of antagonism to Catholic liberties 
 ‘had lain in the allegation that it was not possible 
 for the consistent Roman Catholic to pay to the 
 Crown of this country an entire allegiance, and 
 that the admission of persons, thus self-disabled, 
 to Parliament, was inconsistent with the safety of 
 State and nation.”* But satisfactory assurances 
 
 238 Tbid., p. 11. 
 239 Ibid., p. 12. 
 240 Ibid., p. 16. 
 241 Tbid., p. 25. 
 
186 PROBLEM OF SOVEREIGNTY 
 
 were given, and the emphatic denial of civil 
 responsibility to the Pope made by men like. 
 Bishop Doyle, the declaration of the Vicars 
 Apostolic, and the Hierarchy, was sufficient to 
 make men accept as a limitation in theory what 
 was inevitably necessary as a limitation in prac- 
 tice.” But the situation, in Mr. Gladstone’s view, 
 had now changed. ‘Since that time,’ he wrote,” 
 ‘all these propositions have been reversed. ‘The 
 Pope’s infallibility, when he speaks ex cathedra 
 on faith and morals, has been declared, with the 
 assent of the Bishops of the Roman Church, to 
 be an article of faith, binding on the conscience 
 of every Christian; his claim to the obedience of 
 his spiritual subjects has been declared in like 
 manner without any practical limit or reserve; 
 and his supremacy, without any reserve of civil 
 rights, has been similarly affirmed to include 
 everything which relates to the discipline and 
 government of the Church throughout the world. 
 And these doctrines, we now know on the high- 
 est authority, it is of necessity for salvation 
 to believe.’ 
 
 This seemed to him a claim to universal sover- 
 eignty. It would of necessity involve the State 
 no less than the individual. The medieval history 
 of the Papacy showed how easily the gap between 
 individual and corporate difficulty might be 
 bridged. There were cases of national protest and 
 
 242 Ibid., p. 31-33. 
 243 Ibid., p. 33. 
 
THEORY OF CATHOLIC REVIVAL 187 
 
 the Papacy did not always emerge successful from 
 the conflict. Yet, on the whole, a theory of sepa- 
 rate spheres, such as was the basis of the Roman 
 Catholic Relief Act, was worked out—a theory 
 for which it seems that Mr. Gladstone did not 
 hesitate to claim divine sanction.”* But of this an 
 end had been made. The stern demand for abso- 
 lute obedience ‘swept into the papal net whole 
 multitudes of facts, whole systems of government, 
 prevailing, though in different degrees, in every 
 country in the world.”*” It denied the severance 
 of Church and State even while it asserted the 
 superiority of the former organisation. It drew 
 within the ecclesiastical domain much of what had 
 formerly been deemed matter for the State’s 
 decision. The result was that ‘this new version 
 of the principles of the papal Church inexorably 
 binds its members to the admission of these exorbi- 
 tant claims, without any refuge or reservation on 
 behalf of their duty to the Crown.” The civil 
 loyalty of Catholics was thus made impossible 
 since their ecclesiastical sovereign had claimed the 
 rights of their temporal sovereign also. 
 
 If this was a logical deduction from the Decree 
 of 1870 two conclusions seemed to Mr. Gladstone 
 to follow. Either the Catholics must reject the 
 possible civic interpretation of the new dogma, or 
 the assurances of the twenties must be repeated. 
 
 244 Ibid., p. 41. 
 
 245 Ibid., p. 43. 
 246 Ibid., p. 45. 
 

 
 188 PROBLEM OF SOVEREIGNTY 
 
 For the claims had substance behind them. It was 
 true that the Court of Rome could neither secure 
 an invasion of England, or fulfil the visions of 
 Gregory VII." But a contest with civic authority 
 Rome was determined to have, and the result of 
 the Falck Laws seemed to him to demonstrate that 
 she was merely fighting her enemies one by one.”* 
 The events in Germany and the intransigeant 
 policy of Rome in Italy seemed to him to portend 
 danger of no mean kind. It was a serious incentive 
 to European wars because the possible disaffection 
 of Roman Catholic subjects might hinder the 
 action of the State.° He seems to suggest that 
 the type of influence which the Dogma of Infalli- 
 bility of 1870 is bound to extend was shown in the 
 influence of the Irish prelates over the Nationalist 
 members in 1873.*° The attitude of converts to 
 Rome seems to him fraught with danger. The 
 phrase ‘a Catholic first, an Englishman afterward’ 
 seems to him now to mean ‘that the ‘‘convert’’ 
 intends, in case of conflict between the Queen and 
 the Pope, to follow the Pope, and let the Queen 
 shift for herself; which happily, she well can do.”** 
 Before 1870 Mr. Gladstone felt that he could ask for 
 religious liberty ‘for whatsoever be the follies of 
 ecclesiastical power in his Church, the Church 
 
 247 Ibid., p. 47. 
 
 248 Ibid., p. 50. 
 
 249 Tbid., p. 52. It is curious to speculate how differently Mr. Glad- 
 stone would have written in 1916. 
 
 250 Ibid., p. 62. 
 251 Ibid., p. 64. 
 
THEORY OF CATHOLIC REVIVAL 189 
 
 itself, has not required of him, with binding 
 authority, to assent to any principles inconsistent 
 with his civil duty.”°’ But of that consolation he 
 has been deprived even though he will continue to 
 urge the necessity of toleration. For, at bottom, 
 he believes in the loyalty of English Catholics. 
 What they did in the sixteenth century they will, 
 he hopes, do in the nineteenth. He hopes it, and 
 expects that it will be so. And into the hateful 
 path of religious persecution England will not 
 be drawn by the ‘myrmidons of the Apostolic 
 Chamber.” 
 
 If it is in no sense an original thesis, it is, at all 
 events, an ably argued one, and it derived a peculiar 
 significance when maintained by the most impor- 
 tant of English statesmen. The whole point of 
 Mr. Gladstone’s thesis was in his emphasis on the 
 novelty of the position in which English Catholies 
 had been placed: they had before been able truth- 
 fully to make declaration of their loyalty; now 
 they were compelled to make choice between Queen 
 and Pope. But, as a fact, Mr. Gladstone’s argu- 
 ment was vitiated by exactly the same fallacies as 
 those which, half a century before, had been used 
 to defeat Catholic emancipation. He depicted 
 Vaticanism as an attack on the sovereignty of the 
 State. The sphere of the latter body was invaded 
 if the implications of papal infallibility were 
 fulfilled. But that was in its turn to imply that 
 
 252 Ibid., p. 65. 
 253 Ibid., p. 67. 
 
190 PROBLEM OF SOVEREIGNTY 
 
 the claims were possible of fulfilment, and of this 
 Mr. Gladstone himself made emphatic denial. It 
 was exactly that old problem of a unified allegiance 
 which, as Sydney Smith had so whimsically shown, 
 no man can have if his interests are of a varied 
 character."* It was not very serious that Pius 1X 
 should make claim to the lordship of the world 
 if he could not make good his pretensions. If 
 Catholics did not obey the Papacy in the sixteenth 
 or in the seventeenth century, when the reality of 
 its power was a far more powerful tradition with 
 men, it was hardly likely that they would bow to 
 it in the nineteenth, when its temporal possessions 
 were gone and it stood as a forlorn ghost of a glory 
 which now adorned a novel and secular power. 
 To a claim of spiritual supremacy Mr. Gladstone 
 could raise no objection; he had himself often 
 ‘enough lamented the Erastianism of the English 
 State.” If, as it seemed, the spiritual demand 
 was justified, and the temporal was unimportant, 
 Mr. Gladstone was fighting a shadow. The sover- 
 eignty he feared had no more than a historic 
 interest. It depended, as he must have realised, 
 on the consent of men; and there was no evidence 
 that that consent could in any dangerous degree 
 be obtained. 
 
 The answers to Mr. Gladstone’s pamphlets were 
 varying in nature, and perhaps of a greater interest 
 than his own attack. Manning at once declared 
 
 254 Supra, n. 22. 
 255 Morley, Life, I, 282. 
 
THEORY OF CATHOLIC REVIVAL 191 
 
 that the decrees ‘have in no jot or tittle changed 
 either the obligations or the conditions of civil 
 allegiance’ of Catholics whose ‘civil allegiance is 
 as undivided as that of all Christians, and of all 
 men who recognise a divine or moral natural law’; 
 but he was careful to emphasise that ‘the civil 
 allegiance of no man is unlimited, and therefore 
 the civil allegiance of all men who believe in God, 
 and are governed by conscience, is in that sense 
 divided.” Lord Acton pointed out that the 
 claims of the Ultramontane school had a far longer 
 history than Mr. Gladstone cared to admit, and 
 he wisely, if a little sardonically, suggested that 
 to repel the demand of the Pope needed a little 
 more than ‘a written demonstration.”” ‘The fact 
 is,’ said Lord Emly, one of the most distinguished 
 of Catholic laymen,”* ‘we should deal with a 
 Pope’s orders to be disloyal as Stephen Langton 
 and the Barons of Runnymede dealt with a similar 
 order.’ Lord Camoys and Mr. Henry Petre spoke 
 in similar fashion.”® Nor were Protestants want- 
 ing to repudiate Mr. Gladstone’s contentions. His 
 assumptions appeared to the Edinburgh Review 
 entirely erroneous. ‘English Roman Catholics,’ it 
 wrote,” ‘are quite as loyal now as they were in 
 the days of Lord Howard of Effingham and the 
 Spanish Armada . . . all men in some degree hold 
 
 256 Times of November 9, 1874. 
 
 257 Times, same date as the letter of Manning. 
 
 258 Life of A. P. de Lisle, Vol. II, p. 56. 
 
 259 Annual Register for 1874, p. 105. 
 260 Hdinburgh Review, July, 1875, p. 557. 
 
‘ 
 \ 
 
 192 PROBLEM OF SOVEREIGNTY 
 
 a divided allegiance to conscience and the law. A 
 Quaker who refuses to take an oath .. . A Non- 
 conformist who refuses to pay a Church rate, .. . 
 the High Church party in England, are contin- 
 ually setting the law at defiance. We think these 
 conscientious people are mistaken, but we do not 
 accuse them of throwing off their allegiance,’ and, 
 in an admirable sentence it pointed out that 
 ‘Catholics do and can give their consciences the 
 benefit of the great ‘‘nevertheless.’’”* The 
 Times, while pointing out that certain claims of 
 Dr. Manning would ‘possess the power of deter- 
 mining for Queen Victoria and her subjects the 
 bounds of their mutual obligations,’ did not fear 
 the claims. ‘The guns may look very formidable,’ 
 it argued,” ‘but they require men to fire them; and 
 if the word of command should ever be given, the 
 obedience rendered to it will be too irregular to 
 produce any dangerous result.’ Father Reilly 
 protested that a truly divine religion could not 
 possibly make its members disloyal subjects of 
 society.” Clearly, here, the notion of an absolute 
 sovereignty is disregarded altogether. Your sover- 
 eign obtains what obedience he can, and it seems 
 to be admitted that the judgment, or the con- 
 science, of men, is in truth the actual arbiter of 
 events. 
 
 Yet different interpretations were not wanting. 
 
 261 [bid., p. 559. 
 
 262 Times of November 14, 1874. 
 
 263 See the quotation from his pamphlet in the Dublin Review for 
 1876, p. 83. 
 
THEORY OF CATHOLIC REVIVAL = 193 
 
 W. G. Ward boldly stated that the Bull Unam 
 Sanctam was his ideal and that he had ‘no other 
 wish than that its doctrines may find acceptance 
 in Europe.” The ground of his attitude is quite 
 evident. A Catholic theocracy on earth was his 
 ideal and without the absolute supremacy of the 
 Pope it seemed to him that anarchy would follow.” 
 Ambrose de Lisle, on the other hand, thought ‘it 
 dangerous and untrue’ thus to assert the supe- 
 riority of the ecclesiastical to the civil power, or 
 to suggest that the former defined the limits of the 
 latter.“ The distinguished historian Thirlwall 
 echoed with grave concern Mr. Gladstone’s theo- 
 ries. ‘It has now become impossible,’ he said,” 
 ‘for a Roman Catholic, consistently with the first 
 principles of his religion, to be a loyal subject of 
 any government which is not itself subject to the 
 Pope.’ Canon Oakeley, one of the most distin- 
 guished of the Newmanite converts, argued that 
 the Syllabus and its consequences embodied no 
 more than the natural consequences of the Oxford 
 Movement. ‘There is not,’ he told Mr. Glad- 
 stone,” ‘one of the popular maxims condemned in 
 the Syllabus which such men as Mr. Keble and 
 Mr. Hurrell Froude would not have held in utter 
 detestation,’ and he argued for the dutiful recep- 
 tion of the Vatican decrees. But the two fullest 
 
 264 Dublin Review, 1875, p. 179. 
 
 265 Ibid., p. 197. 
 
 266 Times of November 23, 1874. 
 
 267 Charges, Vol. II, p. 302. 
 268 Annual Register for 1874, p. 107. 
 
194 PROBLEM OF SOVEREIGNTY 
 
 
 
 answers, on the Ultramontane side, to Mr. Glad- 
 stone, came from Manning, and his subordinate, 
 Monsignor Capel. Cardinal Manning, in his brief 
 note to the Times, had already explained that the 
 civil allegiance of Catholics was unimpaired by the 
 promulgation of the dogma. He now explained 
 the grounds upon which his assertion was based. 
 He pointed out again that no allegiance is undi- 
 vided. ‘Every moral being,’ he wrote,” ‘is under 
 two authorities, human and divine. The child is 
 under the authority of parents, and the authority 
 of God; the subject is under the authority of the 
 Civil State and the divine authority of natural 
 or revealed religion. Unless we claim infallibility 
 for the State, its acts must be liable to revision and 
 resistance by natural conscience. An unlimited 
 obedience to parents or to States would generate 
 a race of unlimited monsters.’ So far he had done 
 no more than to give an admirable criticism of 
 Austinianism. But he proceeded to questions of 
 a different kind. He urged that to allow complete 
 liberty of conscience was virtually to allow anarchy 
 and against this the Church must provide corporate 
 protection. The sixty-third proposition of the 
 Syllabus adjudged anathema against him who 
 rebelled against legitimate princes. ‘The political 
 conscience of Catholics,’ he said,” ‘is not left to 
 the individual judgment alone. It is guided by the 
 whole Christian morality, by the greatest system 
 
 269 The Vatican Decrees, London, 1875, p. 37. 
 270 Tbid., p. 38. 
 
THEORY OF CATHOLIC REVIVAL = 195 
 
 
 
 of ethical legislation the world has ever seen, the 
 Canon Law and the Moral Theology of the Catholic 
 Church.’ But this was virtually to admit that the 
 Church controlled the Catholic as a citizen, which 
 was exactly the position against which Mr. Glad- 
 stone had made his protest. Nor did Manning 
 stop here. While he admitted that, within his own 
 sphere, the State was a perfect and supreme 
 society, he denied that it was the highest society 
 on earth; the Church was higher than the State 
 because it had a higher aim and was therefore 
 supreme above the State. What did that suprem- 
 acy imply? One thing only to his mind: that the 
 Church only can fix the limits of its own juris- 
 diction;*” and he admitted that if it can fix the 
 limits of its own jurisdiction, it can fix the limits 
 of all other jurisdictions. From this, as he con- 
 ceived, two consequences followed: the Church did 
 not concern itself with temporal matters, and in 
 all things which hinder or promote the eternal 
 happiness of men, the Church has a power to judge 
 and enforce.” 
 
 It will perhaps be admitted that the argument 
 is more controversially interesting than historically 
 accurate. Its truth can only be maintained by 
 giving to the word ‘eternal’ a connotation which 
 includes all temporal things. But temporal things 
 had been adjudged the province of the State, and 
 
 271 Ibid., p. 46. 
 
 272 Ibid., p. 54. 
 278 Ibid., p. 55. 
 
196 PROBLEM OF SOVEREIGNTY 
 
 on that basis Manning had suggested that if each 
 organisation kept to its rightful sphere, collision 
 was impossible. He did not doubt which was the 
 offender. ‘Modern Liberalism,’ he wrote in 1877," 
 ‘is the Caesarism of the State. Liberalism seems 
 to believe that ‘‘all power in heaven and on earth”’ 
 was given to it—that the State has power to define 
 the limits of its own jurisdiction and also those 
 of the Church. All sin and blasphemy against God 
 is forgiven to men. There is only one unpardon- 
 able sin. Any one who speaks a word against the 
 omnipotence of the State is disloyal, and shall 
 never be forgiven.’ So thoroughgoing a criticism 
 leaves no doubt as to the direction in which 
 Manning’s sympathies lay. Theoretically, it seems 
 clear that his attitude lays itself open to the 
 objections urged by Mr. Gladstone. If only the 
 Church could define the limits of her jurisdiction, 
 and if she chose, as under Gregory VII and 
 Innocent ITI, the medieval Church seems to have 
 chosen, to interfere with every possible domain of 
 civilised life, then collision between Church and 
 State was not merely possible but inevitable. That, 
 in fact, was the central problem of Ultramontan- 
 ism. It postulated a theocracy of which the Pope 
 was the Austinian sovereign. It could hardly then 
 be surprised if those out of sympathy with Catholic 
 ideals showed themselves unwilling to admit such 
 unlimited power. Cardinal Manning, indeed, 
 when confronted with the facts, seems to have 
 274 Nineteenth Century, 1877, Vol. I, p. 804. 
 
THEORY OF CATHOLIC REVIVAL 197 
 
 been driven to that conclusion. ‘The first prin- 
 ciples of morals,’ he wrote in a very striking 
 paragraph,” ‘forbid the extension of the supreme 
 judicial power of the Church on such a civil order 
 as that of England. When it was de facto subject 
 to the Church, England had, by its own free will, 
 accepted the laws of the Church. It can never 
 again be subject to such laws except on the same 
 condition—namely, by its own free will. Till then 
 the highest laws of morality render the exercise 
 of such Pontifical acts in England impossible.’ 
 It is difficult to see exactly why this should be the 
 ease unless the Austinianism for which Manning 
 had previously contended becomes impossible. For 
 whereas he had argued for a papal sovereignty 
 based upon Divine Right, now he does not ask for 
 its exercise except upon the basis of human consent 
 to its activities. In such a connotation the Austin- 
 ian spectre is more formidable in appearance than 
 in reality. 
 
 Monsignor Capel went even further in the 
 direction of an extreme interpretation than Man- 
 ning. His historical disquisition it is probably 
 unnecessary at this date to treat with any serious- 
 ness; it is in his political theses that the interest 
 of his pamphlet lies.** He explains that God has 
 established on earth three powers, paternal, civil 
 and spiritual. ‘Each of these powers is supreme 
 and independent in its own province; has full and 
 
 275 Vaticanism, p. 79. 
 276 A Reply to Mr. Gladstone’s Political Expostulation, London, 1875. 
 
198 PROBLEM OF SOVEREIGNTY 
 
 ei 
 
 free activity in its own order; preserves its own 
 autonomy ; and ought never to be absorbed by either 
 of the other powers.” We have, in fact, a kind 
 of Presbyterian doctrine of three kingdoms instead 
 of two, and since allegiance to each is absolute, the 
 theory is really, on the surface at least, a theory 
 of toleration and liberty. But then Monsignor 
 Capel begins to introduce curious limitations. He 
 explains that the Spiritual Power is pre-eminent 
 over the other two not only because of ‘its nobler 
 end and greater empire, but also in its very 
 nature’; for that reason ‘it is manifest that this 
 power is not exercised directly in its own sphere, 
 but likewise indirectly over the actions of the other 
 two powers. In this sense, it is supreme, and the 
 other powers are subordinate to it.” So that the 
 freedom and independence of which he had pre- 
 viously spoken are not really existent. He explains 
 the cause of this seeming contradiction. ‘The 
 Church has held,’ he writes,” ‘that politics, or the 
 science which treats of the State, must necessarily, 
 from its ethical character, present many points of 
 contact with revealed truth. The principles on 
 which it is based flow from the natural law. They 
 ean never, therefore, be in real contradiction with 
 the precepts of the divine and positive law. Hence 
 the State, if it only remain true to its fundamental 
 principles, must ever be in the completest harmony 
 217 Ibid., p. 53. 
 
 278 Ibid., p. 54. 
 279 Ibid., p. 55. 
 
THEORY OF CATHOLIC REVIVAL 199 
 
 with the Church and Revelation. Now so long as 
 this harmony continues, the Church has neither 
 eall nor right to interfere with politics, for earthly 
 politics do not fall within her jurisdiction. The 
 moment, however, the State becomes unfaithful to 
 its principles, and contravenes the divine and 
 positive law, that moment it is the Church’s right 
 and duty, as the guardian of revealed truth, to 
 interfere, and to proclaim to the State the truths 
 which it has ignored, and to condemn the erro- 
 neous maxims which it has adopted.’ So that, in 
 the last analysis, the Ultramontanism of which 
 Capel was representative is only willing to allow 
 the State its freedom so long as its actions meet 
 with the approval of the Church. It goes back 
 to medieval ideas, and reduces politics to a branch 
 of theological study of the truth of which it is 
 necessarily and obviously the sole arbiter.” So 
 that we ultimately have a State that finds the 
 expression of its freedom in compliance with the 
 wishes of the Church; and the Church, we are 
 told, has judged of the conduct of States as a 
 consequence of the universal desire of nations. 
 It is perfectly clear, therefore, that Monsignor 
 Capel’s theories of the Church make it logically 
 impossible to hold the idea of separate supremacies 
 which he had previously put forward; for a 
 supremacy that is not supreme seems rather to 
 
 280 Cf, the very valuable remarks of Dr. Figgis on this nation in the 
 
 introductory lecture to his Gerson to Grotius. 
 281 4 Reply to Mr. Gladstone’s Political Expostulation, p. 61. 
 
200 PROBLEM OF SOVEREIGNTY 
 
 belong to a Looking-Glass world than to a well- 
 reasoned political treatise. It was essentially to 
 bring out the implications of this Ultramontanism, 
 historically and politically, that Dollinger had 
 written his Pope and the Council and Mr. Glad- 
 stone his pamphlet. Logically, Monsignor Capel, 
 lke Manning, virtually admits the main conclu- 
 sions at which Mr. Gladstone arrived, and in theory 
 their conclusions led exactly to that questionable 
 loyalty of which he spoke as established by the 
 new dogma. Where both he and they were in error 
 was in their regarding an Austinian sovereignty 
 as a working hypothesis. Theoretically admirable, 
 in practice it would not work. Mr. Frederic 
 Harrison made this abundantly clear in an admir- 
 able letter. ‘Exeter Hall denounced the opium 
 war,’ he wrote,’ ‘some of our civil and military 
 officers are under the inspiration of Exeter Hall; 
 therefore we may expect them to desert to the 
 enemy in a possible war with China. ‘These 
 exercises of irritating logic are as easy as they 
 are puerile. If every opinion a man may hold is 
 to be followed out to what we think its logical 
 result, and every man is to be supposed in any 
 dilemma which our ingenuity can frame, every 
 man is a rebel.’ The pity was that the advocates 
 of Ultramontanism did not see the application of 
 these remarks no less to their own demands upon 
 
 282 In a letter to the New York Herald quoted in Monsignor Capel’s 
 
 pamphlet, p. 67. The whole letter is an admirable exposition of the 
 real meaning of sovereignty. 
 
THEORY OF CATHOLIC REVIVAL 201 
 
 the minimisers of their own faith, than to the 
 criticism passed upon them by Mr. Gladstone. 
 For the fact is, that in any contest between life 
 and logic, it is not logic that is successful. It 
 required a man whose philosophic outlook was 
 essentially based upon this realisation to under- 
 stand the actual nature of the debate. Newman’s 
 Grammar of Assent, then but four years old, was 
 above all things a study of the psychology of 
 mental processes, and a demonstration that certain 
 dormant conceptions, when once aroused, would 
 justify convictions for which no logic could ade- 
 quately account.**’ But the line between belief and 
 action was not very wide and it required but a step 
 to transfer the ideas of the philosophical volume 
 to the political arena. Quite early in the con- 
 troversy with Mr. Gladstone he determined to 
 speak out his mind, and though his ‘old 
 fingers’—he was then seventy-three—‘did not 
 move quick,’ he seems to have worked with aston- 
 ishing rapidity.“* The Letter to the Duke of 
 Norfolk,*” the Apologia apart, was Newman’s 
 masterpiece. Its profound psychology, its sub- 
 tlety, its humour, its loyalty to his friends, its 
 whimsical castigation of his enemies, place it in 
 
 283 It would be interesting to trace the relation of this attitude to 
 the current psychology of the unconscious. It is of course the argu- 
 ment of James in the famous lecture on Bergson in his Pluralistic 
 Uniwerse. 
 
 284 The Letter to the Duke of Norfolk was begun in October, 1874, 
 and published in January, 1875. Ward, Life of Newman, II, 402-403. 
 
 285 I use an edition published by the Catholic Truth Society of New 
 York in 1875 and all references are to that edition. 
 
202 PROBLEM OF SOVEREIGNTY 
 
 
 
 
 
 a class by itself of the controversy of which it 
 formed a part. But it is more than a piece of 
 ephemeral argument. It remains with some 
 remarks of Sir Henry Maine and a few brilliant 
 dicta of F. W. Maitland as perhaps the pro- 
 foundest discussion of the nature of obedience 
 and of sovereignty to be found in the English 
 language. In the reply to his critics which Mr. 
 Gladstone published it is clear that of this argu- 
 ment alone did he take serious account.** For 
 Newman, even apart from his theology, was an 
 able political thinker who had devoted the twelve 
 years of his connexion with the Oxford Movement 
 to the study of the problem of sovereignty in its 
 acutest phase—that of Church and State. The 
 pamphlet, in a sense, was the summation of his 
 life’s work. He seems to have felt that the clouds 
 which had gathered about so much of his early life 
 were now dispersing and that he might hope, if 
 not for justification, at any rate for peace.” And 
 it is difficult not to feel that the service he rendered 
 to his Church upon this occasion was closely 
 connected with the bestowal of that honour which 
 was his official vindication. But in the hearts of 
 Englishmen it was a vindication he did not need. 
 
 Newman was quick to see that the central 
 problem was the relations of sovereignty to alle- 
 
 286 Cf. his phrase p. 11, ‘Dr. Newman is like the sun in the intellectual 
 hemisphere of Anglo-Romanism’ and note the different way in which 
 throughout he deals with the criticism of Newman compared with other 
 
 replies. 
 287 Cf, the beautiful letter to Blachford. Life, II, 408. 
 
THEORY OF CATHOLIC REVIVAL 208 
 
 giance on the one hand, and to conscience on the 
 other. The Pope was sovereign and infallible, 
 said Mr. Gladstone; therefore no British subject 
 can be at once loyal to the Crown and a Catholic. 
 But Newman at once points out that there are 
 degrees of obedience and that they determine the 
 nature of sovereignty. Mr. Gladstone, as he said, 
 objected to the ‘supreme direction’ exercised by 
 the Pope over Catholics.** But Newman urges 
 that the State, through the law, makes a precisely 
 similar claim. ‘The State,’ he said, ‘as well as 
 the Church, has the power at its will of imposing 
 laws upon us, laws bearing on our moral duties, 
 our daily conduct, affecting our actions in various 
 ways, and circumscribing our liberties; yet no one 
 would say that the Law, after all, with all its power 
 in the abstract, and its executive vigour in fact, 
 interferes either with our comfort or our con- 
 science.’ But the papal activity is less than this. 
 ‘At first sight,’ Newman says,’ ‘IT have not known 
 where to look for instances of his actual interpo- 
 sition in our private affairs.’ The fact is that, of 
 necessity, whatever be the claims of the Papacy, 
 it can in practice do no more than lay down 
 perfectly general laws and trust to the good sense 
 of Catholics for their wise application to the facts 
 of any particular case.** And he goes on to show 
 how Catholic loyalty to the Pope must receive 
 
 288 Letter to Duke of Norfolk, p. 52. 
 289 Tbid., p. 53. 
 290 Tbid., p. 54. 
 291 [bid., p. 57. 
 
204 PROBLEM OF SOVEREIGNTY 
 
 limitation in the event. ‘Suppose England,’ he 
 wrote,’ ‘were to send her ironclads to support 
 Italy against the Pope and his allies, English 
 Catholics would be very indignant, they would 
 take part with the Pope before the war began, they 
 would use all constitutional means to hinder it; 
 but who believes that when they were once in the 
 war, their action would be anything else than 
 prayers and exertions for a termination?’ In so 
 difficult a case, in fact, Catholics would do no more 
 than play the perfectly constitutional part of an 
 opposition in Parliament, as did John Bright 
 during the Crimean war. But what, Newman 
 asks, would Catholics do if a direct command from 
 the Pope came actively to oppose their country? 
 If, for example, Parliament forced Catholics to 
 attend Protestant service weekly, and the Pope 
 told Catholics to disobey the law, he would obey 
 the Pope. To Mr. Gladstone’s argument that such 
 a case 1s impossible he replies by admitting it, and, 
 almost in Mr. Harrison’s words he points out the 
 obvious circumscription to which an absolute 
 obedience is subject.*’ He would not obey the 
 Pope if, as a Privy Councillor, he was ordered to 
 give acknowledgement to a Prince of Wales who 
 became a Roman Catholic. He would not obey the 
 Pope if, when a soldier or sailor, the Pope ordered 
 all Catholics to retire from the services. In 
 extreme cases, in brief, that is ‘when his conscience 
 
 292 Ibid., p. 64. 
 293 Ibid., p. 66. 
 
THEORY OF CATHOLIC REVIVAL ~— 205 
 
 could not be reconciled to any of the courses of 
 action proposed to him by others,’ he will follow 
 the dictates of his conscience as men like Turre- 
 cremata and Bellarmine have alike argued he must 
 do.** For such a demand of absolute obedience 
 ‘would be transgressing the laws of human nature 
 and human society’ since ‘there is no rule in this 
 world without exceptions.” He is careful to 
 point out that this is not the doctrine of private 
 judgment as held by Protestants; for while with 
 the latter private judgment is the arbiter of 
 common events, with him it is decisive only ‘in very 
 extraordinary and rare, nay, impossible cases.’ 
 The term ‘conscience’ must not be misunderstood. 
 ‘Conscience is not a longsighted selfishness, nor a 
 desire to be consistent with oneself, but it is a 
 messenger from Him who, in nature and in grace, 
 speaks to us behind a veil and teaches and rules 
 us by his representatives.” Such a freedom of 
 conscience no Pope dare deny; did he do so ‘it 
 would be a suicidal act. He would be cutting the 
 ground from under his feet ... on the law of 
 conscience and its sacredness are founded both his 
 authority in theory and power in fact.” If he 
 trampled on the consciences of men thus conceived 
 he would meet his due reward. And conscience 
 thus conceived is the real abiter of conduct. Nor 
 ean it collide with infallibility. For the one, he 
 
 294 Ibid., p. 68. 
 295 Ibid., p. 69. 
 296 Ibid., p. 73. 
 297 Ibid., p. 77. 
 
206 PROBLEM OF SOVEREIGNTY 
 
 
 
 says, quoting St. Thomas, is engaged only with 
 immediate things while infallibility deals with 
 general propositions.”* And he is careful to point 
 out that the Pope ‘is not infallible in his laws, nor 
 in his commands, nor in his acts of state, nor in his 
 administration, nor in his public policy.” He is 
 infallible only when he speaks ex cathedra in the 
 name of the Church; and it is a difficult theological 
 problem to decide when he does so speak. Newman 
 feels certain that the essence of Catholic doctrine 
 is the duty of obeying conscience ‘at all hazards.”” 
 ‘If I am obliged,’ runs his striking conclusion,” 
 ‘to bring religion into after-dinner toasts (which 
 indeed does not seem quite the thing), I shall 
 drink—to the Pope if you please—still to Con- 
 science first, and to the Pope afterwards.’ 
 
 The argument seems complete. Man should do 
 that which he deems morally right, and the only 
 obedience he ean render is the obedience consonant 
 with his ethical standards. Clearly in such a view 
 the sovereign of Austin, the superior who always 
 receives submission to his views, is an unthinkable 
 thing. He is unthinkable because so long as men 
 live they will vary in opinion on fundamental 
 questions, and varying will follow their individual 
 bent. Whether so minimising an interpretation 
 represents with any accuracy the policy of Rome 
 
 298 Ibid., p. 80. 
 
 209 Ibid., p. 81. 
 
 300 [bid., p. 83, and see the interesting citations he gives on this point. 
 301 [bid., p. 86. 
 
LHEORYI OF CATHOLICOREVIVEAL, \ 1207 
 
 is another and very different question.*” Certainly 
 one may doubt whether it would have met with 
 the approval of a1 diavolo del’ Concilio, Manning. 
 For it deprives the Pope of his sovereignty at 
 exactly the point where it is most needed—the 
 crucial instance where it might be put to the test 
 of the event. It is a theory of liberty since it 
 bases power and obedience on the consent of men. 
 In such a view, for instance, Newman has not the 
 right to doubt the morality of Dollinger’s seces- 
 sion; for the highest motives—as was universally 
 admitted—actuated the great historian in the 
 course he took. Certain words of Mr. Gladstone, 
 when he closed this momentous debate, contain a 
 truth of profound importance. ‘It may be true,’ 
 he said,*’’ ‘that the men of good systems are worse 
 than their principles, and the men of bad systems 
 better than their principles.’ Theories which 
 depend for their translation into terms of the 
 event upon an irrevocable certainty in human 
 nature are psychologically fallacious. Men, for the 
 most part, have an unknown factor in their every 
 political equation. Dogma may dream that it has 
 extinguished right at law, and it yet will be found 
 to suffer defeat. Divine right does not prevent the 
 execution of kings. So long as our theories have 
 to validate themselves in practice we may perhaps 
 fear little the remorselessness of their logic. For 
 human nature has evolved its separate guarantees. 
 
 302 Newman claimed for it the sanction of Bishop Fessler—the 
 Secretary-General of the Council. Ibid., p. 105. 
 303 Vaticanism (New York, Harpers, 1875), p. 85. 
 
208 PROBLEM OF SOVEREIGNTY 
 
 Vv 
 
 The problem of Church and State is in reality, 
 as Mr. Figgis has so ably argued,™ but part of the 
 larger problem of the nature of civil society. To 
 distrust the old theory of sovereignty is to strive 
 towards a greater freedom. We have been perhaps 
 too frankly worshippers of the State. Before it 
 we have prostrated ourselves in speechless admira- 
 tion, deeming its nature matter, for the most part, 
 beyond our concern. The result has been the 
 implicit acceptance of a certain grim Hegelianism 
 which has swept us unprotestingly on into the 
 vortex of a great All which is more than ourselves. 
 Its goodness we might not deny. We live, so we 
 are told, but for its sake and in its life and are 
 otherwise non-existent. So the State has become 
 a kind of modern Baal to which the citizen must 
 bow a heedless knee. It has not been seen, or 
 perhaps has been too truly seen, that the death 
 of argument lies in genuflexion.*” 
 
 It is an inadequate attitude thus to perpetrate 
 a meaningless uniformity of outlook. Societies are 
 persons as men are persons. They have—the word 
 matters but little—their ethos, character, nature, 
 identity. They are born to live within the pale of 
 human fellowship. They may be wrong, as men 
 
 304 In his Churches in the Modern State. 
 
 305] should like to refer to Mr. Barker’s brilliant paper on the 
 ‘Discredited State’ in the Political Quarterly for May, 1915, for a very 
 
 full expression of this attitude. I think, however, that he unduly 
 narrows the meaning of personality. 
 
THEORY OF CATHOLIC REVIVAL ~ 209 
 
 
 
 and women are wrong, and the rules of human 
 conduct which the processes of evolution have 
 developed for the individual must be applied to 
 them also. It is no answer to assert the theoretical 
 infallibility of the State to us who possess the 
 record of history. To acquiesce in its sin, to judge 
 of it by criteria other than those of individual 
 action, is to place authority before truth. The 
 sovereignty of the State will pass, as the divine 
 right of kings has had its day. It has been no 
 more than a sword forged in one of the mightiest 
 of political conflicts. It has been a victorious 
 sword but it must be replaced by newer weapons. 
 No dogma can hope for immortality since we live 
 in an age of readjustment and of reconstruction. 
 
 There is an etching of Brangwyn’s in which the 
 artist has depicted the break-up of a discarded 
 vessel. It lies on its side, dominating the picture. 
 It overawes by its impressiveness, by its suggestion 
 of a mighty past. One sees it as a stage in the 
 evolution of sea-craft, a vessel which, in its day, 
 was a very giant of human invention. Then it 
 enabled those who piloted it through unknown and 
 uncharted seas to do voyage of service and dis- 
 covery. But it is at length cast aside. Vessels 
 built on principles more consonant with modern 
 knowledge take its place. .So, with its past 
 splendour borne clearly in mind, it is held to have 
 served its purpose. What it has been, what it has 
 accomplished, is remembered by those who plan 
 the evolution of that science of which it is part; 
 
210 PROBLEM OF SOVEREIGNTY 
 
 
 
 whatever there is in it of good, goes to the making 
 of its successor. So should it be with the dogmas 
 of political thought. At a time when the organisa- 
 tion of the State was the essential need, the dogma 
 of its moral sovereignty was of the highest value. 
 But newer knowledge has come, and with it the 
 need of change. And it is sheer tragedy that men 
 should be unwilling to realise that the majesty of 
 the State is in nowise diminished by a frank 
 recognition of its imperfections. The State, like 
 man, ceases to be human when it is exalted into 
 Godhead. We dare not so exalt it lest we be 
 imprisoned by the errors of the past. For it is 
 ours to hand down undimmed the torch of conscious 
 life. 
 
CHAPTER V 
 DE MAISTRE AND BISMARCK’ 
 
 it 
 
 HE Catholic Revival and the growth of nation- 
 alism are perhaps the two most fundamental 
 facts in the history of the nineteenth century. 
 Round them may very largely be grouped the 
 ideals from which its ultimate canon may be 
 evolved. They are largely antithetic movements; 
 for the series of facts which each sought to control 
 were for the most part identical. It is thus 
 perhaps superficially difficult to discover grounds 
 of intimate resemblance between the greatest of 
 those who gave to the Roman Catholic system the 
 chief rationale of its renascence, and the supreme 
 master of nationalist statesmanship. The nine- 
 teenth century, after all, is essentially an anti- 
 theological age. It is the age which contributed 
 most to the dissolution of ecclesiastic structure, the 
 age in which Cavour destroyed the political foun- 
 dations of the Church,. in which Darwin cast 
 1It is perhaps unnecessary to express the obligation this paper owes 
 
 to the essay by Lord Morley in the first volume of his Miscellanies, to 
 that of Sainte-Beuve in his Portraits littéraires, Vol. II, and above all 
 
 to the masterly analysis of Faguet in his Politiques et Moralistes. See 
 also the brilliant little study by M. Georges Cogordan. 
 
212 PROBLEM OF SOVEREIGNTY 
 
 the corrosive sublimate of demonstrated evolution 
 upon the basis of dogmas which had boasted of 
 their eternal nature. De Maistre, it is clear enough, 
 stands for that old medieval theocracy which the 
 Revolution had made finally impossible. The 
 frank opponent of Bacon, the contemptuous critic 
 of Locke, the unmitigated hater of Voltaire, he 
 seems essentially unaffiliated to the modern world. 
 He is like one of those curious instances of atavism 
 for which the science of heredity is so signally 
 unable to account. It seems at first sight illogical 
 to connect his thought with that of Bismarck who, 
 in creating the German empire, was perhaps 
 instrumental more than any other statesman of his 
 time in rendering impossible the fulfilment of the 
 dream of which De Maistre was the chief expo- 
 nent. Bismarck was, with Cavour, the most 
 national of nineteenth century statesmen, and it 
 was of nationalism that the Ultramontane theory 
 has been the uncompromising antagonist. He was 
 the foe of the Roman Church. For more than a 
 decade he pursued it with a hostility that was at 
 once bitter and unrelenting. His outlook seems 
 antithetic to that of De Maistre. Yet the differ- 
 ences are more apparent than real; and exami- 
 nation suggests that in the search for an adequate 
 perspective they are unimportant. Each aimed, 
 fundamentally, at the same goal; and it was only 
 the formal structure in which their ideas found 
 realisation that marks a distinction in the basis of 
 their thought. 
 
DE MAISTRE AND BISMARCK 213 
 
 II 
 
 There is no problem as to the origin of De 
 Maistre’s fundamental ideas. He was born to hate 
 the Revolution and in his examination of its 
 character he found no signs of good. Every 
 institution he cherished it had overthrown. Every 
 dogma he accepted it had cast away. It had 
 tyrannised over the Church, it had mocked religion, 
 it had executed the king. ‘France was dishonoured 
 by more than a hundred thousand murders and 
 the soil of that noble kingdom was strewn with 
 scaffolds.” The foundations of political authority 
 were overthrown and with them the structure 
 of ecclesiasticism seemed to perish. It was 
 De Maistre’s task to suggest the basis of their 
 reconstruction. 
 
 The character of his response was in a large 
 degree determined by his early life. The member 
 of a distinguished family, he was, as M. Faguet 
 has well pointed out,’ essentially a patrician by 
 nature. His early career had fastened on him the 
 disposition of the bureaucrat who loves order and 
 to whom chaos is the first of sins. He had, even 
 from childhood, a high regard for authority; and 
 even when at the University, he read no book 
 without the permission of his father. Nor can the 
 fact that the Jesuits of Chambéry played their 
 
 2 Considérations sur la France, p. 13. I use an edition published in 
 1910 by Roger and Chernoviz of Paris. 
 3 Politiques et Moralistes, p. 5. 
 
214 PROBLEM OF SOVEREIGNTY 
 
 part in the determination of his career have been 
 without its influence; and we know that to his 
 mother the suppression of that order in France 
 was a serious blow to religion.* T’o an intelligence 
 so trained a shock more deep than that which the 
 ideas of the Revolution must have suggested it is 
 impossible to imagine. The blow came, moreover, 
 when he was nearly forty years of age,’ at a time 
 when the main lines of intellectual development 
 have been finally determined. 
 
 He desired a reconstruction of society and it 
 was such a method as his education had famil- 
 iarised him with that he applied to his work. In 
 no sense of the word a psychologist, it was a logical 
 analysis of the problem that he made. He found 
 a new dogma—the sovereignty of the people— 
 popularised by the Revolution. No item in the 
 term was defined, no implications had been studied. 
 The magie of a phrase had enthralled the intel- 
 ligence of men. There was easy talk of the rights 
 of men, and, once more, no shadow of precision in 
 the talk. Society, he pointed out, was not born, 
 as Rousseau devoutly urged, from deliberation; 
 for that term itself implies the organisation which 
 is society. Nor can we predicate a society before 
 we have a sovereign, in order: that we may refer 
 authority to a popular origin. The very idea of 
 human intercourse implies, to his mind, the idea 
 
 4 Sainte-Beuve, Portraits littéraires, Vol. II (ed. of 1862), p. 389. 
 
 5 He was born in 1753. 
 6 See the biting attack on Rousseau in the Mélanges, pp. 188-192. 
 
DE MAISTRE AND BISMARCK 215 
 
 
 
 of sovereignty ; ‘for the term ‘‘people’”’ suggests an 
 organisation built round a common centre, and 
 without sovereignty there can be neither union nor 
 political unity.” He is equally opposed to the 
 suggestion that man is in any sense an independent 
 being. He admits that the thought is an easy one, 
 but it is founded upon a mistaken interpretation 
 of freedom.* We have to accustom ourselves to 
 grasp firmly the idea of a divine will as the 
 foundation of human society, and only in so far 
 as man acts in harmony with that will is he capable 
 of constructive achievement.” 
 
 It is easy to see the direction in which his 
 thought is moving. To conceive of man as an 
 isolation is to build a State upon the basis of his 
 separatism.” But that is to neglect the fact that 
 the State is essentially an unity, over and above its 
 constituent parts. The attempt to base it upon 
 separatism results in an undue stress of the indi- 
 vidual on the one hand, and of reason on the other. 
 Reason is useless in the preservation of a political 
 society,” and the essence of patriotism is that 
 abnegation of the individual which a separatist 
 theory denies.” That corporate soul which is the 
 centre of national power can never be constructed 
 from thought. ‘If every man thinks out for 
 
 7 Mélanges, p. 192. 
 
 8 Principe Générateur, No. X. Cf. No. XLV. 
 
 9 Mélanges, p. 192. 
 
 10 Cf, the valuable remarks of M. Faguet, op. cit., p. 10. 
 
 11 Mélanges, p. 247. 
 12 T[bid., p. 249. 
 
216 PROBLEM OF SOVEREIGNTY 
 
 himself the principles of government,’ he says, 
 ‘civil anarchy and the destruction of political 
 sovereignty must quickly follow.’ So that the 
 consequence is clear. If reason is insufficient, we 
 must have faith; if argument is inadequate we 
 must have authority. And since what man alone 
 achieves is not destined to endure, he has need of 
 the work of God. As in the Hebraic and Moham- 
 medan systems, the wise legislator will make his 
 political theory a religion also; so will the fidelity 
 of his citizens become a faith and their obedience 
 be exalted into a fanatic enthusiasm.” Religion 
 to him is the keystone of the arch of social 
 structure, and the deeper the study of history the 
 more certain becomes the realisation of how indis- 
 pensable is its alliance.* That was, as Cicero 
 realised,” the secret of Roman success. The states- 
 man dare not neglect it since, crime apart, the best 
 means are the most successful.” 
 
 We have abandoned reason and the individual 
 and their main weapon must follow. If it is 
 necessary to introduce a certain mysticism into the 
 texture of the State, it must be preserved in all 
 its dignity. So he urges that a written constitution 
 is anerror. The danger of its accessibility apart, 
 it contains the stupid error of supposing that the 
 makers of laws are men, that laws are documents, 
 that a nation can be constituted with a pen and 
 
 13 [bid., p. 230. 
 
 14 [bid., p. 236. 
 
 15 De natura deorum, II, 4. 
 16 Lettres sur l’Inquisition, I. 
 
DE MAISTRE AND BISMARCK 217 
 
 paper. History gives evidence to the contrary. 
 The more feeble the institution the more does it 
 tend to take a written form.” Men do not respect 
 that which they see created. A real constitution 
 man can not create; for his function in nature is 
 only to transform. ‘Man,’ he urges,” ‘can not give 
 laws to himself. He can do no more than defend 
 what is dispensed to him by a higher power. These 
 rights are beneficent customs which are beneficent 
 because they are unwritten and because we know 
 neither their beginning nor their author.’ And the 
 declaration of custom should be avoided since not 
 only is it either the effect or the cause of great evil, 
 but it also is invariably more costly than it is 
 worth.” 
 
 So that it is to authority we are driven back and 
 of its worth he has no doubt. He has emphasised 
 the value of patriotism of which the essence is an 
 undeliberating and heedless devotion, a sacrifice of 
 oneself to the corporate good. Under what form 
 of State may it be best attained? Of democracy 
 he takes but little account; it is to be defined as an 
 association of men without sovereignty, that is to 
 say, without control over themselves.” It lacks 
 the essential conditions of stability and of justice. 
 It gives too great a handle to selfishness, it has not 
 the distinction of ranks which is the foundation of 
 
 17 Principe Générateur, Nos. 19, 20, 21. 
 
 18 Mélanges, p. 244. 
 
 19 Principe Générateur, No. 28. 
 20 Mélanges, pp. 246, 347. 
 
218 PROBLEM OF SOVEREIGNTY 
 
 power.” Aristocracy he conceives to have more 
 merit though he allows it vigour only in proportion 
 as it approximates in character to a monarchy.” 
 For it is in monarchy that he places all his confi- 
 dence. It is the natural form of government. It 
 permits that concentration of sovereignty which 
 allows the manifestation of its real virtues. Even 
 if it has its dangers, nevertheless history gives to it 
 a splendid justification and history is experimental 
 polities.” It is in a monarchy that the vices of 
 sovereignty are least apparent.” It permits, above 
 all, of unity—an inestimable virtue in his eyes; 
 since in the rule of many the subjects of the 
 crown delight in its dissection and thus deprive 
 it of its majesty.” But kingship gives to sover- 
 eignty a character of intensity which increases its 
 value. ‘The name of king,’ he writes,” ‘is a talis- 
 man, a magic power, which gives to every force 
 and intent a central direction.’ It is the personal- 
 isation of that authority which is the pivot of De 
 Maistre’s political system. 
 
 No one can doubt the reasons for his attitude. 
 ‘Ainsi done, Madame,’ he wrote to a Russian lady,” 
 ‘plus de pape, plus de souveraineté; plus de 
 souveraineté, plus de unité; plus d’unité, plus 
 
 21 [bid., p. 359. 
 
 22 Tbid., pp. 332 seq. 
 
 23 [bid., pp. 201 seq. 
 
 24 Ibid., p. 309. 
 
 25 Ibid., p. 313. 
 
 26 Ibid., p. 323. 
 27 Oeuvres Choisies de Joseph de Maistre, Vol. IV, p. 179. 
 
DE MAISTRE AND BISMARCK 219 
 
 
 
 d’authorité; plus d’authorité, plus de foi.’ It is 
 the bitter protest of the medievalist against the 
 Revolution. Doubt is sin, and to prevent its birth 
 we must form a political system in which it shall 
 have no place. The antithesis of doubt is faith 
 and faith must be imposed. It must come from 
 without, and authority is therefore its inevitable 
 accompaniment while sovereignty is no more than 
 its full expression in political terms. It is, too, 
 clear why he desired unity so deeply. Where men 
 begin to differ change must result; and change is 
 the child of that discussion which can be born only 
 of scepticism. We recognise the medievalism of 
 an attitude which is clearly identifying heresy 
 with rebellion and finding therein political reason 
 for its suppression. So long as there is unity there 
 is peace which is the sole guarantee of survival. 
 De Maistre can not doubt that the guarantee of a 
 continuance of political life is the erection of a 
 system impermeable to the currents of change. 
 Man’s truest ideas are the primeval feelings of 
 his heart, and he could see no adequate ground 
 for their discussion. Herein is the result of his 
 experiences of the eighteenth century; for to deny 
 the value of reason and of argument is to deny the 
 fundamental purpose for which it conceived itself 
 to exist.” He opposes the splendour of a stable 
 civilisation to the bewildering variety for which the 
 age in which he lived stood sponsor. For in that 
 variety is involved a denial of the sovereignty of 
 28 Cf, Faguet, op. cit., p. 15. 
 
220 PROBLEM OF SOVEREIGNTY 
 
 the State, the division of its powers, the erection 
 of antithetic systems of rights; and from them is 
 born revolution.” If you suggest that from revo- 
 lution good may accrue, he will point out that 
 between the conduct of France and the qualities 
 of which virtue is composed there is a direct 
 antithesis. ‘Cette plaie,’ he wrote angrily,” ‘est du 
 vol... cette habitude du vol, cette scandale 
 donné et recu mutuellement tous les jours, et tout 
 le jour sur toute la surface de la France, ont 
 produit a la fin un état de chose dont on ne se 
 forme ancune idée juste si on ne 1’ a vu de prés... 
 Il y a une antipathie naturalle et invincible entre 
 la République Franeaise et toutes les vertus.’ 
 
 We need, then, a formula against revolution and 
 it is in the sovereignty of authority that we find it. 
 One tremendous consequence must result imme- 
 diately from such a conclusion: our theologico- 
 political system can not be Protestant in character. 
 De Maistre was too bold a thinker not to admit the 
 logical deduction from his premises and he was 
 unsparing in his criticisms of Protestantism. It 
 is a word that must be effaced from the language 
 of Europe if religion is to be re-established and the 
 foundations of political authority strengthened.* 
 In its various forms, as Calvinism, more insid- 
 iously as Jansenism,” it has declared war on 
 
 29 Fragments, p. 34. 
 
 80 Ibid., p. 57. 
 
 31 Du Pape, Conclusion (ed. of 1910), p. 354. 
 
 32 The reader will wish to consult Sainte-Beuve’s reply to De Maistre’s 
 attack, Porte-Royal, Vol. III (ed. of 1888), p. 233 seq. 
 
DE MAISTRE AND BISMARCK 221 
 
 every sort of authority. It is protestant against 
 sovereignty for its only dogma is to have no 
 dogmas.” The French Revolution is the inevitable 
 and disastrous consequence of its principles; it has 
 almost annihilated Christianity in Europe.* For 
 it is a philosophy of scepticism. ‘C’est l’ insur- 
 rection de la raison individuelle,’ he wrote,” ‘contre 
 la raison générale, et par conséquent ¢’est tout ce 
 qu’on peut imaginer de plus mauvais. C’est 
 l’ennemi essentiel de tout croyance commune a 
 plusieurs hommes: ce que constitue ennemi du 
 genre humain.’ By nature it is rebellious, for 
 doubt is its foundation and doubt is the mother of 
 rebellion. History gives proof of this statement. 
 With the Reformation came the religious division 
 of Christianity and the political division of 
 Europe.” Its force even then was not expended. 
 To test the doctrines of Luther it cast Germany 
 into the horrors of the Thirty Years’ War. The 
 execution of Charles I is traceable directly to its 
 influence. If it urges the inhumanity of Saint 
 Bartholomew the necessity of that massacre is the 
 proof of its inherent danger.” It is in fact anti- 
 sovereign, and therefore anti-authoritarian by 
 nature. It is the very mainspring of inquietude. 
 For sovereignty in its essence is indivisible, and 
 Protestantism makes of each man his own sover- 
 
 33 TVme lettre sur l’education publique en Russie. 
 
 34 Vide his Sur l’Etat du Christianisme en Europe. 
 
 35 Mélanges, p. 510. 
 
 36 Ibid., p. 513. 
 87 Ibid., p. 516. 
 
222 PROBLEM OF SOVEREIGNTY 
 
 
 
 
 
 eign.” It places faith in the category of sin, and 
 examines dogma only to reject it. For in that 
 desire for investigation lies the yearning for 
 novelty, and the distrust of existing things, as is 
 instanced in the manner in which one whom De 
 Maistre signalises as perhaps the most odious of 
 the Revolutionists, Condorcet, was the eager friend 
 of reform.” It is the sans-culottisme of religion. 
 It is inferior as a political system even to pagan- 
 ism or to the theories of Mahomet which realised 
 the necessity of dogma and faith.” It has taken 
 the security of the State to cast it heedlessly 
 among the multitude. 
 
 The criticism has at any rate the merit of certi- 
 tude and it is also the logical result of his beliefs. 
 For when he had based his monarchy on miracle, 
 De Maistre had in fact placed it beyond the reach 
 of argument, and his salvation must find itself 
 in a political theory in which reason was but a 
 secondary consideration. The necessities of his 
 outlook are clear. He has his organic state, of 
 which the nature and origins are alike enwrapped 
 in mystery. He has asserted the need of corporate 
 government which can not, in its turn, exist without 
 sovereignty. For there is no adequate rule that 
 is not absolute. If it is said that absolutism is 
 bound to issue in injustice, he will retort that 
 injustice is at the basis of life. It is upon sacrifice 
 
 38 Tbid., p. 227. 
 
 39 Ibid., p. 542. 
 40 [bid., p. 547. 
 
DE MAISTRE AND BISMARCK 223 
 
 that existence is founded, and if the innocent die 
 they will at any rate have the satisfaction of 
 remembering that the executioner is the corner- 
 stone of society. If it be retorted that this is 
 irrational, he will then answer that he is thereby 
 the more certain of its truth. So to him even 
 Christ can be no more than ‘une victime sanglante,’ 
 and M. Faguet has acutely suggested that his 
 Christianity was basically pagan; for it lacks the 
 very idea of love of which the Gospel is the written 
 expression.” This, clearly, is the cause of his 
 profound hatred of the Greek spirit. For he 
 found there the same lack of vigour, of hardness 
 of certitude, the same anxiety to examine and to 
 doubt, which is the root of the egoism of the 
 Protestant.” Nothing is more characteristic of 
 his temper than the singular but striking judgment 
 of Plato that as a Greek he is wearying to a degree; 
 ‘il n’ est grand, sublime, pénétrant que lorsqu’ il 
 est théologien; c’est a dire lorsqu’ il énonce des 
 dogmes positifs et éternels séparés de toute 
 chicane.”* The Greek mind was for him too 
 pliable, too yielding, too curious to command either 
 his affection or his admiration. What he sought 
 for were the premises of life, and, once given, as 
 he could not doubt they were given to the world 
 in the Christian philosophy, the sole problem was 
 to give them an unchangeable political expression. 
 41 Faguet, op. cit., p. 59. 
 
 42 Du Pape, Bk. IV, Caps, VII-XI. 
 43 Du Pape (ed. of 1910), p. 331. 
 
224 PROBLEM OF SOVEREIGNTY 
 
 The discussion of Christianity itself became thus 
 unimportant. For, once given, it was outside the 
 realm of argument. It was in this way that De 
 Maistre became above all a political theorist. He 
 could subordinate philosophy and theology to his 
 theory of the State simply because they required 
 no more than the statement to merit acceptance. 
 That is why, as M. Faguet has pointed out, his 
 earliest work is a political treatise; for at the very 
 outset of his career his other views were indelibly 
 fixed, were, indeed, the foundation of his political 
 thought.* 
 
 Jen 
 
 With the rejection of Protestantism he is thrown 
 back on the Catholic theory, and to this he gave an 
 uncompromising and unquestioning acceptance. 
 The book was in the nature of a personal apologia; 
 for in the stress of the Napoleonic conflict he had 
 spoken disrespectfully of the Holy Father, and 
 Du Pape was written as a method of reparation.” 
 Certainly the Papacy has good reason to give 
 thanks to the ability of its enthusiastic champion; 
 for with the possible exception of Augustinus 
 Triumphus no one has given such entire allegiance 
 to the gravest extremism of Hildebrand and of 
 Innocent ITI., and De Maistre is superior to his 
 
 44 Waguet, op. cit., p. 5. 
 
 45 Brandes, Main Currents of XIXth Century Literature, Vol. III, 
 p. 105. 
 
DE MAISTRE AND BISMARCK 225 
 
 predecessor in that he has the important merit of 
 being readable. 
 
 It is not difficult to understand the cause of De 
 Maistre’s papalism. Semper eadem might have 
 been the motto of his thought, as it was the 
 Catholic challenge to a revolutionary age. The 
 Papacy had endured unchanged for eighteen hun- 
 dred years. It was almost the parent of dogma. 
 Its very life depended on the imposition of its 
 authority. It was the guardian of a mystery into 
 which faith alone could penetrate. Its sanction 
 was divine; it spurned the power of human 
 thought; it was the proud claimant of infallibility. 
 What institution could be more fitted to rule the 
 world? 
 
 It claimed infallibility. That was to mark it as 
 a sovereign power, since infallibility is only the 
 spiritual synonym of sovereignty.** That it should 
 claim infallibility did not mean that it asked the 
 possession of any special privilege, but only that 
 the Church was a monarchy and demanded the 
 natural attributes of its character.” It meant that 
 error could not be charged against it, that its 
 decisions must be accepted without question. If 
 it be suggested that its infallibility is impossible, 
 since Popes have erred, the reply is simply that 
 infallible it must be since without it unity becomes 
 impossible.** Nor is it worth while to raise the 
 
 46 Du Pape, Bk. I, Chap. I (ed. of 1910), p. 44. 
 
 47 Ibid., p. 45. 
 48 Ibid, p. 47. 
 
226 PROBLEM OF SOVEREIGNTY 
 
 objection, since the Catholic Church does not enter 
 into argument. ‘Elle croit,’ he says almost with 
 affection,* ‘elle croit sans disputer; car la foi est 
 une croyance par amour, et l’amour n’ argumente 
 point.’ It has the even greater merit of finding 
 at once its visible unity in the Pope. De Maistre 
 makes short work of conciliar claims. ‘Their 
 infrequency, the manner in which they have them- 
 selves acclaimed the papal supremacy, the analogy 
 with the relation of States-General to. King, the 
 witness of Gallican Church and Jansenist schis- 
 matics, of Protestant theologians like Calvin and 
 heretic jurists like Pufendorf, are all dragged, 
 some little matters of history notwithstanding, 
 into the service of this supremacy.” Rome, he says 
 with Calvin, is the centre of the world, wmbilicus 
 terrae.” 
 
 He is not afraid of despotism; for the Pope will 
 be governed by the laws of his being, which are 
 divine in character. And in any case he alone is 
 the judge of those laws and must be obeyed without 
 conditions unless anarchy is to result. The descent 
 from absolute sovereignty to utter confusion is 
 single and precipitous. Infallibility has been 
 established in order that it may be avoided.” If 
 it be said that Popes have meddled too intimately 
 with the lives of men, he will reply that it has never 
 
 49 Ibid., p. 49. 
 
 50 Ibid., Bk. I, Chaps, II-IX. 
 
 51 Ibid., p. 79. 
 52 Ibid., p. 123 (Bk. I, Chap. XVI). 
 
DE MAISTRE AND BISMARCK 227 
 
 been without justification, and to Catholics who 
 cherish such a thought he gives the warning that 
 it imphes a human judgment upon a divine insti- 
 tution.” Everything, in short, that can be known 
 of the papal structure justifies the conclusion that 
 it fulfils all the necessary conditions of social 
 permanence. ‘Il ne peut avoir de société humaine 
 sans gouvernement,’ he said in tremendous words,” 
 ‘ni de gouvernement sans souveraineté, ni de sou- 
 veraineté sans infaillibilité, et ce dernier privilége 
 est si absolument necessaire, qu’ on est forcé de 
 supposer ]’infaillibilité, mémes dans les souver- 
 ainetés temporelles (ot elle n’est pas) sans peine 
 de voir l’association se dissoudre.’ Law, then, is 
 simple enough. Itis what the sovereign commands, 
 and that sovereign must be unique that he may 
 escape destruction. 
 
 There is a tinge of fatalism in so terrible a logic, 
 but De Maistre is ready with explanations of its 
 necessity. Man, he holds, is a curious mingling of 
 good and evil, and has need of government that he 
 may be social. The law courts—we must remember 
 that De Maistre was for long a judge—make us 
 understand why that government must be absolute. 
 Where there is no sentence given dispute imme- 
 diately arises; and sovereignty arising to prevent 
 the disaster which would result therefrom. Man 
 desires to be just, and sovereignty provides the 
 
 53 Ibid., p. 129 (Bk. I, Chap. XVIII). 
 54 [bid., p. 132 (Bk. I, Chap. XIX). 
 
228 PROBLEM OF SOVEREIGNTY 
 
 means for the attainment of that end.” It is true, 
 of course, that dangers can result from its exercise ; 
 but they are less than the dangers which would 
 result from its absence. And those who urge that 
 the difficulty may be avoided by the erection of 
 constitutions and of fundamental laws forget that 
 the individual or the institution which carries them 
 into effect will be in fact sovereign; so that in our 
 effort to avoid it we attain it.” It is useless to 
 object, for instance, that the difficulty has been 
 evaded in the limited monarchy of England; for, 
 as he urges, what has been limited in England is 
 royalty while the king in Parliament still remains 
 supreme.” It can do all it desires, and there is no 
 legal limitation upon its will. He does not deny 
 that kings may act wrongly; but in that event they 
 will be subject to the indirect power of the Pope, 
 who, as the direct representative of God, can 
 release their subjects from their oath of fidelity. 
 It is in this case only that there exists a right of 
 resistance in the subject. Or, rather, it is not a 
 right of resistance so much as a duty, since it is a 
 command laid upon them by the most supreme of 
 powers.” Nor have the Popes ever misused their 
 power. If they have fought with sovereigns, with 
 abstract sovereignty itself they have never con- 
 85 Ibid., p. 138-139 (Bk. II, Chap. I). 
 86 Ibid., p. 140 (Bk. II, Chap. II). 
 
 87 Ibid., p. 145 (Bk. II, Chap. IIT). 
 88 Ibid., p. 148 (Bk. II, Chap. IV). 
 
DE MAISTRE AND BISMARCK 229 
 
 tended. They have enforced the divine law of 
 which they are the chosen delegates, and its very 
 exercise has exalted the peoples of the earth.” 
 They have defended the sanctity of marriage;” 
 they have maintained the laws of the Church and 
 the customs of the priestly caste; they have 
 upheld—De Maistre speaks in all seriousness—the 
 liberty of Italy ;° it is an enviable record. 
 
 The power thus theoretically conceived is justi- 
 fied in its practical results. It is untrue to urge, 
 as is customary with the opponents of the Papacy, 
 that it has plunged Europe into strife and fanati- 
 cism. The Popes are charged with the execution 
 of a supreme power—that of excommunication— 
 and they have used that power for public welfare. 
 Where its use has resulted in tumult, it is due 
 to the resistance they have encountered.” The 
 medieval exercise of their right saved Europe 
 from the catastrophes of barbarism. They can do 
 so again, after the latest of barbarian irruptions, 
 if men would but realise their power instead of 
 remaining blinded by appearances. The good the 
 Popes have conferred upon men is manifest in 
 work such as missionary enterprise which is the 
 harbinger of civilisation.“ It is seen in their 
 
 59 Ibid., p. 149 (Bk. II, Chap. V). 
 
 60 Ibid., p. 166 (Bk. II, Chap. VII). 
 
 61 Ibid., p. 173. 
 
 62 Ibid., p. 180. 
 
 63 Ibid., Bk. II, Chap. IX. 
 64 [bid., Bk, III, Chap. I. 
 
230 PROBLEM OF SOVEREIGNTY 
 
 struggle for civil liberty,” in the admirable results 
 that have followed on the institution of clerical 
 celibacy*’°—a good which Protestantism has sought 
 to destroy—in their almost miraculous preser- 
 vation of monarchy at a time when the decay of 
 the Roman empire, and the barbarian invasions 
 from the North seemed destined to achieve its 
 destruction.” In its new infancy it was cherished 
 and strengthened by the papal arm. Where 
 kings have been obedient to the Pope their reigns 
 have been long and prosperous—clearly a sign of 
 virtue.” Without the Pope, in short, a true 
 Christianity would have been impossible. ‘Des 
 Papes,’ he writes,” ‘furent les instituteurs, les 
 sauveteurs, et les veritables génies constituantes 
 de l’Europe.’ It thus becomes impossible to judge 
 of kings save in their papal context, and its 
 achievements are the solid demonstration that the 
 papal monarchy is the best because the most 
 permanent and the most natural. 
 
 To such a view his theory of schism is the logical 
 conclusion. A schismatic church is a Protestant 
 Church, for it is destroying the essential unity of 
 civilisation.” The heretic churches are so many 
 
 66 [bid., Bk. ITI, Chap. IT. 
 
 66 Ibid., Bk. III, Chap. III. 
 
 61 Ibid., Bk. III, Chap. IV. 
 
 68 [bid., p. 287. 
 
 69 Ibid., Bk. III, Chap. V. 
 
 70 Ibid., p. 303. 
 71 [bid., Bk. IV, Chap. I. 
 
DE MAISTRE AND BISMARCK 231 
 
 evidences of division and thus so many proofs of 
 danger. They have no common name, their char- 
 acter is mutually alien, they attack each others’ 
 dogma, they have no means of final decision 
 between their errors.” To sympathise with their 
 variety is to invite the onset of a cataclysm. 
 
 What, then, is the conclusion to which his specu- 
 lations lead? The faulty systems of the eighteenth 
 century must be cast aside; they have deprived the 
 half of Europe of its Christianity.” The institu- 
 tion which alone has lasted for eighteen centuries 
 can serve as the natural centre of a new political 
 system which will be the old. It is necessary for 
 the preservation of Christianity that Rome should 
 undertake that leadership. She only has the power 
 and the majesty. She only emerges unharmed 
 from the ruthless attacks to which she is subjected. 
 She only can guarantee unity and faith. Divine 
 in her origin, she has been splendid in her past and 
 is destined to a more glorious future. God has 
 watched over her with a special love, and thus 
 fitted her to be the protector of nations. She holds 
 in her hands the future happiness of men. If she 
 has to face doubt and vice and rebellion, yet is she 
 destined to triumph. ‘Hydra-headed error-will be 
 vanquished before indivisible Truth: God will 
 reign in the Temple as He reigns in heaven, in 
 the blessed communion of his Saints.” 
 
 72 Ibid., p. 321 ff. 
 
 73 Ibid., p. 347. 
 74 Ibid., p. 365. 
 
232 PROBLEM OF SOVEREIGNTY 
 
 IV 
 
 Lamartine has somewhere remarked that De 
 Maistre’s political thought is at the service of his 
 religious instincts and this must be the main and 
 abiding impression of any one who analyses his 
 work. His was that fanatic devotion to a cause 
 which examines all dogmas save his own. His own 
 faith he did not examine, for he had placed it 
 outside the realm of discussion; and to have 
 admitted that it was capable of analysis would 
 have been for him the admission that it might be 
 annihilated. It is an admirable position; and it 
 would demand the highest reverence did it possess 
 the single merit of truth. For it was here that the 
 immense fallacy lay in De Maistre’s argument. 
 He had already determined his conclusions before 
 he began his enquiry. In the result, he became not 
 the judge but the advocate who uses history as the 
 great storehouse of political examples from which 
 instances such as he desired might be culled. Nor 
 was he in the least careful as to the accuracy of his 
 interpretations.” He had that peculiar faculty of 
 the eighteenth-century mind for seeing only what 
 he believed on a priori grounds.” He would not 
 admit that he might be wrong, for that would be 
 to give tolerance the name of virtue. So it is that 
 to the modern sense there is something of almost 
 
 75 His treatment of the Spanish Inquisition is a good example of this 
 
 trait. 
 76 Cf, the admirable remarks of M. Faguet, op. cit., p. 66. 
 
DE MAISTRE AND BISMARCK ase 
 
 unrelieved ugliness in the brutality with which he 
 discusses his opponents. What is above all lack- 
 ing in his temper is the capacity to understand 
 humanity and, understanding, to forgive. The 
 first necessity, after all, in a statesman, even in a 
 theological statesman, is the readiness to admit 
 error. History, in fact, is strewn with the wrecks 
 of infallible systems and, in the end, De Maistre 
 added but one more to that hapless company. 
 
 He mistook the grounds of the Revolution. He 
 misread the character of his age. He seems, 
 indeed, to have hated it too greatly to have made 
 possible that understanding which, politically at 
 least, can be born of sympathy alone. He did not 
 remember, or else he chose to forget, the very 
 obvious fact that no great historic event can come 
 to pass without some justification of equal great- 
 ness as its parent. Since the Revolution did not 
 accord with his desires, he chose deliberately to 
 misrepresent its ideals. He would not understand 
 that it had come as a protest against exactly that 
 system of which he urged the reconstruction. He 
 made the capital error of taking no account of the 
 category of time. After all, the events he had 
 regretted were on the book of record, and to ignore 
 them was in nowise to ensure their oblivion. The 
 world that had seen the fall of the Bastile was 
 bound to be a different world. To tilt against its 
 fundamental principles may have been courage; 
 but it was the courage which has been immortalised 
 by the dangerous pen of Cervantes. His plan 
 
234 PROBLEM OF SOVEREIGNTY 
 
 would perhaps have been admirable in the fifth 
 century after Christ. One recognises then the need 
 of that powerful, even absolute, centralisation for 
 which he contended. But to apply the solution of 
 the problems of the fifth century to the difficulties 
 of the nineteenth was to make too bold a denial of 
 the march of mind. Men had thought too infinitely 
 for his conclusions to be possible. They had . 
 known the Papacy too long. They would judge it 
 not by the programme it announced but by the 
 character its actions suggested it to possess. If 
 the Reformation, and its political offspring the 
 Revolution, have any definite beginning, they can 
 be traced back to the era when what most oppressed 
 men was the crimes of Rome. Luther may have 
 been ignorant, fleshly, brutal, but he said boldly 
 what men wanted to hear. It is not enough to 
 proclaim loudly that Rome has never erred when 
 men of genius have occupied themselves with the 
 pregnant examination of her error. It is an 
 inadequate outlook to defame curiosity as sin 
 without attempting to enquire whether it is not 
 in fact as natural as faith itself. Easy it may be 
 to proclaim sovereignty divine, but the real prob- 
 lem comes when its defender is asked to justify 
 the results of its exercise. The brilliance of De 
 Maistre’s apologetic does not conceal the vicious- 
 ness of its determined obscurantism. 
 
 But it is of his main tenets that there must be 
 most serious question. He takes his stand upon 
 the splendour of national and religious unity, and 
 
DE MAISTRE AND BISMARCK 235 
 
 his books are in effect a ceaseless hymn to its 
 praise. It is for its preservation that his dogmas 
 are so pitilessly erected. Sovereignty is politi- 
 cally one that thought may cease to be manifold. 
 The Church is a monarchy that the single judge 
 of the content of faith may pronounce his judg- 
 ment without the fatal dissolvent of argument. 
 To the need for unity are alike sacrificed reason 
 and liberty. We know, of course, the explanation 
 of his attitude, nor can we lack compassion for 
 the suffering he so courageously endured. But a 
 theory which finds no justification in experience 
 is not a theory but a dream. ‘T'o construct a satis- 
 factory theory of the State we must be equipped 
 with a psychology that is realistic. We must deal 
 with men as they are, and desist from the seductive 
 temptation to deal with men as they would be could 
 they but be induced to appreciate the force of our 
 ideas. For we are given variety and difference 
 as the basis of our political system, and it is a 
 world that takes account of them that we must 
 plan. Race, language, nationality, history, all 
 these are barriers that make us understand how 
 fundamental are the natural limits to unity. And 
 within the State itself it is only upon minute issues 
 that agreement or compromise is possible; upon 
 the basis of conviction, where conscience pricks 
 to the utterance, we are, often despite ourselves, 
 compelled to retain our souls. A system that 
 makes entire abstraction of such facts as these is 
 grounded in falsehood and doomed to dissolution. 
 
236 PROBLEM OF SOVEREIGNTY 
 
 Its sovereignty can not remain entire so long as 
 there is disagreement, and the means to unity De 
 Maistre barely sought to discuss. He argued that 
 his papalism would prevent disunion and change 
 but he did not see that this was true only to the 
 point where the system carried conviction. That 
 was the meaning of Hume’s caustic saying that 
 even despotisms are built upon consent, and it is 
 only in a world of De Maistres that consent to 
 such a despotism could be possible. The freedom 
 of thought from which the Revolution was born 
 may have been anarchy; we can then but note that 
 its necessity makes it sacred. We can not make 
 a fetich of obedience. To every one there comes a 
 point where to bow the knee is worse than death. 
 It was a realisation which Luther had at the Diet 
 of Worms, which came to Ridley and Latimer in 
 the open square of Oxford, to Dollinger, when, in 
 1871, he parted with a Church that was dearer to 
 him than life. We who care for truth can not 
 promote unity if its cost be the suppression of such 
 spirits. It may be that such an attitude involves 
 the dangerous exaltation of individuality. Yet 
 this is an interstitial world to be absorbed into 
 which is to lose oneself. A State that is so funda- 
 mentally one as never to need the wholesome spur 
 of discontent will doubtless avoid a revolution; 
 but that will only be because its corporate life is 
 dead. The one thing that seems to be historically 
 sure in an uncertain world is the fact that progress 
 
DE MAISTRE AND BISMARCK 237 
 
 is born from disagreement and discussion. We 
 have, then, to organise our State in such fashion 
 as best permits its emergence. 
 
 We may, of course, urge as De Maistre would 
 doubtless have argued, that the best of worlds is 
 a static world and that the love of progress is an 
 illusion. That may be true, but the world, after 
 all, is not static, and it is with the given conditions 
 that we must cope. And even De Maistre may be 
 said to have admitted progress when he remarked 
 that every attack on Catholicism has only strength- 
 ened it. Development is so certainly the funda- 
 mental law of our being that it is therein we must, 
 however difficult be the conception, find our truest 
 identity. And that is to say that we must lay 
 down no immutability of political form. Since 
 each of us lives differently our hopes and thoughts 
 must be different. That, logically, is the negation 
 of the extreme claims of Catholicism. It means 
 that the Pope will not possess the sovereignty of 
 the world, since there are people who do not agree 
 with him. It means that he will be compelled to 
 continuous readjustment not less from within than 
 from without. It was not without reason that 
 Sextus IV and Alexander VI were followed by 
 men like Caraffa and Gregory XIII; that to 
 Pius IX the liberalism of his successor would have 
 been anathema it is difficult indeed to deny. But 
 facts such as these prove the futility of a sover- 
 eignty that alone would have satisfied De Maistre. 
 
 It is not as a political theorist that he will live 
 
238 PROBLEM OF SOVEREIGNTY 
 
 but as the trumpeter of a remarkable reaction. 
 He is the real author of that Ultramontanism by 
 which the nineteenth century Papacy sought the 
 restoration of its prestige. It was upon his 
 argument that it was founded and his book was 
 in reality its watchword. For he gave it cause to 
 hope at a time when the humiliation of the 
 Revolution seemed to have stricken it beyond 
 recovery. He provided logical cause for a hatred 
 that before had been but sullenly instinctive. He 
 created the materials for a new and more terrible 
 Canossa. It was the spirit of De Maistre which 
 barred the way to a united Italy. It was the new 
 hope that he inspired which caused the condem- 
 nation of Lamennais. He was the real author of 
 the definition of papal infallibility in 1870. And 
 yet in every victory he suffered a defeat. Cavour 
 built a new Italy upon the ruins of the temporal 
 power. Lamennais is the author of a French 
 reformation that is yet to come. The seed sown 
 at the Vatican Council has yet to produce its 
 harvest. For men have grown in the course of 
 time to love freedom and slavery has become a 
 losing cause. Yet it is impossible to withhold our 
 admiration from a man who battled so earnestly 
 for what he deemed right. Even if he loved a 
 cause we deem mistaken, it is to his honour that he 
 loved it greatly. And it may well prove in the end 
 that he served liberty the more truly because he 
 did not shrink from proclaiming his hate. 
 
DE MAISTRE AND BISMARCK 239 
 
 v 
 
 If in the perspective of history it seems a little 
 grimly ironical to connect the name of Bismarck 
 with the spirit of religion, yet is it none the less 
 certain that his attachment to Christianity was 
 deep and sincere.” Though as a young man he had 
 been a sceptic,”* his friendship with the Blanken- 
 berg circle seems to have convinced him of the 
 
 truth of Christian principles, and he experienced | 
 
 all the typical phenomena of religious conversion.” 
 Henceforth he did not doubt the power of God in 
 the direction of the world, and he felt to the full 
 the significance of the need for human redemption 
 from sin.” And this new realisation of a vivid 
 faith gave him strength in his political life. It 
 was therein that he found all the sources of his 
 activity. ‘If I. was not a Christian,’ he told 
 Ferrieres in the stress of the Franco-Prussian 
 War,” ‘I could not hold my position for an hour. 
 If I could not count on God’s help, I could sacrifice 
 nothing for the sake of earthly masters. If I lost 
 my faith, of what avail would be my fatherland 2?’ 
 
 77 On Bismarck’s attitude to religion the most important discussion 
 is that of Baumgarten, Christliche Welt (1902), pp. 507-512, 587-591, 
 626-634. See also Busch, Our Chancellor, Vol. I, Chap. Il—probably an 
 authoritative statement, and Glaser, Bismarck’s Stellung zum Christen- 
 tum (1909). 
 
 78 Glaser, op. cit., p. 14. 
 
 79 Furst Bismarcks briefe an seine Braut und Gatlin, pp. 5-6 (January 
 4, 1847). 
 
 80 See the most interesting letter to Andrae Roman in Bismarck, 
 Briefe, 1836-1873, ed. Kohl, p. 420. 
 
 81 Busch, Tagenblatter (1899), I, 249. 
 
240 PROBLEM OF SOVEREIGNTY 
 
 Whatever happened in his career he attributed to 
 a divine intervention. If he escaped an accident, 
 it was God who warded off the danger ;” were the 
 French defeated, God had chosen thus to reward 
 the piety of the German nation.” He was, in short, 
 essentially an Evangelical whose religion partook 
 of that curious inwardness which, in Geneva, made 
 of Calvin a tyrant that he might become the parent 
 of resistance to tyranny. 
 
 And the political consequences of his attitude 
 were no less apparent than they were logical. 
 Because he came increasingly to emphasise the 
 significance of this inward vision he came also 
 certainly to suspect, perhaps even to deprecate, its 
 expression in religious societies and institutions. 
 Man had only to do his duty and for Bismarck, 
 so the indefatigable Busch informs us, the manner 
 in which his belief found expression was unim- 
 portant. It was this religious spirit that he termed 
 ‘one of the foundations and bulwarks of justice 
 and the State.” For him the State was essentially 
 based upon the principles of Christianity, and to 
 rob it of that character was to destroy that which 
 gave it its crowning distinction. For it was from 
 this intimate infusion of: the Christian spirit that 
 it derived the eternal renewal of its underlying 
 truth.” 
 
 82 Wilmowski, Meine Erinnerungen an Bismarck, p. 186. 
 
 83 Bismarck’s Briefe an seme Gatlin aus dem Kriege, 1870-1871, 
 pp. 70, 76. 
 
 84 Busch, Our Chancellor, Vol. I, p. 106. 
 
 85 Busch, op. cit., I, 115. 
 
 86 [bid., p. 117. 
 
DE MAISTRE AND BISMARCK 241 
 
 What it is here important to realise is that, like 
 most Evangelical Christians, Bismarck lacked 
 any deep sense of an institutional and organised 
 Church. Indeed, he would probably have denied 
 that religion, as internally grounded, has any need 
 of external form, since, so he would have argued, 
 it finds its most adequate expression in political 
 action. He took no interest in dogmatic prob- 
 lems*’—even the internal dissensions of the Ger- 
 man Evangelical Churches aroused in him no 
 echo of interested response;* he had but little 
 confidence in the fortification supplied by religious 
 observances.” For him there was but one insti- 
 tution—the State—and it was to that he devoted 
 his energies and, on occasion, sacrificed his con- 
 victions.” Like the great Stahl, he saw in the 
 State a Church, and his theory of its structure 
 was at bottom theocratic.” It was for this reason 
 that he had, in 1847, opposed the emancipation 
 of the Jews; for since the State was Christian in 
 character, its identity would be destroyed by the 
 admission of non-Christian elements into its com- 
 position.” But the Christian State meant to 
 Bismarck neither the vague socialism of F. D. 
 Maurice and of Kingsley, nor the control of that 
 
 87 Whitman, Reminiscences of Bismarck, p. 296. 
 
 88 Busch, op. cit., I, pp. 154-155. 
 
 89 Aus dem Leben der beiden ersten deutschen Kaiser und threr 
 Frauen (1906), p. 309. 
 
 90 Busch, op. cit., I, 121-122. 
 
 91 On Stahl, see the admirable essay of Jaeobowski, Der Christliche 
 Staat und seine Zukunft (1894). 
 
 92 Reden, I, 22. 
 
242 PROBLEM OF SOVEREIGNTY 
 
 State by a Church. It meant simply the govern- 
 ance of its political conduct by the rules of life 
 which Bismarck, in all sincerity, believed that he 
 received from God. He was thus logically bound 
 to hate all organisations which might embarrass 
 the State, for such embarrassment was the clear 
 proof of an anti-religious spirit. His State was 
 simply the Hegelian conception taken to the plane 
 of action, and raison d’état justified everything.” 
 What he did for the welfare of the State he could 
 not doubt was for the welfare of his Church since 
 it came directly from his intimate union with God. 
 ‘T believe,’ he said in 1873," ‘that I am serving my 
 God by serving my King,’ and it was this which 
 explains his love of unity in political activity. He 
 simply could not understand antagonism to his 
 policy where raison d’état was its justification; 
 for it seemed to him not dissimilar to direct 
 antagonism against the divine will.” He was thus, 
 perhaps, the most completely Erastian statesman 
 who has ever lived, since his identification of 
 politics with religion is final and absolute. In such 
 a view he would be compelled to regard with 
 vehement hostility the exclusion of any sphere of 
 life from the control of the State; and this surely 
 explains why he seems to have regarded with 
 suspicious dislike the Prussian measure of 1850 
 
 93 Her suspicion of ‘raison d’état’ was the secret of his antagonism 
 to the Empress Augusta. See the very striking remarks in Bismarck, 
 Gedanken und Erinnerungen, I, p. 302. 
 
 94 Busch, op. cit., I, 136. 
 95 See the Bismarck Jahrbuch, 1895, Vol. II, p. 335. 
 
DE MAISTRE AND BISMARCK 243 
 
 which had guaranteed autonomy to the Church.” 
 He, in fact, deified the State, and in the light of 
 such an identification, the toleration of variety 
 became completely impossible. 
 
 It was obvious that in such a mind the Roman 
 Catholic Church would awaken no sympathy. It 
 ran directly counter to all for which he stood; and 
 that the more so in an age when, in its warfare 
 against the Revolution, the Papacy had refur- 
 bished the weapons of Ultramontanism. For 
 Rome claimed a sovereignty superior to that of 
 kings. She regarded the Church as a complete 
 and perfect society, determined to brook no inter- 
 ference with her internal affairs. That Church, 
 further, like Bismarck’s own State, demanded 
 the undeviating allegiance from its subjects. It 
 was, moreover, an infallible Church, nor did it 
 permit question of its judgments. No organisa- 
 tion was so centralised or so patiently efficient. 
 No organisation was less ready to admit the virtue 
 of change. The Church laid down its fundamental 
 laws and, at the risk of forfeiting their salvation, 
 men were compelled to obey. Clearly in such a 
 view a conflict of sovereignty might arise. The 
 attainment of unity was impossible. If Bismarck 
 could issue commands which the Roman Catholic 
 members of the German empire might refuse, at 
 the papal behest, to obey, the dream of twenty 
 years was a vain and empty thing. A struggle 
 between empire and papacy became again essen- 
 
 96 Reden, VI, p. 269. 
 
244 PROBLEM OF SOVEREIGNTY 
 
 - tial since the absolutism of Bismarck’s sovereignty 
 would not admit the existence of spheres of sepa- 
 rate influence. If the Roman Catholic Church 
 differentiated between things which were of 
 Caesar, and those which were of God, Bismarck 
 denied the distinction. Since to him the world 
 meant Germany, within its confines he would 
 permit no division of power. That, to his mind, 
 was the fundamental error of granting eccle- 
 siastical independence. He saw no meaning in 
 that term or, if he did, it was a meaning fraught 
 with danger. If the emperor could not be master 
 in his own house, Bismarck would drive out those 
 who doubted his domination. ‘If such a sect as 
 the Ultramontanes,’ he declared proudly,” ‘can 
 not be at one with the ambitions of the State, and 
 even endangers those ambitions, clearly the State 
 can not tolerate their existence.’ For it would be 
 the blasphemy of politics to destroy the identity 
 of the ethics of the State. It was the negation of 
 that Hegelian sovereignty the empire was proudly 
 to personify. 
 
 VI 
 
 Such was the psychological basis of the Kultur- 
 kampf. That is not to say that it was for the 
 enforcement of these political views that Bismarck 
 embarked upon his most disastrous enterprise. 
 Certainly it was not the definition of papal infalli- 
 
 97 See Wilmowski, Meine Erinnerungen an Bismarck (1909), p. 189. 
 
DE MAISTRE AND BISMARCK 245 
 
 bility which moved him to action; for not only 
 did he very decisively refuse Hohenlohe’s sug- 
 gestion of concerted action against the Vatican 
 Council, but Hohenlohe at one time even suspected 
 that he was the secret ally of the Jesuits.” The 
 great canonist Schulte found him unwilling to 
 take action against the infallibilist German 
 bishops.” 'It seems, on the contrary, that with 
 him the Roman policy was the natural result of 
 the method he employed in founding the empire. 
 ‘My one ideal,’ he said in 1879,** ‘was the unifica- 
 tion of Germany under Prussian leadership. To 
 that everything is accessory.’ It was when he 
 discovered that, as he conceived the Catholics of 
 Germany stood in the path of his ambition that 
 he set out to ensure their destruction. | That he 
 did not desire war with them is surely evident 
 enough from August Reichensperger’s express 
 exoneration of him from hostility in motive to the 
 Church.** It was but one of the institutions he 
 felt it incumbent upon him to sacrifice in his 
 pursuit of the Austinian chimera. 
 
 It was the unity of the German empire he had 
 set himself to achieve. He had fought Austria 
 as a step towards its achievement, because he 
 
 98 Hohenlohe, Denkwurtigkeiten, II, 61-66. It should, however, be 
 noted that, according to Frederic III, Bismarck told the Grand Duke of 
 Baden, on the morrow of Sedan, that he intended to fight infallibility. 
 Kaiser Friedrich’s Tagebucher (1902), p. 107. 
 
 99 Schulte, Liebenserinnerungen, I, 378. 
 
 100 Busch, Tagenbuchblatter, II, 547. See the Life by Pastor, II, 387. 
 
 101 Pastor, Ruchensperger, II, 49. 
 
246 PROBLEM OF SOVEREIGNTY 
 
 believed that the new Germany must have a 
 Hohenzollern and not a Hapsburg as its leader. 
 When Sedan gave him victory over France it was 
 possible to state the terms of.the new problem, 
 but not, as yet, to solve it. | The permanence of 
 the new empire he did not feel wholly assured. 
 Poland was an old danger, and it had by no 
 means proved capable of adequate Germanisation ; 
 Poland was notoriously Catholic, and Jesuit 
 influence there was known to be strong.\ The 
 Roman question puzzled him greatly. He dreamed 
 always of a revanche; and it seemed to him that 
 a Franco-Italian alliance might well serve as its 
 basis ;*"’ and if he forestalled France, as a Latin 
 and Catholic power she might easily turn to the 
 aid of the stricken Papacy. If the Roman Catho- 
 lic sympathy for Pius IX was so deep as Bismarck 
 believed, could he feel certain of their loyalty?” 
 Bavaria was preponderantly Catholic and Bavaria 
 showed no eagerness to affirm its adherence to the 
 new empire; and when Bismarck had asked for 
 Antonelli’s assistance in securing the Catholic vote 
 in the Bavarian Parliament, his request had been 
 politely refused.** Alsace-Lorraine, again, was 
 predominantly Catholic in character; and its 
 discontent with its new masters the Papacy was 
 
 102 See Govone, Mémoires (French translation), p. 521 seg. Boullier, 
 Victor Emanuel et Mazzini, p. 251 seq. 
 
 103 Hahn, Fiirst Bismarck (1878), I, 720-723. 
 
 104 Goyau, Bismarck et Le Kulturkampf, I, 52. I can not too greatly 
 
 express my debt to this admirable work—easily the best extant on the 
 subject. 
 
DE MAISTRE AND BISMARCK 247 
 
 unwilling to alleviate." When he remembered 
 that as a Protestant power, as the victor, moreover, 
 in a conflict with the two greatest Catholic nations, 
 Prussia could hardly inspire affection at Rome, 
 it was not difficult for his mind to consider very 
 Seriously if the allegiance German Catholics owed 
 to the Roman see, which he considered essentially 
 a political power,’ was not at the root of his 
 difficulties. If he could destroy that bond, the 
 obstacle to unity might be removed. 
 
 Internal political causes seemed to point in the 
 same direction. The National liberals had been 
 enthusiastic for unification; and they were the 
 theoretical antagonists of clericalism. It was their 
 intellectual leader, Bluntschli, who at Worms in 
 1869 declared that the success of German liberty 
 depended upon the destruction of Roman in- 
 fluence.” They had already urged upon Bismarck 
 the dangers of monasticism*” and the religious 
 control of schools.*° Journalists were writing of 
 the French defeat as the prelude to a campaign 
 against Ultramontanism in the party papers.” 
 Men of their school were speaking of the great 
 victory as a step forward for Luther’s cause.” 
 If Germanism was synonymous with Protestant- 
 
 105 Goyau, op. cit., I, p. 53. 
 
 106 Poschinger, First Bismarck, I, 68. 
 
 107 Bluntschli, Denkwurtiges, III, 232. 
 
 108 Tbid., IIT, 193, 
 
 109 [bid., III, 253. 
 
 110 Goyau, op. cit., I, 68. 
 111 Goyau, I, 71. 
 
248 PROBLEM OF SOVEREIGNTY 
 
 
 
 ism, as they did not cease to proclaim, Bismarck 
 would have no doubts as to the requisite policy. 
 ‘Not France alone,’ wrote the Alsatian Schnee- 
 gans,” ‘declared war on Germany; it was Rome 
 which desired a deadly combat with Protestant- 
 ism.’ And Treitschke was proclaiming loudly the 
 import of that religion to Prussia.” 
 
 If Protestantism thus showed signs of militancy, 
 the Catholics were no less watchful. In the 
 Prussian elections of 1870, some sixty of them 
 were returned to the Chamber, and in men like 
 Windthorst, Savigny, Reichensperger, they had 
 politicians of unusual ability. Their very organ- 
 isation roused serious anger among the National 
 Liberals, and they were soon charged with having 
 as their object a conspiracy against the State. 
 Bismarck must have noted its formation with 
 some disquiet; for the Ultramontane Bishop 
 Ketteler, urging to him that the German victory 
 over France was too largely interpreted as a 
 Protestant victory with unfortunate results in the 
 pacification of Alsace-Lorraine, had suggested that 
 peace might the sooner come if the Catholics out- 
 side Prussia were given the same liberty as within 
 it.° Did that mean, as it seemed to imply, that 
 the Catholics were German in a different sense 
 from the Protestants? At any rate he allowed 
 his journalist Blum to announce that the Centre 
 
 112 Schneegans, Memoiren, p. 54. 
 
 113 Historische und politische Aufsaetze, III, 610. 
 114 Majunke, Geschichte des Culturkampfes, p. 144. 
 115 Raich, Briefe von und an Ketteler, p. 422. 
 
DE MAISTRE AND BISMARCK 249 
 
 was hostile to the German State—a sign of growing 
 suspicion.”® In the imperial elections of 1871 
 Ketteler’s letter became the basis of a definite 
 programme and forty-three Catholics of the centre 
 were elected.*”7 To the press the Centre was 
 simply an instrument in the hands of Rome, the 
 tool of Ultramontanism, and thus in its conception 
 anti-national.** Its members seemed no less sus- 
 picious since Windthorst was an enthusiastic 
 papalist, and Ketteler, as a bishop, might be 
 considered as an official representative of Rome; 
 and Bismarck, at the outset of his career as a 
 deputy, made him understand that between Catho- 
 lic and layman there was already a grave distinc- 
 tion.” It seemed not a little suggestive that the 
 first speeches of these two suspects should be in 
 response to an attempt on the part of the National 
 Liberals to make the ground of conflict one between 
 Rome and Germany.” It was, to say the least, 
 menacing that Bismarck, on the eve of the debate, 
 should have given Italy the assurance that he was 
 disposed to be friendly towards it. For friend- 
 ship with Italy could mean only hostility to the 
 Papacy, and, from such an attitude, it was but a 
 logical road to the Falk Laws. The meaning of 
 
 116 Goyau, I, 82. 
 
 117 Ibid., I, 95. 
 
 118 Holtzendorff, Das Deutsche Reich und die Constituirung der 
 Christlichen Religionsparteien, p. 16. 
 
 119 Goyau, op. cit., I, 101. 
 
 120 Goyau, op. cit., I, 105. 
 121 Rothan, L’Allegmane et L’Italie, II, 380. 
 
250 PROBLEM OF SOVEREIGNTY 
 
 
 
 his attitude was clear. The old principle of a 
 territorial religion of which the empire should be 
 the divinity had come to be for him the solution 
 of these ecclesiastical complications. 
 
 On the first of April, 1871, he made quite appar- 
 ent the drift of his thought. A Polish member 
 of the Reichstag had denied the voluntary affilia- 
 tion of Poland with the Empire in the name of 
 his country. It was a direct challenge to Bis- 
 marck’s conception of the State, and he did not 
 fail to take it up. ‘Behind you,’ he retorted 
 angrily,’ ‘you have naught save errors and 
 illusions. You think that the Polish nation has 
 elected you to represent it, but, in truth, you have 
 been elected to represent the interests of the 
 Catholic Church, and if you defend them when 
 they are under discussion, you will have fulfilled 
 your electoral function.’ It was a notable identi- 
 fication. It could mean only that he had declared 
 war on the Roman Church and the Grand Duke 
 of Weimar regarded it as his first overt attack 
 on Ultramontanism.** Windthorst saw clearly 
 the drift of his mind when he declared that it was 
 an attempt to enslave the Church. And it is of 
 interest to note that Treitschke denounced the 
 Roman claim of a free Church within the State 
 as equivalent to a demand for the right to rebel- 
 lion. It is often difficult to distinguish between 
 
 122 Bismarck, Reden, V, 16. 
 
 123 Busch, Tagenbuchblatter, II, 222. 
 124 Goyau, op. cit., I, 113. 
 
DE MAISTRE AND BISMARCK 251 
 
 the thought of Treitschke and the practice of his 
 master. 
 
 The issue was defined; it was not yet joined. 
 If the Centre was anti-imperial diplomatic nego- 
 tiations with Rome might bring its members to 
 their senses; and journalistic pressure might make 
 plain to the Pope the danger of embroiling himself 
 with the public opinion of Germany. Tauffkirchen 
 was accordingly despatched to Rome to explain 
 to the Papacy the help given to its enemies by the 
 lamentable aggressions of the Centre; while 
 Busch was commissioned to write articles to the 
 same effect.** Antonelli disavowed any attempt 
 at criticism of the Centre, and thus increased the 
 anger of Bismarck who had already found new 
 causes of suspicion in its support of the demo- 
 erats**—for him outside the State—and their 
 opposition to the grant to the successful generals 
 of the recent war.” Bismarck appealed in vain 
 to the papal approval of the Versailles ceremony.” 
 He began to accuse the Centre of Jesuitism, and 
 to remind the Church that for three hundred years 
 it had failed to conquer the Teutonic genius.” 
 But he could obtain nothing satisfactory. Rome 
 pursued its ancient policy of patience; for Ket- 
 
 125 Bismarck, Politische Briefe, I, 265 ff. 
 126 Busch, Tagenbuchblatter, II, 226. 
 127 Raich, op. cit., p. 443. 
 
 128 Hohenlohe, Denkwurtigketten, II, 64. 
 129 Pastor Reichensperger, II, p. 30. 
 
 130 Bismarck, Reden, V, 204. 
 
 131 Reden, V, 206. 
 
252 PROBLEM OF SOVEREIGNTY 
 
 teler had put it on its guard against his accusa- 
 tions.*” He sent the Prussian minister to dine at 
 the Quirinal.*” Antonelli’s reply was to inform 
 him that ‘Rome could not break with the party’ 
 he so bitterly hated.** 
 
 ‘The members of the Centre,’ he said a little 
 later,” ‘are trying to make us Italians,’ and it was 
 of this he had become convinced by his negotiations 
 with Rome. The papal refusal seemed to him 
 evidence that he was dealing with a State within 
 a State, and that reprisals were essential if the 
 sovereignty of the empire was to be maintained. 
 If he sought for means, they were near at hand in 
 an alliance with the National Liberals who as the 
 bitter antagonists of the Papacy were prepared 
 with a policy that might accomplish its destruction. 
 It was the old antagonism of priestcraft and king- 
 eraft.** If the Centre treated his government as 
 an enemy it was clearly necessary to treat its 
 master as he had treated Austria and beat him 
 into submission. Rome, as he now saw, was 
 associated everywhere with his enemies. She 
 endeavoured to rule in France, in Bavaria, in 
 Poland; at the Vatican Council, as Dollinger’s 
 excommunication seemed to show, she had laid 
 claim once more to the lordship of the world. He 
 would make plain the sovereignty of the State. 
 
 132 Pfulf, Ketteler, III, 153. 
 
 133 Favre, Rome et la République Francaise, p. 143-144. 
 
 134 Bismarck, Politische Briefe, I, 268. 
 
 135 See Poschinger, Bismarck und die Parliamentarier, II, 160. 
 136 Politische Reden, XII, 348. 
 
DE MAISTRE AND BISMARCK 253 
 
 VIL 
 
 It was the ancient contest of Guelf and Ghibel- 
 line prolonged into a modern time. What was 
 changed was not so much the manner of the 
 struggle as the roots from which it sprung. As 
 in the medieval time it had been the function of 
 the State to be the police department of the Church, 
 so to Bismarck the Church in the modern age 
 seemed to have a similar part to play.” But there 
 was the same attitude of suspicion between the 
 two powers. ‘This is a question of Church and 
 State,’ said Bismarck at Gastein to Monsignor 
 Vallet,*** ‘as a statesman I hate the Church.’ He 
 hated it because it threatened the unity of his 
 State. He conceived of allegiance as one, and it 
 was part of the danger inherent in any eccle- 
 siastical organisation that it undermined that 
 oneness. While, verbally, he admitted the 
 Church’s right to absolute freedom in her own 
 domain, he still held that her sphere must be 
 defined by the State and, as the Falk Laws bear 
 witness, controlled by it.°° The Kulturkampf 
 seemed to him ‘the primeval fight for supremacy 
 between royalty and priesthood. ... What we 
 aim at is the protection of the State, the establish- 
 
 137 On the nature of the relation between medieval Church and State 
 the reader can consult Dr. Figgis’ brilliant paper, printed as an appendix 
 to his Churches in the Modern State. 
 
 188 See the interesting little brochure of Mgr. Vallet, Le prince de 
 
 Bismarck ad Gastein (1906), p. 16. 
 139 Cf, Busch, Our Chancellor, Vol. I, p. 135. 
 
254 PROBLEM OF SOVEREIGNTY 
 
 ment of a distinct boundary-line between priestly 
 dominion and Royal rule, defined in such sort that 
 the State may be enabled to abide by it. For, in 
 the kingdom of this world, the State is entitled to 
 power and precedence.”*” But that was virtually 
 to deny the doctrine of a separate sphere for 
 Church and State and to assert the superiority of 
 the latter. He can hardly have hoped for peace 
 when he promulgated such a doctrine against 
 Rome. A remark of Busch’s on this attitude 
 perhaps throws light on the Chanecellor’s mind. 
 ‘For Protestant States to achieve peaceful rela- 
 tions with the Church of Rome,’ writes that dutiful 
 commentator," ‘is—under the most favourable 
 circumstances—a problem like that of squaring 
 the circle, the solution of which one may go very 
 near, but never quite attain.’ Such an attitude, 
 added to his fear that the Vatican contemplated 
 a ‘gesta Dei per Francos””’ was sufficient in itself 
 to give him a theory of political action against a 
 foreign and interfering prelate. Regarding the 
 Pope as he did, simply as the head of the Centre 
 party,’ it is little wonder that difficulties should 
 have arisen. It was not, of course, from theory 
 that he fought. ‘It is unworthy of a great State,’ 
 he had said in 1850, ‘to fight for any question 
 that does not concern its own interests;’ and he 
 
 140 Bismarck, Reden, V, 382. 
 
 141 Busch, op. ctt., I, 138. 
 
 142 Ibid., p. 139. 
 
 143 [bid., p. 147. 
 144 [bid., p. 183. 
 
DE MAISTRE AND BISMARCK 200 
 
 
 
 fought Rome as holding in its hand the key to his 
 French and Polish difficulties. He believed, as the 
 National Liberal Bennigsen put it,” that the 
 Ultramontanes desired ‘not conciliation but domi- 
 nation’ and he would strive against that to the end. 
 If the Papacy chose to ally itself with a party 
 which, in attacking him, threatened the unity of 
 the empire, he must vindicate the sovereignty so 
 challenged.** It might be, as Krementz stingingly 
 told him, that he was trying to make Prussia play 
 the part of Julian the Apostate; but at any rate 
 Julian had not hesitated to assert the authority of 
 the empire. That was why, as he laboriously ex- 
 plained,** he had suppressed the Catholic division 
 in the Ministry of Public Worship, ‘for it. repre- 
 sented not the rights of the State but rather the 
 rights of the Catholic Church.’ They were rather 
 papalists than Germans; and they must go if the 
 integrity of the empire was to be maintained.™ 
 They destroyed the peculiarly Germanic character 
 he had endeavoured to develop. They were Poles, 
 and they repudiated the German nationality.” 
 The Catholic division facilitated the teaching of 
 Polish in Polish schools—a thoroughly anti- 
 German work. And when he remembered that the 
 
 145 Oncken, Bennigsen, II, 218. 
 
 146 See his retrospect of April 21, 1887, in Reden, XII, 369 seq. 
 
 147 Siegfried, Actenstucke bet. reffend den preussischen Kulturkampf, 
 p. 46. : 
 148 Bismarck, Gedanken, II, 128. 
 
 149 Reden, VI, 270. 
 
 150 See his conversation about Kraezig with Auguste Reichensperger, 
 reported in Poschinger, Bismarck und die Parliamentarier, II, 184. 
 
 * 
 
256 PROBLEM OF SOVEREIGNTY 
 
 Poles were born rebels, it was not difficult to see 
 a widespread conspiracy.” His press continually 
 compared the Ultramontanes to the Poles and the 
 French—the enemies of German nationality.*” 
 ‘Your bishops,’ he told Auguste Reichensperger,” 
 ‘are not safe; Ketteler corresponds with that Pole 
 Kosmian. They only care about ecclesiastical 
 interests. I respect every manner of faith... 
 but I can not allow a powerful enemy threatening 
 to Germany to organise itself.’ He believed he had 
 proofs of the Polish taint in the Jesuits;** later 
 he urged that they were guilty of the almost equal 
 sin of plotting to lead the Social democrats.*” 
 Hohenlohe explained the true character of the 
 conflict. ‘We begin the old medieval conflict 
 again,’ he said,’ ‘I am a Ghibelline and I shall 
 always be of that party.’ And to consolidate the 
 empire Bismarck, too, would take up the ancient 
 text. 
 
 It is thus that we have to interpret the nature 
 of the anti-clerical legislation.” The Falk Laws 
 are an attempt to insist on the universal para- 
 mountey of German influences. The expulsion of 
 the Jesuits removed an order which he believed 
 to be concerned with the promotion of Polish 
 
 151 Cf. Majunke, Geschicte des Culturkampfes, p. 198. 
 
 152 Goyau, op. cit., II, 96. 
 
 158 Pastor, Reichensperger, II, 63. 
 
 154 Hohenlohe, Denkwurtigketten, II, 78. 
 
 155 Reden, XI, 250-251. 
 
 156 Goyau, op. ctt., I, 317. 
 
 157 M. Goyau has conveniently reprinted the text of the laws in the 
 fourth volume of his excellent work. 
 
DE MAISTRE AND BISMARCK 257 
 
 
 
 interests.** The refusal of bishoprics to any save 
 a German who has followed a course of study 
 approved by the government” has a clear purport 
 not merely of purging the Catholic episcopate of 
 men not likely to be in sympathy with German 
 ideals, but also of placing their education under 
 a strict governmental supervision. The third 
 clause in the sixteenth article of this law is par- 
 ticularly noteworthy. ‘When there exists,’ it 
 states,’ ‘against a candidate facts which give 
 grounds for the opinion either that he will not 
 observe the laws of the State and the arrangements 
 made by the authorities within the legal limits of 
 their powers, or that he will disturb the public 
 peace,’ his confirmation may be refused. ‘Raison 
 d’état,’ in fact, will serve as a sufficient excuse for 
 denying an otherwise fit appointment; in this way 
 Germany could rid itself bit by bit of the Ultra- 
 montanes. It is important, moreover, to bear in 
 mind both the civil penalties attached to the laws 
 and the establishment of a State Court of Appeal. 
 This was, in implication, the assertion of the 
 superiority of State to Church. The twenty-fourth 
 article’ went even further and gave the State the 
 right of interference with ecclesiastical functions 
 where it deemed them improperly performed. 
 Against the law of thirteenth of May, 1873, which 
 limited ecclesiastical punishments to those of a 
 
 158 This is the Imperial Law of July 4, 1872. Goyau, IV, 225. 
 159 This is the law of May 11, 1873. Goyau, IV, 227. 
 
 160 Goyau, IV, 231. 
 
 161 [bid., IV, 238, 
 
258 PROBLEM OF SOVEREIGNTY 
 
 
 
 
 
 purely spiritual kind,” it is difficult to take serious 
 objection; though it is worth remarking that the 
 Church is forbidden to inflict or to threaten 
 pecuniary penalties. The law of the twentieth of 
 May, 1874,’* virtually handed over the control of 
 vacant bishoprics to the State, thus rendering 
 it difficult to enforce an objectionable appointment. 
 All religious orders, save those of a semi-medical 
 character, were forbidden on Prussian soil.** 
 Catholic Churches on Prussian soil were handed 
 over to the old Catholics in such parishes as those 
 in which the majority consisted of their sympa- 
 thisers, for certain hours of the day; though 
 Bismarck must have known that to the Catholics 
 this was simply the desecration of a sacred edifice. 
 The State charged itself with the surveillance of 
 the fiscal administration of the Church, forbidding 
 it to build or collect. funds without permission; a 
 law which of course placed in lay hands half the 
 possibility of church extension.** To the lay 
 control of schools, established with a similar 
 object, it is difficult to find grounds of exception. 
 ‘But it is clear that no more thorough-going 
 ‘Erastianism than this has ever been attempted. 
 Every corner of Church policy was swept by the 
 grim hand of the State. While it is possible to 
 admire the relentless thoroughness with which the 
 
 162 Ibid., IV, 241. 
 
 163 Ibid., IV, 246. 
 
 164 Prussian Law of May 31, 1875. Goyau, IV, 256. 
 
 165 Law of July 4, 1875. Goyau, IV, 272. 
 166 Prussian Law of June 7, 1876, Goyau, IV, 274. 
 
DE MAISTRE AND BISMARCK 259 
 
 legislation is conceived, it is also difficult to deny 
 that such legislation would have annihilated any 
 conception of a Church worthy of the name. It 
 would have turned it into no more than an organ 
 for the propagation of the opinions of an im- 
 perious chancellor upon German unity. It would 
 have prevented the Roman Catholic Church from 
 remaining true no less to the letter than to the 
 spirit of its endeavour. It would have made it 
 admit to virtual membership excommunicated 
 members of its own communion. Clearly to 
 antagonism such as this only an unfaltering 
 hostility was possible. / 
 
 ‘The history of the Kulturkampf showed how 
 greatly Bismarck had mistaken the strength of 
 his opponents. He fined, he imprisoned, he in- 
 flicted a virtual exile; but the Church replied only 
 with contempt.; In the Reichstag itself he found in 
 men like Windthorst and Reichensperger foemen 
 in every way worthy of his own powers. | Despite 
 his utmost efforts and unconcealed chagrin the 
 numbers of the Centre grew, and those of the 
 National Liberals diminished until the Catholics 
 were in virtual control of the House.; The ban- 
 ished prelates continued, in despite of his laws, 
 to exercise their functions from Rome and Hol- 
 land, and they found a willing obedience. / All his 
 efforts to obtain some compromise with the Centre 
 or with the Vatican met with the utmost diplo- 
 matic politeness but also with the completest 
 refusal. Little by little he was compelled to turn 
 
260 PROBLEM OF SOVEREIGNTY 
 
 from alliance with the National Liberals to his old 
 friendship with the Conservatives—a change which 
 involved also his humiliation.) ‘If,’ he had said in 
 1874,*” ‘I was stranded on an island where there 
 were only two men, a Catholic and a Scandinavian, 
 I believe I should make friends with the latter.’ 
 But in 1879 the same Bismarck was nominating 
 a member of the ‘anti-German’ Centre, Franken- 
 stein, to the vice-presidency of the Reichstag ;*" 
 on the twenty-ninth of June, 1879, he was dis- 
 missing Falk;** in 1883 he sent the Crown Prince 
 Frederic to the Vatican; in 1884 he asked for 
 papal mediation in his difficulties with Spain ;” 
 finally, in 1886 and 1887, came the abrogation of 
 the Falk Laws. It was the ‘little Canossa’ he had 
 tried vainly to conceal amid his smiles.*” 
 
 VIIl 
 
 So he learned the meaning of a sovereignty 
 within Germany which yet did not belong to 
 the German State. ‘You will never be German 
 citizens,’ said the historian Baumgarten to the 
 Catholics in words which might have been Bis- 
 
 167 Poschinger, Stud. bei Bismarck (1910), p. 159. 
 
 168 Goyau, III, 77. 
 
 169 On Falk’s dismissal and his own interpretation of it, see Fischer, 
 Falk, p. 17. 
 
 170 Philippson, Friedrich, III, p. 367. 
 
 171 Goyau, op. cit., IV, 61f. 
 
 172 Lefebre de Behaine, Léon XIII et Bismarck, p. 86. The whole of 
 this admirable book, by the French ambassador at Rome during the 
 Kulturkampf, must be consulted for Bismarck’s tortuous negotiations. 
 
DE MAISTRE AND BISMARCK 261 
 marck’s;"* and if that meant that they were to 
 be faithless to their religion its truth was unde- 
 niable. But it was a different Bismarck who, in 
 1881, acclaimed the German Catholics as his 
 compatriots, and the institutions of their Church, 
 the Papacy included, as part of the great con- 
 federation it had been his task to create.“ It was 
 a different Bismarck from him who, in 1875, had 
 urged that if France submitted to the new Ultra- 
 montanism the peace of Europe must be broken ;*” 
 and in the same year had urged the vital necessity 
 of defending the State against an aggressive Catho- 
 lic Church.” In the interval he had learned a 
 mighty lesson. 
 
 \He had learned that the world, even the Ger- 
 manic world, is not one and indivisible. He had 
 defined the State to himself as a power which, to 
 maintain itself, must prove its sovereignty over 
 every department of human life.) He would have 
 agreed with Calhoun that the division of sover- 
 eignty was its destruction. So, in one aspect, he 
 would contend that the Kulturkampf was no more 
 than the vindication for the State of rights that 
 were in reality its own. ‘We can not,’ he said,” 
 ‘concede to the Church the permanent right of 
 exercising part of the powers of the State; and 
 while the. Church is in possession of such a pre- 
 
 173 See his amazing Luther Redivivus (1878), pp. 254-255. 
 
 174 Reden, IX, 162. 
 
 175 Goyau, II, 109. 
 
 176 Tbid., II, 247. 
 177 Busch, Tagenbuchblatter, II, 322. 
 
262 PROBLEM OF SOVEREIGNTY 
 
 rogative we must, for the sake of peace, restrain 
 its activities.’ But the Falk Laws show clearly 
 that his notion of restraint involved the extension 
 of the powers of the State into a field where no 
 Catholic could admit its exercise and where con- 
 flict was bound to result. / Doubtless so to derogate 
 from the unity he envisaged as desirable was to 
 lessen the completeness of the sovereignty he 
 pursued; but it was to limit it in the direction of 
 its natural boundaries.; It was useless for him to 
 contend that no difficulties would ever have arisen 
 if the Centre had only helped him to complete the 
 unity of the empire.’ He defined unity in such 
 a manner as to make possible only their opposition. 
 He did not see, as Treitschke so clearly understood, 
 that the sovereignty of a State is simply the power 
 that State has at its disposal; though where the 
 Prussian historian would have found that power 
 in the army, we tend, in the modern State, to find 
 it in the degree of consent a measure can command. 
 Bismarck learned that sovereignty must thus be 
 essentially an illusory concept since its exercise 
 at any moment belongs to the realm not of the 
 certain but of the probable. But his defeat would 
 have taught him also the error in Treitschke’s 
 teaching that the State is ‘born and dies with the 
 exercise of its sovereignty’; for assuredly the 
 German State did not disappear because it was 
 178 Bismarck, Gedanken, II, 150. 
 
 179 See Treitschke’s Zehn Jahre Deutscher Kampfe, II, 238-239. 
 180 Op. cit. 
 
DE MAISTRE AND BISMARCK 263 
 
 worsted in the Kulturkampf. It was simply 
 demonstrated that men belong not to one all- 
 inclusive group, the State, but to a variety of 
 groups, and that, in the last resort, they will follow 
 the demands of their conscience. It was useless 
 for Bismarck to demand its subjugation to the 
 needs of the State, to urge that in making war on 
 the State the Church was usurping one of the 
 State’s prerogatives. Such argument was born 
 from the failure to understand that the State is 
 an institution like any other and that rights must 
 find their justification in the support they can 
 command. There may be a divorce between 
 politics and morals, but, in all final questions, we 
 begin to perceive the clear sign of their essential 
 identity. It was Bismarck’s difficulty that he 
 failed to understand their union, and was thus 
 unable to resolve his problem into its constituent 
 parts. 
 
 IX 
 
 Where De Maistre speaks of the Church, Bis- 
 marck speaks of the State; where De Maistre 
 discusses the Papacy, Bismarck is discussing the 
 German empire. Otherwise, at bottom, the thought 
 is essentially the same. Nor was their problem 
 different. De Maistre had to confront a world 
 which the Revolution had smashed into an atomic 
 chaos and it was in the world-sovereignty of Rome 
 that he found its new centre of unity. Bismarck 
 
264 PROBLEM OF SOVEREIGNTY 
 
 found a bewildering congeries of unimportant and 
 fragmentary communities from which a great 
 empire had to be builded and it was in the single 
 hegemony of Prussia that he found his instru- 
 ment. What De Maistre feared was intellectual 
 opposition; the chief bane of Bismarck was politi- 
 — eal antagonism. The fundamental faith of each 
 
 was beyond the sphere of reason—with De Maistre 
 it was the dogmas of Catholicism, with Bismarck 
 the revelations of an evangelical Christianity. 
 Each saw in a world of individualisation the guar- 
 antee of disruption and evolved a theory to secure 
 its suppression. Each loved passionately the ideal 
 of unity since that seemed to them both the surest 
 guarantee of survival. Each saw truth as one and 
 therefore doubted the rightness of a sovereignty 
 that was either fallible or divisible; and each in 
 the end came to the realisation that his theories 
 were inconsistent with the facts of life. Hach 
 failed to understand that tremendous truth incul- 
 cated by Lamennais when he urged that the real 
 unity of doctrine—whether political or religious— 
 can come only from possession of freedom. It is 
 useless to paint truth as one unless preparation is 
 made to carry on the perpetual warfare that will 
 result from disagreement with its nature. That 
 was the fundamental defect in the minds of both. 
 They did not see that however organic be the 
 community in which we live, man is a solitary no 
 less than a social being, and his ideal world is at 
 bottom interstitial. However much he acts in 
 
DE MAISTRE AND BISMARCK 265 
 
 common, he wishes also to act alone; however much 
 he thinks as a member of the herd, he will wish 
 also to think as a lonely wanderer. It is, perhaps, 
 an antinomy; but it is one which no theory of the 
 State dare afford to neglect. For an attitude which 
 makes the boundaries of authority commensurate 
 with the bounds of mind is at war with the instincts 
 most pregnant with human good. 
 
COP neket ees 
 
 
 
APPENDIX A 
 
 A NOTE ON SOVEREIGNTY AND 
 FEDERALISM 
 
 P AD he commented with any fullness upon it, 
 
 the Constitution of the United States would 
 doubtless have provoked the vehement derision of 
 John Austin, for nowhere, either in theory or in 
 practice, has it chosen to erect an instrument of 
 Sovereign power. In England, as De Lolme told 
 us a century ago, nature alone has set limits to 
 the omnicompetence of the king in Parliament, 
 and what he so forcibly taught Professor Dicey 
 has reiterated in the most famous of all his books. 
 So that, in some sort, there would seem a theo- 
 retical deficiency in American government. We 
 do not know who rules. Certainly the president 
 is not absolute. Neither to Congress nor to the 
 Supreme Court is unlimited power decreed. And, 
 as if to make confusion worse confounded, there 
 eut athwart this dubiousness certain sovereign 
 rights possessed by the States alone. 
 
 Professor Dicey would shrug his shoulders and 
 tell us that it is the natural consequence of federal- 
 ism. It is, he writes, ‘the method by which fed- 
 eralism attempts to reconcile the apparently 
 inconsistent claims of national sovereignty and 
 
268 PROBLEM OF SOVEREIGNTY 
 
 State sovereignty.’ The sarcasm is but thinly 
 veiled. The fathers reconciled these opposites by 
 abolishing altogether any notion of Austinian 
 sovereignty. Federal government, we are there- 
 fore told, is notoriously weak government, since 
 in it there is no final arbiter. The legislature of 
 the United States, or of Canada, for the matter 
 of that, is degraded to the level of an English 
 railway company. It is a non-sovereign law- 
 making body. It derives its powers, like the 
 Great Eastern Railway Company, from a written 
 document, which simultaneously limits them. 
 Federalism, Professor Dicey notes further, tends 
 to produce Conservatism. For the Constitution 
 is written arfd rigid. It acquires a kind of sacro- 
 sanct character in the eyes of the people. Change 
 of any kind becomes difficult because it almost 
 seems irreligious. It is condemned before it is 
 attempted. The unitary method of government 
 impresses Professor Dicey as being as far more 
 admirable in conception as it is more efficacious 
 in results. 
 
 Any criticism of this well-established doctrine 
 has at least two obvious lines of attack. We 
 might, in the first place, urge that to talk of par- 
 liamentary omnicompetence in such downright 
 fashion is to beg the whole question. Theoretically 
 existent, practically Parliamentary sovereignty is, 
 in the technical sense, an absurdity. The British 
 Parliament may be the legal superior of the 
 colonial legislatures; but everyone is well aware 
 
SOVEREIGNTY AND FEDERALISM 269 
 
 that it dare not in fact override them on any 
 fundamental question. When the South African 
 Parliament forbade the admission of Indians to 
 the Transvaal, Great Britain felt that a grave 
 injustice had been inflicted on a meritorious section 
 of its subjects; but Great Britain did not dare, 
 despite the theoretical sovereignty of its legis- 
 lature, to repair the injustice so inflicted. When 
 Lord Grey tried, in 1849-1850, to turn the Cape 
 of Good Hope into a penal colony, he was com- 
 pelled, despite the delegation to him of sovereign 
 power, to desist. Lord Brougham caused the 
 Judicial Committee of the Privy Council to be 
 created the supreme tribunal in ecclesiastical 
 eases; but it is notorious that churchmen have 
 refused to accept its decisions as binding in 
 spiritual matters. Sir James Graham, in 1843, 
 took the legally admirable ground that if the 
 courts upheld the right of lay entry into patronage 
 in the Scottish Church he must uphold their 
 decision in Parliament; but that legal rectitude 
 did not prevent Dr. Chalmers and his colleagues 
 disrupting the Church to emphasise their dissent. 
 In a more recent time, when the Welsh miners 
 struck in complete defiance of the provisions of 
 the Munitions Act, it was found simply impossible 
 to enforce its penalties. The American Revolution 
 was, on the English side, an experiment in applied 
 Austinianism. It is surely obvious that a sover- 
 eignty so abstract is practically without utility. 
 The second method of approach is more con- 
 
270 PROBLEM OF SOVEREIGNTY 
 
 structive. It is the result of the view that sover- 
 eignty, rightly regarded, ought not to be defined 
 as omnicompetence at all. Sovereignty is, in its 
 exercise, an act of will, whether to do or to refrain 
 from doing. It is an exercise of will behind which 
 there is such power as to make the expectation of 
 obedience reasonable. Now it does not seem 
 valuable to urge that a certain group, the State, 
 ean theoretically secure obedience to all its acts, 
 because we know that practically to be absurd. 
 This granted, it is clear that the sovereignty of the 
 State does not in reality differ from the power 
 exercised by a Church or a trade union. The 
 obedience the Church or trade union will secure 
 depends simply on what measure of resistance the 
 command inspires. So that, on this view, when 
 Louis XIV revoked the Edict of Nantes, when a 
 Church issues a new doctrinal order, when a trade 
 union proclaims a strike, all are exercising a power 
 that differs only in degree, not in kind, from that 
 of the State. Analysed into its elements sover- 
 eignty is, after all, not such a very formidable 
 thing. It is the obvious accompaniment of per- 
 sonality, and the main characteristic of person- 
 ality is the power to will. Sometimes wills, 
 whether individual or corporate, conflict, and only 
 submission or trial of strength can decide which 
 is superior. The force of a command from the 
 State is not, therefore, bound to triumph, and no 
 theory is of value which would make it so. When 
 Germany orders its subjects to refrain from the 
 
SOVEREIGNTY AND FEDERALISM 271 
 
 discussion of peace terms it may enforce its rule 
 when only Rosa Luxemburg or Liebknecht is con- 
 cerned; it could not do so were the Socialists as 
 a whole to rebel. 
 
 Aside from the historical accident which has 
 given the constituent States of the American 
 federation a certain sovereignty, at any rate in 
 well-defined spheres, it may well be argued that 
 Hamilton and his coadjutors would have had 
 theoretical justification even if they had not had 
 history to guide them in their determination of 
 the division of constitutional powers. That divi- 
 sion is more consonant with political facts than 
 the unitary theory so favoured by the majority 
 of European observers. Certain local groups have 
 a life of their own that is not merely delegated to 
 them by the State. They are capable of directing 
 their own concerns. Their interest in themselves 
 is revivified and inspired by the responsibility for 
 such direction. When New York wants a new 
 Constitution it can apply itself to that manu- 
 facture. When Australia needs one, or Canada, 
 they must be made—the phrase is sinister—in 
 Whitehall. The history of Lord Grey’s experi- 
 ments in the direction of colonial self-government 
 makes clear the utter inadequacy of the latter 
 method. If Wisconsin wants an income tax it can 
 obtain one by winning the assent of its citizens. 
 If Manchester wants a ship canal it must persuade 
 Parliament that its needs are more important than 
 the jealousies of Liverpool. There is no more 
 
272 PROBLEM OF SOVEREIGNTY 
 
 tragic history than that which comes under the 
 rubric ‘the decline and fall of the parish.’ 
 
 ' Lawyers, for the most part, have tended to 
 believe that the status of a person is something it 
 is in the power of the State alone to confer, and in 
 this view Austin, doubtless, would have most fully 
 concurred. But surely it is abundantly clear that 
 the personality of associations is primary, that it 
 springs from the fact of their existence, and is not 
 conceded to them by the State... This concession 
 theory has, it is true, the authority of great men 
 like Savigny behind it. It was urged, in effect by 
 that subtle lawyer Pope Innocent IV when he 
 argued that the corporate person is sheer fiction. 
 That claim, however, is becoming increasingly 
 impossible of acceptance. Things, for example, 
 like the Disruption in the Church of Scotland, or 
 the failure of the Privy Council as the supreme 
 ecclesiastical tribunal, show that in truth the 
 churches live lives of their own, independent and 
 self-contained, and that they will not tolerate 
 external interference. The State, for good and 
 special reasons, withheld corporateness from trade 
 unions; but the Taff Vale decision showed how 
 real was its existence in despite of statute. The 
 failure of the Sherman Act may be traced to a 
 similar cause. You can not make men compete by 
 Act of Congress. They have wills of their own 
 that the statute does not form. Everywhere we 
 have diversity, plurality. It seems indeed time to 
 admit its existence. 
 
SOVEREIGNTY AND FEDERALISM — 273 
 
 It is really difficult to understand what special 
 merit attaches to unity. Germany points proudly 
 to the complete absence of differences among her 
 citizens. Contempt is openly expressed for a 
 country like the United States where diversity of 
 Opinion is most clearly apparent. In Germany, 
 it is moral error to doubt the rightness of her cause. 
 It is certainly dangerous to resist the sovereign 
 mandate to sacrifice all to her need. Yet there is 
 clearly grave danger in her attitude. ‘The man,’ 
 Lord Acton wrote, ‘who prefers his country before 
 every other shows the same spirit as the man who 
 surrenders every right to the State. They both 
 deny that right is superior to authority.’ 
 
 In fact, there is real moral insufficiency in any 
 theory of the State which impresses upon its 
 members the need for any consistent uniformity 
 of outlook. The fact that no one in Germany 
 doubts her rightness in sinking, for example, the 
 Lusitania, does not morally, or even politically, 
 justify her position in that regard. It is simply 
 evidence that in Germany to-day necessity has 
 exacted the sacrifice of right to authority. Faith 
 there is more urgent than thought. We prefer a 
 country where the sovereignty is distributed, 
 where the richness of the corporate lives is insur- 
 ance against such sterility of outlook. The 
 Austinian theory of sovereignty, ungenial enough 
 even in its abstract presentation, would as a fact 
 breed simple servility were it capable of practical 
 application. There can be no servility in a State 
 
a74 PROBLEM OF SOVEREIGNTY 
 
 
 
 that divides its effective governance. The neces- 
 sity of balancing interests, the need for combining 
 opinions, results in a wealth of political thought 
 such as no State where the real authority is single 
 can attain. The price of liberty is exactly diver- 
 gence of opinion on fundamental questions. The 
 well-ordered and neatly arranged products of 
 recent German thought on polities testify to the 
 existence of its opposite. No man, and even more, 
 no State, can ever be so right as not to need doubts 
 of his rightness. 
 
 It is probable that even the most extreme sup- 
 porters of parliamentary authority would sym- 
 pathise with this view. Certainly Professor Dicey 
 adopted it when he gave his adhesion to the Ulster 
 eause. For he thereby announced his willingness 
 to resist the authority he had declared omnipotent, 
 and he would surely not resist unless he had some 
 hope of success. If the truth of this attitude be 
 admitted, if the State be viewed, in brief, as some- 
 thing more than a delegator of powers, we begin 
 to approach an organisation that in essence is not 
 distinct from a federation even if in name it be 
 different. We begin to see the State as akin to 
 that medieval empire which was above all a 
 community of communities. The sovereign ap- 
 pears as a thing consistently to revere rather than 
 as a thing undeviatingly to obey. It expresses a 
 
 unity of feeling, not a unity of opinion—the feel- 
 ing that, as Aristotle pointed out long ago, the 
 object of the State is the good life; while it implies 
 
SOVEREIGNTY AND FEDERALISM — 275 
 
 a diversity of opinion as to the means by which 
 that good life may be attained. Federal govern- 
 ment may be weak government, but it is weak only 
 as other governments are weak—that is, in the 
 degree to which it commits acts of trespass. 
 Parliamentary government has only remained 
 strong, has only retained the appearance of omni- 
 competence, by reason of the delicate skill with 
 which its footsteps have been directed. 
 
 A last word may be hazarded. One who comes 
 to America from Europe may well crave leave to 
 doubt whether, fundamentally, there is truth in 
 the judgment that federalism is conservative. The 
 forms, it is true, may be preserved, may even seem 
 to be revered as sacred things, but the spirit glows 
 with a life that is ever new and abundant. The 
 one thing that must strike the modern observer of 
 any federal Constitution is the growing impatience 
 with its rigid encasement, the ever insistent 
 demand that the form shall be made equally 
 elastic with the spirit. And in the variety of its 
 eroup life, the wide distribution of its sovereign 
 powers, he may not unjustly see the surest 
 guarantee of its perennial youth. 
 

 
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APPENDIX B 
 SOVEREIGNTY AND CENTRALISATION 
 
 T can never be too thoroughly emphasised that 
 the founders of the American Constitution did 
 not intend to create a complete system of govern- 
 ment. They took the States for granted, and it 
 was upon their complex foundation that they 
 attempted to build. What they attempted was 
 essentially its supplement, the binding together 
 of certain strands which the withdrawal of British 
 Sovereignty had grievously untied. Yet, as the 
 event was to show, it was no easy matter to achieve 
 a working efficiency for the new instrument of 
 Sovereign power. If we can say to-day that the 
 interests of the American nation are supreme, and 
 that the old States’ rights theory of sovereignty is 
 largely obsolete, we have to remember that a Civil 
 War was needed to give it its death-blow. For the 
 Constitution was doubtfully imposed and regret- 
 fully accepted. Men found it difficult to under- 
 stand that two jurisdictions largely co-ordinate 
 ean work towards a similar end. They imagined 
 that co-ordination meant antithesis, and drew a 
 distinction between State and nation. Antagonism 
 not unnaturally resulted; for where men believe 
 there is enmity, its appearance may with certainty 
 
278 PROBLEM OF SOVEREIGNTY 
 
 
 
 
 
 be predicted. In the result we may utter our 
 requiescat over the grave of localism. 
 
 Nationalism, then, is triumphant. The natural 
 question any statute must now raise is not whether 
 Missouri or Alabama will benefit from its enact- 
 ment, but whether the United States will so benefit. 
 But there is another aspect of this unified sover- 
 eignty about which certain doubts may be ex- 
 pressed. It stands for centralisation; that is to 
 say, it changes the whole character of the federal 
 idea. It may be, indeed, that this centralisation 
 is essential to the future of the United States. It 
 may be that until the power of the latter under- 
 goes a further concentration, it can never ade- 
 quately be exercised. The interests of the whole 
 may so uniquely transcend the interests of the 
 parts as to give their separate claims little or no 
 validity. Yet even an observer handicapped, as 
 I am, by an alien tradition, can not help but 
 realise that there is in America a certain funda- 
 mental disunity of circumstance. When I am in 
 Kansas, I know that I am not in New York. The 
 problems, even the thoughts and the desires, are 
 different and affect people differently. Is it wise 
 to make Washington a kind of Hegelian harmoni- 
 sation of these differences and say that Congress 
 can transcend them in a federal statute? In the 
 result, as every statesman must know, what are 
 called the ‘interests of the Republic’ in New York 
 will probably be called ‘discrimination against the 
 Middle West’ in Kansas. And that is intelligible, 
 
SOVEREIGNTY AND CENTRALISATION - 279 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 even if it is rarely praiseworthy. For while action 
 in Kansas would have attempted to cope with the 
 difficulties of the Middle West, action at Wash- 
 ington aims—since a balance of interests must be 
 struck—at their genial evasion. Surely this sug- 
 gests the existence of a problem which has aroused 
 less attention than it deserves. 
 
 The growth of national government, with the 
 consequent strengthening of its sovereign char- 
 acter, leads, as I have urged, to its increasing 
 centralisation. This is true not of America alone. 
 The whole history of England, Maitland once 
 remarked, could be brought under the rubric of 
 the decline and fall of the sheriff. One of the 
 resultant and fundamental problems Great Britain 
 will have to face when its reconstruction comes is 
 precisely this. Its local life will have to be made 
 real. It will undergo revivification. Its units of 
 local government will have to be made real. They 
 will have to receive a sovereignty that is some- 
 thing more than an anaemic reflex of the central 
 power. An interest in local problems will have to 
 be aroused not less keen and vivid than the interest 
 in national problems. Nor is this less true of 
 France. Her local group-life has been sacrificed 
 to the absorptiveness of Paris; with the result 
 that since the fall of Napoleon, France has been 
 striving to: regain the local creativeness now 
 stricken with impotence. The vigorous self- 
 government of the modern German city derives 
 from the at any rate partial admission by higher 
 
280 PROBLEM OF SOVEREIGNTY 
 
 authority that its powers, to be responsible, must 
 be complete. It was there remembered, as in 
 England and France it has been forgotten, that 
 the tissue of the civic parts changes more fre- 
 quently than the tissue of the national whole. 
 Since in the latter countries an adequate nutrition 
 of final responsibility was not provided, the result 
 has been in a real sense death from starvation. 
 
 I know well enough that nothing like this stage 
 has been reached in the United States. Yet the 
 difficulty is ominously near. No kind of working 
 compromise has been reached between the States 
 on the one hand, and the federal government on the 
 other. Each has gone its own way, often almost 
 wilfully duplicating the work of the other. The 
 State, it is assumed, must do what the federal 
 government has not done; the federal government 
 merely acts as the bracket to a series of algebraic 
 symbols. The possibility of a co-operation is not 
 considered. The lines of demarcation are never 
 made plain. It is never adequately realised that 
 both are overcrowded with business, that they can 
 not, with all the good will in the world, waste an 
 ounce of energy in this complex age. Congress, 
 of a certainty, can not give proper attention to 
 local problems. It is, moreover, all the more 
 difficult to obtain a rapprochement with a Consti- 
 tution uniquely inaccessible to amendment. It 
 may be admitted frankly that the centralisation 
 of the modern federal government has won some 
 tremendous victories. An Englishman needs no 
 
SOVEREIGNTY AND CENTRALISATION 281 
 
 convincing that the victory won in 1865 for union, 
 and, implicitly, for centralisation, was a victory 
 for the beneficent forces of the civilised world. 
 He may well stand amazed at the quality no less 
 than the volume of work performed by such 
 centralising agencies as the Interstate Commerce 
 Commission. He has no doubts as to the past. 
 It is about the future that he must feel uncertain. 
 
 For there are many able thinkers in the United 
 States who are convinced that where national 
 thought is, generally speaking, superior in quality 
 to State thought, where it is temporally in advance, 
 national, that is to say centralised action should 
 follow. The sovereign, in fact, should show his 
 powers of self-assertion. Where he is in posses- 
 sion of a progressive idea which fails to obtain 
 sanction in a backward state, then he should use 
 his reserve power in compensation for its reac- 
 tionary character. It is, of course, easy to sneer 
 at people who cling to the ideas of the mid- 
 Victorian age. It is easier still to remember that 
 there is outside the State government a federal 
 power which pays no heed to regional opinion. 
 State government and State opinion must, so the 
 reformer urges, be overridden if progress is to be 
 made. 
 
 A typical instance is that of prohibition. Re- 
 formers in Maine do not see why they should 
 suffer for the stupid inability of New York to 
 control its liquor traffic. Congress, they say, 
 should legislate for the nation, and prevent either 
 
282 PROBLEM OF SOVEREIGNTY 
 
 the enactment of anomalies, or the retention of so 
 pathetic an ancestralism as a taste for beer. Now 
 I waive the whole question of whether Maine does 
 in fact benefit from its more acute perception; 
 reputable authority assures me that the contrary 
 is the case. But the real question to which I want 
 an adequate reply—more convincing than rhetori- 
 cal statements of the case for prohibition—is 
 whether America will not gain more from the slow 
 self-struggle of New York to intelligence, than 
 from the irritating imposition from without of a 
 belief to which it has not been converted. I can 
 not avoid the emphatic opinion that in this, as in 
 other matters, nature is not saltatory. Politically 
 we probably gain more from the slow, and often 
 painful erosion of prejudice by education, than 
 when we attempt its elimination by more drastic 
 methods. It is, of course, annoying for those of 
 us who consider we have found the truth; but if 
 we are to have democratic government we must 
 bear with the inconveniences of democracy. 
 
 The traditional separation of powers in Ameri- 
 can government has been assailed as often as it 
 has been explained. Yet I believe it is in fact a 
 natural division. Of course to lawyers like Pro- 
 fessor Dicey, federalism of any kind appears but 
 a step on the road to centralised government; it 
 is, in his own phrase, the union which precedes 
 unification. J am a frank medievalist in this 
 regard. It seems to me admirable that a country 
 which, in certain aspects, is one, should yet adapt 
 
SOVEREIGNTY AND CENTRALISATION 2838 
 
 
 
 its governance to suit the severalty which is no 
 less characteristic of other aspects. In a democ- 
 racy, the surest guaranty of civic responsibility 
 seems to lie in the gift of genuine functions of 
 government no less to the parts than to the whole. 
 No doubt, on occasion, the dissipation of sover- 
 eignty will result in conflict. But even without it 
 there is conflict of a kind far more wasteful, since 
 it in nowise depends upon principle. And anyone 
 who reads the reports of the United States 
 Supreme Court for the last twenty-five years will 
 realise that the national powers have not been 
 extended without opposition and that Washington 
 has not always been victorious. What seems to 
 me dangerous is that the expansion no less than 
 the contraction of the central power should always 
 have been planless and unthinking. It has de- 
 pended always—witness the recent embarkation 
 upon the governmental regulation of railway 
 wages—upon the haphazard accidents of momen- 
 tary events, instead of upon a scheme of considered 
 and inherent policy. It has grown without thought 
 of local needs or of local personality. Had the 
 sovereign federation given respectful recognition 
 to those other sovereigns, no less real, which we 
 call the States, there would have resulted no less 
 an impulse to creation than an economy of effort. 
 
 It is the fashion to regard federalism as the 
 merest pis aller and to hope piously for the time 
 when a more adequate centralisation will render 
 it unnecessary. This seems to me to neglect certain 
 
284 PROBLEM OF SOVEREIGNTY 
 
 
 
 obvious lessons to be drawn from other experience. 
 In education, for example, we have learned that 
 the more pupils per teacher, the less efficient, on 
 the whole, is the instruction. Commercially, Mr. 
 Brandeis has shown that certain business units 
 may become so large as to be physically incapable 
 of successful administration. I would urge that 
 a similar law of diminishing returns applies also 
 to the sphere of government. It becomes more 
 and more obvious that we must recognise certain 
 natural units of political administration, but also 
 see to it that we do not duplicate that power. It 
 is admitted freely that the result will probably 
 derogate from the unique sovereignty of the whole. 
 Yet that is surely but a theoretical derogation 
 from which no practical consequences ensue; and 
 I am pragmatist enough to contend that it is there- 
 fore no derogation at all. 
 
 I can imagine no more fruitful political thinking 
 than that which should attempt to read for our 
 own day the due lesson of the failure of certain 
 emperors who, because they took the whole world 
 for their field of vision, gave Voltaire the material 
 for the most admirable of his gibes. We seem in 
 genuine danger of going back to an ancient and 
 false worship of unity, to a trust in an undivided 
 sovereignty as the panacea for our ills. Surely the 
 vitality of political life depends rather on the 
 conference of final responsibility where there is 
 the willingness to assume it and the capacity to 
 assume it wisely. Only thus can we prevent 
 
SOVEREIGNTY AND CENTRALISATION 285 
 
 Washington from degenerating into Dublin 
 Castle. In the end, maybe, the ways of attainment 
 will be as difficult as the objects at which they 
 aim; but the good of the universe is manifold and 
 not single. We are as travellers breasting a hill, 
 and we reach its summit by a thousand devious 
 paths.’ 
 
 1 Cf. Mr. Croly’s remarks in the New Republic, Vol. IX, p. 170, and 
 the brilliant paper of M. Duguit in the Revue d’ Economie Politique, 
 1894, p. 88. Mr. Barker in his Political Thought from Spencer to Today, 
 
 pp. 180-182, has noted the modern attitude to this problem. See also 
 Mr, H. A. L. Fisher’s classic lecture on Political Unions. 
 
INDEX 
 
ry’ 
 
 
 
INDEX 
 
 A 
 
 Acton (Lord), on continuity of 
 political thought, 64; on the 
 authority of the State, 121; his 
 theory of liberty, 168f.; his 
 dislike of W. G. Ward’s atti- 
 tude, 171; condemns the Ultra- 
 montanes, 172; journalistic ex- 
 perience, 173; his view of the 
 Catholic situation in England, 
 174; on papal infallibility, 180; 
 corrects Mr. Gladstone’s history, 
 191, 
 
 Aliiesam: (Cau We)), 
 supremacy, 105. 
 
 American constitution, sanctity of, 
 22; based on foundation of 
 States, 277. 
 
 American Law, contribution of to 
 theory of Church and State, 119. 
 
 Antonelli (Cardinal), attains 
 power, 164-5; urged to withhold 
 syllabus, 178; refuses assist- 
 ance to Bismarck, 246; supports 
 the German centre, 251-2. 
 
 Aquinas (S. Thomas), his attitude 
 to unity, 2. 
 
 Aristotle, his theory of the State 
 pragmatist, 18. 
 
 Arnold (T.), his theory of a gen- 
 eralised Christianity, 71; differ- 
 ence between him and the Trac- 
 tarians, 76; his argument 
 against the admission of Jews 
 to Parliament, 89. 
 
 Auchterarder case, 35. 
 
 attacks royal 
 
 Austin (J.), sponsors an omni- 
 competent State, 68. 
 
 B 
 
 Baddeley (Serjeant), asks for 
 mandamus against Hampden’s 
 appointment, 99. 
 
 Barclay (W.), connection of his 
 theory with that of Chalmers, 
 65. 
 
 Baumgarten, quoted, 260. 
 
 Bell (T.), his theory of Church 
 powers, 46. 
 
 Bellarmine (Cardinal), his feder- 
 alism, 65. 
 
 Bennett (W. J. E.), attacks royal 
 supremacy, 104. 
 
 Bennigsen, quoted, 254. 
 
 Bentham (J.), desires dissolution 
 of English Church, 69. 
 
 Birmingham (Bishop of), limits 
 sovereignty of State to temporal 
 affairs, 112. 
 
 Bishops (Catholic), on duty of 
 obedience, 130. 
 
 Bismarck (O. von), reasons for 
 kulturkampf, 8; his failure, 29; 
 difference from De Maistre, 
 212; his religious views, 239- 
 40; his theory of State, 240f.; 
 lacks sense of institutions, <bid. ; 
 makes State divine, 242f.; his 
 antipathy for Rome, 243 f.; 
 source of his struggle with 
 Rome, 245; his troubles with 
 Poland, 246; nervous about em- 
 
290 
 
 pire, ibid.; friendship for Italy, 
 249; attacks the Poles, 250; 
 pressure on Rome, 251; attacks 
 centre, 252; on Church and 
 State, 253 f.; on Polish prob- 
 lem, 255-6; Falk Laws, 257; 
 allies himself with national 
 liberals, 259; makes peace with 
 Rome, 260; learns lesson of 
 Canossa, 261 f.; relation to De 
 Maistre, 263 f. 
 
 Bluntschli, quoted, 247. 
 
 Boniface VIII, his 
 Church, 2, 28, 50. 
 
 Book of Discipline, struggle over, 
 29-30. 
 
 Bowyer (Sir G.), on Wiseman pas- 
 toral, 151-2. 
 
 Bradley (F. H.), on pluralism as 
 destruction of unity, 1; on pain, 
 le 
 
 Bramhall (Bishop), attack on 
 Presbyterianism, 49. 
 
 Brandeis (L. D.), quoted, 284. 
 
 Bright (J.), attacks religious atti- 
 tude of Russell, 152-3. 
 
 Brougham (Lord), connection with 
 Judicial Committee, 81; attacks 
 privilege of Church, 89. 
 
 Bruce (A.), attitude to Presbyte- 
 rian claims, 37. 
 
 Bryce (Viscount), quoted, 3. 
 
 Burke, argues for Catholic eman- 
 cipation, 122. 
 
 Bull of Pius V, a cause of Catho- 
 lic persecution, 138. 
 
 claims for 
 
 Burleigh (Lord Balfour of), 
 quoted, 43. 
 Buchanan (R.), distinguishes 
 
 Church and State, 47, 56. 
 
 Butler (Charles), view of papal 
 power, 128-9, 131; his Gallican 
 tendencies, 133. 
 
 INDEX 
 
 C 
 
 Camoys (Lord), 
 191. 
 
 Canning (G.), advocates Catholic 
 emancipation, 125-6; inserts 
 oath in Grattan’s bill, 130. 
 
 Capel (Monsignor), answers Mr. 
 Gladstone, 194; his explanation 
 of Vaticanism, 198-9; weakness 
 of, 199-200. 
 
 Carlyle (A.), quoted, 162. 
 
 Cavour (Count), his ecclesiastical 
 ideal, 164; destroys political 
 foundations of Church, 211. 
 
 Catholic revival, place in the 19th 
 century, 211. 
 
 Cecil (Lord Hugh), theory of 
 Church and State, 110. 
 
 Centre party (German), character 
 of, 248 f. 
 
 Chalmers (T.), accepts leadership 
 of Free Church, 29; his theory 
 of Church and State, 38-41; dif- 
 ference between Scottish and 
 English establishments, 42-3. 
 
 Chesterton (G. K.), on logic, 23. 
 
 Church (R. W.), his account of 
 the reception of Tract 90, 79; 
 his theory of the Church, 87; 
 thinks Church could depose 
 kings, 93; his view of Hampden, 
 97; attacks Hampden’s appoint- 
 ment as bishop, 98; protests 
 against attitude to ritualists, 
 110. 
 
 Cicero, on secret of Roman success, 
 216. 
 
 Civil war (American), effect on 
 theory of States’ rights, 277. 
 Claim of Right summarised, 44, 
 
 48. 
 
 Clerk (Sir G.), theory of Church 
 
 claims, 47. 
 
 on Vaticanism, 
 
INDEX 
 
 291 
 
 
 
 Cockburn (Lord), judgment in 
 Auchterarder case, 53. 
 
 Coleridge (S. T.), quoted, 22. 
 
 Combes (E.), on separation of 
 Church and State, 8. 
 
 Congress, power of, limited, 267. 
 
 Cook (Dr.), theory of Church and 
 State, 57-8. 
 
 D 
 
 Dante, his worship of unity, 1, 164. 
 
 Darwin (C.), destroys basis of old 
 dogmas, 211. 
 
 Daubeny, foreshadows an Angli- 
 can revival, 70. 
 
 Dewey (J.), quoted, 20, 23. 
 
 Dicey (A. V.), his limitation on 
 theory of Parliamentary sover- 
 eignty, 151; on consequences of 
 Federalism, 267 f.; criticism of, 
 268-9; contradictory views of, 
 274; views Federalism as a step 
 to unified government, 282. 
 
 Disruption, origin of, 34 f. 
 
 Dodsworth (W.), reasons for con- 
 version to Rome, 107. 
 
 Dollinger (J. von), effect of his 
 ‘Pope and Council,’ 181; ex- 
 communicated, 183; renews his 
 acquaintance with Mr. Glad- 
 stone, 184. 
 
 Doyle (Bishop), on papal in- 
 fluence, 130; his casuistry, 136. 
 
 Drummond (H.), view on position 
 of English Church, 103. 
 
 E 
 
 Exeter (Bishop of), distinguishes 
 between moral and legal sover- 
 eignty of Parliament, 111. 
 
 F 
 
 Faguet (E.), quoted, 213, 224. 
 
 Faithfull (J.), identifies Church 
 and State, 88-9. 
 
 Federalism, is weak and conser- 
 vative, 268; value of, 270f.; 
 spirit of, 275; regarded as a 
 pis aller, 283. 
 
 Figgis (J. N.), quoted, 27, 49, 208. 
 
 France, attitude to congregations, 
 63, 67; failure of centralisation 
 in, 279. 
 
 Froude (J. A.), quoted, 87. 
 
 Froude (R. H.), hates Erastian- 
 ism, 74; compared to W. G. 
 Ward, 79; nature of his mind, 
 139. 
 
 Fullerton (Lord), dictum in 
 Court of Session, 56. 
 
 G 
 
 Germany, attitude to State-neces- 
 sity in, 22; success of local self- 
 government, 279. 
 
 Gerson, opposes Ultramontanism, 
 28. 
 
 Gierke (O. von), quoted, 5. 
 
 Gillies (Lord), denies possibility 
 of contract between Church and 
 State, 52-3. 
 
 Gladstone (W. E.), on Vatican 
 Council, 7; on Newman’s con- 
 version, 80; on Gorham decision, 
 81, 101; on Ecclesiastical Titles 
 Act, 153; repeals it, 155; visit 
 to Dollinger, 184; attack on 
 Syllabus, 185; on meaning of 
 papal infallibility, 186; his de- 
 ductions from it, 187f.; their 
 fallacies, 189 f. 
 
 Golightly (Rev. W.), urges New- 
 man to attack established 
 church, 95. 
 
292 
 
 INDEX 
 
 
 
 Gonsalvi (Cardinal), visits Eng- 
 land, 134, 
 
 Gorham (G.), connection with Ox- 
 ford Movement, 81. 
 
 Graham (Sir J.), repudiates Pres- 
 byterian claims, 37, 58f.; his 
 theory of Church property, 76. 
 
 Grattan (H.), persistent advocacy 
 of Catholic cause, 122. 
 
 Gray (J. C.), quoted, 17. 
 
 Great Britain, right in American 
 War of Independence on monis- 
 tic theory of State, 23; failure 
 of centralisation in, 279. 
 
 Gregory VII, his theory of Church 
 and State, 2, 28, 50. 
 
 Greville (Charles), expects reform 
 of English Church, 71. 
 
 Grey (Lord), reforms [Irish 
 Church, 72; warns English 
 Church, 88. 
 
 Groups, separate life of, 271; per- 
 sonality of primary, 272; differ- 
 ences of valuable, 273. 
 
 H 
 
 Hallam (A.), on performance of 
 ‘King John,’ 134, 
 
 Hampden (Bishop), appointed 
 Regius Professor of Divinity, 
 77; revenge for criticism, 79; 
 appointed a bishop, 80; repre- 
 
 sents broadest latitudinarian- 
 ism, 97. 
 
 Harcourt (Sir W.), his Erastian- 
 ism, 112. 
 
 Harrison (F.), on nature of alle- 
 giance, 200. 
 
 Hegel (G. W. F.), dominance of 
 his philosophy, 6; his 
 competent state, 67, 
 
 omni- 
 
 Henry VIII, his imperialism, 2; 
 his thirst for power, 138. 
 
 Hickes (Bishop), 
 ance, 2, 
 
 Hobbes (T.), hatred of corpora. 
 tions, 8; of dissension, 25; on 
 Papacy, 137. 
 
 Hobhouse (J. C.), his theory of 
 Church property, 77. 
 
 Hohenlohe (Prince), against papal 
 infallibility, 181; suspects Bis- 
 marck of alliance with Jesuits, 
 245. 
 
 Horsley (Bishop), his 
 against Erastianism, 85. 
 
 Hume (D.), on public opinion, 
 163. 
 
 Hume (J.), theory of Church as 
 civil institution, 89-90. 
 
 on non-resist- 
 
 protest 
 
 iF 
 
 Inglis (Sir R. H.), the pattern of 
 High Churehmen, 75. 
 
 Innes (A. Taylor), answers Man- 
 ning, 50. 
 
 Interstate Commerce Commission, 
 value of, 281. 
 
 J 
 Jacobites, hate Presbyterianism, 
 33. 
 James (W.), quoted, 1. 
 Jeffrey (Lord), judgment in 
 
 Auchterarder case, 62 f. 
 
 Jesuits, their theory like that of 
 Chalmers, 65-6; revived power 
 of, 164-5; may not enter Eng- 
 land, 135; uphold papal infalli- 
 bility, 177; enthusiasm for the 
 dogma, 180; influence in Poland, 
 246. 
 
INDEX 
 
 K 
 
 Keble (J.), his Assize Sermon, 73; 
 unites with Newman, 74; stays 
 in Anglican Church, 80; on 
 Church’s right to reform itself, 
 86; attack on Gorham judg- 
 ment, 103. 
 
 Kinnoull (Lord), relation to Dis- 
 ruption, 35 f., 63. 
 
 Knox (J.), his conception of 
 Chureh power, 30; result of his 
 nationalism, 37; desires to 
 found a theocracy, 49. 
 
 Korkunov (N. M.), quoted, 16. 
 
 L 
 
 Lamartine (A.), quoted, 232. 
 
 Law, nature of, 13; sanctions of, 
 14, 
 
 Lecky (W. H.), on extent of 
 Romeward movement, 141. 
 
 Leslie (Charles), attacks Presby- 
 terianism, 49. 
 
 Liebknecht (K.), different view 
 of State from Kaiser, 21. 
 
 Lisle (A. de), on dangers of Vati- 
 canism, 193. 
 
 Liverpool (Lord), theory of Eng- 
 lish government, 124. 
 
 Llandaff (Bishop of), opposes 
 Catholic emancipation, 124. 
 
 Lloyd (Bishop), complains of im- 
 potence of Church, 90. 
 
 Lolme (J. de), quoted, 267. 
 
 Lotze (H.), argues that pluralism 
 means impenetrability, 6. 
 
 Louis XVI, pays penalty for er- 
 rors of his predecessors, 14. 
 
 Luther, his thought related to that 
 of Disruption, 65; his Erastian- 
 ism, 66. 
 
 293 
 
 M 
 
 Macaulay (Lord), quoted, 33, 51. 
 
 Mackenzie (Lord), opinion in 
 Auchterarder case, 53. 
 
 McGill (Professor), quoted, 41. 
 
 Mackonochie (Father), pleads for 
 free church, 109. 
 
 Maistre (J. de), character, 211; 
 seeming difference from Bis- 
 marck, 212; thought of, 213; 
 desires a reconstruction of so- 
 ciety, 214; theory of State, 215; 
 value of political mysticism, 
 216; necessity of authority, 217; 
 opposes variations, 219; hatred 
 of Protestantism, 220-1; criti- 
 cism of his attitude, 222-4; de- 
 fence of papalism, 225f.; of 
 despotism, 227f.; value of 
 Papacy, 229f.; his theory of 
 schism, 230; attacks 18th cen- 
 tury, 231; examination of his 
 
 doctrines, 232f.; author of 
 modern Ultramontanism, 238; 
 comparison with Bismarck, 
 263 f. 
 
 Maitland (F. W.), quoted, 4, 279. 
 Manning (Cardinal H. E.), erro- 
 neous view of Presbyterianism, 
 50; conversion to Rome, 82; 
 on royal supremacy, 102; on 
 corporate completeness of Eng- 
 lish Church, 105; view of Mr. 
 Gladstone’s compromise, 106; 
 on English Reformation, 107; 
 belief in intellectual captivity, 
 173; efforts for papal infalli- 
 bility, 180; answer to Mr, Glad- 
 
 stone, 190; on Vaticanism, 
 194 f.; weakness of his argu- 
 ments, 196-7. 
 
 Marvell (A.), on pushpin theology, 
 123, 
 
294 
 
 Maskell (W.), attitude in Gorham 
 ease, 102. 
 
 Maule (F.), defends Presbyterian 
 Church, 48. 
 
 Meadowbank (Lord), 
 Church and State, 54. 
 
 Medwyn (Lord), theory of Church 
 
 and State, 61. 
 
 Melville (A.), 
 
 kingdoms, 49. 
 
 Mill (James), his plan of Church 
 
 reform, 71. 
 
 Milner, sign of revived religious 
 feeling in Anglican Church, 70. 
 
 Milner (Bishop), opposes oaths of 
 allegiance, 131-3; is firm Ultra- 
 montane, 134. 
 
 Mohler, influence of his ‘Sym- 
 bolik,’ 140; helps Roman Catho- 
 lies ‘in England, 156. 
 
 Moncrieff (Lord), opposes lay 
 patronage, 35; denies the deri- 
 vation of Church from State, 
 42. 
 
 Montalembert, his reputation, 139; 
 on ‘Church and State,’ 178. 
 
 Morley (Lord), quoted, 80, 86, 
 
 theory of 
 
 theory of two 
 
 
 
 153. 
 N 
 Nationalism, dominant political 
 theory in America, 278. 
 National education, justification 
 LOT Melos 
 Neale (J. M.), attacks Gorham 
 
 judgment, 104. 
 
 Newman (J. H.), attack on Par- 
 liamentary sovereignty, 13; his 
 anger against the Liberals, 73; 
 compelled to resist State, ibid. ; 
 forms association of friends of 
 the Church, 74; notes beginning 
 of Roman problem, 79; is con- 
 verted to Rome, 80; his hatred 
 
 INDEX 
 
 of Jerusalem archbishopric, 90- 
 1; feels that State has deserted 
 Church, 96; reproach against 
 Church as merely an establish- 
 ment, 109; comparison with 
 Chalmers, 113 f.; was fighting 
 a medieval battle, 115-6; his 
 sense of the reality of corporate 
 personality, 117; influence of 
 his visit to Rome, 140; on 
 nature of Church and State, 
 155 f.; historical relation of his 
 theory to that of the early 
 church, 160-1; his attitude 
 marks the end of the anti-Hilde- 
 brandine reaction, 163; his im- 
 plicit liberalism, 174; wavering 
 views of, 175; hatred of extreme 
 Ultramontanism, 175-6; mini- 
 mises the Syllabus, 178-9; fears 
 of papal infallibility, 181-2; re- 
 ply to Mr. Gladstone, 201 f.; 
 theory of sovereignty, 203 f.; 
 on importance of conscience, 
 205; discussion of his view, 206- 
 ie 
 
 North British Review, quoted, 51. 
 
 Norwich (Bishop of), on divided 
 allegiance of Catholics, 123. 
 
 O 
 
 Oakeley (Canon), defends Vati- 
 eanism, 193. 
 
 O’Connell (D.), on militant agita- 
 tion, 123; repudiates claim of 
 Pope to temporal allegiance, 
 129; repudiates oaths, 131; on 
 Catholic democracy, 140. 
 
 O’Hanlon (Dr.), on nature of 
 teaching at Maynooth, 129. 
 
 Ossory (Bishop of), reason for 
 opposing Catholic emancipation, 
 124, 
 
INDEX 
 
 295 
 
 
 
 ae 
 
 Palmer (Sir W.), joins Associa- 
 tion of Friends of Church, 74; 
 promotes address to Archbishop 
 of Canterbury, 96. 
 
 Palmieri, his attitude to sover- 
 eignty, 65. 
 
 Papacy, change in character after 
 1846, 164. 
 
 Parnell (Sir H.), sums up Catholic 
 ease, 122. 
 
 ‘Parmenides,’ shows difficulty of 
 problem of unity, 3. 
 
 Patronage (lay) abolished, 31; 
 restored, 33; relation to Church 
 freedom, 35. 
 
 Peel (Sir R.), opposes Catholic 
 emancipation, 8; repudiates 
 Presbyterian claims, 37; on es- 
 
 tablished churches, 58; on 
 Church property, 77. 
 
 Petre (Henry), on Vaticanism, 
 191. 
 
 Philpotts (Bishop) and Gorham 
 case, 81; protests against 
 Chureh Discipline Bill, 100; re- 
 nounces communion with Arch- 
 bishop of Canterbury, 102. 
 
 Pius IX, abandons liberalism, 
 164; imprisons Madeai, 165; 
 promulgates dogma of Immacu- 
 late conception, ibid.; issues 
 Encyclical Quanta Cura and 
 Syllabus, 177; summons General 
 Council, 179; futility of his 
 claims, 190. 
 
 Plunkett (Lord), advocates Catho- 
 lie emancipation, 125, 132; on 
 constitutional principles, 136; 
 quoted, 137. 
 
 Pound (Roscoe), on need for 
 pragmatic theory of law, 64. 
 
 Privy Council, failure of as Church 
 tribunal, 13. 
 
 Pusey (E. B.), suspended from 
 preaching in Oxford, 79; stays 
 in Anglican Church, 80; view of 
 Hampden’s appointment, 99; 
 of Gorham case, 101; on eccle- 
 siastical authority, 102. 
 
 Q 
 
 Queen Victoria, resents Wiseman’s 
 Pastoral, 163. 
 
 R 
 
 Reformation, character of, 27. 
 
 Reilly (F.), on Vaticanism, 192. 
 
 Religious toleration, 
 for, 18. 
 
 Richard II, on source of law, 2. 
 
 Rickards (H.), on need of Church 
 freedom, 96. 
 
 Right, a term with double impli- 
 cation, 20. 
 
 Roebuck (J.), answers Russell on 
 hierarchy, 149; on danger of 
 intolerance, 152. 
 
 Roman law, influence of its revived 
 study, 162. 
 
 Rome, fear of in England, 138. 
 
 Rose (H. J.), edits British Maga- 
 gine, 74. 
 
 justification 
 
 Rosmini, failure of, 164; con- 
 demned, 165. 
 
 Rossi (Count), murdered, 164. 
 
 Rousseau, value of his termi- 
 nology, 8, 13. 
 
 Rutherford (T.), argument to 
 
 Court of Session, 45-6. 
 Rutherford, on nature of Church, 
 45. 
 Russell (Lord J.), proposes to con- 
 fiscate Church funds, 72; on 
 
296 
 
 Church as national institution, 
 76; makes Hampden a bishop, 
 80; sends envoy to Rome, 145; 
 his Durham letter, 146; his in- 
 tolerance, 147. 
 
 8 
 
 Schlegel (F.), converted to Rome, 
 69; his reputation, 139. 
 
 Schneegans (F.), quoted, 248. 
 
 Schrader (Father), view on Im- 
 maculate Conception, 281. 
 
 Session (Court of), its theory of 
 Church and State, 36. 
 
 Simeon (C.), as factor in Angli- 
 can revival, 70. 
 
 Smith (Sidney), refutes case 
 against Catholic Emancipation, 
 126 f. 
 
 South African War, as patriotic 
 test of morality, 22. 
 
 South Wales Miners, disobey Act 
 of Parliament, 12, 19. 
 
 Spain, its attack on Netherlands 
 justified on monist theory of 
 State, 23. 
 
 States, desire to override their 
 opinion in America, 281. 
 
 Stuarts, fallacy of their theory of 
 divine right, 2. 
 
 Suffragists, oppose State, 12. 
 
 Supreme Court of U. S., its 
 limited power, 217. 
 
 AR 
 
 Tablet, quoted, 51. 
 
 Talbot (G. J.), attacks Privy 
 Council as Church tribunal, 154. 
 
 Tarquini, his theory of  sover- 
 eignty, 65. 
 
 Thirlwall (C.), on Vaticanism, 
 193. 
 
 INDEX 
 
 
 
 Tocqueville (A, de), on importance 
 of England for religious free- 
 dom, 154. 
 
 Tractarianism, relation to roman- 
 tic movement, 69, 
 
 Tracts for the Times, their theory, 
 
 83f.; plead for Church free- 
 dom, 94f.; their living charac- 
 ter, 108. 
 
 Treitschke (H. von), popularity, 
 6; quoted, 248, 250; his eit! 
 of the State, 262. 
 
 Tudors, found a despotism on 
 popular consent, 2 
 
 U 
 
 Ulster Unionists, attitude to State, 
 12. 
 
 Union (act of), relation to Church, 
 32. 
 
 Vv 
 
 Vicars, apostolic, declare 
 loyalty to crown, 128. 
 Voltaire, on Holy Roman empire, 
 
 284. 
 
 their 
 
 WwW 
 
 Wade (J.), author of ‘Black 
 Book,’ 69. 
 
 Wallas (G.), quoted, 14, 19. 
 
 Ward (W.), on Wiseman’s in- 
 fluence, 140. 
 
 Ward (W. G.), joins Oxford 
 Movement, 79; converted to 
 Rome, 80; love of papal bulls, 
 165; his ideal of European 
 
 organisation, 167; puzzled by 
 Newman, 176; accepts Syllabus 
 as infallible, 179; on value of 
 theocracy, 193. 
 
INDEX 
 
 Welsh (Dr.), action at General 
 Assembly of 1843, 29. 
 
 Whately (Archbishop), influence 
 on Newman, 85. 
 Whitgift (Archbishop), attitude 
 
 to Presbyterianism, 65 f. 
 Wilberforce (S.), quoted, 88. 
 Wilberforce (W.), part in Angli- 
 
 can revival, 70. 
 
 William II (of Germany), differ- 
 ent view of State from Lieb- 
 knecht, 21, 
 
 Wiseman (Cardinal N.), arrives 
 
 297 
 
 on mission to England, 78; his 
 social ability, 139; becomes 
 leader of English Catholics, 
 140; plans hierarchy, 141; at- 
 tacked for his pastoral, 143 f.; 
 his reply, 145 f. 
 
 Worcester (Bishop of), opposes 
 Catholic emancipation, 123. 
 
 ae 
 
 Young (R.), presented to living 
 of Auchterarder, 35 f., 63. 
 
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