NEWS BY THE MAIL.

Globe, Volume II, Issue 184, 11 January 1875, Page 4

NEWS BY THE MAIL.

From the papers to hand by the San Francisco mail, we make the following extracts, under date November 16th ; I The Earl of Derby has been elected Lord •Rector of Edinburgh Univejjiity, by a majority of 187 over the Liberal nominee, Dr Playfair. Among the public correspondence arising out of Mr Gladstone's pamphlet is a letter from Lord Camoys, a Roman Catholic peer, expressly repudiating the dogma of Papal Infallibility. Monsignor Capel, head of the Catholic University in London, replies to Lord Camoys that his rejection of the Vatican dogma separates him f torn communion with the Roman Catholic Church.

The Peninsular and Oriental Steamship Company have given notice of the breakiug up of their establishment at Southampton, their vessels being intended only to call at that port in future. The dispute between the Rector of St Mary Steps, Exeter, and the Nonconformist parishioners who resist the payment of Dominicals continues, and there is much angry feeling exhibited. It is understood that an attempt will be made to obtain a legal decision upon the legality of the demand.

The Despatch steamer, from Alexandria for Hull, laden with cotton seed, foundered at sea, but the crew, twenty in number, were saved.

It is stated that a Swede has discovered a new explosive compound which exceeds in power all known explosives, and is free from the dangers which attach to most of them. The export of gold to the Continent has been resumed, and although the amount withdrawn is not especially heavy, the fact has exercised an influence on the money market. Consols on Saturday were steady at 93J to # for delivery, and 93f for the December account. Transactions in foreign securities were limited in extent, but the general tendency was towards improvement, Egyptian and Turkish making further recovery. Railway shares were dull, and Midland, North British, North-Western, and several other principal lines showed a slight decline. American and Canadian lines also were fractionally lower. The weekly reports from the provincial corn markets show rather a better demand for wheat, and in some places a slight advance in prices was obtained. Barley also was firm, and oats were unchanged. The Paris political world continues to be engrossed by speculations as to the probable course to be taken by the Ministry upon the re-opening of the National Assembly, but there appears to be a general conviction that the present Cabinet has no chance of any very protracted existence. M. Emile de Girardin has started a new journal, La Jf'rance, in which he proposes the status quo until 1880, and then an appeal to the country upon a Constitution to be drawn up in the last Session of the Assembly. The trial of M. Clement Duvernois and others for alleged frauds in connection with the Territorial Bank of Spain is concluded, but the Court has not pronounced judgment. A special Mass was celebrated yesterday at the church of St Augustin, in Paris, in commemoration of the ex-Empress's fete day, when large numbers of the friends of the Imperial family were present. The re arrest of Count Arnim is still a subj3ct of surprise in Berlin, but the explanation generally accepted is that the Count, having found other official documents than those he had given up, had shown them to his lawyer. The Count's health is so shattered that he is allowed to remain in his private apartments. Mr Gladstone is said to have sent a copy of his last pamphlet to Prince Bismarck. The Austrian Minister of Justice on Saturday presented to the Ueichsrath the new Penal Code, which is regaided as a great improvement upon the existing laws, and is framed in a humane spirit. The Carlists on their retreat from Irun appear to have suffered severe hardships, the cold being intense, and many men were frozen to death. Don Carlos is falling back upon Estella, aud it is believed that he will be unable to attempt any movement during the winter. The Madrid papers assert that several Carlist bands have tendered their submission to the Republican commanders. The Swiss Federal Council has passed the Military Bill, and alio the New Divorce Law. ;

MB GLADSTONE AND THE CHURCH OF ROME. (Pall Mall Gazette.) Mr Gladstone's pamphlet on ' ' The Vatican Decrees," in which he maintains that acceptance of the decisions of the last Roman Council is incompatible with civil loyalty, has been freely discussed both in the United Kingdom and on the Continent. Among the replies which it has called forth are letters from Archbishop Manning and from Lord Acton, With whom Mr Gladstone has been staying for two days this week as his lordship's guest, at Aldenham Hall, near Bridgenorth. Archbishop Manning declines to be content with Mr Gladstone's acknowledgment that many of his Soman Catholic friends and fellow-countrymen are as loyal as himself, because the whole scope of his book is to prove that if they are so it is because they are not good Catholics. " I should be wanting in duty," says Dr Manning, " to the Catholics of this country and to myself if I did not give a prompt contradiction to this statement, and if I did not with equal promptness affirm that the loyalty of our civil allegiance is not in spite of the teaching of the Catholic Church, but because of it." Dr Manning contends that the Vatican decrees have in no jot or tittle changed either the obligations or the conditions of civil allegiance ; that the civil allegiance of Catholics is as undivided as that of all Christians and of all men who recognise a divine or material moral law; that the civil allegiance of no man is unlimited, and therefore the civil allegiance of all men who believe in God or are governed by God is in that sense divided. In that sense only, he maintains, can it be said with truth that the civil allegiance of Catholics is divided. A Catholic's civil allegiance is limited by conscience as is that of every Christian man: Beferring to the conflict in Germany, Dr Manning accuses Dr Dollinger of being the author of that " national evil," and he laments not only to r?ad the name but to trace the arguments of the leader of the Old Catholic movement in Mr Gladstone's pamphlet. Lord Acton's letter is addressed to Mr Gladstone himself, and is characterised by the writer as "a preliminary reply" to the right hon gentleman's " Expostulation." He thinks that Mr Gladstone has overlooked

some points which may most fitly be discussed " by those who are least responsible." As one of these, he proceeds to argue that the position of the Pope in regard to the civil allegiance of Catholics is in no way altered by the last Vatican decrees. The claims now advanced were advanced centuries ago, and yet Parliament abolished the Catholic oath, the reason being that whatever might appear to be the Catholic faith, the loyalty of individual Catholics waa trusted. "I think yon will admit," Lord Acton says, " that your Catholic countrymen cannot fairly be called on to account for every particle of a system which has never come before them in its integrity, or for opinions whose existence among divines they would be exceedingly reluctant to believe." For example, the Pope who is famous in history as the author of the first Crusade decided that it was no murder to kill an excommunicated person, and this decision still continues part of the ecclesiastical law. Another Pope declared that the murder of a Protestant is so good a deed that it would atone, and more than atone, for the murder of a Catholic; while Pope Pius V., " the only Pope who has been proclaimed a saint for many centuries, having deposed Elizabeth, commissioned an assassin to take her life." It is hard to believe (Lord Acton says) that these thiDgs can excite in the bosom of the most fervent Ultramontane that sort of admiration or assent that displays itself in action. If they do not, then it cannot be truly said that Catholics forfeit their moral freedom or place their duty at the mercy of another." In another passage Lord Acton remarks :—" There has been, and I believe there is still, some exaggeration in the idea men form of the agreement in thought and deed which authority can accomplish. As far as decrees, censures, and persecution could commit the Court of Rome, it was committed to the denial of the Copernican system. Nevertheless, the history of astronomy shows a whole catena of distinguished Jesuits, and, a century ago, a Spaniard who thought himself bound to adopt the Ptolemaic theory was laughed at by the Roman divines. The submission of Fenelon, which Protestants and Catholics have so often celebrated, is another instance to my point. When his book was condemned Fenelon publicly accepted the judgment as the voice of God. He declared that he adhered to the decree absolutely and without a shadow of reserve, and there were no bounds to his submission. In private he wrote that his opinions were perfectly orthodox #nd remained unchanged, that his opponents were in the wrong, and that Rome was getting religion into peril." Mr Gladstone thinks that English Catholics ought to be compelled to demonstrate one of two things—that the Pope cannot, by virtue of powers asserted by the late Council, make a claim which he was perfectly able to make by virtue of powers asserted for him before; or that he would be resisted if he did. The first, Lord Acton, says, is superfluous. The second is not capable of receiving a written demonstration.

The Irish Soman Catholic papers write very bitterly concerning the pamphlet. The Freemans Journal printed it in full, and says that it has read the work with utter dismay. It asks why Mr Gladstone did not discover in 1870 that the Vatican decrees were what he now describes them. It was subsequent to that date that he introduced an Education Bill professedly intended to make concessions to the Roman Catholic hierarchy. The spectacle, it says, is a painful and a pitiful one—that of a great mind domiuated by such base passions as ignoble ambition and disappointed spite. The style of the pamphlet, the Freeman adds, is painfully offensive, even to Billing gate. Now that the leader of the Government and the leader of the Opposition are vying with each other to fan the flames of ultra-Protestantism, Catholics must be prepared to guard their liberties and franchises. The Freeman calls this book " Mr Gladstone's Durham letter," and prophesies political extinction for him in consequence, as happened, it declares, to Earl Russell. The Dublin Evening Post, Cardinal Cullen's organ, expresses its profound regret " that the late Prime Minister, who had been the means of vast good for Ireland, should thus, wilfully and imprudently, place between Catholics and himself an abyss beyond the power of man to span or bridge." The Post characterises the pamphlet as an " untoward and deplorable publication, the mischief of which it is impossible to forecast." The Post has also published a bitter personal attack on Lord Acton, and asserts that Mr Gladstone's assault on Catholicity was planned at Munich between the ex-Premier, Lord Acton, and Dr Do!linger. Lord Acton, it says, " has foully calumniated the Catholic Church, but no one familiar with his antecedents can be scandalised by his treachery and baseness. The Durham letter drove Lord Beaumont out of the Catholic Church; the Gladstone expostulation may drive Lord Acton." According to a Daily News telegram from Borne, the Pope spoke as follows to some English Catholics who waited upon him : A former Minister of your country, whom I had believed rather moderate, and who, to say the truth, had never while in office manifested arrogance or violence towards the Catholic Church, intoxicated by the proceedings of another v -Minister in another State, has suddenly come forward, like a viper, assailing the barque of St Peter. I have not read the book, and I have no great desire to read blasphemies, but from what I understand, the Minister whom they call Liberal flatters the Catholics of that nation and leads them to believe that I wish those subjects to become disloyal to their Sovereign and the laws of their country. Puzzled at beholding the vast progress made by that great nation in the path of the true faith, the fallen Minister hopes to [arrest the luminous triumph of the Church, by interpreting after his own fashion, the will of this poor Vicar of Christ. A great king (Charlemagne) said that even should the Church Jimpose heavy burdens on the conscience of the population, the Catholics should bear them from their interest in the communion of the Church; but our dogmas, far from being burdens, are light. Those who will walk astray are not Catholics, they are worse than infidels and Protestants, because calling themselves Catholics, they daily rebel against God and the laws of the Church.

The Berlin correspondent of the Times says:—Mr Gladstone's new essay on the Civil Allegiance of Roman Oatholics elicits bursts of applause from the whole German press, the Ultramontane organs alone excepted. Copious extracts are followed by translations in full in the leading journals." In France, the MSpublique Francaise writes of the pamphlet as " a courageous utterance, coming from one so eminent," and says that it ought to " resound beyond the bounds of England,"