THE RELIGIOUS PERSECUTION IN GERMANY

New Zealand Tablet, Volume II, Issue 62, 4 July 1874, Page 12

THE RELIGIOUS PERSECUTION IN GERMANY

From the • Saturday Review.' Thi imprisonment of the Archbishop of Cologne, which had been anticipated, took place on Tuesday last, and adds another to the lengthening catalogue of Episcopal confessors in Prussia. It proves, at all events, that Prince Bismarck's illners and threatened retirement have not as yet produced any change, or even check, in the ecclesiastical policy, of the Government. But every' fresh persecution under the Falk laws not only serves to embitter the controversy, but inevitably re-opens in the popular mind the previous*question, so to call it, of the justice and expediency of the course on which the Imperial Government has entered. Many opportunities have already occurred for indicating our own view of the matter, but a highly characteristic apology for the new legislation which appeared the other day in the * Daily Telegraph' supplies amusing evidence of how little one section Liberalism has succeeed in mastering the first elements ai the question at issue. The 'Telegraph ' notices with regret .that there are English Liberals who have taken the' wrong side in the- quarrel, and it solemnly admonishes them that, •* on the main point in dispute between the Prussian Government and the Catholio clergy, the sympathies of Englishmen must, in all fairness, go with the former,', this main point being, as fa* as we are able to gather from the context, that as a matter of principle, " the clergy should obey the civil law." It appears to have escaped the writer that the whole dispute is about the applicotion of the principle. Even the doughty Archbishop of Posen would probably admit the ordinary duty of obedience to the law, but he would plead, plausibly enough, that there must be some limit to this obligation, or there would be bo security against any excess of arbitary oppression. To confine ourselves to the religious aspect of the question, it is obvious that, if the duty of civil obedience is absolute and universal, the early Christian martyrs were morally, as well as legally, criminal in preferring their faith to the commands of the devine Emperor. As jto where the lino should be drawn, there is room, of course, for infinite diversity of opinion. Some people profess conscientious scrupleßjabout vaccination, and others about giving medicine to the sick, which the Legislature very properly disregards. But few unprejudiced observers are likely to deny that the Prussian Government has overstepped the utmost legitimate limits of civil interference in matters of conscience. Nor is it any answer to say, even supposing it to be strictly true, that Roman Catholic notions sf religious duty are fanciful and erroneous. That is not a point for the decision of the State, especially of a Protestant State, so long as the moral and social interests of tie community are not injuriously affected- And, indeed, the ' Telegraph ' writer, for whose sinister advocacy his clients will hardly be thankful, has too much of the instincts of English freedom not to be dimly aware of this distinction himself. He admits that many of the provisions of the Falk laws are scarcely consistent with our notions of right and justice, and illustrates his admission by specifying nearly all of them. But these are precisely the points on which the whole controversy hinges, so that the natural inference would seem to be that the sympathies of Englishmen must, in all fairness, go with the victims of legislative injustice, and not with its authors.