equal to their great trust and to any crisis; but we cannot surrender the welfare of our republic to any foreign empire. Free trade may, or may not, be England's neces sity. Certainly it is not our necessity; and it has not reached, and never will reach, the altitude of a science. An impost on corn there, it is clear, would produce an exodus of her laboring population, that would soon leave the banner of Victoria waving over a second-rate power.

Among the nations of the world the high position of the United States was never more universally and cordially admitted. Our rights are everywhere promptly conceded, and we ask nothing more. It is an age of industry, and we can only succeed by doing our best.

Our citizens, under a protective tariff, are exceptionally prosperous and happy, and not strangers to noble deeds nor private virtues. A popular government based on universal suffrage will be best, and most certainly, perpetuated by the elevation of laboring men through the more liberal rewards of diversified employments, which give scope to all grades of genius and intelligence, and tend to secure to posterity the blessings of universal education, and the better hope of personal independence.

MONTALEMBERT

C

HARLES FORBES DE MONTALEMBERT was born at Poitou on the 29th of May, 1810. When he was but a little over twenty, he interested himself in the establishment of a School of Liberal Catholicism. This scheme brought him into notice and he was formally charged with unlicensed teaching. He claimed the right of trial by his peers, and made a notable defence, of course with the deliberate intention of formulating a protest against the expected judgment. In 1836 he published the "Life of St. Elizabeth of Hungary." During the reign of Louis Philippe he made himself conspicuous by his remonstrances against the restrictions imposed on the liberty of the press, besides struggling for freedom in national education. On the downfall of Louis Philippe, he accepted a seat in the Assembly. A defeat in 1857 put an end to his parliamentary career. After the establishment of the Empire, he became prominent as an author. Ten years before his death, and when he was fifty years old, his great work, "Les Moines d'Occident depuis St. Benoît jusqu'à St. Bernard,” appeared. He died in March, 1870.

FOR FREEDOM OF EDUCATION'

KNOW that by myself I am nothing. I am but a child; and I feel myself so young, so inexperienced, so obscure, that nothing less than the recollection of the great cause of which I am here the humble champion could encourage me. But I am happy in possessing a recollec tion of words pronounced for the same cause in this very place by my father. And I am sustained by the conviction that this is a question of life and death for the majority of

'From an Address delivered before the Chamber of Peers in Paris in 1831, when Montalembert (aged twenty-one) was arrested with Lacordaire for teaching an unauthorized school.

Frenchmen-for twenty-five millions who hold the same religious faith as myself; and by the unanimous cry of France for freedom of teaching; and by the written wishes of those fifteen thousand Frenchmen whose petition we have ourselves carried to the other Chamber; and by the rights of thousands of families whose offspring are spring. ing up in a region which arbitrary legislation has made a desert-in one word, by the image of a cruel past to atone for, and an invaluable future to assert, and, above all, by the name I bear-that name which is as great as the world, the name of Catholic. I have all these principles to sustain me when I thus appear before you; and I require to remind myself of these great arguments, not only to give me cour age, but to convince my judges that I have not been guided in what I have done by any inspiration of vanity, or any thirst for distinction. It is sufficiently well known that the career on which I have entered is not of a nature to satisfy an ambition which seeks political honors and places. The powers of the present age, both in government and in opposition, are, by the grace of Heaven, equally hostile to Catholics. There is another ambition not less devouring, perhaps not less culpable, which aspires to reputation, and which is content to buy that at any price; that, too, I disavow like the other. No one can be more conscious than I am of the disadvantages with which a precocious publicity surrounds youth, and none can fear them more. But there is still in the world something which is called faith—it is not dead in all minds; it is to this that I have early given my heart and my life. My life—a man's life--is always, and especially to-day, a poor thing enough; but this poor thing, consecrated to a great and holy cause, may grow with it; and when a man has made to such a cause the sacrifice Vol. 16-H

of his future, I believe that he ought to shrink from none of its consequences, none of its dangers.

It is in the strength of this conviction that I appear today for the first time in an assembly of men. I know too well that at my age one has neither antecedents nor experience; but at my age, as at every other, one has duties and hopes I have determined, for my part, to be faithful to both

DEVOTION TO FREEDOM

DELIVERED IN THE CHAMBER OF PEERS, JANUARY 1848. ON THE TROUBLES IN SWITZERLAND

I

HOLD for my part that the conflict in Switzerland has

not been against the Jesuits, nor for and against the

sovereignty of cantons. The battle has been against you, and for you. That is to say, a wild, intolerant, unregulated, and hypocritical liberty has combated that true, sincere, orderly, tolerant, and lawful freedom of which you are the representatives and defenders in the world. What was in question on the other side of the Jura was neither the Jesuits nor the independence of cantons; it was order, European peace, the security of the world and of France; and these have been vanquished, smothered, crushed, at our very doors, by men who ask no better than to throw the burning brands of discord, anarchy, and war from the Alps and the Jura into our midst. Thus I do not speak for the vanquished, but to the vanquished, vanquished myself that is to say, to the representatives of social order, rule, and liberalism which have just been overcome

in Switzerland and which are threatened throughout Europe by a new invasion of the barbarians.

Last year at this time, about this same day, I denounced at this tribune, in the midst of the marks of your sympathy and indulgence, a similar crime, the incorporation and confis cation of Cracovia; and to-day I am again called upon to denounce an unworthy violation, not only of the right of treaties, of that political right which I respect and esteem, but of a right superior to all others, the right of men, of nature, and of humanity, if I may use an expression common to the present time. The crime is the same to my eyes. Last year the last remnant of the Polish nation was in question; this year it is the cradle of European freedom which is the victim of a similar attack. But last year the attempt was made by absolute monarchies, and this year it is committed by pretended Liberals, who at bottom are tyrants of the worst class. What we have witnessed was the same then as now-the abuse of force, the suffocation of liberty and right by brutal and impious violence-the violence of pledged faith, the reign of the greater number, the assumption by Force of Falsehood as its arms and attire..

There is, however, when I consider these two crimes, a difference which I cannot here indicate. The crime of last year, a crime of force, was committed in the name of force. This year the crime is that of despotism, with the addition of hypocrisy, for it is committed in the name of freedom. To my eyes, this odious lie aggravates the offence, and makes it ten times more worthy of your in dignation and contempt.

Believe me, gentlemen, I do not come here to complain of religious or Catholic grievances. Yes, Catholicism has