greater number), who, in all the blaze of light diffused around them by the general diffemination of the Holy Scriptures, continue to delight in darknefs, having no religion but that of their teachers, qualified or unqualified, and fubmiffively laying down their reafon aud their faith at the door of the confeffional; but I truft and I know that there are thofe amongst the moft confcientious and fincere Catholics, whofe understanding cannot be fo grofsly imposed on; I know that there are many confcientious and fincere Catholics, who are better able to give an account of the faith that is in them, as the Difciples of Chrift, than to acknowledge thefe fpurious doctrines, these foundlings of the schools, fwaddled in all the tunics, and cowls, and coifs, and cinctures of their monkifh fofterers, which you would obtrude upon them, as the genuine and legi timate offspring of the holy religion they profefs.

Here again I have the Allocution of the Holy Father to the facred Confiftory before me; I read it over and over, and I do not find one word in it of this plea of Neceflity. If his Holiness urged fuch a plea to thefe his confidential advisers, he has not ventured to publish it to the world. It has not been offered, under any special authority from him to the faithful at large, to reconcile them to the indignities to which he fubmitted, or to the facrifices he has made. We hear of it only in whifpers. The chief ground of defence his Holiness has chofen has been long familiar to his predeceffors. He could not ftifle the voice of his conscience,

or drown its cries, notwithstanding all he tells us of his having fatisfied his doubts. He forefaw the attacks to which he must be expofed from every quarter of the Chriftian world, and the war he would have to encounter from the universal sense and feeling of mankind. He, therefore, took refuge within the ancient fortrefs, the old caftle of St. Angelo, in which all his predeceffors have fhut up and entrenched themselves, on every such defperate attack. To every affault he presents the interests of Chriftianity, infeparable from the interefts of the Holy See; the degradation of the Crofs manifefted in the degradation of the Pontifical Crozier, and its triumphs in the triumph of the triple Crown; the name of God and of his Son profaned by the indignities offered to their Vicegerent, and respected and reverenced in the homage paid to him; the veneration and obedience due from all Chriftians to St. Peter, renounced in the plunder, or evinced by the protection and fecurity of the patrimony of St. Peter.

This is the defence which his Holinefs fends into the world to meet the univerfal indignation which he forefaw, and not an imperious Neceffity operating on his fears. On this ground he represents the miferies which the Holy See had fuffered from the tyranny and oppreffion of the Corfican, as overwhelming the religion which that apoftate had renounced; and in the minatory adulation, the infulting fubmiffion paid by him to his Holiness, with a view to the farce that has been fince acted,

he rejoices as in the converfion of this auguft Prince to the Catholic Religion, and the reftoration of the true worfhip of God throughout the extenfive regions of the French empire.

It must be confeffed that in all this his Holinefs has done no more than follow the precedents fet him by his predeceffors, from the days of Pope Zachary in 752, to his own. The reign of that Pontiff in particular takes away from Pius the 7th every other merit or demerit but that of imitation; and if the draft that was fketched with fo mafterly a hand by Zachary has been but rudely and faintly copied by his worthy fucceffor, we muft afcribe it to the changes that have been produced by fo long a fucceffion of ages, and to the difference of fiuation and character in the two ufurpers, Pepin and Napoleon.

The events which the mention of those times brings to my recollection throw confiderable light on our fubject. It cannot, therefore, be foreign to it, to enter into them with fome minuteness.

The Popes owed no great obligations to the first race of the Kings of France; Clovis their great founder had been converted to the Chriftian faith; he built Churches, he founded Monaftries, he affembled Councils; but it does not appear that he had any intercourfe with the Holy Father, if we except a letter to him from Pope Anaftafius, congratulating the Church, as almost every other wef

Began his reign in 481, A. D.

tern Bishop did, on the acquifition of fuch a convert*. For this Father Daniel, the Jefuit, is my authority, an authority which you, Sir, will not be forward to difpute. In his history of that Prince's reign we find no mention whatever of the contemporary Popes, except on the occafion abcve alluded to. It appears, from that hiftory, that he erected Sees, that he filled them with Prelates of his own choice, and that he conftantly confulted with them on every thing that concerned the interefts of religion. In particular the Rev. Father gives us a letter from thefe Prelates on the break. ing up of a Council, to which the King had fummoned them at Orleans: in this letter they tell him that "they fend him the answers, on which they had agreed, to all the points he had propofed for their difcuffion, in order that he might Stamp thefe answers with his approbation, if he "Should think them worthy of it, and that the deci"fions of fo many Holy Prelates might be rendered "more efficacious by the authority and the orders of "fo great a King." This is an important document; it is the act of the whole body of the French Church; but it contains not one word of the Pope, nor of the Holy See; not one word of the fucceffor of St. Peter; not one word of the Supreme Head of the Church, the fole arbiter in all matters

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* There is a fable of his having prefented a golden crowu to St. Peter, invented by fome Monk, and noticed by no hiflorian of that day.

of religion, or even of that neceffary authority to fanction and give force to the decrees of Councils in all articles of faith and difcipline, which the Popes have fince arrogated.

On any intercourse between the Popes and the fucceffors of Clovis, more than with any other of the western Bishops, the Jefuit is equally filent. He quotes, indeed, a letter from Pope Pelagius to one of them, ftyling himfelf" by the mercy of God,

Bishop of the Catholic Church of the city of "Rome." Thefe his titles are no lefs different from those affumed by his fucceffors than is the tenor of "the letter. It is to clear himfelf to the King from an accufation propagated againft him in France, and charging him with the want of Oxthodoxy. Daniel mentions, alfo, a correfpondence between Gregory the Great and the famous Queen Brunhault, relative to the converfion of England; and with Childebert, extolling the French King and nation above all the other Princes and kingdoms of the earth. But all this adulation produced no grateful returns. There was no affumption on the one part, nor acknowledgment on the other, of any right of interference, much less of any control, in the affairs of the Church of France, inherent in the See of Rome by Divine right. On the contrary, these fucceffors of Clovis continued to create and depofe Bishops, to affemble Councils by virtue of their regal authority, and to confirm the Canons paffed in those Councils; but of the vifible Head of the Catholic Church, or of the Supreme apoftolic See,