T

THE TABLET TABLE OP CONTENTS.

TABLE OF CONTENTS.

RELIGION AND POLITICS:—

Page

French Horrors •• ........................ ^61 The Chartist Land Company . . .. 561 A New Receipt for Reconciliation .. 562 Modern Relie Worship.. .. •• 5G3 Letter o f a Catholic from the Roman

States to the Catholics o f England.. 503 The “ English Churchman ” and the

“ Secessions to Rome” . • •• 563 Notices to Correspondents .. .. 568 REVIEWS:—

Exercises of St Ignatius. New Trans­

lation — Dolman’s Magazine—The Long-Lost Found—Mores Catholic! —Patriots o f Italy. An Appeal in their Favour—The Potato Itot and its Cure — Zenobius — Dunigan’s Home Library.. •• •• •• 563 CATHOLIC INTELLIGENCE:—

The London Vicariate .. •• •• 564 Subscriptions for the Relief o f the

Distress in Ireland .. •• •• 564

L owdon :—

St. George’s Church — Hammermersmitli, &c. . . •• •• •• 565 P r o v in c ia l :—

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Alton : Address to the Rev. H. White—Houghton-le-Spring : Catholic Tea Party—Liverpool: Death of the Rev. Mr. Gillow—Newcastle : The Catholic Clergy — Salford : Laying the Foundation Stone of a New C onvent.................... 565 I reland :—

Festival of St. Audeon—Profession of Two Nuns at the Richmond Presentation Convent—Cork: Festival of St. Augustine—Conversions in Derry Workhouse •• .. .. 565 F ORE ION & COLONIAL fNTKLLlG EN CE:—

Italy—Rome—Energy of the People-

Franco : The Murder of the Duchess de Praslin—Suicide of the Duke’s Son—Examination of the

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Governess — Spain — Galicia—Belgium- Switzerland—America—Rio de la P!ata—Australia—New Zealand—Cape of Good Hope •• •• 566 NOTICES TO CORRESPONDENTS :— 568 SECOND EDITION :—

The “ Horrors ” in Paris-Confession of the Duke de Praslin—“ From Oxford to Rome”—Death of the Rev. Robert G illow—Somers Town: Funeral—Opening of the Guild Hall —Literary Society—Dundalk Election—Banquet—Marriage in High Life — Latest Intelligence from Ireland. &c. •• •• •• •• 569 Conversions .. •• •• •• 569 Suicide of the Eldest Son of the Duke de Praslin .. •• •• •• 569 The Attempted Murder by a Prince in France .................................. 569 DOMESTIC NEWS:—

C ourt and F ashionable L ife :—

The Queen’s Progress in Sootland— Prince Albert’s Birthday •• PERSONAL :—

Illness of Lady Byron—Death ofWm.

Parke—The New Peers—Jenny Lind—Sir J. Breuton’s Widow— &c., fee................................................ POLITICAL :—

The E l e c t i o n s ....................... MISCELLANEOUS — LAW AND

POLICE — ACCIDENTS AND OFFENCES, &c. IRELAND- POLITICAL: —

Loyal National Repeal Association —

Meeting of the Irish Confederation, &c., &c............... NAVAL AND MILITARY NEWS:— GAZETTES :— RAILW AY INTELLIGENCE ?— MONEY MARKET AND CITY NEWS MARKETS .................................. ADVERTISEMENTS.......................

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569

570 670

572

575 576

Vox,. VIII. No. 383.

SATURDAY,

SEPTEMBER 4, 1847.

P r i c e 6d.

F R E N C H H O R R O R S . T h e minds o f ou r readers must be b y this time to lerably w e ll saturated with French crimes and F rench horrors. A month or tw o back every post brought us across the Channel some new story o f corruption, impeaching the character o f the whole class o l official men, throw ing discredit on the entire system o f Government, and reducing to p r o o f and certainty what has usually been taken to be the declamatory exaggeration o f opposition writers. T h e course o f events has since changed a little. F rom the filth o f public delinquencies we com e to the ferocities o f private crime — perjuries, assassinations, suicides— all p erp e trated b y persons o f the higher o r highest classes o f society— all carrying discredit to the present stale o f things in France, and covering with disgrace those whose public position renders them the exponents o r representatives o f the present state o f things.

In what a strange circle have the events o f the last seventeen years run round. A t the head o f affairs, during all that period, has been a man of consummate ability and unscrupulous craft, who gained his power b y cunning and intrigue, and who has upheld it b y using the selfish passions and interests o f all classes o f people w ithin and w ith out the k ingdom over which he rules. _ F o r a time, fo r years, thanks to his great skill, intrepid perseverance, and the visible aid o f Heaven— everything succeeded with him . T h e plots o f his foes were d isconcerted; savage attempts on his life were m iraculously averted ; the rage o f political enemies was calmed down b y sheer despair; the restless turbulence o f a society so long troubled by revolutionary convulsion, appeared as i f settling down into a halit o f tranquillity ; and everything seemed to promise the peaceful transmission o f a sceptre so doubtfu lly acquired, and the g lo ry of having been able to found stability in a chaos of ja rrin g elements.

T h * consummation was once almost assured and mdy even yet be realised. But, indeed, o f late a mpst hostile current has been setting in. The bareness, selfishness, and corruption, which have been the materials o f this great achievement, now rise up in rebellion against him who fo r seventeen years has been their master. T h e love o f gold, the absence o f a ll high principle, the wickedness deeply seated beneath a covering o f decorum , the falsehood, the meanness, the treachery, the callous indifference to evil, the dwarfish littleness o f soul — all these burst the manacles o f routine in which they were thought to be straightly confined, and walk forth into the highways o f French life affrighting, amazing, and confounding the people.

Thanks to these events, a great part o f the labour o f seventeen years has been thrown away. M en no longer believe in the social and political structure which has been reared at so vast an ex pense, and, in order to ensure peace and tranquillity, it is needful that they should believe. I f society were w h o lly c o r r u p t ; i f honour were a l together banished from i t ; i f it retained no lofty instincts and no aspirations after good— it might settle down fo r a time contented in the mud of its own vileness, and submit to be ruled by infam y, cheerfully acknow ledging itself infamous. But the case is quite otherwise. Internally weak, effeminate, emasculated, F rench society has a swelling ambition after something better. I t has not the moral strength necessary f o r great civil virtues and the heroic magnanimity o f peace, but it cannot rest contented to know itself fo r what it is. I t desires things incompatible with each other — the pleasure o f sinning and the g lo ry o f abstaining— close contact with vice without the stain and the shame thereof. I t is not content with the naked truth o f things. I t wishes the garments o f life to hide the actions o f death. Its ambition is to liv e w ithout G od in the world, and to plaster o v e r its internal rottenness with lo fty theories and phrases b low n up o f vanity.

W h e n the tru th makes its appearance ; when the internal corruption displays it s e l f ; when men trained up td m ock at thoughts o f religion are fou nd to act on the public stage o f the world as i f re lig ion were indeed a fa r c e ; when the class o f men b y whom society is governed is proved to be in too great measure composed o f such materials— then, forsooth, society takes alarm at the horrible and revoltin g circum stance that the appearance corresponds with the f a c t ; that the evil tree brings . forth evil f r u i t ; and that the bitter fountain does not send forth sweet waters.

A great dispute has arisen, both in the French and in the English jou rnals, whether the murder o f the Duchess de Praslin is or is not to be laid to the account o f the existing state of things ; whether this fr ightful crim e is an exception or a symptom ; and whether it ju s t ly brings discredit on the ruling powers under which it has taken place. These are h igh questions, not very easy for a foreigner to answer, and we prefer answering them in the language o f a F rench Catholic periodical well known to our readers— the Correspondent— an extract from which is appended to these remarks. However, one o r two points havestruck us not a little, and may be worth a few words.

Both here and in France the Government or the police have been accused o f providing the D u k e de Praslin with the means o f suicide. F o r doing this the Government lias been charged with f o l l y as regards the imprudence o f such an act, and with partiality as if it reserved such ghastly favours for rank, wealth, and high connections. AVhat has not been much commented on, is the peculiar notions o f morality under which such connivance is alone possible. The man who intentionally supplies fa cilities to suicide is an accomplice in murder. W hen the French Ministers, therefore, are charged with this shocking connivance, they are really accused o f murder, and those who believe them guilty, b e lieve them guilty o f murder. N or is this murder like the crime o f duelling, which is sanctioned and enforced b y a false code of honour. It stands out — i f committed— as an isolated act; springing from the o cca s ion ; perpetrated under no outrageous sense o f insult or passionate stim u lu s ; but resulting solely from an indifference to human life, and a shocking disregard o f the laws o f God.

Now', it is not our wish to lend any countenance to the charge b rough t against the French authorities in this case. W e do not believe it to be true sim ply because we do not see sufficient e v idence to create belief in so great a crim e. But look ing at it as a matter bearing on the vexed question o f the social condition o f F rance, we cannot but call to m ind an event that has preceded it but a little.

I t is not lon g since M . Teste, overwhelmed with proofs of Ministerial corruption, made an attempt upon his own life with a small pocket pistol. I t was at first rum oured that his son had supplied him with the deadly weapon. Being questioned on this point, he denied the fact, but he added, that i f it had been true, he should have thought his son bad perform ed a filial and praisew orthy act in enabling him to quit a life stained with d ish onour! This sentiment, so far as we observed, met with no reprobation in I ranee; and i f we can trust appearances, it was the expression o f a very general opinion among the highest classes in that country. Amongst the duties o f a child, it seems, in the new code o f philosophical ethics, is that o f taking part (u pon occasion) in the murder o f his fa th e r !

W h en , therefore, we hear it charged upon the F rench Ministers that they allowed the D u k e o f Praslin to poison himself, we answer, first o f all, that we doubt the fa c t ; but, secondly, that i f the charge be false, th ey were restrained from doing so either b y an unwillingness to confer an illegal favour on the D u k e , or by a sense o f p o l i tical prudence, and not at all by horror at the crim e.

Another circumstance has somewhat startled us. A. French paper— the Presse Agricole— (see the Morning Chronicle, August 2 5 )— informs us that when the police officer, M. A lla rd, examined the b od y o f the murdered lady, he “ declared at “ once that the blow s were not given by the expe“ rienced hand o f an ordinary assassin.” Here we come down from the crimes o f high life to those o f a low er d e g r e e ; and i f this expression be true and to be taken literally, it would seem that there are in Paris men who make a habit o f assassination ; who acquire skill by frequent practice ; w h o are the ordinary follow ers o f a trade in which the D u k e was a bungling in te r lo per; and that the police distinguish at a glance the skilful and delicate handling o f a professional murderer from the rough, rude perform ance o f a tyro or a n o v ic e ! Can this be so ?

B u t we detain our readers too lo n g from the reflections o f the writer in the Correspondant:—

The attempt would be idle to reduce the assassination o f the Duchess de Praslin to the proportions o f a private occurrence. Even i f we wished to do so, the voice o f the people, so worthy o f respect in such circumstances, would not consent to it. It requires all the blindness of the Journal tics Debats to venture on such an attempt. To talk s'ill o f the contrast, that our gentleness o f manners oilers to tliis act o f butchery and cannibalism, uerpetr.ited, according to all appearance, by the heir of an illustrious house, a Peer o f France, o f recent date, formerly a member o f the Chamber o f Deputies, invested wirh a post o f honour on the very steps o f the Throne; and who,but three weeks since, sat amongst the judges o f Tiste and Cubietes.

Insanity alone could furnish an excuse—what do I say ?—an explanation o f such a crim e; but who does not know that certain horrible madnesses are the offspring only o f an inveterate depravity, o f a prolonged forgetfulness of every moral sense, and the madness of the criminal resembles the lightning which is formed from all ibe eleclric vapours scattered through the atmosphere.

Yes, the people are right, the whole society is culpable— it is at least an accomplice, in a certain sense, of the assassination o f the Ducliessof Praslin. Recall all your recollections, you will find nothing similar for many centuries, unless you remember the murder o f the Marchioness de Gauges, the recital o f which terrified our infancy when reading the collection o f Causes Ce/ebres But the assassins o f that pour woman belonged to a remote province, where the passions art1strong, and manners were still gross and barbarous ; and her husband had a pretext for jealousy, and was moreover suspected only o f complicity.

There was not In that c ¡so the supreme elegance, the refinement o f delicacy, in the midst, o f which Death visited the ¡lache s o f Praslin as brutally as if it ltatl been inflicted by common ruffians. Until the present tnomeuf, no similar horrors have ever stained the escutcheon o f the truly illustrious families o f France. The people are right; our epoch was destined to furnish an example o f things which centuries, the most noted for their effervescence and corrup ions, had never furnished.

To wislt to mitigate or combat this universal impression would, then, he a useless attempt. For seventeen years no event has produced such an impression. On Wednesday there was a question o f removing the principal criminal to the prison o f the Luxembourg; they dared not do it by day7, in consequence o f the immense and excited crowds that besieged the gates o f the hotel where the body o f the Duchess reposed. They waited until night had scattered tiie groups, and it was only at four o ’clock iu the morning that the removal took place.

Let us not, then, struggle to vindicate our innocence. The superior and educated classes who have flocked to roar with laughter at the performance o f the Auberge des Adrets; who, not content with the first attempt, have,asitwere,commanded from men o f an infernal spirit the aristuphanic apotheosis o f Robert Macaire; to stimulate whose palled appeiiteait became necessary to render the Peuilletons more horrid than the Gazette des Tribunaux; these superior and educated classes, who, for ten years, have never ceasedto have,'by readings o f their own choice and preference, their imaginations stained with a frightful mixture o f blood and debauch; these classes, who knew not how to discountenance by their contempt the props o f public balls, the main supports of the “ Griseites,” and of the “ Queens P o m a r e those coryphoei (in a Christian country) o f dances, more obscene than the orgies o f Paganism ever witnessed; these classes, already answeraqle for the poems o f Lacenaire, must also be answerable, before God and man, for the assassination o f the Duchess de Pi aslin. It is a thing unheard of, inexplicable at the first blush ; it is a thing very simple, when we reflect on it, that a man according to the best accounts o f mediocre talent, educated, as most o f us have been, by the State-schools, degraded little by little by that corruption that wealth too often gives facilities for, should have come, by an imitative monomania, to realise iu act those horrors which are the daily food o f the imagination in our day.

I repeat if, let us not defend ourselves; let us not try' to deceive ourselves. "We all know how it happens; we know the innumerable intermediate steps that con* duct us to the three flowers o f blood and shame, which have recently burst into bloom beneath the sun of corruption : Teste and Cubit-res, Beauvallon and Equevilly ; and unless God can deliver us from this last vision—the Duke de Praslin ; on one side the takers of bribes, and those who purchase them on the other; the duelling journalists, with gentlemen false witnesses ; and in fine, great lords Infected with that impurity which is formed by the fatal commixture of cruelty aud lust.

T H E C H A R T I S T L A N D C O M P A N Y . The election o f Feargus O ’ Connor fo r N o t tingham, anti some recent proceedings o f the Chartists in Worcestershire and Lancashire, have drawn attention to the doings o f these renowned agitators. F o r a lon g while the w orld at large has heard little o f them. W h en th e y were planning and executing physical force rebellions, sacred weeks, turns-out, and other schemes o f the like hopeless character, they made, o f course, noise enough, and were thought to be form idable and endowed with a disastrous vitality, F o r two or three years past they have sunk into comparative quiet, and, as ordinary newspaper readers suppose, into positive insignificance. This, however, is a slight mistake, and the real truth may remind us not a little o f the maxim current among nurses, that when children are making least noise they are doing most— mischief!

N o t that we would by any means insinuate that what the Chartists have been labouring at during the past eighteen months is m is ch ie f ; on the c o n trary, we are strongly inclined to believe that they have been labouring usefully, and we are at least sure that whatever may be the ultimate r e sult they have been striving honourably b y peaceable, and thrifty means to benefit their own condition, and put a new face on the condition o f their class.

E ighteen mouths ago, or little more, Feargus O ’C onnor began to consider how he might so apply the principle o f eo-operation, which already in insurance offices has produced such surprising and beneficial effects, to the production o f other effects not less surprising and beneficial for the labouring classes. I t occurred to him that b y c lubbing together small periodical subscriptions, thousands o f poor labourers might eacli in their turn become proprietors of small patches o f land, witli cottage and appurtenances, ju st large enough to engage the personal superintendence o f the p ro prietor, and free from the obligations o f leases and the exactions o f landlords. Eighteen months ago, this scheme, says Feargus, “ was undertaken “ by me, with the assistance o f a few working men, “ amid the jeers o f all.” D u rin g that short period it has from a small seed grown into a large tree, so that a good many town-birds lodge in the branches thereof. W ith ou t the expense o f a guinea in puffing o r advertising, Feargus has c on trived in a year and a h a l f to collect subscriptions enough to buy three or fou r estates, and to settle on them three or fou r batches o f labouring men in farms o f two, three, and fou r acres. These farms are the absolute property o f the small farmers. They are, indeed, subject to a redeemable rent charge o f five per cent, on the purchase money, but beyond this they are the absolute property o f the tenant, who is thus converted into a landowner, a man with a stake in the country, a p erson whose interest is by that very position placed strongly on the side o f order, peace, and rational conservatism.

On M onday evening, August 9, commenced, and on the fo llow in g Thursday ended, the ballot fo r the allotments o f a small estate ju st purchased by the Chartist funds. The estate appears to have consisted o f about three hundred and eightythree acres, divided into one hundred and fifteen allotments ; thirty o f two acres, seventeen o f three acres, and six ty-eigh t o f fou r acres.

On M onday morning (1 6 th August) the delegates from the different Chartist localities “ as“ sembled on the People’s Second Estate, L o iv“ bands, Worcestershire, in the splendid school“ room erected in the centre o f that beautiful “ spot.” This was the Parliament o f the “ N a “ tional Land Company.” I t met in conference to discuss the extension and continuance o f the Land Scheme, the establishment o f a Chartist Bank, a Chartist Insurance Company, a Chartist Loan Fund, and many matters o f detail arising out o f these comprehensive designs; it continued its sittings fo r several days, from eight in the morning, w ith one hour’s intermission, till seven in the evening— each speaker being allowed five minutes wherein to address the Conference. T h e result 1ms filled Feargus O ’ Connor with a v e ry legitim ate and natural enthusiasm ; hut we must allow him to speak iu his own p e rson : —

“ The representation of the Land Company is splendid; it is not like any representation that I have ever seen in my life ; the Old Guards are there teaching the juveniles, and the juveniles are denoting the progress that has taken place ; in short, the representatives you have sent rejoice my heart and bespeak your improvement. It is the miniature o f that full-length portrait o f Liberty and Wisdom which Bri ain will present to the world; all set upon one purpose—all aiming to arrive at the desired object. It 1 have had mv full share of anxiety, I have had more than my full share o f reward. Nine o f your delegates, representing Scotland ,and the