T A B L E OF CONTENTS.

RELIGION AND POLITICS

Pago

The News from Italy . . . . . . 625 Literary Institutions . . . . . . 625 English and Continental Honesty in

Trade •• •• . . •• •• 625 The Bishop o f London’s Bishops . . C26 Slanders on Dr. W isem an-“ . . . . 626 The “ Nation” and the Member for

Youghal •• •• •• . . •• 626 M. de Montalembert and M. LiadiOres 627 Notices to Correspondents . . . . 633 R E V I E W S :—

History of the Bank of England— The

Dublin Review—Dolman’s Magazine — Progress and influence of the Catholic Church in the United States— The Holy Trinity Proved from Antiquity—Duty and Fruit of Almsgiving— Lives-of St. Thomas of Villanova and St. Francis Solano— The Decorator’s Assistant— Currency Records . . . . . . . . 627

CATH O L IC IN T E L L IG E N C E :—

Sympathy with the Pope — The

Austrian Aggressions in I ta ly :— Great Meeting of the Catholics of Marylebone The Rev. T . M . M ‘ Donnell . . The London V ic a r ia te ........................... . Trinity College and the Catholics of

Ireland •• A Hint for the “ Interesting Case London:—

The Right Rev. Dr. Wiseman and St. Mary’s Chapel, Chelsea—V ir ginia-street: Polish Martyrs Provincial

Liverpool: The Fever—Newcastleupon-Tvne : Recovery from Fever o f the Very Rev. Mgr. C . Eyre— North Shields............................. Ireland :—

The Bishop o f Clonfert— Waterford and the Pope ••

Page

628 629 62!) 629 630

T A B L E OF CONTENTS.

FOREIGN & COLONIAL INTELLIGENCE:—

Italy—Rome— Orders in Case of In­

Page vasion-Count Lutzow’s Note—The Pope’s Resolution— Count Bresson — Lucca—Modena— Naples—France — The Abbe o f Paris— Spain—Portugal— Belgium— Switzerland : The Bible Society — Russia - - Poland — United States and Mexico— South America.. .......................................... 631 NOTICES TO CORRESPONDENTS : — SECOND ED IT IO N :—

Another Fever Victim :—Death of the Very Rev. Thomas BUlington, V .G .— The Mission of Rugeley, Staffordshire — Bank Directors — Mr. D. W . Harvey and the Electors — Old and Young Ireland—The Lord Lieutenant— The New Governor of Malla — Newry— Conversions, &c...................... •• •• 633 Conversions .. ........................ C32

DOMESTIC N E W S :—

Court and Fashionable Lif e :—

Page

The Court at Osborne House •• 634 PERSONAL :—

Death of Madame Albertazzi—Fes­

tivities at Knowsley—Festivities at Dravton....................................................... 634 P O L IT IC A L :— P R O TESTANTISM .— M ISCELLANEOUS — L A W AND

POLICE — ACCIDENTS AND OFFENCES, &c. IR E L A N D - P O L IT IC A L :—

Loyal National Repeal Association—

State of the Country— Progress of Fever, &c.......................... . . G3o N A V A L AND M IL IT A R Y NEWS :— G A Z E T T E S :— R A I L W A Y IN T E L L IG E N C E :— 637 MONEY M A R K E T AND C IT Y NEW S 63. M ARKETS .......................................... 639 A D V E R T I S E M E N T S ............................. 640

V o l . VIII. No. 387.

SATURDAY,

OCTOBER 2, 1847.

P r ic e 6 <7.

T H E N E W S F R O M I T A L Y . The news from Ita ly is becoming a little more cheerful and hopeful. I f we may believe the accounts alreadypnblished through various channels, Austria has made— either in fact, or in fact and in name also— the required concessions. Our foreign authorities differ about the mode, though they seem to agree as to the fact. According to one authority, the obstructions of Ferrara have been relieved b y a bowel complaint! The Croats and Hungarians who have been made to do garrison duty°hi the grass-grown streets o f this decayed and mouldering city, find the autumnal vapours that reek up from the fiat, fat, drainless, marshes o f the Po, anything but conducive to a healthy action o f the skin. I f we may believe a German news-writer, whose story has at least all the gravity o f truth, hundreds o f these miserable military victims to insufficient drainage crowd the hospitals, and render it absolutely impossible for Count Radeczky— though within call o f some sixty thousand soldiers— to find men enough for ordinary patrol duty. So writes the Teutonic prose Homer o f Nuremburg. The parties being at a dead lock, and celestial interference necessary to unravel the plot, suddenly the sharp clangour o f the silver bow is heard; the god Apollo shoots his glittering shafts into the Austrian quarters; the patrols are seized with unutterable inward pangs; heavenly compulsion drives them from the posts they have been recently set to guard ; and thus Austrian aggression is stopped, medically, b y a colon. In other words, by a providential and most opportune dysentery the town is evacuated.

Other chroniclers conduct us to a not dissimilar result by means less poetical. A n autograph letter from the Rope to the Emperor, and another to the Empress, arc said to have worked wonders. Count Lutzow, too, has been marvellously brought over to the Pope’s views, alter due explanation and persuasion. in point o f fact, Prince Metternich never intended a military demonstration against the Pope— not he. A l l that was meant was to act in strict conformity with the Treaty of Vienna, by occupying the “ place” o f Ferrara. I f there should be any doubt about the meaning of the treaty, it can be talked over in an amicable way, like any other fam ily m atter; only it was rather unfriendly to disarrange official decorum by a public notarial act and noisy protest loud enough to be heard by all Europe.

Another story tells us that the Pope had consented to a compromise. Russian troops, o f all othefs in the known world, were, according to this version, to replace the relaxed Hungarians in the service o f the city gates! This, of course, is im . possible; and the more probable version o f the story is contained in the following paragraph, which reads as i f it. might be, in the main, true.

It is announced that an arrangement has been concluded, by the medium of the Count de Lutzow, the Austrian Ambassador at Rome, between the Pontifical Government and the Cabinet of Vienna, relative to the right of Austria to keep a garrison at Ferrara. According to this arrangement. Austria, it is said, is to renounce interfering in the police and governmental affairs of the town, and all the interior posts of Ferrara ate to be evacuated by the Austrians and occupied by tlie Pontifical soldiers; tbe contingent of 300 Swiss is to be appropriated to that service. Cardinal Ferretti, it is said, has demanded and obtained, in the name of the Holy Father, that the right of garrison by Austria shall be restricted to the citadel, with the faculty for the commander of the troops to lodge them if necessary in the old convents of Santa Catterina, Santo Benedetto, and Santo Dominion, situated outside the citadel, and of which it has been admitted that Austria could claim the disposal; besides, it lias been recognised by Austria that the occupation of these external posts has for its only object to protect the military service of tile troops. This arrangement, which has, it is'said, obtained the approbation of tile Pope, only requires, in order to become de finitive, that o f the Austrian Government, which was expectedfrom Vienna.— Conservatenr.

These various stories all point to the same result— a peaceable arrangement o f the dispute, and some sort o f concession on the part of Austria. The exact terms are not yet known, probably not yet settled ; but our readers must have sufficient confidence in the good sense and firmness o f the Pope and his advisers to feel sure that i f settled, and when settled, the terms will be amply satisfactory.

Meanwhile, what has Prince Metternich gained by this intervention? W e think not very much. H e has indeed succeeded in bringing about, a revo- j t lution, a royal or ducal flight in Lucca, and a vigorous retrogression in M odena; but beyond these not very potent benefits no great Austrian purpose seems as yet to be much advanced or hastened. T h e Grand D uke o f Tuscany— near kinsman o f the Kaiser— stands firm for Italian in dependence and more liberal institutions. The K ing o f Sardinia stands firm likewise. Austria has received a check ; has shown that she desires what she cannot execute; that Ita ly is slipping out of her clutches; that she detests the improvement of the Peninsula, and would fain prevent it, but that her capacity to do so is limited ; and that henceforward the courage and resolution of the Pope has built np a wall between Lombardy and the rest oi Italy, behind and beneath the shelter o f which liberty and improvement may dcvelope themselves.

Once before when— on due invitation— Austria crossed the Po, the progress o f her influence southward was checked by a piratical occupation o f Ancona. French statesmen bethought them selves o f combating A '¡stria by new aggressions on the Pope, and b y exhibiting a determination to share, i f not to prevent the plunder. In any other country situated like Ita ly the result o f this double occupation would naturally have been the conquest and spoliation o f the country occupied. But Ita ly is not as other countries. God watches over it in a special manner, and what seemed destined to injure has been made the instrument of good. French intervention quickened the removal o f the Austrian troops, and now, when a second time they march across the frontier, they are met— not by French piracy— but b y a declaration on tile part o f England that it can allow no invasion or occupation o f Central or Southern Ita ly , and that the hostile designs of Austria must he relinquished.

Meanwhile, the spirit o f “ progress” has received a powerful impulse from this wanton hostility. It has developed the popular sentiment, with tenfold warmth and ardour; deepened i t ; fixed i t ; strengthened i t ; and while showing the 1utility of | vain fears and idle apprehensions, tends to steady promise, but they seem to have no bond ol coherence— no principle o f even ordinary duration. T hey are generally founded on compromises, on the necessity o f ignoring that which it is every man’s highest interest to know. Their aim is the diffusion o f knowledge, not the acquisition of truth. Into the philosophy o f these Institutions truth, as such, does not enter: certainly can be found, it seems, only in the material world, and faith is a delusion or a dream. T o investigate the laws o f nature is certainly a high ambition, but to regard the results of such inquiries as the whole of knowledge is to be satisfied with the porch of the temple, and to neglect the altar and the shrine within.

H e who earns his daily bread by daily labour cau find here no particular source o f comfort. It is but adding tbe fatigue of thinking to his bodily weariness, and so prostrating him doubly. The pursuit o f knowledge cannot be a recreation, and i f it were it would not be worth the time it requires. A man worn out by hard bodily labour during the day is not the best qualified for intellectual labour at, night. These Institutions discover the fact, and accordingly provide amusement for their frequenters, while the innocent public supposes them to be reading Newton’s “ Principia,” or in the very depths of the Plutonian theory. Wherever instruction is combined with amusement the latter generally gets the upper hand. I t is far more pleasant, it not more easy, to laugh than to weep.

T o educate and instruct grown-up men without any restraint is a worthy device oi the nineteenth century. In earlier days childhood and youth were the seasons o f instruction. Manhood belongs to practical exertion. W e have neglected our youth, and would now try to remedy what ought never to have taken place. I t cannot lie done. Men do not want knowledge in general, but they do greatly need moral cultivation ; and this cannot be brought about without some means more commanding than the Literary Institutions o f the day. These are failures. T hey satisfy no wants, minister to no convenience which are not already attended to in a hundred other ways.

on to a still greater extent. Foreign buyers cry out loudly against the roguery, and withdraw their custom. The small retail shopkeepers, women especially, who are not up to all the m a lpractices o f the day, are incessantly taken in, and selling at prices fixed on the supposition that the goods when bought o f the wholesale houses were really in quantity what they professed to be, find themselves losers rather than gainers by their trade. In short, the system seems to ramify in all directions, and to be productive oi as many losses and inconveniences in a mere pecuniary point o f view as it is demoralising and debasing to the moral character o f all persons concerned in such disgraceful proceedings.

W hen compared with the loud complaints that we often hear from Protestant travellers o f extortions o f innkeepers and shopkeers on the Continent, this quiet and self-satisfied roguery is also peculiarly offensive. Nothing is more common than to hear a lady or gentleman declaiming agaiust the practices o f tradesmen in Pari-,, Vienna, Florence or Rome, and denouncing their system oi bargaining as indicative oi a real d ishonesty o f character, and as proof positive of the low standard o f morality which prevails wherever Catholicism is the religion of a people. Forgetting that there are many trades in England in which the same system is constantly recognised and put in practice by all persons, they imagine that because a French or Italian hosier or jeweller asks perhaps double the sum he intends to take for his goods, he is deliberately trying to cheat and make dishonest gains. The tact, of course, is, that this is simply the custom o f the country, all people (unless they specify to the contrary) as a general rule trading upon the system o f making bargains, asking a large sum on all occasions, and making the whole affair a contest o f wits and general information. There is no more dishonesty necessarily attached to the practice than to the habits of all the sellers o f fish throughout England, who almost invariably follow the same rule, and expecting to he beat down by their customers, naturally begin by asking exorbitant sums.

and sober the national movement by bringing pal|pably before men’s minds the dangers from without, I and the certainty that interference w ill come from abroad, i f the ju s t endeavours after internal im provement be perverted into a dangerous and revolutionary propagandism.

L I T E R A R Y IN S T I T U T I O N S . W e have lately recorded in our columns the fate o f three Literary Institutions : one o f them in Leicester-square, the second in W indsor, and the third flourished in the Hackney-road. How long they continued in being we know not, but the causes o f their dissolution may be easily guessed at, for one o f them perished in debt, and another was sold to satisfy those who cared more for their own money than the instruction o f their neighbours at their expense. Popular instruction does not seem to thrive in the magnificent form in which these institutions desire to embody it. Some o f them drag on a convulsive existence by means of popular lecturers, and chemical experiments supply the place o f the ingenious conjuror. Sometimes a tea-party or a ball enlivens the dulness o f the instruction, and gives a fit o f unnatural energy to the decaying Institute by which its powers oi life are more rapidly crushed.

. Upon the whole, our sympathy is not with these Institutions themselves, but with their amiable promoters. These feel a want, and recognise it, and fail only in the means b y which it might be satisfied. Moral and intellectual pursuits are deserving o f all praise, and such as promote them are benefactors o f their kind. But good intentions are not al ways good in their results— sometimes positively evil. W e do not say that these Institutions are evil in themselves, but we do say that they mast fall to be instruments o f good, and even o f ordinary success. Something is wanting in them to give them a hold upon people in general, or they are not the true instruments for the end which their promoters desire.

In spite of the orations oi S ir Robert Peel, and o f the more mystical declamations o f Young England, Literary Institutions do not thrive. They begin well with great pomp and greater

If, then, we wish to make an impression for good on our fellow-creatures, we must have recourse to some other means, not discarding the fine arts nor the accumulated stores o f learning. Poor men have hearts and keen affections, though their intellects may have grown unequal to great efforts ; and, more than a ll, they have souls. W e should like to try once more whether the road to their heart be not what it used to he, and whether they will not respond again to the call o f a visible Church. W e should like to see them respected as brethren. I t will be worth while to make an experiment, at least, upon them. M a y they not find pleasure in their duties? Rich and poor alike are fond o f pageantry, and they gratify their passion in diverse ways, in theatres and Temperance processions. W h o can tell the effect upon a deseited people of the sight o f their long-lost inheritance— the ceremonious splendours of the Catholic worship ?

ENGLISH AND CONTINENTAL HONESTY

IN TRADE.

A few surprising and somewhat startling facts have lately come out in connection with certain négociations and discussions among parties engaged in the drapery trade, which will perhaps open people’s eyes a little to the virtuous nonsense which is sometimes talked about the want, o f commercial honest.}' in Catholic countries. It appears that there is a wide spread system o f cheating in practice among nearly all classes o f wholesale and retail dealers in this branch of business. For example ; wholesale houses are in the habit of warranting the quantity o f the different kinds of goods supplied by them to the retailers. These warrants, however, often turn out to he just so many barefaced falsehoods. Reels o f thread (to mention one case as a specimen o i a thousand others) warranted to contain 100 yards have often been found t.o measure 921, 80, or 881 yards, and in some cases to he eveu OS per cent, less in quantity than the length indicated by the stamp ; while in no single instance (in a large number o f cases examined) did the measurement reach the full standard. In other goods the cheating is carried

W e are b y no means defending this system, either as convenient and necessary, or as indicating any very high standard o f morality among those who may have been the first to put it in practice. But we cannot help referring to these scandalous mal-practices in our own home trade as furnishing one o f the thousand proofs which ought, to open the eyes o f all English people to the gross misconceptions which they are constantly forming o f the real state o f manners and morals abroad. A ssociating with innkeepers, coachmen, and postilions ; without personal knowledge o f any portion o f the more respectable classes o f foreigners; adopting hours o f rising and habits o f passing their day which necessarily exclude them from all fair opportunities o f observing even the exterior o f the population through whom they are passing, they come home crammed with notions of the dishonesty and religious formalism o f whole countries, of whose real condition they actually know nothing. T hey have about as much reason for the views they have formed as a foreigner would have for judging o f the moral and religious condition o f England who had conversed only with waiters at inns, with stable boys, and with those exquisite individuals who dispense smiles and ribbon behind the counters o f linendrapers’ shops.

A l l these follies are, however, we trust, gradually passing away. People are beginning to admit that a man whogetsjupat nine o’clock in the morning abroad is not quite in a condition to judge o f the religious practices o f people who go to Mass at five and s i x ; and that the random stories picked up in diligences, salons, and from the disreputable classes oi society are not the fairest representations o f tbe philosophy, the politics, the literature, and the religion o f our neighbours. These sad revelations, also, o f our own misdeeds at borne, melancholy and mischievous as are the facts they tell, will yet not be without their good result i f they disabuse poor, credulous John Bull o f some few of his absurd superstitions about, foreign Catholics and foreign morals, and teach him to look at home before he condemns a whole nation because o f the delinquencies o f a classorauindividual

*

r i