The-papacy-its-history-dogmas-genius-and-prospects-wylie

—THE UPPER CLASSES AND ROMANISM. 50.9to inquire whether the Church does not need protection,rather than possess the ability to bestow it. The upperstrata of society in France, too, are pervaded by a greatanxiety to create power,—to discover new principles andsources of authority ; and what so likely as the inlHuence ofthe Church to tame and subjugate those passions M'hich theKevolution has let loose? Up to the present hour, ever sincethe great outbreak of 1848, they have found out no principleof authority save downright force. The army and thepolice, pretty much blended into one, is their only instrumentof government.They are not unnaturally anxious tosupplement their vast array of physical force with a certainamount of moral power, by enlisting the priesthood on theirside. They look to the Pope as a kind of moral Fouche,a spiritual prefect of police for Europe. These statesmen,speaking generally,—for we must except MM. Montalembertand Falloux,—care nothing for the Church as a Church.They never go to confession or to mass ; but they need theChurch for the maintenance of their own authority. Theirreligion is that of Pope's Sii- Balaam, who, whilst he himselfwas seeking to make his fortune in corrupt politics, senthis wife and family to sermon. How far this perfidious alliance,prompted by fear and necessity, is likely to promotethe ends of either statesmen or churchmen, we shall inquirewhen we come to glance at the favourable symptoms of Europe.Meanwhile we note it as one of the grand currentsin the Catholic world, and one of the main causes which haveled to an apparent return of many of the higher classes toRomanism. Thus everywdiere we behold a movement to-Rome is in the van ofwards civil and religious despotism.the march.