Three Ideals. 129 



selves with the poor. They are not likely soon to have another 

 opportunity of playing the former part, but the occasions for the 

 latter can never be denied them. If to belong to a religious order 

 were made a capital offence in every country in Europe, it would 

 not prevent the formation of secret societies, whose sole external 

 symbol would be the greater readiness of their members to spend 

 their substance upon others rather than upon themselves. There is 

 enough in these considerations to excite enthusiasm, provided that 

 other conditions are favourable. In appealing to the democracy, the 

 Roman Catholic clergy would, in form at least, be reviving the best 

 traditions of the Church. There will be nothing strange in their 

 persuading themselves that power may be best recovered by boldly 

 resorting to the methods which originally gained it. 



"We certainly do not look forward to any incongruous alliance 

 between the Roman Catholic Church and the Reds. To the extreme 

 revolutionary party on the continent politics have become a religion, 

 and the cardinal articles of that religion are probably held with as 

 much fanaticism as can be commanded by the Roman Catholic 

 Church itself. Supposing the Church to take the line we have indi- 

 cated, we should rather regard it as a rival power bidding against 

 the Reds for the friendship of the poorer classes of society. The 

 Church would offer them equal sympathy, alloyed with less of that 

 desire for personal aggrandisement which the poor are so ready to 

 attribute to leaders of their own class. It would be quite as little 

 hampered by any stereotyped reverence for economical laws. Ordinary 

 politicians are disturbed if they become convinced that a particular 

 line of action is opposed to the growth of capital. They are so 

 accustomed to associate the well-being of a nation with its material 

 progress, that a state of things which does not further the latter can 

 hardly in their eyes tend to further the former. The Red Republican 

 has emancipated himself from this tendency to link together the two 

 ideas, and the genuine ecclesiastic has never been subject to it. For 

 different reasons capital is scarcely less hateful to the one than to 

 the other, and we are not at all sure that the doctrine that property 

 is a trust held for the benefit of the poor may not prove as attractive 

 to the cestuique trust as the rival doctrine that property is only 



K 



