DE PRERSENSi: ON MEN AND PARTIES. 179 



" I answer fliitly — no. 1 uni well aware thai I am treadinc:, 

 here, on dangerous ground. Inccdo per igncx. I liastcn, accord- 

 ingly, to repeat that I make no pretence to express anythuig 

 more than an individual opinion, 1 bow bef<jre all the texts and 

 all the canons that will be quoted against me. I shall neither 

 dispute tliem nor discuss them. But I cannot crush out the con- 

 viction of my conscience and heart. I cannot do otherwise than 

 express it, now that I have read, for twelve j-ears past, those 

 essays on the restoration of men and things to a perfect state, 

 which nobody, when I was a young man — at least no Catholic — 

 ever thought of defending. I declare, therefore, that I feci an 

 invincible horror at all punishments and all violences inflicted 

 on mankind under pretence of serving or defending religion. 

 The fagots lighted by the Jiands of Catholics, arc as horrible to 

 me as the scaffolds on which Protestants have immolated so 

 many mart3'rs. [Sensation and applause] The gag in the mouth 

 of any sincere preacher of his own faith, I feel as if it were be- 

 tween my own lips, and it makes me shudder with distress. 

 [Henewcd sensation.] The Spanish inquisitor, saying to the here- 

 tic, " The truth, or death," is as odious to me as th(^ French ter- 

 rorist saying to my grandfather, " Liberty and fraternity, or 

 death." [Shouts of applause.] The human conscience has the 

 right to demand that none of these hideous alternatives shall ever 

 be imposed on it." [Reneired appjlaui^e.] 



Such language as this certainly left nothing to be desired in 

 point of precision. Received with enthusiasm in the Liberal- 

 Catholic party (although it must have appeared cxtrn.vagant to 

 some of them), in the opposite party it waked np a lively indig- 

 nation, especially in the burning centre of Roman Jesuitism; 

 for M. de ]Montalembert had laid an audacious hand on the fun- 

 damental principles of that powerful bod\', and on the ver}- basis 

 of their private teaching. We are compelled to believe that it 

 ■was just after the congress of Halines, and as a sequel to all tlie 

 protests and denunciations to which that congress gave rise, that 

 the Encyclical of December 8th, 1864, was prepared. Read it 

 without prejudice, giving its words their natural sense, and it is 

 not possible to help seeing in it the clearest refutation of all that 

 Montalembert had declared, with a generous piLssion, on the 

 platform of the congress : 



