176 



ARTHUR GALTON^ M.A._, ON 



of the revolutionary excepises. The despotic sovereigns of 

 Europe formed an Holy Alliance against the liberties of their 

 people and the rights of nations. With this infamous and 

 fatuous policy our various administrations were in sympathy, 

 until our affairs were managed by the more generous, brave, 

 and liberating intellect of Lord Palmerston, who was not only a 

 great Englishman, but a wise, farseeing and beneficent European. 

 Secondly, ' the growth of ultramontanism was due to the re- 

 establishment of the Society of Jesus, which is pledged above 

 all things to the papal service ; for its motto. Ad Majorem Dei 

 Gloria?!!, always means the greater glory and jurisdiction of the 

 pope. Its theologians in the sixteenth century drew the most 

 logical conclusions from the claims of the mediaeval papacy, 

 and its men of action devoted themselves with heroic zeal to 

 making tliese conclusions practical. The restored Jesuits not 

 only controlled the policy of the Holy See, but they liad 

 almost a monopoly of both lay and clerical education. In other 

 words, they leavened the theology and the mentality of the whole 

 papal system. Their efforts culminated with the decree of 

 infallibility in 1870 : but the effects of their policy still 

 remain to be proved ; for their evolution of Romanism during 

 the nineteenth century is not working out veiy successfully,, 

 so far as one can judge, in the twentieth. Thirdly, the spread 

 of ultramontanism owes much to those extravagant, senti- 

 mental, and fallacious notions of medisevalism which replaced 

 the sturdier common sense of the eighteenth century. A 

 scientific knowledge of the middle ages does not make either 

 for Catholicism or for papalism, or for an unqualified admiration 

 of mediaevalism itself, that mingled product of ignorance and 

 barbarity ; but the romantic movement of the early nineteenth 

 century was not scientific, nor was any single one of its leaders 

 either in France or England, either in history or in theology. 

 It was, rather, ignorant and emotional and silly. It produced 

 our thoroughly illogical English tractarianism, and it was 

 utilised very cleverly by the more logical ultramontanes for 

 their own purposes. 



Besides these three causes for the growth of tdtramontanism,. 

 the ancient barriers of the gallican church against romanising 

 were destroyed. Tliey fell with the monarchy, and were not 

 restored with it. The old national spirit of the church was 

 broken. A breach was made between the church and ihe 

 nation, which the reactionary politics and the romanising 

 theology of the French ecclesiastics have widened continuously.. 

 Every possible mistake, that could be made, was made by the 



