190 AKTHUR GALTON, M.A., ON THE CATHOLICS IN FRANCE. 



French Episcopate, He had thus come to regard the present 

 impasae of ecclesiastical affairs in France as a drawn battle between 

 Ultramontanism and the great principle of National Churches ; and, 

 as a staunch Anglican Churchman, he would fain still hope that, in 

 the working of Divine Providence, a way would be found for the 

 great historic Galilean Church to again raise its head and resume its 

 ancient "Galilean Liberties," to the humiliation of the Roman See 

 with its monstrous pretensions to lord it over the other churches of 

 Christendom. 



Dr. Irving went on to say that he had had this matter forced upon 

 his serious attention from the way in which, by perversion of 

 history, the " Italian Mission " in this country had been pushing 

 its way in his own neighbourhood, through an outlying settlement 

 in Bishop's Stortford in connexion with St. Edmund's College at 

 Ware, the modern Douai. It was a gratification to him to find 

 that the position which he had taken up in controversy with the 

 Eomanists in the local paper for several years past — and more 

 especially at the time of cruel, crushing treatment which the French 

 Episcopate had to endure from Pius X. and the Curia in August, 

 1907 — was fully supported by what Mr, Galton had put before us 

 in his most able paper. 



In conclusion he would like to ask the author of the paper if it 

 was not a fact that the ideas of Pascal and the Port Royalists were 

 becoming daily a greater intellectual force in the minds of thought- 

 ful religious Frenchmen, and if he did not join in the hope that 

 through the growth of those ideas, strengthened by the recent 

 translation of the Bible from the original tongues into French, the 

 religious life of the French nation might emerge from the present 

 €haos through the evolution of an order of things on a broad and 

 tolerant basis, such as we are familiar with in this country. 



Mr. J. T. Matthews and Mr. H. S. Williams also spoke, after 

 which the Chairman put the vote of thanks, which was carried by 

 acclamation. 



Mr. Galton replied briefly and the meeting terminated. 



