published under government auspices in Paris, which, though in milder terms than the Augsburg Gazette, had a good deal of its inspiration. It was daily sent to such Bishops of the Council as might be supposed to be open to its influence; but I never could understand why it was sent to me. Mr. Gladstone was Prime Minister of England, and he had his representative at Rome. During the period of the Council three hundred despatches were sent home. This I know authentically. Were they all the work of his ostensible representative, or were there other agents at work who were nearer the Church, and more intimate with the Augsburg Gazette? This has always been suspected. It is certain, however, that the then Prime Minister caught some of the infection that foreign statesmen had imbibed from the German professors, when he gave the hint of retaliation upon the Church for intruding into the civil sphere. Doubtless the notion of turning the Syllabus into dogma, and the Infallibility into an instrument against the civil power, had been already made to loom before his mind. Such a notion was, nevertheless, the pure result of heated imagination, and, as we shall hereafter show, never had the slightest ground in fact.
Who would not have assumed that these impressions had been effaced through better knowledge gained later on? In the interval between the Council and Mr. Gladstone's article in the Contemporary Review, that statesman had been a most generous friend to his Catholic fellow-countrymen. He had protected our principles against strong opposition in the Elementary Education Act; he had repealed the Ecclesiastical Titles Act, an immense boon to us; he had freed Catholic
