Some of them have already attained to that profì-
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THE SECRET OP
ciency : they are the first men of their country, both by the posts they occupy, and the superiority of their abilities. But, good heavens ! what is the object of all this management ? What sufficient motive shall we assign for so much stratagem? What duty, what recompence, can so long reconcile the faces of men to bear the fatigue of the mask ?
Can the play of so many batteries be destined to defend only a real and legitimate power? Such a power would not need it; truth can defend herself. Is it to protect the miserable interests of vanity? Perhaps it is; yet to take so much pains to attain so contemptible a result would be unworthy of the grave men to whom I allude: I attribute to them pro-founder views; I think I perceive a greater object, and one which better explains their prodigies of dissimulation and longanimity.
An ambition inordinate and immense, one of those ambitions which could only possibly spring in the bosoms of the oppressed, and coiüd only find nourishment in the miseries of a whole nation, ferments in the heart of the Russian people. That nation, essentially aggressive, greedy under the influence of privation, expiates beforehand, by a debasing submission, the design of exercising a tyranny over other nations : the glory, the riches which it hopes for, consoles it for the disgrace to which it submits. To purify himself from the foul and impious sacrifice of all public and personal liberty, the slave, upon his knees, dreams of the conquest of the world.
It is not the man who is adored in the Emperor Nicholas — it is the ambitious master of a nation more ambitious than himself. The passions of the
THEIR POLICY.
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Russians are shaped in the same mould as those of the people of antiquity : among them every thing reminds us of the Old Testament; their hopes, their tortures, are great like their empire.
There, nothing has any limits, — neither griefs, nor rewards, nor sacrifices, nor hopes: the power of such a people may become enormous, but they will purchase it at the price which the nations of Asia pay for the stability of their governments—the price of happiness.
Russia sees in Europe a prey which our dissensions will sooner or later yield to it: she foments anarchy among us in the hope of profiting by a corruption which she favours because it is favourable to her views : it is the history of Poland recommencing on a larger scale. For many years past Paris has read revolutionary journals paid by Russia. " Europe,'1 they say at Petersburg, " is following the road that Poland took; she is enervating herself by a vain liberalism, whilst we continue powerful precisely because we are not free: let us be patient under the yoke ; others shall some day pay for our shame."
The views that I reveal here may appear chimerical to minds engrossed with other matters; their truth will be recognised by every man initiated in the march of European affairs, and in the secrets of cabinets, during the last twenty years. They furnish a key to many a mystery; they explain also, without another word, the extreme importance which thoughtful men, grave both by character and position, attach to the being viewed by strangers only on the favourable side. If the Russians were, as they pretend, the supporters of order and legitimacy, would they make use of men, and, what is worse, of means which are revolutionary ?
VOL. III.Q
338THE FALLIBILITY
The monstrous credit of Russia at Rome is one of the effects of the influence against which I would have us prepared.* Rome and. Catholicism have no greater, no more dangerous enemy than the Emperor of Russia. Sooner or later, under the auspices of the Greek autocracy, schism will reign alone at Constantinople ; and then the Christian world, divided into two camps, will recognise the wrong done to the Roman church by the political blindness of its head.
That prince, alarmed by the disorder into which the nations were falling on his elevation to the pontifical throne, terrified by the moral evils inflicted upon Europe by our revolutions, without support, alone in the midst of an indifferent or scoffing world, feared nothing so much as the popular commotions from which he had suffered, and seen his contemporaries suffer: ceding, therefore, to the fatal influence of certain narrow minds, he took human prudence for his guide; he became wise according to the fashion of the world, skilful after the manner of men; that is to say, blind and weak in the sight of God: and thus was the cause of Catholicism in Poland deserted by its natural advocate, the visible head of the orthodox church. Are there полу many nations who would sacrifice their soldiers for Rome ? And yet, when, in his nakedness and poverty, the pope still found a people ready to die for him — he excommunicated them ! — he, the only prince on earth who was bound to assist them at the risk of his own life, excommunicated them to please the sovereign of a schismatic nation! The faithful asked each other in dismay, what had become of the indefatigable
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foresight of the Holy See: the martyrs, smitten with interdiction, saw the Catholic faith sacrificed by Rome to the Greek policy; and Poland, discouraged in her godlike resistance, submitted to her fate without understanding it.*
How is it that the representative of God upon earth has not discovered that, since the treaty of Westphalia, all the Avars of Europe are religious wars ? What carnal prudence is it that can have so disturbed his vision as to have led him to apply to the direction of heavenly things, means proper enough for earthly monarchs, but unworthy of the king of kings ? Their throne has only a transient duration ; his shall endure fur ever — yes, for ever: for the priest who is seated upon that throne would be more great, more clearsighted in the catacombs than he is in the Vatican. Cheated by the subtilty of the sons of the age, he has not penetrated below the surface of things; and, in the aberrations into which his fear-policy has led him, he has forgotten to draw his strength from its only real source — the politics of faith.†
* These remonstrances, which, it is believed, do not overstep the bounds of respect, have been justified by the later edicts of the court of Rome.
† Ignorance on religious points is so 'great in the present day, that a Catholic, a man of talent, to whom I read this passage, interrupted me, saying, " You are no longer a Catholic, you blame the pope!" As if the pope was impeccable, as well as infallible, in matters of faith. Even this infallibility itself is submitted to certain restrictions by the Gallicans, who yet consider themselves Catholic. Has Dante ever been accused of heresy ? Yet what is the language that he addresses to such of the popes as he places in his hell ? The ablest minds of our times fall into a confusion of id¿as that would have excited the Q 2
340A GLAXCE AT
But patience ! the times are ripening ; soon every question will be clearly defined, and truth, defended by its legitimate champions, will regain its empire over the minds of nations. Perhaps the struggle which is preparing will serve to convince Protestants of an essential truth, which I have already more than once dwelt upon, but on which I insist, because it appears ío me the only truth necessary to expedite the reunion of all Christian communities: it is that the only really free priest that exists is the Catholic priest. Everywhere else, except in the Catholic church, the priest is subjected to other laws and other lights than those of his conscience and his doctrine. One trembles on seeing the inconsistencies of the Church of England, as well as the abjectness of the Greek church at Petersburg: when hypocrisy ceases to triumph in England the greater part of the kingdom will again become Catholic. The church of Pome has alone saved the purity of faith by defending throughout the earth, with sublime generosity, with heroic patience, with inflexible conviction, the independence of sacerdotal power against the usurpations of temporal sovereignties. Where is the church which has not allowed itself to be lowered by the different governments of the earth to the rank of a pious police ? There is but one, one only — the Catholic church; and that liberty which she has preserved at the cost of the blood of her martyrs, is an