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conceived the intention of Home Rule precipitately, or had concealed it unduly. This is the answer:-" In the first place, I deny that it is the duty of every Minister to make known even to his colleagues every idea which has formed itself in his mind. I should even say that the contradictory proposition would not be absurd. . . . . But letting pass, for argument sake, a very irrational proposition, I grapple with the dilemma, and say non sequitur; the consequence asserted is no consequence at all. It was no consequence from my not having condemned Home Rule that I had either not considered it or had adopted it. What is true is, that I had not publicly and in principle condemned it, and also that I had mentally considered it. But I had neither adopted nor rejected it, and for the very simple reason that it was not ripe either for adoption or rejection.'

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We have italicized the parts of the two quotations which show most strikingly the fundamental disagreement between the chief and his lieutenant, concerning the duty of a democratic leader.

The fact is, and recent events in particular abundantly prove it, that public opinion has not at all that force and strength attributed to it by the current delusion of a political necessity. History shows how the most deeply seated popular prejudices have been successfully conquered by the wholesome fearless expression of independent opinion by the courage of those whom Matthew Arnold aptly calls the "Remnant." Man is still

master of his fate, and the phantom enemy's armour when tested will be found to be only of the pasteboard kind. What individual courage and persistency can do in combating the convictions of a biassed majority can be seen in the successful crusade (by many deemed hopeless) in the first Midlothian campaign, and (to join great things with small) the victory of Mr. Bradlaugh on the oath question. Never was a time, perhaps, when earnestness and enthusiasm were more potent with the masses, and the acts and words of those who determinedly face unpopularity in defence of their own cherished beliefs meet with a more generous appreciation. But, for the most part, public men prefer swimming with the tide to stemming it, bending the knee to an idol in great part of their own manufacture. The error is contagious; the claptrap about necessity and "force of circumstances passes from lip to lip and becomes the political stock-in-trade of a whole generation, and so we have the spectacle of majorities drifting with the tendency and the tide of a destiny which is nothing more than a name for the combined flabbiness and lethargy of individual minds.

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"History of an Idea," p. 5.

N. J. SYNNOTT.

ART. VIII. THE STORY OF THE FRENCH EXILES.

Le Clergé français réfugié en Angleterre. Par F. X. PLASSE, Chanoine Titulaire de Clermont. Two vols. Paris: Victor Palmé. 1886.

GREAT gap in both English and French history has been happily filled by the publication of these volumes by Canon Plasse. In 1802, the Abbé de Lubersac, Vicar General of Narbonne, printed in London, and dedicated to George III. his "Journal historique et religieux de l'Emigration et Déportation du Clergé de France en Angleterre," a book by which its author" wished to make known to all nations, and to the remotest posterity, the magnanimity of England's king and the generosity of his subjects." But his narrative, though conceived in a noble spirit of gratitude, was inadequate for its purpose. It consists of mere episodes, and they are related without proportion. It is also a royalist pamphlet, and a protest against the Concordat of 1801, between Pius VII. and Napoleon, rather than a history. We shall, however, make use of it in this article for some details passed over by Canon Plasse.

It is perhaps right that the bounty of England to the French should be recorded by the nation that received, rather than by that which conferred the benefits; yet it is strange that a matter of such magnitude as the free gift, to the exiles of a nation with which England was at war, of more than two million pounds sterling, should neither have found a special historian in England, nor anything beyond the merest incidental mention in English histories. In many respects this gift is more glorious to us as a nation than the twenty millions voted for negro emancipation. Yet Alison has no space for it in his lengthy record of the affairs of Europe; Knight's enormous folios on the reign of George III. contain not more than a dozen lines on the subject; and the late Mr. Greene, in his larger History, while illustrating what he calls "the new humanity" by Howard's prison reforms, the trial of Warren Hastings, and the abolition of slavery, has not a word on the hospitality of Protestant England to the Catholic clergy of France.

Stranger still has been the apathy of Catholic writers with regard to an event of such interest and importance, from a religious point of view, as the residence in England, for many years together, of many thousand Catholic priests. Charles Butler, indeed, in his additions to the Historical Memoirs of English Catholics, published in 1821, gives five pages to the recep

tion in England of the French Persecuted Clergy,* but he enters into no details as to the numbers, residence, or occupation of the exiles. Those who have followed him have added nothing to our information, as may be seen by a quotation from Canon Flanagan's History of the Church in England :

The tide of the exiled clergy [he writes] was far beyond all the need of the missions: it soon amounted to no fewer than eight thousand. It was accompanied by a vast number of the French nobility, and nearly all, both nobles and clergy, were cast penniless upon the shores of England. Seldom or never has England presented so noble a spectacle as upon that occasion. It rose superior to its old prejudices and received them all with open arms; one thousand of them found a shelter in the King's house of Winchester, and the voluntary subscriptions that poured in being still insufficient, a large sum was annually voted for many years.t

In this short paragraph the whole subject is despatched. Could anything be more vague or unsatisfactory? How was the immigration caused? When did it begin, and when did it end? How much money was subscribed, how much vɔted by Parliament? How was it distributed? What is to be understood by many years"? What was the occupation of the French clergy during their exile, what their conduct? What have been the results on the nation, or on the Catholic Church in England, of the presence of these thousands of confessors of the Catholic faith? Canon Flanagan answers none of these questions. His point of view was apparently the "need of the missions," and the supply being beyond the demand. So thoroughly, or so narrowly, does he keep to his immediate subject, that, though he quotes the generous words in which Abbé Barruel testifies to the favourable impression made on the French clergy by the English Catholics, he has forgotten to speak of the impression made on English Catholics and Protestants by the magnificent spectacle of ten thousand priests sacrificing their all for conscience sake. This omission is all the more to be regretted in that he gives two pages to a history of the Blanchard Schism, the one unfortunate blot on the glorious record of the French Church in England.

More unaccountable still is the silence of Provost Husenbeth in his Life of Bishop Milner. When Milner was pastor of St. Peter's, Winchester, more than seven hundred French priests lived in community for four years at the King's house in that city, and many more in private lodgings. Milner was intimately concerned in these arrangements, as Canon Plasse shows. Yet

* Vol. iv. chap. 78, § 5. Four of the nine pages of this section relate the sufferings of the English nuns. † Vol. ii. p. 412.

the only reference to the matter by his biographer is that Milner translated a letter by a French bishop, and allowed the French clergy to celebrate in his church a solemn requiem at the death of Louis XVI., at which the English pastor preached; yet Milner's later action, as bishop, against the French schism, or Blanchardists, is related in detail. The reasons for Dr. Husenbeth's illproportioned treatment of Milner's relations with the French clergy are, doubtless, that he was a witness of the bishop's zeal against the poor and misguided remnant of the exiles, while of the earlier and heroic days he knew little. Still, the documents used by Canon Plasse were accessible in 1862, when Husenbeth wrote, and belonged to his subject.

We have made these remarks, not in disparagement of excellent books, but to show that Canon Plasse breaks new ground. He has written an important chapter in English as well as in French history, and his volumes should be read with equal interest and glow of pride by French and English, by Protestants and Catholics. In a visit to England in 1864 the subject first presented itself to his mind. He set himself to learn English, made seven subsequent journeys across the Channel, and visited most of the places in England, Scotland, and Ireland, where his exiled brethren had resided, worked hard in the MS. collections of the Record Office and British Museum, and in the archives of the old Catholic churches, took personally many photographs of places and old prints, and with the materials gathered by all these labours has constructed a narrative full of interest and edification.* Naturally he has written from a French point of view. There are descriptions in his book that are superfluous for English readers; and he has given a space to the investigation of the names and dioceses of exiles, which in an English adaptation of his book we should gladly see devoted to some biographical details regarding their English hosts and friends. We regretted also to find so little use made of contemporary English literature, or of English biographies bearing on those times; but after having ourselves sought to complete our knowledge by a pretty long search through recent historians, and the memoirs of such men as Pitt, Percival, Canning, Wilberforce, we confess to have found little to repay our toil, except in the Parliamentary debates. In the brief sketch we now attempt we must be understood to refer to Canon Plasse for the proofs of what we state, unless when we indicate other sources.+

Eighteen full-page engravings add much to the value of these volumes.

These volumes have the ordinary French defect of being without index. We have sometimes arrived at our conclusions by supplementing one statement or document by another. Canon Plasse is abundant, and no doubt accurate in his references, but he has not always given us the summaries or totals we should desire.

The causes and progress of the French Revolution are too well known to need repeating here. The exile of the French clergy, to which we restrict ourselves, was not, like that of most of the laity, a spontaneous, or a merely political movement. In July, 1790, the Civil Constitution of the clergy had been voted, which threw all who accepted it into open schism with the Holy See. An oath to observe it was required from all who held office or benefice, and in November deprivation and other penalties were voted against the non-jurists. In the assembly, out of 290 ecclesiastics, only 96 swore, and 25 of these almost immediately retracted. In Paris, out of 800, 600 refused the oath; in the provinces 50,000 out of 60,000. On January 21st, 1791, the king, Louis XVI. weakly signed the bill of ejectment against the clergy who refused the oath. On the same day, two years later, he was beheaded, but not before he had bitterly regretted his weakness. It is interesting to learn from an English source, that when Abbé Edgeworth told the king, just before his death, that the exiled clergy were being received and sheltered in England, the king exclaimed with emotion: "Ah! la généreuse nation, la généreuse nation." * As the revolution proceeded the enemies of religion were not satisfied with depriving the Catholic clergy of their benefices, or forbidding them to minister to their former flocks. By a law of August 26, 1792, all non-jurant ecclesiastics were to quit the country in a fortnight, under pain of transportation to French Guiana. Three francs a day were to be given them for the expenses of a daily journey of thirty miles to the frontier. If they returned they would be awarded ten years' imprisonment. The sick, and those over sixty years old, were exempted from banishment, but had to assemble in a place assigned to them in each department. The exiles had passports, yet multitudes were massacred en route at Rheims, Meaux, Lyons, Versailles, Caen, and other places, and those who escaped were pillaged and stripped, and arrived in exile, for the most part in absolute penury. Naturally those in the northern parts of France fled to the nearest place of safety, the Channel Islands-French in language, though English in nationality and religion-and the southern shores of England.

Let it be remembered that this expulsion of 50,000 priests was endured by them voluntarily, in the sense that it could have been avoided by taking an illicit oath, and let us judge by it such passages as the following of Carlyle. Describing the first beginnings of the French Revolution, he says: "Our Church stands haltered, dumb, like a dumb ox, lowing only for

*Journal of Miss Porter in 1796, quoted in the Journal of Mary Frampton, published in 1885, p. 89.

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