, among other causes, we incline to think that
the Roman Catholic reaction may proceed considerably further in this
country ere it receives any effectual check. The academical training and
the clerical teaching of the upper classes have not qualified them to
resist it. At the other end of society there are large masses who cannot
be considered inaccessible to any missionary influence, affectionately
and perseveringly applied. Not all men, in a crowded community, are
capable of the independence, the self-subsistence, without which
Protestantism sinks into personal anarchy. The class of weak, dependent
characters, that cannot stand alone in the struggle of life, are
unprovided for in the modern system of the world. The cooperative
theorist tries to take them up. But somehow or other he is usually a man
with whom, by a strange fatality, cooperation is impossible; intent on
uniting all men, yet himself not agreeing with any; with individuality
so intense and exclusive, that it produces all the effect of intolerant
self-will; and thus the very plans which by his hypothesis are
inevitable, are by his temper made impracticable. He appeals, however,
and successfully, to the uneasiness felt by the feeble in the strife and
pressure of the world; he fills the imagination with visions of repose
and sympathy; he awakens the craving for unity and incorporation in some
vast and sustaining society. And whence is this desire, disappointed of
its first promise, to obtain its satisfaction? Is it impossible that it
may accept proposals from the most ancient, the most august, the most
gigantic organization which the world has ever seen?--that it may take
refuge in a body which invests indigence with sanctity--which cares for
its members one by one--which has a real past instead of a fancied
future, and warms the mind with the coloring of rich traditions--which,
in providing for the poorest want of the moment, enrolls the disciple
in a commonwealth spread through all ages and both worlds! Whatever
socialistic tendency may be diffused through the English mind is not
unlikely, in spite of a promise diametrically opposite, to turn to the
advantage of the Catholic cause."

Here is another valuable contribution to the philosophy of this
controversy. There are few positions more relied on by Roman Catholics,
or more thoroughly unsound and fallacious, than the assertion that there
are no essential differences between the position of Roman Catholics