dy of Catholics as well as
of non-Catholics. Rational liberty had few defenders, and they were
excluded, like Fenelon, from the Court. The politics of Philip II. of
Spain, of Richelieu, Mazarin, and Louis XIV. in France, which were the
politics of Catholic Europe, scarcely opposed by any one, except by the
Popes, through the greater part of the sixteenth and the whole of the
seventeenth centuries, tended directly to enslave the people, and to
restrict the freedom and influence of the Church.

Trained under despotic influences by the skilful hand of despotism,
extending to all matters not absolutely of the sanctuary, and sometimes
daring, with sacrilegious foot, to invade the sanctuary itself, the
people were gradually formed interiorly, as well as exteriorly, to the
purposes of the despot. They grew up with the habits and beliefs which
Caesarism, when not resisted, is sure to generate.

The clergy, sympathizing, as is the case with every national clergy,
with the sentiments of their age and nation in all things not strictly
of faith, had little disposition to labor to keep alive the spirit of
freedom in the hearts of the people, and would not have been permitted
to do it, even if they had been so disposed. Schools were sustained,
but, affected by the prevailing despotism, education declined; free
thought was prohibited; and it is hard to find a literature tamer, less
original and living, than that of Catholic Europe all through the
eighteenth century, down almost to our own times.

As the Catholic religion was professedly patronized by the sovereigns,
the Church, in superficial minds, seemed to sanction the prevailing
Caesarism. The clergy, because they preached peace, and thought to fulfil
their mission without disturbing the State, came, for the first time in
history, to be regarded as the chief supporters of the despot.

They who retained some reminiscences of the liberties once enjoyed by
Catholic Europe, and the noble principles of freedom, asserted in the
Middle Ages by the monks in their cells, and the most eminent Doctors of
the Church from their chairs, became alienated from Catholicity in
proportion as they cherished the spirit of resistance, and, unhappily,
imbibed the fatal conviction that to overthrow the despot's throne they
must break down the altar. Rightly interpreted, the old French
Revolution, although bitterly anti-Catholic and infidel, was not so much
hatred of religion, and impatience of her sal