forces of the Empire are exhausted internally in keeping the tails together. With Sadowa finally disappeared the "Gross Deutschland-Partei,' which clung to the dream of an Austrian union. If there be dislike in the South to Prussia, it is because the Prussian has made himself offensive to the gentler and more courteous Southerner. In 1878, on March 22, the birthday of the Emperor, a military banquet was given at Munich in honour of the Kaiser, to which were invited all Prussian officers then in Munich, and his health was enthusiastically drunk by Bavarians and Prussians alike. When, next, the health of the King of Bavaria was proposed, the Prussian junior officers remained seated, and refused the toast; when asked the reason, they replied by their spokesman, that the mental or bodily welfare of the Sovereign was a matter of supreme indifference to them. In a club to which I belonged in a South German city, the Prussian officers of the native garrison were admitted by the kindly citizens, proposed and elected without prejudice. Once in, they monopolised the best room and best tables, and by their loudly expressed insulting speeches about the little State, its Sovereign, and religion, drove the old members from the room into another. These are mere specimens of conduct pretty general, and which naturally embitters people against Prussia. They decline to love those who comport themselves not as conquerors only, but as bullies.

But this antipathy to the Prussian-which is after all only the dislike a person might have to the invasion of his boudoir by a very boisterous and unmannerly Newfoundland dog-does not extend to the Empire. The re-establishment of the German Empire was hailed alike by Protestants and Catholics, priests and laymen; and I believe the Chancellor was entirely mistaken in supposing that the Roman Catholic Church would prove a danger to

the young Empire. He has made one or two great mistakes in his life. He is blundering now into a repressive warfare against Social-Democracy. His Kulturkampf was a greater error. Since 1871 I have been every year to Germany, and have talked with every sort of person, and have become more and more convinced that this was the case. A Roman priest said to me, 'In 1871 we were all mad with joy; Catholics, Protestants, Jews, -it was all the same; we rushed into each other's arms, and swore Bruderschaft; we thought the millennium had come.'

And there was reason why the Catholics in Baden at all events should hail Prussian supremacy. In 1806, by the Peace of Pressburg, the Margrave of Baden acquired all the lands of Austria between the Rhine and Danube to the Lake of Constance-lands thoroughly Catholic. At once every monastery was sequestrated, and turned into a barrack, or a brewery. In Protestant Germany there are many Stifte, old convents used for noble ladies, who live there comfortably as canonesses under an abbess. The religious character of these institutions is of course gone, but they remain as almshouses for the nobles, and the post of abbess has often been given to a discarded mistress of a prince. Thus the Countess of Königsmark was made abbess of Quedlimburg. In the Black Forest was an almshouse for peasants' daughters, at Lindenberg, in which Catholic old maids might end their days together, not taking monastic vows, but living together near a chapel, and with gardens and meadows belonging to the institution. So persistently has the Baden Government worried the Catholics who have come to the Grand Duchy, that even this very harmless institution was suppressed in 1869; and now it remains untenanted and falling into ruin. At the very same time, as if to add insult to injury,

a Protestant Stift' was founded for noble Evangelical ladies, nine miles off, at Freiburg, in a city where, before 1806, there had not been a Protestant. Indeed, since 1806 the Catholic Church in Baden has been harassed in every way possible by the Government, though the proportion in every 100 persons in Baden is 64.5 Catholics to 33.6 Protestants. In 1852, when the late Grand Duke died, the Archbishop of Freiburg was ordered to have high Requiem Mass for his soul in the Cathedral. He declined, on the grounds that this was not possible, as the Grand Duke was a Protestant, and the Catholic Church only allowed masses for the souls of its members: but he offered to hold a solemn service of mourning, and to preach a panegyrical sermon on the sad occasion. This was the origin of a series of petty persecutions to which the Roman Church in Baden was subjected till 1871. When the Archbishop died, in 1868, and the chapter sent in eight names to the Grand Duke for him to choose among them, he tore up the list, and bade the chapter elect again. A second list met with the same fate, and since then the see has been without bishop recognised by the State, i.e. for ten years. It may well be imagined that Baden Catholics could feel no very warm enthusiasm for their Government, which had incessantly worried them since they had been handed over to an insignificant Margrave blown into a Grand Duke by Napoleon I.

The Badenser Catholics drew a long breath in 1871, and hoped that in a mighty Empire they might receive more generous treatment than in a petty principality. In Würtemberg the Catholics are in a minority. Before 1806 they were under Austria or Catholic 'immediate' princes; but Napoleon, to reward the Duke of Würtemberg for treason to the cause of Germany, forcibly annexed

them to his Duchy, and gave the Duke a royal crown. Out of 100 persons 30-4 are Catholic, and 68.7 are Evangelical. The Catholic Church is not allowed much liberty. It is part of the Roman system to use monasteries and convents for the advance of religion; and in Würtemberg, by law of 1862, religious orders and congregations are only allowed to settle or be formed subject to the risk of expulsion at a few days' notice. As a matter of fact, there are in Würtemberg only 232 sisters of mercy, tolerated, not recognised, by the Government, and 144 sisters of other orders.

Bavaria does not comprise people of one blood like Würtemberg. It embraces Bavarians proper (the Bojars, a Slav people originally), Franconians of Würzburg, Bamberg, and Aschaffenburg given it in 1806, and Swabians, formerly under the rule of little princes, on the east of the Iller. The proportion among 100 persons in Bavaria is 71-2 Catholics to 27.6 Protestants. Bavaria is a contented little kingdom, and there was no religious reason for opposition to the Empire. The King was more dreaded than the Emperor. He coquetted with the Alt-Katholics, supported Döllinger, and when Pius IX. died, showed his animus by forbidding the bells of the churches in his realm being tolled to call the Catholics to pray for their departed Pontiff.

In Prussia the Roman Church enjoyed complete liberty. She looked on America and Prussia as her happy hunting fields. The conciliatory spirit manifested by the Government had the most happy results in completely securing the loyalty of Westphalia, the Rhenish provinces, and Silesia. Indeed, South Germans looked with some suspicion on the Catholics of the North, and it was a common saying among them that these latter were 'Prussians first, Germans next, and then Catholics.'

All at once a bolt fell out of the blue sky. On July 4, 1872, the Emperor William signed at Ems a law expelling the Jesuits and their affiliated orders from the German Empire.

On May 20, 1873, it was announced by the Chancellor that the Redemptorists, Lazarists, the Congregation of Priests of the Holy Ghost, and the Society of the Sacred Heart, were included in this condemnation.

On February 6, 1875, a law was signed which withdrew registration of births and burials from the clergy, and placed it in the hands of officers of the State, and also made civil marriage compulsory.

On February 26, 1876, an addition was made to the penal code of the Empire drawn up in 1871, which made the clergy amenable to punishment for uttering any expression in public, or for printing anything, which imperils the public peace.

These are the only ecclesiastical laws affecting the Empire, but a whole string of laws has been enacted, first in Baden, and then in Prussia, applicable to both these States-in Baden in 1869, two years later in Prussia. 'Fiat experimentum in corpore vili.'

On July 8, 1871, the ministry of the Catholic religion in the Kingdom of Prussia was suppressed, and one ministry of religion was constituted for Catholics and Protes

tants.

On March 15, 1873, the office of Chaplain-General in the army for Catholics was done away with. Other acts were passed to give petty annoyance; but those of May 1873 were more serious.

The law of May 11 requires that no priest shall enter on a cure of souls who has not passed through examination in a German gymnasium, spent three years in a German university, and passed an examination in three