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They do not consider that temporal sovereignty cannot be saintly and above sin; that it cannot aspire to celestial perfection in this world. Material weapons and legal violence, justified by reasons of State, should not belong to the Vicar of Christ on earth, who is to preach peace, to pray and to pardon. Religion is not, and it cannot be, an affair of State. Its mission is to console believers with the hope of everlasting life and to uphold the spirit of faith. . . . .

The Italians, by promulgating the law of May, 1871, have solved a problem which seemed incapable of solution. In this country, where freedom of thought and of conscience is acknowledged, unlimited liberty has been granted to the Head of the Church with reference to his sacred office and his irresponsibility and inviolability. In regard to his acts, the Pope is subject only to God, and no human potentate can reach him. He exercises a sovereign authority over all those who believe in him-and they are many millions-while he is surrounded by all the honors and privileges of royalty without the drawbacks of civil power, without the hatred, the resentment, and the penalties inseparable from such power. No earthly prince is in a similar position or on the same level. His position is unique. He has no territory to govern. Indeed, any extent of territory would be inadequate for his position, and yet all the world is subject to his spiritual power. Were he a temporal prince his authority would be diminished, because it would be equal to that of other rulers, and he would cease to be pre-eminent. He would be exposed to continual struggles, as he has struggled for centuries to the detriment of the faith and of his spiritual authority. We have made him an independent sovereign, and as such he is superior to all other princes. In this lies his power. He exercises the office by virtue of authority; he corresponds with all the world; he prays; he protects, without needing protection, because the Italian kingdom is his shield. Consequently, no earthly weapon can reach him; and the outrages inflicted upon Boniface VIII. cannot be repeated.

Catholics should be grateful to Italy for the services which we have rendered to the Roman pontiff. Before September 20, 1870, he was obliged to bow before the princes of the earth, and concordats were concessions of divine right made to the prejudice of the Church. It was only when relieved of his temporal dominion that Pius IX. could cope with Bismarck and make that man feel the power of spiritual arms. All this is our handiwork, the work of our Parliament and our king. I will say more; it was the will of God, because the Almighty willed that Italy should gather her provinces together and become an equal of other nations.

EMILIO CASTELAR (1832-1899)

THE ORATOR OF THE CORTES OF SPAIN

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HE life of Castelar was one of adventure and diversity. In 1856, a professor of history and philosophy at Madrid; in 1864, editor of La Democracia-a newspaper whose title tells its character— in 1866, condemned to death as a revolutionist, and fleeing for life; back again in the successful revolution of 1868; speaking earnestly against the crowning of King Amadeus, and bringing about his downfall in 1873; then made President by the short-lived republic-which was soon overthrown by the opposing elements in the State. In 1874 he was forced to resign and again seek exile, but in 1876 he was back in the Cortes once more, and continued to speak there with all his old fire and eloquence till his withdrawal from public life in 1893.

ABRAHAM LINCOLN

[Instead of giving an extract from Castelar's political speeches, we prefer to present his graceful and enthusiastic eulogy of Abraham Lincoln, a man after his own heart, and whose lofty character he could fully appreciate. With a few strokes Castelar succeeds in painting a large picture, presenting Lincoln to us as one of those marvels in human history that the centuries rarely bring forth.]

The Puritans are the patriarchs of liberty; they opened a new world on the earth; they opened a new path for the human conscience; they created a new society. Yet, when England tried to subdue them and they conquered, the republic triumphed and slavery remained. Washington could only emancipate his own slaves. Franklin said that Virginians could not invoke the name of God, retaining slavery. Jay said that all the prayers America sent up to Heaven for the preservation of liberty while slavery continued were mere blasphemies. Mason mourned over the payment his descendants must make for this great crime of their fathers. Jefferson traced the line where the black wave of slavery should be stayed.

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Nevertheless, slavery increased continually. I beg that you will pause a moment to consider the man who cleansed this terrible stain which obscured the stars of the American banner. I beg that you will pause a moment, for his immortal name has been invoked for the perpetuation of slavery. Ah! the past century has not, the century to come will not have, a figure so grand, because as evil disappears, so disappears heroism also.

I have often contemplated and described his life. Born in a cabin of Kentucky, of parents who could hardly read; born a new Moses in the solitude of the desert, where are forged all great and obstinate thoughts, monotonous like the desert, and, like the desert, sublime; growing up among those primeval forests, which, with their fragrance, send a cloud of incense, and, with their murmurs, a cloud of prayers to Heaven; a boatman at eight years in the impetuous current of the Ohio, and at seventeen in the vast and tranquil waters of the Mississippi; later a woodman, with axe and arm felling the immemorial trees, to open a way to unexplored regions for his tribe of wandering workers; reading no other book than the Bible,* the book of great sorrows and great hopes, dictated often by prophets to the sound of fetters they dragged through Nineveh and Babylon; a child of Nature, in a word, by one of those miracles only comprehensible among free peoples he fought for the country and was raised by his fellow-citizens to the Congress at Washington, and by the nation to the Presidency of the Republic; and when the evil grew more virulent, when those States were dissolved, when the slaveholders uttered their warcry, and the slaves their groans of despair-the woodcutter, the boatman, the son of the great West, the descendant of Quakers, humblest of the humble before his conscience, greatest of the great before history, ascends the Capitol, the greatest moral height of our time, and strong and serene with his conscience and his thought; before him a veteran army, hostile Europe behind him; England favoring the South; France encouraging reaction in Mexico, in his hands the riven country; he arms two million men, gathers a half million of horses, sends his artillery twelve hundred miles in a week, from the banks of the Potomac to the shores of Tennessee; fights more than six hundred battles; renews before Richmond the deeds of Alexander, of Cæsar; and, after having emancipated three million slaves, that nothing might be wanting, he dies in the very moment of victory-like Christ, like Socrates, like all redeemers, at the foot of his work. His work! Sublime achievement! over which humanity shall eternally shed its tears, and God his benediction!

An error due to imperfect information on the part of the speaker. Lincoln read almost every book that came in his way.

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There are 704 pages in this volume. The sixty-four full-page half-tone illustrations should be added to the last folio number indicated (640) giving a total of 704 pages.

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