Burlington Tri Weekly Hawk Eye

TOIL AND TROUBLE

Although barricades are not just now in fashion, the reform movement of the world is progressing with slow and sure advances, and perhaps, in no sphere more unostentatiously than in that of things ecclesiastical. Three symptoms appearing almost simultaneously, two in Europe and one on this Continent, all of them of first-rate importance, warrant us in pronouncing the movement of revolt against Church establishments one of the most manifest tendencies of the times. The first of these manifestations, in point of time, at least, is the "Act for the Secularization of Clergy Reserves," lately passed by the Canadian Legislature, by which the English Establishment was abolished, and the religious system of Canada was based upon the voluntary principle, and assimilated to that in force among ourselves, an act of spoliation at which the Bishop of Toronto vainly raised the cry of "Communism!" This measure is the sorest blow the Church of England at home has sustained of late, and British House of Peers trembled, as it passed the preliminary statute enabling the Canadians thus to deal with the possessions of their clergy.

The Church of Rome has fared no better than that of England. The little State of Sardinia, which had been signalizing itself for some time by divers profane proceedings—such as the abolition of ecclesiastical censorship—has at last outdone itself in wickedness by destroying almost totally, all the religious associations of both sexes, the collegiate churches and simple benefices, and delivering over their property to the administration of the civil power. Whereat the Papal heart is tortured, and taking up the cry of the Anglican Bishop of Toronto, denounces the little Commonwealth as infected with "pernicious errors of Socialism and Communism," and as having merited the awful castigation of an interdict. Heresy in Italy was bad enough, but not so bad as the evil news from Spain—Spain, the native country of Loyola; the cradle of the Jesuits; the hope of the Inquisitor; the matchless defender, the peerless propagator, the chivalric champion of the Roman Church. Like Sardinia, the barricade ministry of Spain begat, by offending in small things—such as the liberty of the press, religious toleration and the like. The Court of Rome made an ineffectual threat of withdrawing its representative from Madrid for a breach of the concordat, and then kept silence.

But the downward way is speedy; the Spanish ministry are now carrying through a bill for selling all ecclesiastical property and making the clergy and the religious houses dependent for support upon money salaries from the public treasury. This plan is analogous to that instituted by the French Constituent Assembly of 1789, and when carried into effect will assimilate the position of the Spanish clergy to that of their brethren on the other side of the Pyrenees. "How are the mighty fallen!" The incubus that has so long weighed upon the destinies of the Iberian Peninsula, that has blighted the promise of its middle-age, and played for the last two centuries, a subordinate part in the movement of European civilization, seems about to be—partially, at least—shaken off. The Pope has not yet spoken out upon this last profanity; but neither the brilliancy of Isabella's gift, nor the splendor of the assembled magnates at Rome, nor the eclat of the newly proclaimed dogma, nor the consequent ecstasies of the faithful in every land, will suffice to repair the damage inflicted by these rebellious assumptions of independence on the part of Spain and Piedmont. -[N. Y. Tribune.