addressed us by means of our conscience. If our conscience tells us that an action is bad, we cannot perform it, whatever may be the injunctions of the law which prescribes it; on the contrary, if conscience tells us that an action is a duty, we cannot omit it, whatever may be the prohibitions of the law. This, in a few words, and with all its force, is all that can be alleged against intolerance in doctrines and facts emanating from them. Let us now see what is the real value of these observations, apparently so conclusive.

It is apparent that the admission of this principle would render impossible the punishment of any political crime. Brutus, when plunging his dagger into the heart of Cæsar, Jacques Clement, when he assassinated Henry III., acted, no doubt, under the influence of an excitement of mind, which made them view their attempts as deeds of heroism; and yet, if they had both been brought before a tribunal, would you have thought them entitled to impunity—the one on account of his love of country, and the other on account of his zeal for religion? The greatest number of political crimes are committed in a conviction of doing well; and I do not speak merely of those times of trouble, when men of parties the most opposed are fully persuaded that they have right on their side. Conspiracies contrived against governments in times of peace are generally the work of some individuals who look upon them as illegal and tyrannical; when working to overthrow them, they are acting in conformity with their own principles. Judges punish them justly when they inflict on them the penalties appointed by legislators; and yet, neither legislators when they decree the penalty, nor the judges when they inflict it, are, or can be, ignorant of the condition of mind of the delinquent who has violated the law. It may be said, that compassion and indulgence with respect to political crimes increase every day, for these reasons. I shall reply, that if we lay down the principle that human justice has not the right to punish, when the delinquent acts according to his conviction, we must not only mitigate our punishments, but even abolish them. In this case, capital punishment would be a real murder, a fine a robbery, and other penalties so many acts of violence. I shall remark in passing, that it is not true

that severity towards political crimes diminishes as much as it is said to do; the history of Europe of late years affords us some proofs to the contrary. We do not now see those cruel punishments which were in use at other times; but that is not owing to the conscience of the criminal being considered by the judge, but to the improvement of manners, which, being spread every where, has necessarily influenced penal legislation. It is extraordinary that so much severity has been preserved in laws relating to political crimes, when so great a number of legislators among the different nations of Europe knew well that they themselves, at other times, had committed the same crimes. And there is no doubt that more than one man, in the discussion of certain penal laws, has inclined to indulgence, from the presentiment that these very laws might one day apply to himself. The impunity of political crimes would bring about the subversion of social order, by rendering all government impossible. Without dwelling longer on the fatal results which this doctrine would have, let us observe, that the benefit of impunity in favour of the illusions of conscience would not be due to political crimes alone, but would be applicable also to those of an ordinary kind. Offences against property are crimes of this nature; and yet we know that many at former periods have regarded, and that unfortunately some still do regard, property as a usurpation and an injustice. Offences against the sanctity of marriage are ordinarily considered crimes; and yet have there not been sects in whose sight marriage was unlawful, and others who have desired, and still desire, a community of women? The sacred laws of modesty and respect for innocence have equally been regarded by some sects as an unjust infringement on the liberty of man; to violate these laws, therefore, was a meritorious action. At the time when the mistaken ideas and the blind fanaticism of the men who have professed these principles were undoubted, would any one have been found to deny the justice of the chastisement which was inflicted on them when, in pursuance of their doctrines, they committed a crime, or even when they had the audacity to diffuse their fatal maxims in society?

If it was unjust to punish the criminal

for acting according to his conscience, all imaginable crimes would be permitted to the atheist, to the fatalist, to the disciple of the doctrine of private interest; for by destroying, as they do, the base of all morality, these men do not act against their consciences; they have none. If such an argument were to hold good, how often should we be entitled to charge tribunals with injustice, when they inflict any punishment on men of this class. By what right, we should say to magistrates, do you punish this man, who, not admitting the existence of God, does not acknowledge himself as culpable in his own eyes, or consequently in yours? You have made a law, by virtue of which you punish him; but this law has no power over the conscience of this man, for you are his equals; and he does not acknowledge the existence of any superior, to give you the power of controlling his liberty? By what right do you punish another, who is convinced that all his actions are the effect of necessary causes, that freewill is a chimera, and who, in the action which you charge on him as a crime, believes that he had no more power of restraining himself than the wild beast, when he throws himself on his prey which he has before his eyes, or on any other animal that excites his fury? With what justice do you punish him, who is persuaded that all morality is a lie; that there is no other principle than individual interest; that good and evil are nothing but this interest, well or ill understood? If you make him undergo any punishment, it will not be because he is culpable in his own conscience; you will punish him for being deceived in his calculation, for having ill-understood the probable result of the action which he was about to commit. Such are the necessary and inevitable deductions from the doctrine which refuses to the public authority the power of punishing crimes committed in consequence of an error of the mind.

But I shall be told that the right of punishment only extends to actions, and not to doctrines; that actions ought to be subject to the law, but that doctrines are entitled to unbounded liberty. Do you mean doctrines shut up in the mind and not outwardly manifested? It is clear that not only the right but also the possibility of punishing them are wanting, for God alone can tell the secrets

of the heart of man. If avowed doctrines are meant, then the principle is false; and we have just shewn that those who maintain it in theory, find it impossible to reduce it to practice. In fine, we shall be told that however absurd in its results may be the doctrine which we have been combating, it is still impossible to justify the punishment of an action which was ordered or authorised by the conscience of the man who committed it. How is this difficulty to be solved? How is this great obstacle to be removed? Is it lawful in any case to treat as culpable the man who is not so at the tribunal of his own conscience?

Although this question seems entirely to turn upon some point on which men of all opinions are agreed, there is nevertheless a wide difference in this respect between Catholics on one side and unbelievers and Protestants on the other. The first lay it down as an incontestible principle, that there are errors of the understanding which are faults; the others, on the contrary, think, that all errors of the understanding are innocent. The first consider error with respect to great moral and religious truths, as one of the gravest offences which man can commit against God; their opponents look upon errors of this kind with great indulgence, and they ought to do so in order to be consistent. Catholics admit the possibility of invincible ignorance with respect to some very important truths; but with them this possibility is limited to certain circumstances, out of which they declare man to be culpable: their opponents constantly extol liberty of thought, without any other restriction than those imposed by the taste of each one in particular; they constantly affirm that man is free to hold the opinions which he thinks proper; they have gone so far as to persuade their followers that there are no culpable errors or opinions, that man is not obliged to search into the secret recesses of his soul, to make sure that there are no secret causes which induce him to reject the truth; they have in the end monstrously confounded physical with moral liberty of thought; they banished from opinions the ideas of lawful and unlawful, and have given men to understand that such ideas are not applicable to thought. That is to say, in the order of ideas, they have confounded right with fact, declaring,

This is one of the profound reasons which justify the Catholic Church, when she considers the sin of heresy as one of the greatest which man can commit. You, who smile with pity and contempt at these words, the sin of heresy; you, who consider this doctrine as the invention of priests to rule over consciences, by retrenching the liberty of thought; by what right do you claim the power of condemning heresies which are opposed to your orthodoxy? By what right do condemn you those societies that profess opinions hostile to property, public order, and the existence of authority? If the thought of man is free, if you cannot attempt to restrain it without violating sacred rights, if it is an absurdity and a contradiction to wish to oblige a man to act against his conscience, or disobey its dictates-why do you interfere with those men who desire to destroy the existing state of society? Why baffle, why oppose those dark conspiracies, which, from time to time, send one of their members to assassinate a king? You invoke your convictions to declare the intolerance which has been practised at certain times against your enemies to be unjust and cruel; but you must remember that such societies and such men can also invoke their convictions. You say that the doctrines of the Church are human inventions; they say that the doctrines prevailing in society are also human inventions. You say that the ancient social order was a monopoly; they say the present social order is a monopoly. In your eyes, the ancient authorities were tyrannical; in theirs the present ones are so. You pretended to destroy what existed, in order to found new institutions conducive to the good of humanity; to-day these men hold the same language. You have proclaimed the war which was

men.

they proclaim that against the present to be So. When you availed yourselves of the means which offered themselves, you pretended that necessity rendered them legitimate; they declare to be not less legitimate the only means which they possess, that of combinations, of preparing for their opportunity, and of hastening it by assassinating great You have pretended to make all opinions respected, even atheism, and you have taught that nobody has a right to prevent your acting in conformity with your principles; but the fanatics in question have also their horrible principles and their dreadful convictions. Do you require a proof of this? See them amid the gaiety of public fétes, glide, pale and gloomy, among the joyful multitude, choose the fitting moment to cast desolation over a royal family, and cover a nation with mourning, while they accumulate on their own heads the public execration, certain, moreover, of finishing their lives on the scaffold. But our adversaries will say, such convictions are inexcusable. Yours are so also. All the difference is, that you have. contrived your ambitious and fatal systems amid ease and pleasure, perhaps in opulence, and under the shadow of power, while they have conceived their abominable doctrines in the bosom of obscurity, poverty, misery, and despair.

Indeed, the inconsistency of some men is shocking to the last degree. To ridicule all religions, to decry the spirituality and immortality of the soul, and the existence of God, to overturn all morality, and sap its deepest foundations, all this they have considered as excusable, and we may even say, worthy of praise; moreover, the writers who have undertaken this fatal task are worthy of apotheosis; men must expel the Divinity from his temples to place there the names and busts of the leaders of their schools; under the vaults of splendid basilicas, where repose the ashes of Christians awaiting the resurrection, they must raise the mausoleum of Voltaire and Rousseau, in order that future generations, when they descend into their dark and silent abodes, may receive the inspirations of their genius. But have they, then, a right to complain that property, and domestic life, and social order, are attacked? Property is sacred; but is it more sacred

than God? However great may be the importance of the truths relating to families and society, are they of a superior order to the eternal principles of morality, or rather, are they any thing more than the application of these principles ?

But let us resume the thread of our discourse. When the principle that there are culpable errors is once established (a principle which in practice, if not in theory, must be received by all the world, but which Catholicism alone can logically maintain in theory), it is easy to see the reason of the punishments which human power decrees against the propagation and teaching of certain doctrines; and we can understand why it is legitimate to punish, without considering the conviction that animated the culprit, the actions which are the result of the doctrines. The law shews that this mortal error has existed, or can exist; but in this case it declares the error itself to be culpable; and if man adduces the testimony of his own conscience, the law reminds him that it is his duty to rectify his conscience. Such is, in truth, the foundation of a legislation which appeared so unjust; a foundation which it is necessary to point out, in order to vindicate a great many human laws from a deep disgrace; for it would be a great disgrace to claim the right of punishing a man who was really innocent. Such an absurd right is so far from belonging to human justice, that it does not belong even to God. The infinite justice of God would cease to be what it is, if it could punish the innocent.

Perhaps another origin will be assigned for the right which governments possess of punishing the propagation of certain doctrines and actions committed in consequence of them, when the criminal has acted from the deepest conviction. "Governments," it may be said, "act in the name of society, which, like every being, possesses the right of self-defence. There are certain doctrines which menace its existence; it has, therefore, of necessity and right, the power of resisting those who promulgate them.” Such a reason, however plausible it may appear, is liable to this grave objection, that it destroys at one blow the idea of punishment and justice. To wound an aggressor in self-defence is not to chastise but to resist him. If we consider society in this point of view, the criminal led

to punishment will no longer be a real criminal, but the unfortunate victim of a rash and unequal struggle. The voice of the judge condemning him will no longer be the august voice of justice; his sentence will only be the act of society avenging the attack made upon it. The word punishment will then assume quite a different meaning; the gradations of it will depend entirely upon calculations, and not on justice. We must remember this; if we suppose that society, by virtue of the right of self-defence, inflicts a punishment upon the man whom she considers quite innocent, it no longer judges or condemns, but fights and struggles. That which is perfectly suitable with respect to the relations between one society and another, is in no way suitable to society in its relations with individuals. It then appears like a combat between a giant and a pigmy. The giant takes the pigmy in his hand, and crushes him against a stone.

The doctrine which I have just explained evidently shews the value of the much vaunted principle of universal toleration; it has been demonstrated that that principle is as impracticable in fact as it is unsustainable in theory; consequently all the accusations made against the Catholic Church on the subject of intolerance are overturned. It has been clearly shewn that intolerance is in some measure the right of all public power; this has always been acknowledged; it is acknowledged still, generally speaking, when philosophers, the partisans of tolerance, attain to power. No doubt, governments have a thousand times abused this principle; no doubt, more than once the truth has been persecuted by virtue of it; but what do men not abuse? Their duty, then, as good philosophers, was not to establish principles that cannot be sustained, and are extremely dangerous; not to declaim to satiety against the times and institutions which have preceded us; but to endeavour to propagate sentiments of mildness and indulgence, and, above all, not to impugn important truths, without which society cannot be sustained, and which cannot be destroyed without abandoning the world to the empire of force, and, consequently, to despotism and tyranny.

Men have attacked dogmas; but they have not been willing to see that morality was intimately connected with dogmas, and