cellar. As it was, the cat alone seemed to make note of them. He turned his glaring eyes for an instant on the individual who had intruded upon his solitude, growled an unpleasant greeting, and then concentrated his energies on his previous occupation of blinking at the smouldering embers on the hearth.

Determined that his presence should receive a more marked recognition, the visitor struck the crazy door several times with his foot. The sable cat again glared fiercely at the daring intruder, and lazily erected himself into a posture of defence. The beldame shook her staff at her favourite, and turned to greet her visitor. Shading her leaden eyes with her trembling hand, she fixed them on the figure that filled the doorway.

"Who are you, and what do you want ?" she asked, in a shrill, cracked voice.

"A customer, mother," returned the cloaked figure, with a polished accent not often heard within the witch's abode.`

"And what have I that such as you can buy ?" demanded the crone, in no way mollified by the answer she had received. "Do you come for a charm against murrain or blight, or a draught which will subdue the heart of some of those proud dames who toss their feathered heads, and laugh in scorn at us, poor wretches, as we hurry out of the way of their horses' hoofs ?"

"Not any of these, good mother," replied her customer, blandly. "I trust thy skill in compounding those subtle mixtures, but I am neither a creaght nor a lover. I would have a drug which brings death, not one that preserves life, or excites love."

"Death!" repeated the old woman, slowly. "What would you with death? He will come soon enough; do not hurry him on. Let him come when he will, you will think he has come too quickly," and the hag shuddered as if the dread spectre were already by her side, and she felt all the horrors of his presence.

"Thanks for the advice," returned her visitor. "I have no intention of seeking an introduction to the monster just yet. I want the drug merely to give a quiet death to a brute who might hurt somebody if we attempted to dispose of him by violent means."

"Ay, 'tis the custom of your class," retorted the woman, bitterly: "cruel to your fellows, considerate to your beasts! Yes, I will sell you a mixture, a drop of which poured into his drink will kill him straight."

"Nay, I am even more tender-hearted than you suppose me," was the reply. "I would have the animal die a slow death. I should like to spare him the writhings and convulsions produced by such quickworking draughts."

"It would be kinder to put an end to his sufferings at once; but, like all your class, your whims make cruelties of your kindnesses. Be it as you will. You may have draughts which, by slow degrees, will infect the blood; which, step by step, will force its way into all the mazy channels of the body, and drive out life from every hidingplace."

"And look you, mother," interposed the stranger; "if it were

such that it might be conveyed into the blood on the point of bodkin, by the prick of a pin, it would suit my purpose all the better."

The hag fixed her glassy eyes on the face of the speaker-a pale face, with small glistening eyes, and a brow which contracted with every question and answer, that issued from the thin lips; hardened as were the lines of the face, it betrayed a momentary abashment under the scrutiny.

"I cannot stay much longer," said her visitor, uneasily, slipping a few gold pieces into the witch's shrivelled hand. "If you can give what I seek, let me have it and be gone."

"What matters it to me?" mumbled the woman under her breath. "You shall have it," she continued, aloud. "It is not every day my wares are paid for in gold; my services are usually rewarded in baser metal."

Concealing the coins in the bosom of her worn-out gown, the crone hobbled across the room, and drew from a dingy cupboard a small dark phial.

"See here!" she exclaimed; "the prick of a pin that has been dipped in this is certain death. The poison will spread itself slowly through the veins, and raise in the blood a ferment death alone can still. If you had a foe who had done you deadly wrong, the scratch of a bodkin dipped in this liquid would give you terrible revenge."

"I have none such," answered the purchaser, hastily; "and even though I had, you would not surely advise me to seek revenge by

murder ?"

"I give no advice," replied the woman, putting the phial into

his hand.

66

'Good night, mother, good night," said her customer; "remember as little of this visit as you can. It will be better for both of us." He pulled his hat over his eyes, and quitting the cellar hurried along the street at a rapid pace. Emerging into the more frequented parts of the city, he stumbled upon a gay party who had just quitted some dinner-table at which the wine had been abundant.

"Whither away, bird of the night?" asked a laughing soldier, whom he had jostled, grasping him rather unceremoniously by the

arm.

"On the service of the State," he answered, in a whisper; "the most important that has been undertaken here for many a day.'

“And on the devil's service, too, I doubt not," muttered Arthur Montgomery, as he recognised the pale features of Lucas Plunkett.

THE RELATIONS OF THE CHURCH TO SOCIETY.

BY THE REV. EDMUND J. O'REILLY, S.J.

XXIV. MARRIAGE.

I HAVE already spoken of marriage on the ground of its being an object of ecclesiastical authority and legislation, and holding an important place in the relations of the Church to society. I said all that I then considered needful on this subject. My purpose was to point out clearly the nature of the contract and of the sacrament, and to remove some misapprehensions that are common enough, even among Catholics. I explained the position of the Church with reference to matrimony, and her power of prescribing conditions, on which not only its lawfulness but its validity may depend. I did not undertake to vindicate the conduct of the Church. I saw no particular occasion for doing so, and my plan at the time continued to be mainly confined to statement of doctrine. This plan I have somewhat varied since, on account of Mr. Gladstone's attack on the Catholic Religion. That attack has by this time lost a good deal of the perhaps rather undue importance which was attached to it when first made. Mr. Gladstone is, no doubt, a man of great ability, a distinguished statesman, a man, too, that did stand well with Catholics, and was, and even still is, less unfair and less rabid than many other opponents of our Faith, not, however, now entitled to the same credit as he was, or seemed to be, under these last mentioned respects. Yet, as the Gladstone controversy made some noise so lately, as some of the points taken up in it are of a certain permanent interest, which was rather increased by Mr. Gladstone's pamphlets, and as answers to objections made by an individual living opponent have, in consequence, more of a look of definiteness and, so to speak, of reality about them, I will, on the subject of marriage, as I have done on different others, take up and reply to Mr. Gladstone's difficulty. Having already, as I have just now remarked, written something about marriage, I must, to avoid repetition, refer my readers to the earlier paper, and request them to read it and bear in mind what is there said.

Coming now to Mr. Gladstone. In his "Vaticanism," at p. 26, he says: "I have before me the Exposition, with the text of the Encyclica and Syllabus, published at Cologne in 1874, with the approval of authority. . . . . In p. 45 it is distinctly taught that with marriage the State has nothing to do; that it may safely rely upon the Church; that civil marriage, in the eyes of the Church, is only concubinage; and that the State, by the use of worldly compulsion, prevents the two concubinary parties from repenting and abandoning their guilty relation to one another. Exactly the same is the doctrine of the Pope himself, in his speeches published at Rome; where civil marriage is declared to be, for Christians, nothing more than a mere

* IRISH MONTHLY, Vol. II., pp. 422 and following.

concubinage, and a filthy concubinage (sozzo concubinato). These extraordinary declarations are not due to the fondness of the Pontiff for speaking impromptu. In his letter of September 19th, 1852, to King Victor Emmanuel, he declares that matrimony carrying the sacrament is alone lawful for Christians; and that a law of civil marriage, which goes to divide them for practical purposes, constitutes a concubinage in the guise of legitimate marriage. So that, in truth, in all countries within the scope of these denunciations, the parties to a civil marriage are declared to be living in an illicit connection, which they are called upon to renounce. This call is addressed to them separately as well as jointly, the wife being summoned to leave her husband, and the husband to abandon his wife; and after this pretended repentance from a state of sin, unless the law of the land and fear of consequences prevail, a new connection, under the name of a marriage, may be formed with the sanction of the Church of Rome.

"It is not possible, in the limited space here at my command, adequately to exhibit a state of facts, thus created by the highest authorities of the Roman Church, which I shall now not shrink from calling horrible and revolting in itself, and dangerous to the morals of society, the structure of the family, and the peace of life.

"It is true, indeed, that the two hundred thousand non-Roman marriages, which are annually celebrated in England, do not at present fall under the foul epithets of Rome. But why? Not because we marry, as I believe nineteen-twentieths of us marry, under the sanctions of religion-for our marriages are, in the eye of the Pope, purely civil marriages-but only for the technical, accidental, and precarious reason, that the disciplinary decrees of Trent are not canonically in force in this country. There is nothing, unless it be motives of mere policy, to prevent the Pope from giving them force here when he pleases. If, and when that is done, every marriage thereafter concluded in the English Church will, according to his own words, be a filthy concubinage.

"The decrees have force already in many parts of Germany, and in many entire countries of Europe. Within these limits, every civil marriage, and every religious marriage not contracted before a Roman parochus, as the Council of Trent requires, is but the formation of a guilty connection, which each of the parties severally is charged by the Church of Rome to dissolve, under pain of being held to be in mortal sin.

"In 1602, when the Decree of Trent had been in force for thirtyeight years, it was applied by the Congregatio Concilii, with the approval of Pope Clement VIII., to non-Roman marriages, by a declaration that heretics were bound to conform (which was impossible) to the rules of the Council, in default of which their marriages, whether religious or civil, were null and void.

"To this portentous rule exceptions have been made, especially by Benedict XIV. in the case of Holland. Indeed, he questioned its propriety; and Pius VII., in a communication to the Primate Dalberg, formerly Archbishop of Mentz, referred with approval to the language

of Benedict XIV. Many theologians have held an opinion adverse to it, and clergy have been allowed to act at times upon that opinion, but only under cover of a policy of dissimulation, a name by which the Court of Rome itself has not been ashamed to describe its own conduct. But when the abrogation of the rule for non-Roman marriages has been prayed for, even by bishops, and bodies of bishops, the prayer has failed. It has been kept alive, and transactions positively dreadful have taken place under its authority, and under other provisions calculated for the same end. Perrone, who may be called the favourite theologian of the Curia, points out that it works for the benefit of heretics, as on their conversion it has often given them an opportunity of contracting a new marriage, during the lifetime, that is to say, of the former wife.

"The upshot, then, seems to be this: that Rome, while stigmatising marriages not Tridentine as concubinages in the manner we have seen, reserves a power, under the name or plea of special circumstances, to acknowledge them or not, as policy may recommend. This is but the old story. All problems, which menace the Roman chair with difficulties it dare not face are to be solved, not by the laying down of principles, good or bad, strict or lax, in an intelligible manner, but by reserving all cases as matters of discretion to the breast of the Curia, which will decide from time to time, according to its pleasure, whether there has been a sacrament or not, and whether we are married folks, or persons living in guilty commerce, and rearing our children under a false pretext of legitimacy.

"This, then, is the statement I now make. It has been drawn from me by the exuberant zeal and precipitate accusations of the school of Loyola."

So far Mr. Gladstone, from whom I have given a rather long extract, that his view regarding the point at issue may be fairly before my readers. They will understand that some vague statements which occur, as, for instance, about "transactions positively dreadful," and also his general description of the proceedings of the Court of Rome, are to be taken with certain allowances for excited feelings and too ready a belief of the exaggerated accounts and misrepresentations he may have met with in others.

By way of reply, I will endeavour to exhibit the real state of the

case.

First of all, the Council of Trent, in enacting the law which prescribes the presence of a parish priest and two witnesses as a necessary condition of valid marriage, did not intend to increase the connection between the contract and the sacrament, which connection could not, indeed, be increased by any human power, even that of the Church. It did not intend to increase the necessity of any sacred rite; as a silent presence fulfils the condition. The object of the Council was to guard against the evil consequences of marriages not sufficiently attested. There was no desire thereby to throw difficulties in the way of non-Catholic parties, either among themselves, or in case of their contracting with Catholics. It is true that the Church, as a rule, abhors and discourages mixed marriages; but