vine Right of Kings is therefore directly due to the Divine Right of Popes; it was the only possible antidote to the latter; see "The Divine Right of Kings," by J. N. Figgis (Macmillan & Co., New York, 1896). It is therefore perfectly natural to find many Jesuit writers asserting the rights of the People as against the Crown, but by "the People " was always understood a "Pope-guided people." The partiality of Leo XIII. for Democracies is therefore easily understood; with the Divine Right of Kings disappears his chief and only rival. A Democracy has no such dangerous enemy, the idea of popular sovereignty can never take the place of a personal sovereign; moreover, the Pope, as guide of the human conscience or reason, can interfere whenever he pleases in the formation of this popular idol. An independent republic and Roman Catholicism are therefore, from their very nature, incompatible. The only other remedy is, therefore, to convince our Roman Catholic fellow-citizens of the truth of the proposition set forth below, in the chapter on the Church and Individual, in which it is shown that on no questions has a person the right to exile his reason or conscience, and place it, gagged and bound, in foreign hands; but that, on the contrary, it is his most important duty to develop this talent to the utmost, through God's most holy ordinances, and to obey implicitly the warnings of this inspired monitor. No State has anything to fear from an appeal to man's conscience, in direct communion, without human mediation, with God the Holy Ghost.

If this second remedy is not applied thoroughly and speedily, then, as the author believes, is the prospect dark indeed. Then must echo the

streets again with the cries, "Hi, Guelph!" "Hi, Ghibelline!" Then must ring the pulpits again with denunciations of the Divine Right of Popes, as in the days of Elizabeth and James, and with praise for its only possible substitute, the Divine Right of Kings.

The contest would be for the right to follow the inner light, to listen to the small, still voice,-for which Socrates drank his cup of hemlock.

CHAPTER II.

THE CHURCH AND THE WORKINGMAN.

From the prominence which the labor question bears in modern life, it was not to be expected that Leo XIII. would overlook it; in fact, in the first year of his reign, he wrote denouncing socialism and communism, and in 1891 he issued his famous Encyclical "Novarum rerum," in which he undertook to provide remedies for the distressing conditions of the laboring classes of the world. How strongly he felt this to be his duty and privilege the Encyclical expressly shows: "It (the condition of labor) is a matter which we have touched once or twice already. But in this letter the responsibility of the Apostolic offices urges us to treat the question expressly and at length, in order that there may be no mistake as to the principles which truth and justice dictate for its settlement. We approach the subject with confidence and in the exercise of the rights which belong to us; for no practical solution for this question will ever be found without the assistance of religion and of the Church. It is we who are the chief guardians of religion and the chief dispenser of what belongs to the church, and we must not by silence neglect the duty which lies upon us."

In the Encyclical to the Belgian Bishops (above cited) the social question is expressly claimed for

90

the Church as falling within the domain of religion and morals.

Nor is this view peculiar to Leo XIII.; under the definition of morals as explained in a former chapter, the whole social system is included and the ordinary Roman Catholic text-books on Morality include chapters on all important social questions; for example, the above cited work on Moral Philosophy by Father Russo, Father Rickaby's Moral Philosophy, F. Costa Rossetti's Institutiones Ethica et Juris Naturæ.

How imperative and final the plan is to be regarded by Roman Catholics, is shown also by the same Encyclical to the Belgian Bishops, cited in the Introduction, in which he prohibits the laity from discussing the social question in that country and summons a council of Bishops to consider it. How implicitly this infallible voice is followed also in these matters, appears from the unconditional acceptance of its teachings, even by Roman Catholic writers who had previously entertained most opposite views, such as M. Charles Revin, who, in his L'economie politique d'apres l'Encyclique (Paris, 1891), referring to this Encyclical, declares, on page 21: "The Church, behold our guide, our true master for the social question; let us follow her and no one else. Let us have no other political economy than that which flows from her teachings on the labor question."

Father Zahm, in his article on "Leo XIII. and the Social Question," in the North American Review for August, 1895, says: "We recognize in the earnest but tender words of the Pontiff, the divine

perfume of the Master, the precise lessons of the Fathers of the Church, and the carefully pondered and soundly democratic teachings of the Doctors of the Middle Ages."

To understand the scheme of the Holy Father aright, we must bear in mind one sentence of this Encyclical: "Let us now, therefore, inquire what part the State should play in the work of remedy and relief. By the State we here understand, not the particular form of government which prevails in this or that nation, but the State as rightly understood; that is to say any government conformable in its institutions to right reason and natural law, and to those dictates of the Divine Wisdom which we have expounded in the Encyclical on the Christian Constitution of the State."

To fill in any lacking details of the plan proposed, we must therefore suppose that before it can be carried out completely, the State must have been reorganized according to the principles laid down in the foregoing chapter, so that the relation of Church and State shall have become like that of the soul and body, and the Church would then of course be able to supply in its good judgment all that might be necessary to this scheme of social reform.

One passage from this Encyclical is worth citing at this point to remind us of the superiority of the soul: "It is the soul which is made after the image and likeness of God; it is in the soul that sovereignty resides, in virtue of which man is commanded to rule the creatures below him, and to use all the earth and the ocean for his profit and advantage."