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80 I THE NATIONAL DEMOCRAT
June, 1907
afire with the will to believe. To the passionately
yearning and the pitifully lonely Tyrrell offers his
oil and wine. Exultant, yet temperate, his work
is a trumpet-cry of hope. It involves possibilities
of the long looked for reconstruction of belief, the
dawn that we so breathlessly expect after a long,
painful night. Higher education need not, in the
twentieth century, be incompatible with faith. And
though Fr. Tyrrell be regarded with suspicion by
the more stringently orthodox traditionalist, his
work, in spite of occasional intellectual hastiness
and indiscretion, his work with its calm hopeful-
ness and its serene grasp upon practical life, is a
triumphant refutation of the first article in the blind
dogmatism of the modern amateur in life and
dabbler in philosophism, namely, that witlzin the
Catholic Church there can be no salvation.
M.
CORRESPONDENCE
THE “RUNNING" OF EMPIRES
“Scores JUNIOR” (whose letter we have been
compelled to abbreviate, though we have not
omitted any essential part of his argument) writes
to us as follows :-
You make an interesting and just comment on
Father B. Vaughan’s remark in Dublin that
“ Napoleon recognised it was inipossible to run an
Empire without God.” But I vmuld like to carry
the question a little further. It seems to me that
in a sentence like this Father Vaughan was com-
mitting himself to a very questionable theological
view. To him, “ God ” figures as a Being who
might be described (varying Matthew Arnold's
phrase) as a magnified handy-man, VVhom
Napoleon calls in to assist in “running” the
Empire, but VVhom M. Clemenceau dispenses
with in “ running ” the Republic. According to
this view, by implication, God is not Infinite, and
can be ejected from large portions of the earth’s
surface. The whole doctrine is, I believe, an old
heresy. To suggest that Infinity can be shut out
from anywhere, or the Eternal Energy be any-
where dispensed with, is obviously absurd.
To turn to another point, however, Father
Vaughan says Napoleon “ran " his Empire with
God's assistance, and suggests that the French
Republic has turned away from such a favour.
Well, let me ask, what success attended
Napoleon’s Empire? It lasted just eleven years,
and even if we add the period of,the Consulate,
fifteen years, all told. Even those years could
scarcely be described as halcyon days of unrufiied
peace. There was Elba in between, and from
beginning to end Napolcon’s Empire might be
likened to a pyramid standing on its apex, ready
at any moment to topple‘over, constantly beset
with foes ever on the alert, and finally sinking
under their combined attack. Was that an en-
couraging success? Let us, however, even add
the Second Empire. It, too, was a very pious
enterprise, though it began by Louis Napoleon
shooting down the people of Paris, and breaking
the oath he took as President of the Republic in
184.8. Napoleon III. had Papal blessing through-
out. VVell, his Empire lasted from 1851 to 1870,
when it went down before Protestant Prussia at
Sedan. It lasted nineteen years. Thus the total
duration of the two Napoleonic Empires was
thirty-four years at the very outset. Now let us
look at the Third Republic. It was founded in
1870 by men like Gambctta, whom Father
Vaughan would describe as “infidels.” It has
certainly not been as clerical as the Napoleonic
Empires, and has in consequence excited clerical
hostility, and we are now told it is “ run ” without
God. Well, it has lasted just thirty-‘seven years,
that is three years longer than the Napoleonic
governments combined. VVhat is left of Father
Vaughan’s argument? Or did he mean to sug-
gest that whilst you cannot “run ” an Empire
“without God,” a Republic may be carried on
without such divine help, with greater success ?
There is one further question. If Empires
require God’s assistance to “ run ” them, are we
to understand that the British Empire has this
assistance? For, if so, the British Monarch is,
according to Father Vaughan, the head of a
heretical church, and the Empire itself cannot in
any way be described as Catholic. But we may
extend the question and ask, has the Turkish
Empire God’s assistance? For it has lasted a good
deal longer than Napolc-on’s, and has caused the
slaughter of many Christians in its course.
And what of the Roman Empire, where they
had a number of gods, and which is still the model
and pattern for our latter-day Empires 3 Lastly,
what of the Japanese Empire, in which we are
told there is practically no god worshipped at all,
and which has grown into power after defeating the
Russian Empire, which was certainly more devout?
Imay, indeed, conclude by asking was Father
Vanghan’s phrase anything but a piece of thought-
less clap-trap such as your notes say his lecture was
chieliy made upgoff