Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 36.djvu/72

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Manning
66
Manning

he quietly matured his plans for the defence of the 'voluntary principle' under the new conditions imposed by the act of 1870. In 1872 he made an urgent appeal on behalf of his schools in a pastoral addressed to both clergy and laity, which with that of 1869 was reprinted the same year in a small volume entitled 'National Education and Parental Rights' (London, 8vo). The appeal met with a hearty response, and the schools continued not only to maintain their existence but to increase in numbers and efficiency. In regard to higher education he was less successful. A University College founded at Kensington in 1874 proved, under the management of Monsignor Capel, an entire failure and was closed in 1878. For the training of the clergy he founded in 1876 the diocesan seminary of St. Thomas, Hammersmith, which gave a great impulse to the establishment of similar institutions in other dioceses.

A sentence about the deification of the human nature of Christ in one of Manning's sermons at the pro-cathedral in 1878 (see The Divine Glory of the Sacred Heart, a sermon, London, 1873, 8vo) was impugned as heretical in a private letter by an Anglican clergyman, Dr. A. Nicholson. Manning replied through his secretary, Father Guiron, and a correspondence ensued, which was eventually published in the 'Guardian,' 17 Sept. Manning thereupon reviewed the controversy, defending his orthodoxy with much dialectical skill in a series of anonymous articles in the 'Tablet,' 27 Sept.-25 Oct., reprinted, under the pseudonym 'Catholicus,' and the title 'Dr. Nicholson's Accusation of the Archbishop of Westminster' (London, 1878, 8vo), and afterwards in his 'Miscellanies,' vol. ii.

A pamphlet on 'Cæsarism and Ultramontanism,' published by Manning in 1874, and two articles contributed by him to the 'Contemporary Review' in April and June of that year, in reply to certain criticisms by Mr. (now Sir) James Fitzjames Stephen, are also included in his 'Miscellanies,' vol. ii., and form an extremely coherent statement of the ultramontane theory of the relations of church and state. In 1875 he published 'The Vatican Decrees in their bearing on Civil Allegiance,' London. 8vo, a masterly reply to Mr. Gladstone's 'political expostulation' under the same title. Challenged by Lord Redesdale in the columns of the 'Daily Telegraph,' 9 Oct. 1875, to reconcile the infallibility of the Roman church with her practice of communion in one kind, he published several letters on that topic in the same newspaper. A reprint of them, entitled 'The Infallible Church and the Holy Communion of Christ's Body and Blood,' appeared the same year, London, 8vo.

Meanwhile Manning had received the berretta of a cardinal-priest from the pope, who assigned the church of S. Gregory the Great on the Cœlian for his title. There his enthronement took place in presence of a vast congregation, largely English, on 31 March 1875. He did not receive the hat until 31 Dec. 1877. Pius IX was then in his last illness, and Manning remained at Rome, and was present at his death on 7 Feb. 1878. At the election of his successor he voted with the majority of the conclave. In 1877 appeared 'The True Story of the Vatican Council,' a reprint of a series of articles contributed by him to the 'Nineteenth Century' in that year (London, 8vo; 2nd edit. 1884).

During the last twenty years of his life Manning was a pledged 'total abstainer,' and carried on a crusade as a lecturer and writer against the use of alcoholic stimulants. He was the founder (1868) of the temperance society known as 'The League of the Cross,' and was a strong advocate of the legislative restriction of the liquor traffic (cf. Miscellanies, vol. iii.) His philanthropy was as wide as it was untiring. He sat on the Mansion House committee for the relief of the starving poor of Paris in January 1871, was an active promoter of the Hospital Sunday and Hospital Saturday movements of 1872 and 1874, and pronounced his benison on the newly founded Agricultural Labourers' Union at a meeting in Exeter Hall on 10 Dec. 1872, and on lawful combinations of workmen generally, in a lecture on 'The Dignity and Rights of Labour' (repr. in Miscellanies, vol. ii. and in pamphlet form, 1887, London, 8vo). Before his submission to the see of Rome Manning's political principles were those of a moderate liberal, extremely suspicious of doctrinaire ideas and methods. After that great change they were of course mainly determined by it, but he did not often interfere directly in practical politics. He published, however, in 1868 a manifesto on the disestablishment of the Irish church and the reform of the Irish land laws in the shape of a letter to Lord Grey, reprinted in his 'Miscellanies,' vol. i.; and he was known to favour Mr. Gladstone's later Irish policy, including, with some reservations, the Home Rule Bill of 1886. On the religious issue which he conceived to be involved in the constitutional question raised by the return of Charles Bradlaugh to parliament in 1880, he contributed to the 'Nineteenth Century' and 'Contemporary Review' some animated 'Protests' against any modification of the