What Government has not occupied itself about it? There have been interpellations in legislatures, diplomatic circulars, hundreds of articles in a thousand journals in all countries of Europe, speeches in convocations, books, pamphlets, and letters in newspapers from the invited and the uninvited, an universal stir and excitement, not indeed within the unity of the Catholic Church, where all is calm in the strength of quiet and of confidence, but outside, in the political and religious world. The diagnosis of the case is, therefore, hardly correct. The patient is not insensible, but highly sensitive; lethargic at times, perhaps, and unconscious of the extent of his maladies, but fully alive to what is passing around him and impending over him in the future. It is true, indeed, that the indiction of the Council of Trent, for example, fell upon the conscience of Christian Europe while as yet it was visibly united to the Holy See. The errors of the so-called Reformation were already in activity, and the minds of men were deeply moved by many passions. Most of the Civil Powers of Europe were then Catholic, and had therefore a large participation in the Council. Now all is changed. Half of Germany, Norway, Sweden, Denmark, England and Scotland, have ceased to be Catholic. The Civil Powers in countries of which the people remain wholly or almost altogether Catholic, are so no longer. It is not to be expected that they will be moved by hope or by fear, by good or by ill will towards the Council in which they have foregone their share. Nevertheless, even among them, both in public and in private, the
