it is a transient kind of happiness, which sooner or later, perhaps not until this brief span of life on earth is ended, must be changed into unhappiness.
I answer in the second place: How small, how very small, is the number of these really and thoroughly happy mixed marriages If a census were taken in regard to this point, the result would certainly prove anything but satisfactory.
5. " But the strict regulations of the Catholic Church exercise a tyranny over man's conscience," this is put forward as a further objection. How perverse and stupid this is' Does the Church compel any one, even in the least degree, to become a Catholic, or to remain one? But if the Church declares to those who are in her fold: If you desire to be and remain a Catholic, I require this and this of you, it can as little be called tyranny, as can the rules and regulations for a rifle corps, which its members have to observe. No! tyranny over men's consciences was and is practised in quite another quarter. For example, freedom was formerly the battle-cry of the English, when they threw off the ancient faith of their fathers; but on the Catholics of England and Ireland they laid a heavy yoke, and persecuted them with a tyranny and ingenious cruelty which have seldom been equaled in the annals of history.
Liberty and equality are words which
