taken. There were present 601 fathers of the Council. The Placets, or ayes, were 451; the Non placets, or noes, were 88; the Placets juxta modum, that is aye with modifications, were 62. These written amendments, to the number of 163, were sent as usual to the Commission. They were examined and reported on the 16th of July. Many were adopted, together with two amendments proposed by the commission. The whole was then reprinted and distributed, put once more to the vote, and passed.
In the same General Congregation a protest was read by the Cardinal President, which was to the following effect:—
From the time that the Holy Vatican Synod opened by the help of God, the bitterest warfare instantly broke out against it; and in order to diminish its venerable authority with the faithful, and, if it could be, to destroy it altogether, many writers vied with each other in attacking it by contumelious detraction and by the foulest calumnies; and that, not only among the heterodox and open enemies of the cross of Christ, but also among those who give themselves out as sons of the Catholic Church, and, what is most to be deplored, even among its sacred ministers.
The infamous falsehoods which have been heaped together in this matter in public newspapers of every tongue, and in pamphlets without the authors' names, published in all places and stealthily distributed, all men well know, so that we have no need to recount them one by one. But among anonymous pamphlets of this kind there are two especially, written in French, and entitled Ce qui se passe au Concile, and La dernière heure du Concile, which, for the arts of calumny and the licence
