much greater ter are the temptations of the upper classes than those of the common people! Rustics have only to resist impatience, which is more easily overcome than pleasure and ambition. Non sine magna virtute,' says Seneca, 'arridens fortuna tolerari potest.' Simple and poor rustics therefore should be consoled by a remembrance of their greater facility to preserve faith and virtue; but, as was said of Hannibal, that he knew how to conquer, but not how to use his victory; so we may say of rustics, that they know how to conquer, but not how to use their victory, by practising virtues which to them are easy. Oh, what rewards hereafter for poor simple laborious persons, when the gift of a cup of water will not lose its recompense! These vigils, the cold and heat, the labour and necessity, which the faithful rustic has to endure from his boyhod to decrepit age-what a crown awaits them for all this! True, the rustic and the workman, as from ancient days, are variously oppressed, and they stand in need consequently of much patience; but these considerations must succeed in reconciling them with their condition."* The lowest of the people is then prompted to say with St. Lydwina, "If I have not riches and delights like the wealthy, I have poverty and suffering in common with many, and I am grateful to be as others."† No fable was more popular or true in its testimony than that of Le Savetier et le Financier, which is taken from the old Catholic legend of the rich man envying the gaiety of the poor, and destroying it by his well-meant but indiscreet generosity. Best state, contentless, hath a distracted and most wretched being, worse than the worst content. Oh, rich and great! as you sweep on in splendid equipagessee, when through the streets songs are heard at evening, and the sweet notes of the harp sound beneath a palace window, there are no envious glances fixed on you "Here are twenty souls, happy as souls in a dream, They are deaf to your murmurs, they care not for you, Besides, we must take into account the pleasure of overlooking, and of forgiving, not unknown to the Catholic population. What do you want us to do? they reply to the false friend, as if they had read what Euripides left us written in the Phœnicians, "We know better; it is necessary to suffer the folly of the great." But they have deeper thoughts than these, of which those that are social or political may be first * De Regimine Rusticorum, &c. † Laur. Beyerlinck Apophthegm. Christian. noticed; for they know instinctively, as the Chorus says, that the little without the great are a weak rampart for their country, but that with their aid the weak become strong, while the great with the aid of the little are preserved; but, adds the poet, the foolish hear not these maxims, καίτοι σμικροὶ μεγάλων χωρὶς τούτων γνώμας προδιδάσκειν.* The people, when influenced by faith, are not in the number of these unwise who reject such maxims. The great and the vulgar are united in the general bond of love which connects together the great family. Would you mark an instance? Behold a scene sad and horrible, but immortalized by poetry in ages when insurrections were abhorred by all alike. "Who put to death Fernand Gomez?" Fuente de Ovejuna, is the reply. The whole city, by the heroic and invincible resolution of its inhabitants, makes itself responsible for the punishment of that oppressor. "According to your orders, sire," says the judge to king Don Fernando, " I repaired to Fuente de Ovejuna, and spared no effort to discover the authors of the crime. I could obtain no information to my question who committed it. All with one unanimous testimony and indomitable heart, replied Fuente de Ovejuna. I submitted more than three hundred to the rack-I could extort no other answer. I brought to it children of ten years of age, and neither by torments nor menaces could I elicit other word but Fuente de Ovejuna."† Pope Innocent, writing to the province of Canterbury, appeals to great social principles which all Catholics acknowledge, and of which the world now, after attempting to live without Catholicism, discovers the necessity even to secure the interest which it recognizes as its own; for he says, "the elevation of celestial prudence disposes all things with a high and ineffable providence, and establishes with the rules of a fixed reason the vicissitudes and changes of life, causing one time superiors to need help from inferiors, and at another inferiors to need need superiors, in order that the human condition by these reciprocal and alternate services should recognize the instability of its state, and learn that men by a mutual compassion and succour should fulfil the law of Christ." * Soph. Ajax, 158. + Lopez de Vega. + Mat. Paris, ad ann. 1246. Superiority, odious to nature as we are now told, is, at all events, acceptable to grace; and the people, when under the influence of grace and docile to our common mother, are not slow to feel the wisdom of the profound thoughts emanating immediately from faith; for they find it even joyful to yield obedience to the voice which says "charitate fraternitatis invicem diligentes; honore invicem prævenientes." * During sixteen centuries, excepting at short and rare intervals, the rich and poor, the great and vulgar, lived together, as St. Bonaventura says the heavenly citizens dwell in the celestial Jerusalem, "omnes in domo cœlesti habitant in nobilissima societate: habitant in ordinatissima disparitate; in concordissima charitate. Talis est illa fraterna civitas."† Thus fruitful is the action of Catholicity in reconciling the lower with the higher classes; and those are inexcusable who do not profit by the signal. It remains for us to consider that action in its effects upon the great, uniting them with the vulgar in the bonds of sweet sincere affection and of a social intercourse, unobstructed by the delusions of pride. In the first place, by the Catholic religion the rich and powerful are taught to regard themselves under a strict obligation of end endeavouring to promote the welfare of the lower classes, who share with them in the public defence. The danger is common, as Cicero says to Plancius,-" quare non debent aut propriam fortunam et præcipuam postulare, aut communem recusare." The great are to salute the low as other men; and the very form of politeness is interpreted by Catholicism as a recognition of a serious duty; for, as Pedro Messie of Seville remarks, " we uncover the head in salutations to indicate that we place our life at the service of those whom we salute." § Mark the Catholic nobles on this road, and see how those who have faith bow and uncover to the poor. The late venerable Lord Fingall, for instance, who never passed a peasant unsaluted, would have died for him to whom he raised his hat. But proceeding to notice results of ordinary occurrence, let us observe, that it is not to the development of Catholic principles that we can trace any enormous and injurious inequalities in the lot of men; on the contrary, the difficulties of the present generation can very easily be traced to the false opinions in matters of religion which caused them to be set aside. "Formerly," says a holy writer, "all things were instituted in a beautiful order, and there was sufficiency for all; but now, by human malice, it is so confused that we can hardly hope to see a complete restoration of the ancient * Ad Rom. xii. + SS. omn. festo, Serm. ii. state. For now what belongs to the clergy is possessed by laymen:" study well those words, "The things of princes are occupied by ministers, and the goods of rustics are wrested - from them by tyrants; so no one remains in his calling, and the cause of all this is sin. Many who would not pay tenths to God are not suffered now to retain a tenth for themselves, and lords take from them whatever they wish; for, as St. Augustin says, 'this is the just ordination of God, that if you will not give Him a tenth, you will be reduced to a tenth, and you will give to an impious soldier what you did not wish to give to a priest. How many poor in places where he dwells who does not not give tenths! for he takes away what is for them.""* "The want of money," says St. Thomas of Villanova, "comes from the avarice of a few. For God created, and gave a rich world to men; He spread for them an opulent table in fields, rivers, trees, birds, beasts, and fishes; so that if men were multiplied tenfold there would still be sufficient : but the too great abundance of many has produced want in a rich world; for, while one man places fifty kinds of food on his table, it follows that fifty men have no food at all. The first part of justice, therefore, is that each one in temporal things from the common cellar of nature should refrain from grasping more than his share, or, if he should abound, that he be liberal in dispensing to others."† "In fact," says Peter of Blois, "he only has that really which he has who communicates it freely to others; while from others even that which they only seem to have will be taken away."‡ "Let the great," says Lopez de Vega, "be humble and compassionate, taking especial care that the lower classes have speedy justice without waiting for it; and let the goods of the earth, which are the heritage of the human race, be imparted so to all men, that all may be sustained." § In the thirteenth century Stephen Boileau lays down a principle which directs us to the same source; for he says, without fearing the misinterpretation of his words which the execrable sects of France, Italy, and Germany would now occasion, "all must be done for the profit of the common people-au mestier et au commun du peuple." || In France the great roads present an instance; for the plan of planting them as avenues was suggested, as foresters admit, by the desire of furnishing shade to travellers on foot. Varenne-Feuille urges this duty on the state, representing even the need of poor animals in summer * De Regimine Rusticorum, c. 74. Pet. Bles. de Amicit. Christ. xxxv. || Livre des Métiers, tit. lv. that drag heavy loads; but his chief argument is, the necessity of attending to the wants of those persons who travel on foot, who are so far more numerous than those rich tourists who, softly reclined and sheltered from the sun, are carried with rapidity in light carriages. * The love of the higher for the lower classes is thus required by Catholicity to be an active principle, not resembling those ancient statues which used to be formed without arms and hands; and therefore religion dispensed with the systems, which under a different name vainly and often deceitfully profess to supply its place, putting the people in such a dream, that when the image of it leaves them they run mad. The word Patriote, in France, only dates from the age of Louis XIV., when the treatise on parties by Bolingbroke was translated by De Bissy. St. Simon uses it for the first time, saying of Vauban, "Patriote comme il était, il avait été toute sa vie touché de la misère du peuple."+ In place of such fine words, baited with all the unmuzzled thoughts that tyrannous heart can think, words borrowed from the Gentiles which are not found once in the Sacred Scriptures, the Catholic civilization contained many provisions for the good of the lower classes and for rendering the rich and powerful their friends. Venice, for instance, possessed an old and admirable institution, very practical, though worthy of being painted by poets, in that patronage exercised by the great from the birth of a child which the patrician held on the baptismal font, and to which he continued ever after attached. These children were called the Amorevoli. In all countries formerly, as is still the case in Portugal and Spain, it was common for the rich to adopt the children of other persons, to educate them, and often to promote in every manner their future fortunes. In proportion as men approached to the central perfection of Catholic piety, their solicitude for the people and the lower classes becomes more intense. Antonio de Escobar remarks, indeed, that to reprove the whole people, only a man was sent, but that to console Gideon, an angel was sent; on which, he observes, that for reproving the impious as a task less glorious, the commission was entrusted to an inferior order of celestial ministers.‡ The task, however, of rendering spiritual assistance to the lowest vulgar and to the people, is found to employ the noblest intelligences that Catholicism can form; for, as St. Isidore says, Christ being God and man, no one could love the whole Christ who disdained man. The sin may be hated, but not 66 Christ * Mém. sur l'Administration forestière. + Valery, Curiosités Italiennes. In Evang. Comment. Paneg. vol. vi. 26. |