96. Twilight of Czardom (1855-1917);    97. British Social Progress (1865-1922);    Anglican Orders;

96. TWILIGHT OF CZARDOM

Czar Alexander II (1855-81) who succeeded his father Nicholas I during the Crimean War, ended hostilities as soon as possible by making what some regarded as a humiliating peace. Liberal Westernizers seized on this military discomfiture to urge political and social reforms, and anarchistic “Nihilists” began to create serious unrest.

Social reform. Feeling his autocratic position unsafe, the czar decided to emulate his avuncular namesake by embarking on a liberal course capable of pacifying discontent. He inaugurated his program on March 3, 1861, with an edict abolishing serfdom. As a matter of fact, although the serfs were conceded personal liberty, they were in some ^{[p. 638]} instances thereby deprived of their only livelihood in the village communal mir. Most of them became economically poorer, and some drifted to cities to form an exploited proletariat for Russia’s belated industrialization. Those who remained on the land—and in 1917 about eighty per cent of the people were still peasants—were permitted, at least on paper, a minimum of local self-government by Alexander’s “Zemstvo Law” (1864) . Actually, control of local government was monopolized by the nobility and gentry, although legislation was not egregiously class-conscious. During 1862 the juridical system had been modernized on the pattern of the Code Napoleon. By reason of his efforts on behalf of the serfs, Alexander II came to sympathize with the Northern side during the American Civil War in the face of quite general European governmental favor toward the South. In recognition of this friendship in a time of need, State Secretary Seward obliged Alexander in 1867 by taking “that icebox,” Alaska, off his hands. Along with his liberalizing trend and also for reasons originating in the stresses of the Crimean War, Alexander somewhat relaxed the Russian government’s persecution of Catholics, but there was no essential change in czarist determination to dominate the Church.

Reaction. “By 1865 the reforming spirit of Alexander II was spent. He had never been at heart a Liberal. What reforms he had instituted were an impulsive response to the protest of Russian Westernizers against a regime which had suffered humiliating foreign reverses in 1854-56. By 1865 the Crimean War was a thing of the past, and a much more recent occurrence, the Polish Rebellion of 1863, was discrediting the Westernizers and throwing the tsar into the arms of the reactionary Russian Slavophiles.” ¹⁴ Alexander II accordingly abandoned domestic affairs in large part for foreign diplomacy. In 1871 he denounced the neutralization of the Black Sea imposed on Russia at the end of the Crimean War. Having reorganized the army in 1874, he used it effectively during 1877 to free Serbia and Romania and regain Bessarabia. Yet at the Congress of Berlin (1878) his plans for dismembering Turkey were thwarted by the Western powers. Alexander, however, remained in a position to lead a Pan-Slavic alliance against both Turkey and Austria-Hungary. Meanwhile at home Westernizers had become more bold and on March 13, 1881, an anarchist emerged long enough from the underground to cast a bomb which ended Alexander’s career.

l’ Hayes, Political and Cultural History of Modern Europe, op. cit., II, 260.

 (2) POLISH ADMINISTRATION (1855-81)

Hesitant concessions. In Poland, a national literary revival had begun with Adam Mickiewicz (1798-1855), and unofficial national leagues were organized to preserve the religion, language, and customs of the ^{[p. 639]} Poles, who sought political rather than social reforms. Alexander did permit installation of Archbishop Anton Fijalkowski in the long vacant see of Warsaw, but in 1859 he prohibited Catholic priests from making converts under penalty of exile. Poland, however, was already seething with nationalistic fervor, stimulated in 1859 by the beginning of Italian unification. Liberals forged to the lead of this native movement, and in 1860 began to assemble crowds in the churches to chant outlawed patriotic songs. Despite clashes with the Russians, a still greater rally was staged in Warsaw on Kosciusko’s anniversary, October 15, 1861. The police then forcibly ejected the demonstrators and arrested their leaders. When Archbishop Fijalkowski closed the churches in protest against these violent reprisals, he was deported to Siberia where he died the same year. Yet in 1862 the czar proclaimed the proximate restoration of the “Kingdom of Poland,” and deputed his brother, Grand Duke Constantine, to act as his viceroy.

Polish rebellion. Polish Conservatives, led by Lord Alexander Wielpolski, accepted this offer, but these concessions came too late to conciliate the Radicals who now insisted upon Polish independence. The czar neglected the moderating influence of the hierarchy, for by banning Catholic May Devotions during 1862, the Russian administration aroused the defiance of the new Archbishop of Warsaw, Monsignor Felinski (1861-83). When the Russians in January, 1863, issued blanket search warrants that threatened the lairs of the Radical chiefs, the latter precipitated the Second Polish Revolt, January to May, 1863. But this uprising proved to be merely a poorly organized guerilla warfare which was quickly suppressed before foreign assistance could come.

Repressive measures. Polish autonomy was again abolished and severe reprisals taken. Russian administration was re-established and the Russian tongue made obligatory in Polish schools. Archbishop Felinski was deported to Siberia in June, 1863, but unlike his predecessor, refused to die until 1895, and continued to govern his diocese as best he could. Back in Poland, clerics were executed or imprisoned, and the rest placed on parole. Monasteries and private schools were suppressed and seminaries subjected to secular control. Religious instruction by priests in state schools might be given only in the presence of a Russian supervisor. When Pius IX protested against this Polish persecution, Alexander II severed diplomatic relations with the Vatican, January 1, 1866. In December of the same year he repudiated the understanding of 1847—not that this had ever meant much. All legal communication with Rome was cut off and the Polish bishops refused visas to attend the Vatican Council. In 1875 it was announced that all remaining Ruthenians had been incorporated into the Orthodox Church, but on the whole Polish Catholics of both rites remained faithful to the Holy See and ^{[p. 640]} the memory of a free Poland. Leo XIII’s condemnation of Nihilism, however, so pleased Alexander II that he was about to reopen negotiations with the Holy See when he was assassinated.

B. Failure of Autocracy (1881-1917)

(1) ALEXANDER III (1881-94)

Alexander Alexandreivich, succeeding a father blown up by bombs, was a straightforward, honest, brutal man who would not trifle with even a semblance of Liberalism. Rather, “the voice of God orders us to stand firm at the helm of government with faith in the strength and truth of the autocratic power.” Conscientious but dull, he gave Russia a reactionary administration.

Secular policy. Throughout his reign Alexander III remained true to this program. His father’s murderers were executed and underground movements mercilessly ferreted out. Repression became a full-time job and the secret police a regular arm of the government as every phase of Russian life was subjected to a suspicious scrutiny. The czar promoted Russia’s rapid industrialization, though on mercantilist rather than laissez-faire principles. While he subsidized industrialists, however, he gave but inadequate protection to the proletariat and peasantry.

Marxian Socialism accordingly found a field ripe for the harvest. The nihilist “Land and Liberty” program, indeed, was waning; Alexander Ulianov’s unsuccessful attempt to assassinate the czar (1887) was one of the last manifestations of nihilist terrorism. But Ulianov’s prompt execution hardened in a revolutionary career a younger brother Vladimir, who as “Nikolai Lenin” would one day rule from the czarist palace of the Kremlin. In 1883 survivors of the “Land and Liberty” league under the leadership of Georg Plekhanov (1857-1918) formed the Marxist “Liberation of Labor” movement, forerunner of the Social Democratic Party founded in 1898. The latter divided in 1903 into Plekhanov’s Mensheviks and Lenin’s Bolsheviks. Underground or abroad, foes of autocracy worked incessantly.

Religious policies. Alexander III promptly pursued his father’s preliminary overtures to the Holy See. By December, 1882, a new modus vivendi had been concluded between Leo XIII and the czar. This provided that vacant sees in Russia and Poland might be filled, the seminaries were restored to exclusive episcopal control, and Russian supervision of religious instruction in Polish state schools was withdrawn. In 1883 Archbishop Felinski of Warsaw was released. The prelate returned from exile only to resign and be succeeded by the able Vincent Popiel (1883-1912) . But cases of governmental interference with Catholic life still occurred. In 1885 the bishop of Vilna was sent to Siberia for censuring his clergy without governmental approbation; the pope procured his ^{[p. 641]} release only on the understanding that his resignation would follow. The mixed marriage difficulties continued and Ruthenians were still retained in their enforced subjection to the Orthodox Establishment, though by 1917 a third of Russian subjects were dissenters: Catholics, Protestants, or members of radical Russian sects. Vladimir Solovyev, the “Russian Newman,” though converted to the Catholic Church in 1896 at Moscow, could be attended in articulo mortis (1910) only by the village Orthodox priest. In Poland, the policy of Russification in language and customs was pursued relentlessly against equally stubborn resistance. On the whole, however, Polish Catholics enjoyed a slight respite from the severe religious persecution of the previous years.

(2) NICHOLAS II, LAST OF THE CZARS (1894-1917)

Nicholas II (1894-1917) was, indeed, a poor symbol of autocracy. Weak but obstinate, his fatalistic and pseudo-mystical temperament was successively dominated by an hysterical wife, Alice, and a megalomaniac, the lay monk Grigori Rasputin (1873-1916) . With less of the benevolence, moral courage, and divine faith of King Louis XVI, the last of the czars as surely took the road to ruin.

Religious policy. Because Russian ambitions to rule Catholic Slays in the Balkans made good relations with the Holy See expedient, further concessions were announced for Catholics. In 1898 some Ruthenians were allowed to return to communion with Rome on condition of embracing the Latin Rite. The aim of this condition seems to have been to brand everything Catholic as Latin and alien in culture. Religious orders were permitted to resume work openly in Poland. In 1899 the czar allowed priests to visit Rome and authorized a Catholic church in Petrograd. When during 1905 other Ruthenian Uniates were permitted to profess their allegiance to the Holy See openly, whole villages availed themselves of the opportunity. Under pressure of the Duma, the October Manifesto of 1905 proclaimed freedom of conscience, but a reported five hundred thousand conversions to Catholicity induced Nicholas II to restrict this in 1907 by banning any further Ruthenian submission to Rome under pain of fine or imprisonment. Interference with Catholic worship took place spasmodically, but in spite of official disfavor, Catholics continued to increase in number.

Secular administration. Opposition to autocracy was now directed by definite parties. In 1901 Nihilism was reborn in the Social Revolutionary Party. The bourgeois Liberal Party was organized in 1903. In the same year the Social Democratic Party split on the interpretation of Marxism into Menshevik (Moderate Minority) and Bolshevik (Communist Majority) factions. Russian military disasters during the Japanese War (1904-5) led to a General Strike and Workers’ Insurrection in ^{[p. 642]} 1905. The czar tried to placate dissent in an “October Manifesto” which promised a constitution. His convocation of a parliament or duma divided Liberals and Socialists. Though the First Duma, meeting in 1906, was vociferous in demands for reform of autocracy, the czar, his nerve restored by the secret police, dissolved dumas and manipulated elections until he had secured a relatively tame parliament. This remained little more than a debating society, although Liberals did not give up hope for gradual evolution through constitutional methods. Unfortunately for the czar, his “Mirabeau,” the able reform Premier Peter Stolypin (1906-11), was assassinated, and was succeeded by a “Necker”: Kokovtsev (1911-14), expert financier but not a great statesman. During 1914 Nicholas and his foreign minister Sazanov believed that the time had arrived to realize Pan-Slavic dreams in the Balkans. They provoked Serbia into defiance of Austria, and when the latter decided to end Serb provocations, widened the conflict by coming to Serbia’s assistance, with full knowledge of Germany’s engagements to the Austrian alliance. But the course of the war revealed Russian autocracy’s utter inefficiency, and gave Liberals and Socialists new material for criticism. The aristocrats struck first by assassinating Rasputin, December 30, 1916, on the charge of hindering the war effort. Strikes and mutinies followed during the early months of 1917, disrupting what was left of the department of supply. The czar endeavored to force the war-weary troops to coerce the workers. But his peremptory edict of March 11, 1917, proved to be his last official act.

(3) RUSSIAN REVOLUTIONS (1917)

Liberal Revolution (March) . The Duma at length was emboldened to withhold sanction of the royal ukase, the strikers refused to obey and the soldiers fraternized with the workers. The Duma requested a Liberal ministry, but disorder had by then spread too far for halfway measures: the March Revolution was largely spontaneous. On March 15 Nicholas II abdicated in favor of his brother Mikhail, who, however, dared not accept. Lord George Lvov, a Liberal aristocrat, had already formed a provisional government for the Russian Republic.

Provisional democracy. Lvov and associates were mostly aristocrats of Liberal leanings and bourgeois professional men, though Alexander Kerensky of the Mensheviks was included in the ministry to placate the workers. All the customary Liberal freedoms: of speech, of association, of the press, and of religion, were at once proclaimed. The Russian Orthodox elected their first patriarch in two centuries, Tikhon, and the Catholics were encouraged to secure an exarch. Poland and Finland were promised home rule. Universal manhood suffrage was announced. But these paper reforms could not be put into effect at the same time ^{[p. 643]} with successful prosecution of the war. Lvov and his successor Kerensky worked frantically to refashion Russia into a democracy while carrying on the czarist war. But effective military organization was impossible on such short notice, and disastrous defeat and retreat continued. In May Kerensky succeeded Lvov and tried to establish a moderate socialist regime. But he could not overcome defeatism, sabotaged as he was by the Bolshevik capitalizing on the widespread demand for peace and quick delivery on reforms. The Bolsheviks did support Kerensky against a militarist counter-revolt under Kornilov in July, but thereafter asserted: “All power to the soviets (workers’ councils); no support to the Provisional Government.”

Communist Revolution (November) . Unrestrained by patriotism or legality, the Communists mounted the barricades on November 6, 1917, and demanded a Marxist “dictatorship of the proletariat.” The Petrograd troops deserted Kerensky on November 7, and the latter failed in an attempted comeback on November 14 and fled the land. Fighting lasted a week in Moscow; Kiev was not subdued until December, and civil war against one group or another continued within Russian territories until 1921. But none of these counter-revolutionary movements was inspired by devotion to czardom; during the night of July 17-18, 1918, Nicholas II and his whole family were shot to death at Ekaterinburg, Siberia. Theirs was a not wholly responsible expiation for an indefensible, an intolerable regime. But Russians were to discover that the strong Bolshevik panacea that they had so hastily swallowed would bring no cure for the soul.

97. BRITISH SOCIAL PROGRESS

The Second Reform Act (1867) dissolved the “Victorian Compromise.” This measure gave the vote to urban workers irrespective of householding, though it conceded plural votes to businessmen with an office separate from their residence and to university graduates. Moderate property qualifications based on rentals were still required, but a step had been taken toward Democracy by enfranchising urban skilled workers. The act had been passed by the otherwise Conservative Disraeli in an effort to win favor by what he believed to be an inevitable concession. But his political trick failed to win the 1868 elections which returned his Liberal rival, William Gladstone, to office.

A first Gladstone ministry (1868-74) gave further substance to the liberalizing of the “Victorian Compromise.” In 1870 the Forster Education Act provided for free, nonreligious schools, but offered subsidies to private schools which could meet government specifications. In the ^{[p. 644]} same year a Civil Service Order assured a competent, well-trained, nonpartisan career bureaucracy. At the same time the commission purchase system was abolished in the army and conditions of enlistment improved. The Ballot Act (1870) introduced secret voting. In 1873 the Judicature Act placed many separate courts under a supreme tribunal.

Disraeli’s ministry (1874-80) proved conservative in domestic affairs, but departed from the “Little England” policy of Gladstone’s Liberals. Disraeli fostered British penetration into Egypt where the Suez Canal was acquired in 1875 and a virtual protectorate assumed. In 1876 Victoria was proclaimed “Empress of India”—a title which lapsed in 1947. Strong-arm methods at the Congress of Berlin (1878) kept Russia from Balkan domination. But continual imperialist wars in Afghanistan, South Africa, Egypt and elsewhere finally wearied “Little Englanders” of Disraeli and Toryism.

A second Gladstone ministry (1880-85) strove, not always with success, to avoid expansion—the premier’s pacifist and hesitant policy in Egypt finally caused the fall of his ministry. At home, a start was made in 1880 in holding employers liable for workers’ injuries; the Corrupt and Illegal Practices Act regulated campaign expenditures; and the Third Reform Act (1884) enfranchised rural workers, thus according the suffrage to all save “peers, paupers, lunatics, and women.”

Tory imperialism was dominant for the next twenty years, punctuated briefly by Gladstone’s third (1886) and fourth (1892-94) ministries which collapsed in attempting to give Ireland home rule. Conservatives had united with many Liberal “Unionists” to oppose Irish autonomy and social legislation under ministries led by Lord Salisbury (1885; 1886-92; 1895-1902) and his son-in-law, Balfour (1902-5). Imperial expansion was pushed forward vigorously, especially in Africa, until momentarily shaken by reverses in the Boer War (1899-1902) . Canada (1867), Australia (1901), and soon South Africa (1909) became self-governing dominions, but Joseph Chamberlain’s project of imperial federation with close economic, political, and military ties failed to elicit wholehearted response. Thus the “Empire” remained largely a traditional and sentimental bond.

(2) SOCIAL CHANGE (1905-22)

Welfare legislation. In 1905 the period of Conservative domination terminated, and was then followed by the three Liberal ministries of Campbell-Bannerman (1905-8), Asquith (1908-16), and Lloyd George (1916-22) . From 1906 David Lloyd George as chancellor of the exchequer sponsored important social reforms. George was a poor Welsh boy who had experienced dire poverty and who believed that the Boer ^{[p. 645]} War had revealed that a large portion of the English population was physically unfit. He hoped to prevent Marxian socialism by governmental welfare legislation similar to that initiated by Bismarck in Germany. George began in 1906 with a Workingmen’s Compensation Act holding employers liable for accidents save in cases of “serious and willful misconduct.” In 1909 he enacted the Old Age Pension Law for destitute persons over seventy. The National Insurance Act (1911) provided all workers with health insurance together with semisocialized clinics, and offered certain poorer laborers limited unemployment insurance: “the dole.” A Minimum Wage Law (1912) for sweated industries completed the major social legislation, which also included heavy income and excise taxes and liquor control—though not prohibition.

Political democracy. The “People’s Budget” (1909), imposing new and heavy taxes to finance the foregoing legislation, provoked a parliamentary crisis. Against custom, if not law, the House of Lords rejected the budget, invading the Commons’ normal prerogative. The Lords continued to oppose until two general elections during 1910 sustained the Liberal majority in Commons. King George V then threatened to swamp Tory membership in Lords by creating new peers, and the upper house yielded. In 1911 the Parliament Act explicitly removed all financial control from the House of Lords and reduced its legislative function to a two-year suspensive veto. The popularly elected House of Commons, whose members were voted salaries for the first time in the same year, was henceforth for all practical purposes the sole British legislature, though the Lords still function as an appellate law court. In 1918, moreover, the suffrage was extended to all men over twenty-one and to women over thirty—feminine embarrassment was finally removed in 1928 when they were given the vote on the same terms as men. At the same time most plural voting privileges ceased. Disestablishment of Anglicanism in Wales (1914) left the English body the only refuge of privilege—and it was largely disregarded.

International crises, however, distracted Great Britain from social legislation after 1912. In that year an Irish Home Rule Bill was introduced. After two rejections in Lords, it was enacted in 1914, but the outbreak of World War I and the threatening opposition of Ulster led to postponement of its application until 1922, when it was put in force in altered form for two separate Irish governments. World War I, though it brought British imperial domain to a brief zenith, seriously sapped the nation’s vitality and resources. Though Lloyd George proved an energetic war leader, he was neither a farsighted peacemaker nor a gifted economic analyst. During the war, Great Britain was at last overtaken in industrial development and commercial expansion. ^{[p. 646]} Post‑war economic distress and serious labor agitation alarmed the British populace and produced a conservative reaction which forced Lloyd George and the Liberals out of office in the 1922 elections.

Cardinal Manning, archbishop of Westminster in succession to Cardinal Wiseman from 1865 to 1892, proved intransigent on the great question of infallibility, and as has been seen, was a prime factor in securing its definition in the Vatican Council. Newman’s defense of the doctrine against Prime Minister Gladstone—Letter to the Duke of Norfolk (1875) —did much to allay the cardinal’s suspicions of the soundness of view of his distinguished co-convert. He graciously received him as colleague in the college of cardinals in 1879, and preached at his funeral in 1890. If Cardinal Manning, however, seems to have lacked Newman’s fine appreciation of doctrinal and intellectual subtleties, he did excel the latter in his grasp of the urgent social problems of the day.

Relief of the poor. Cardinal Manning, indeed, became primarily interested in the pressing problem of social betterment. He founded the League of the Cross for total abstinence, took the pledge himself, and marched in temperance parades through the London streets. From 1866 he constituted himself defender of the poor, especially those in public workhouses. There Catholic children were likely to lose their Faith under Protestant administration and harsh economic pressure. The cardinal succeeded in lessening discrimination, and in providing Catholic welfare organizations to care for the Catholic poor. He made a start toward founding schools and homes in the crowded cities, and these institutions were enlarged by his successors.

Labor disputes. In his lecture, “On the Rights and Dignity of Labor,” Cardinal Manning had defended the lot of the laboring man, and had admitted moderate governmental intervention in order to safeguard for him proper working conditions, hours, and wages. As early as 1872 he had supported the farm workers in a meeting at Exeter Hall, and he continued to participate in public gatherings and discussions beyond Catholic circles. In 1887 he sustained Cardinal Gibbons of Baltimore in the latter’s defense of the Knights of Labor, and seconded the American prelate’s petition to Rome. Cardinal Manning himself won nationwide attention during 1889 by personally intervening in the London dock-workers’ strike. Though the Anglican prelate of London had dodged the complexities of this dispute, the Catholic cardinal archbishop patiently persevered in lengthy conferences with employers and employees. His mediation eventually proved successful in settling the ^{[p. 647]} strike, and won him the respect of many non-Catholics. The ascetic-looking cardinal had at last come to be regarded as a great Englishman. He retained intellectual vigor to the end of his life, and his death on January 14, 1892, elicited expressions of regret from many non-Catholics.

Missionary agencies. During Cardinal Manning’s episcopate, the Catholic Truth Society began its dissemination of Catholic apologetic and instructive literature, and the Mill Hill Fathers, founded by Father Herbert Vaughan—presently Manning’s successor—furnished Catholic England with its own foreign missionary society.

Cardinal Manning, however, held conservative views in regard to Catholic education. After Oxford and Cambridge universities had abolished religious tests for reception of degrees (1854) , Catholic opinion was divided on the liceity and expediency of Catholic attendance. For a time hopes were entertained of a thoroughly Catholic university under Newman at Dublin, but in 1858 financial and nationalistic difficulties obliged Newman to resign the rectorship. Newman next (1864) opened a preparatory school at Birmingham, but proposals for a “Newman Club” at Oxford University to provide for Catholic needs were decidedly discouraged by the Congregation of Propaganda on Manning’s advice. Cardinal Manning himself tried to provide a Catholic college for Englishmen at Kensington (1874-78), but its rector, Monsignor Capel, was inexperienced, financial resources were inadequate, and the student body discouragingly small. At length the whole project had to be abandoned. Yet the cardinal remained adamant against Catholic participation at Oxford or Cambridge down to the end of his pontificate. He did, however, favor breaking down of Catholic isolation by joining the Athenaeum and the Metaphysical Society. He also postponed erection of a new cathedral in order to found Catholic primary schools.

Cardinal Vaughan (1892-1903), Manning’s successor at Westminster, did build the new Catholic cathedral and was interred in it. On the question of Catholic attendance at Cambridge and Oxford, he proved more obliging than his predecessor. He recommended a change of ruling to Propaganda, and in 1895 Catholics were granted permission to attend these institutions under certain safeguards. These were enumerated as a solidly Catholic preparatory training, and compulsory attendance at lectures under Catholic auspices on religion, philosophy, and history. When this program was put into operation, however, these formal courses were generally modified in favor of Catholic guidance through special chaplains. Catholics were also divided on the prudence of accepting governmental subsidies offered under the Forster Act of ^{[p. 648]} 1870, for it was argued that this presaged state control of Catholic education. Cardinal Vaughan, however, supported the legislation when the Act was extended to cover secondary education in 1902. “The Act (1902) as finally passed put the Voluntary Schools ‘on the rates.’ Provided by the denominations as to sites and buildings and structural repairs, they were henceforth to be maintained financially by the new Local Education Authorities. Their teachers were to be appointed by the School Managers, subject to a veto on educational grounds by the L.E.A.; the secular education was to be controlled by the L.E.A.; the religious by the Managers, who were to comprise four denominational, and two L.E.A. representatives.” ¹⁵

‘⁶ Carlton Beales, The English Catholics: 1850-1950 (London: Burns, Oates & Washbourne, Ltd., 1950), p. 384.

Subsequent developments during the period of English history now under survey left this “Dual System” of public and private schools untouched, despite agitation from secularists against the procedure. Scottish Catholics concluded a quite satisfactory educational concordat with the British Government in 1918, but the English Catholics remained divided on the measures to be adopted and continued as before. Later educational legislation caused them to regret not having made the more favorable arrangement when they had an opportunity to do so.

The insistence by the Oxford Movement on tradition had raised the question of the validity of Anglican orders. Though Catholic practice, in accord with decisions of Julius III and Paul IV (1554-55), had assumed their invalidity, ardent workers for reunion felt that all hope had not been exhausted.

From 1889 Abbé Fernand Portal, C.M. (1855-1926), and Lord Halifax encouraged conferences looking toward corporate reunion, and in 1895 the latter was received in audience by Leo XIII.

During 1896 a papal commission, including Cardinal Mazella, Abbot Gasquet, Abbé Duchesne and Monsignor Merry del Val, examined the question. [Neither Cardinal Vaughan, Catholic Archbishop of Westminster nor Anglican Archbishop Benson of Canterbury were particularly supportive.] French predispositions in favor of validity were reversed by Gasquet and his archivist, Bishop, who discovered in the Vatican archives documents illustrative of the grounds on which the Holy See had repudiated Anglican orders during the sixteenth century. The fruit of these deliberations was the negative verdict of the papal brief, Apostolicae Curae, of September 15, 1896. This declared:

The prelates of Canterbury and York denounced the decree, but Low Church and dissenting clergy chortled. When some French scholars hinted that the Apostolicae Curae was not final, the pope assured the archbishop of Paris that it was definitive in a letter of November 5, 1896.

Hierarchical reorganization. In 1903 Cardinal Vaughan was succeeded at Westminster by Francis Bourne, whose episcopate lasted until his death in 1935. In 1908 the English Church was removed from missionary status, and in 1911 the hierarchical organization which had prevailed since 1850 was changed by the elevation of Liverpool and Birmingham to metropolitan rank—which was also accorded in 1916 to Cardiff in Wales. During 1908 the Eucharistic Congress in London elicited a last flare-up of bigotry when Premier Asquith tried to invoke the antiprocession nuisance relics of Emancipation. Archbishop Bourne complied, but public opinion sided with the Catholics, and the obnoxious provisions were removed in 1927. By 1919 Catholics in England had reached two million and in 1918 the Catholic Evidence Guild began onthe-street exposition.

Diminution of discrimination. Edward VII had been well disposed to Catholics, but had been unable to change the “King’s Protestant Declaration” required since 1689 of “every king and queen of this realm who at any time hereafter shall come to and succeed in the imperial crown of this kingdom.” This declaration included the assertion that, “there is not any transubstantiation in the sacrament of the Lord’s Supper or in the elements of bread and wine, at or after the consecration thereof by any person whatsoever.” This enduring refutation of Anglo-Catholic pretensions to valid orders was repealed on August 3, 1910, prior to George V’s coronation, though the 1701 Act of Settlement still bars a Catholic or anyone married to a Catholic from the throne.

Noted converts of this period included the Anglican monks of Caldey and the nuns of St. Bride (1913), and the writers, Baring, Benson, Chesterton, Dawson, Gill, Hollis, Knox, Leslie, Lunn, MacKenzie, Noyes, Watkin, and Windle.

C. Irish Reforms (1870-1922)

(1) AGRARIAN REFORM

After the Irish Famine population declined enormously through emigration. But the wealthy landlords, largely non-Catholic and often non-Irish, introduced mechanical improvements which put still more peasants out of work. Violent movements, such as “Young Ireland” and the Fenians, had failed to win redress and evictions continued. Yet all that ^{[p. 650]} was done by the British government was to pass the Irish Land Act (1870) which compensated outgoing tenants for improvements and prohibited eviction if the rents were paid up—very small consolation for the poor and debt-ridden.

An Irish Land League was accordingly formed by Michael Davitt to demand three “f’s”: “Free sale, fair rents, fixity of tenure.” Davitt fought for his objectives through boycott and no-rent campaigns, while Charles Parnell, a brilliant parliamentarian, aided him by filibusters at London. Although the Irish hierarchy generally looked askance at Davitt’s semi-socialism, Bishops Walsh of Dublin and Croke of Cashel supported the League and Leo XIII refused to condemn it in 1882. During 1881 Gladstone passed another land measure, conceding the League’s demands in principle. In 1882, however, the murder of Cavendish by the “Invincibles” renewed bitterness and endangered Parnell’s political maneuvers for Home Rule and agrarian reform. His conviction for adultery in 1890 divided Irish politicians. The Conservatives for a time tried to “kill Home Rule with kindness”: divert the Irish from politics by redressing their economic grievances. In 1891 the Irish Land Purchase Act compensated landowners so that Irish tenants might regain the national soil. These provisions were extended in 1896 and 1898, and in 1903 the Irish secretary, George Wyndham, completed the reform by giving a bonus to landlords who would sell, while allowing tenants to buy on easy terms with 68 years in which to repay.

(2) POLITICAL AUTONOMY

Home Rule was the objective of another league founded in 1870 by Isaac Butt (d. 1879). From 1875 Parnell led fifty-nine Irish members of the British parliament agitating for local Irish legislative control of all domestic matters. But the first two Home Rule Bills (1886; 1893) drove enough English Liberals into alliance with Conservatives to form a “Unionist” coalition which blocked Home Rule, though in 1898 native control of county administration was conceded. The Liberals in 191214 passed a Third Home Rule Bill, but it was suspended because of the war and Ulsterite opposition. Impatient Irish nationalists under De Valera staged an unsuccessful rebellion (1916) and long resisted pacification by guerilla tactics. Moderates under Griffith, founder of Sinn Fein (“We Ourselves”), a movement of cultural renewal and passive resistance, were content to negotiate for dominion status. When Orangemen insisted that “Home Rule means Rome Rule,” the British in 1920 permitted six Ulster counties to form a separate administration. After a direct appeal for peace by the king, the Irish Assembly by a vote of sixty-four to fifty-seven accepted dominion status as the “Irish Free State” on January 7, 1922. ^{[p. 651]}

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