the public recognition by the State of the nation's duty toward a new member, in virtue of the equal right, all society standing sponsor for it: it will be the admission not merely formal and of one without will into some narrow congregation, but of one devoted as a priest in one of the national churches of Humanity. For 'confirmation' there will be the vow of the boy and girl, as of the Greek of old, 'to make their country greater and more glorious'; and the public investiture of the young man or woman with the full rights and faculties of citizenship. In the temple also will the loving publicly fulfil their troth (no matter what added ceremony peculiar views may enjoin); and, as men learn a purer morality, no lighter or less holy connection will degrade the race. There too the patriot will receive the olive or the oaken garland; old age be crowned with silver honour; and when the course is run, there too the very unbeliever will approach, and listen, no longer shocked by formal anathemas, to the loving, hopeful words which the true may lay upon the grave of even the most estranged by the variance of speculation.

Nor need religious services be merely ceremonial. There shall likewise be the perpetual ministration of the priests of human life: the preaching and aspiring prayer of our poets, our prophets; why not also those 'sermons in stones,' the accuracies of Science, no longer sceptical, but wisely reverent,-tracking from the very vestiges of creation the harmony and wonderful growth of Life. All things above the actual business of the day will find their expression in our ritual; nor even the commonest avocations be divorced from the religious. Again mankind will assemble in their temples to frame their laws, to formulize God's Law in adaptation to human occasions, to take council together how best to magnify and exalt their Country, for the service of Humanity, for the glory of the Eternal.

That Englishmen should be jealous of any State-Church is natural enough: not only because our popular struggles hitherto have been solely for individual freedom, not yet generally understood as preparative of the organization of freemen,—and so any concentration of power seems repugnant to the habit of our thought (not always to be so); but also because our State-Church,' at least since it was reformed, has been nothing but a greedy corporation, an unspiritual step-mother, growing fat upon our unremitted service, starving our minds and exacting from the sweat of our brows, utterly careless of our education, and altogether alien to the nature which has outgrown even the possibility of her directing it.

But when the Republic shall be established, when every man and woman shall be recognized as God's priest in virtue of the sanctity of human life, then it will be understood that individual freedom may be preserved intact even while men associate in common forms; the faith, the aspirations, of the majority will find a voice, a formulized expression, and progressing, age after age, will change the formula in accordance with the growth of life.

Even now, notwithstanding all the chances that divide us, and the innumerable difficulties in the way of understanding one another, thoughtful men are seeking for some common worship, anxious to discover some temple yet unmonopolized by sectarian intolerance, wherein they may at least associate in the expression of

a general hope, in the exercise of that faculty of adoration which distinguishes man from the beast; where too the millions, who have no church, nor creed, nor ritual, might assemble, and learn, from the higher-natured there kneeling beside them, the ennobling lessons of a faith in the future.

The first stone of that temple may be laid by our republican organization. We associating, no matter in what rude huts, may form the first congregation of believers. But the State-Church can only be when we have indeed a State, a National Power, a Republic.

Then men, without fear of Power, for Power will be their own, themselves,will acknowledge that it is not enough to organize and rule the 'secular' concerns of life; but that the religious, that which links the generations to Eternity, needs also, and even more urgently and primarily, the most careful organization. And thereafter they may find that, as in the inner spirit, so likewise in even the outward regulations of life, there is no duality: that 'religious' and 'political' government are one and the same,-'politics' being only the practical application of religion, and 'religion' the theory upon which alone true polity can build.

The time may be far distant: nevertheless those for whom we hope, the Eternity for which we work, shall surely behold and rejoice in its arrival.

HISTORY OF THE MONTH.

(From July 22nd to August 22nd.)

REPUBLICAN CHRONICLE.

None of our oppoThe very 'Liberals' Even our Celtic friends,

The Press thinks it more prudent to ignore our endeavours. nents dare follow up the outspokenness of the John Bull. steal along the wake of a would be damning silence. generally warmer-hearted. The article on Republicanism in Ireland, which erewhile had called down vehement denunciation, is now dealt with on another tack. The Nation avoids it, the Vindicator is afraid of it; only the Dundalk Democrat has the courage to give us a passing notice. But letters from Irishmen respond to our appeal. The work begins in Ireland.

ENFRANCHISEMENT OF WOMEN.

Note, as a sign of the times, an able article in the last number of the Westminster Review, in advocacy of the enfranchisement of women. Even the 'philosophical radicals' are beginning to acknowledge that universal male suffrage is but a whig finality. In America the much needed reformation in the dress of women is fast progressing. Which of our gentlewomen will dare commence

it here?

THE CENTRAL EUROPEAN DEMOCRATIC COMMITTEE.

TO THE POLES!

You have nobly suffered; you have bravely fought; each of you is a living incarnation of his country. Thinking of Poland, all Europe repeats the words addressed by a Pope to your ancestors-Every handful of your earth is a relic of martyrs.' You are then worthy to hear the truth. We love you, and we feel ourselves worthy to speak it to you. You are called to conclude an European struggle, which your brothers of the south and of the centre will first sustain. The last battle between absolutism and liberty may perhaps be fought upon your plains; your war-cry then must be a formula of life for the Sclavonian world. You have therefore great duties to accomplish; your People has always had the presentiment of them, and for that reason, come what may, you are and always will be a nation. And yet in 1848 you did not respond, with the energy of which you are capable, to the appeal of the Peoples. Wherefore? Because since 1846 you have wanted an unitary organization. Thought has progressed with you; action has lost its continuity and strength. One would say that you, the descendants of ancestors who listened to the Gospel sword in hand, have given up bearing witness to your national faith; awaiting from the slow course of things, or the convulsions of the West, the resurrection of your country and liberty.

Undeceive yourselves; country and liberty will be restored to you only as you are ready to sacrifice yourselves for them; for, if the general laws of Humanity point out to us the end, it is we as apostles, combatants, martyrs if need be, who ought to attain it. Ah! doubtless your brothers of other European countries can do much for you; they will not forget that your breasts were their bulwark against Mahometanism. But, above all, it is

necessary that the conscience of the Polish People should be ready to assert aloud and unceasingly the right that Poland has to exist. Now a right-be sure of this, is only made manifest by the accomplishment of a duty; life is not thought, it is thought translated into action.

Awake, then, and act!

Some men in 1848, showing you Berlin and Vienna in revolt, said-'All is done, liberty will fall upon you from on high, like heavenly manna, without efforts, without battles.' But have you not too surely learned, that against despots liberty can triumph only by force; that nationality cannot be recovered by concession, but must reconquer itself? Yes, we know it; Vienna and Berlin will rise again; but it is not by sending them deputations from your national committees, it is not by demanding reforms from them that you will restore your country; you can do it by paying its ransom with your lives, by responding to the movements of Vienna and Berlin by a sudden outbreak, by placing yourselves between the nations and the Kings as the reserve of the European democratic army; by drawing the sword for the new Gospel of Humanity, for our liberty and for yours.' These noble words, which you addressed to the Russians in 1830, must be repeated in the thick of the fight to all the Peoples of the crusades.

O all you Sclavonians, Latins, Germans, it is no longer a question of a particular interest, but of a principle,-we would almost say of a dogma, of the dogma of human solidarity. Your nationality will only reflourish with all the rest of the oppressed nationalities. The old map of Europe yet bears the ink-stain of Catherine: it is this map which must be remade. An alliance of Kings has consigned Poland to the tomb: an alliance of Peoples alone can break its lid.

The spirit of weariness and inertness-the spirit of individualism and mistrust,--these are the two vices which you must labour to destroy, Employed by your aristocracy, they

have done you mischief in the past: let the Polish People to constitute its future life, eradicate their very roots. Let every traditional hostility disappear from amongst us; let a grand moral fusion be worked out in one common holy idea; let the young nationality of the Peoples efface the old dynastic and aristocratic nationalism. Races are now

for us only the functionaries of Humanity. The hatred which fermented in the corrupted air of palaces, is unknown in the hovel of the poor, in the republican assembly composed of those who have been cradled in the same patriotic songs. The air which circulates amongst the ranks of the People bears with it not hatred but love.

Germans, Sclavonians, Latins, we have all but one single aim-Liberty, association, justice. To-day there are but two camps in Europe. Whosoever should attempt to raise a solitary tent between these two camps, would meet with vengeance on the one side, abandonment and indifference on the other.

It perished

Poles, brothers! aristocracy, the country of caste, has perished for you. at Targowica. It is of that which Kosciusko spoke, if it is true that falling he exclaimed, 'Finis Poloniæ. Arise to new life in equality, in the country of all, in the NATION; and every race, every people in Europe will hold out to you with enthusiasm a brotherly hand.

Does not Europe know indeed that you have brought a grand idea into the world—the federation of the Sclavonian Peoples. This idea appeared under Boleslaus the Great; the aristocracy was unable to comprehend it. By its culpable inaction, it allowed the power of initiative, which this idea should have given you, to perish; like every aristocracy, it centred its life within itself; if ever it departed from it, it was in an interest of egotism. Everywhere, abroad as at home, even in the Russian lands, the first halting-place of those barbarians who went, unconsciously, to receive the consecration of Rome, caste-nationality -by oppressing, tyrannizing, and stifling the popular inspiration-abdicated the grand mission of Poland: that grand mission must now be recommenced, through popular inspiration. The Peasant himself must at last realize that which Boleslaus the Great divined. b We have said a federation of the Sclavonian nations, not Panslavism. Panslavism is a pantheistic unity; it is not the world of liberty, A monstrous conception-the issue of military despotism—and which all Europe would repulse: has it not been given the lie, in 1825, even on the banks of the Neva? Panslavism is the Czar. It is not with him, but with the martyrs of Russian liberty-Pestel, Mouravieff, Bestuzeff, and their companions, that the Polish People can, and ought to link themselves.

What is now wanting to Poland? An initiative. The day on which, fully understanding her mission, she shall take her place as an initiative people-that day she will be saved. Poles! wherefore should it not be thus ? Why should not the watchword of the Sclavonian world be given by you to-day? Why should not Warsaw be the Rome of the North, the centre and focus of the northern races, as Rome has been of those of the centre and the south? While France and Italy organize an alliance in the bosom of the GrecoLatin races, while an inward thrill announces the approaching unification of the Germanic world, why should not Poland, united with the IIungarians-her friends of old-in the name of the services she has already rendered to Europe, in the name of her long martyrdom, send round the fiery cross of the last battle, the last watchword which shall resound even to the eastern shores of the Adriatic?

Or Targovitsa, the name of a small town, where met the noble confederacy formed by the machinations of Catherine II against the Polish Diet.

b Boleslaus the Great, King of Poland, endeavoured to emancipate the serfs, for which the nobility sneeringly called him the Peasants' King.

C

By the republican insurrection of Pestel and his companions.

For this all that is wanting is to will. To will strongly and unceasingly-to will in every and at every hour of the day-to will with love, sacrifice, and constancy. Will then, and onward! Europe begins to believe that you are exhausted by the struggle of 1830. Repeat to Europe the words of Reytan: "There is no despot strong enough to crush me,

nor artful enough to corrupt me.'

For the Central European Democratic Committee,

LEDRU-ROLLIN―J. MAZZINI-A. DARASZ-A. RUGE-D. BRATIANO.

TO THE ITALIANS.

The hour of deliverance is near; from without as from within, everything conspires to hasten it.

From without the nations feel that henceforth their interest is closely allied to yours, that the Revolution will only triumph through the simultaneous explosion of all the peoples, and through their brotherly solidarity.

From within, never has implacable tyranny more efficaciously contributed to temper men's minds, to fortify their souls, to penetrate them with the holy love of freedom.

In two years, political despotism and clerical despotism, protected by foreign bayonets, have renewed all the ferocious persecutions of the middle-ages; at Rome, at Naples, at Milan, at Palermo, they have reigned only by means of spies, prisons, chains and gibbets. In two years they have managed to make of a generous people-full of clemency and magnanimity when it was master-a people of hatred and revenge. It is just the old time in all that it had of fratricidal and savage: the knife replies to the axe, the dagger to the musket. A terrible proof, Italians! which you support with an heroic courage, because you know that the cause which stirs in Italy is not only that of your independence and your liberty, but that it is the cause of the very conscience of Humanity.

In the struggle commenced between light and darkness, between movement and immobility, between life and death, in fine between free thought and catholicism, it was necessary, in order to tear off all veils, to efface the last prestige, to edify timid spirits, pusillanimous consciences, that the papacy should be obliged to revert to its fatal law of religious anathema, of secular extermination; it was necessary, to open all eyes, that it should talk of liberty in the midst of executioners as of old it spoke of mercy at the stake; that, in a word, the terrorism of dogma should anew be transported into the State. It was necessary that the haughty institution which had ruined, destroyed all the nations servilely bowed beneath its yoke,-Italy, Spain, Portugal, Poland, Bohemia, Hungary, Austria, the republics of the middle ages and the southern republics of the New World,-should reign anew by means of punishment in order that from the revolted human mind might escape this cry of independence-No more theocracy, no more papal despotism; absolute, unlimited freedom of conscience!

The men who fell, in France, on the 13th of June, for the Italian Cause, understood this well; they thought not only of defending some narrow text of a constitution, nor even the more eminent principle of the solidarity of peoples; they had in their fall, together with a thought of the future, all the grand protest of the eighteenth century in favour of free thought. They knew well that a people enslaved in soul has never been seen to in

d Reytan was a member of the Polish Diet, of the time of Stanislaus Augustus and the Empress Catherine. He was a true and rigid republican; and died of a broken heart, foreseeing the evils coming upon his country.

e Braliano is a Wallachian. During the brief revolution, in 1848, of the Danubian Principalities, he was his country's chargé d' affaires with the French Republic.