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ENGLAND the footsteps of the fatherless and the widow, the poor, the forlorn, the tempted and the disgraced, who came to him in their hours of trouble and sorrow." No doubt he made mistakes, some of them grave enough—as, for example, his persistent opposition to the frequentation of the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge by young Catholic men and his abortive and costly attempt to supply the loss of academical training by a college of higher studies at Kensington under the direction of Monsignor Capel. But it is certainly true that the active part which he played in every department of social reform revealed him not only as a great philanthropist and a great churchman, but also as a statesman of no mean order. It was said by an able writer, upon the occasion of the twenty-fifth anniversary of his consecration: "To him, more than to any man, it is due that English Catholics have at last outgrown the narrow cramped life of their past of persecution, and stand in all things upon a footing of equality with their fellow countrymen." No doubt this happy result was largely due to Manning; but perhaps it was more largely due to another. The revelation of his inner life which John Henry Newman thought himself obliged to put before his countrymen in order to vindicate himself from the wanton attacks of Charles Kingsley, in 1864, came like a revelation to multitudes of what Catholicism as a religion really is. The "Apologia pro Vita Sua" was like a burst of sunlight putting to flight the densest mists of Protestant prejudice. And the "Letter to the Duke of Norfolk" (1875), in reply to Gladstone's pamphlet on the Vatican decrees which appeared in 1874, may be said to have made an end of the old error that a loyal Catholic cannot be a loyal Englishman. It was enough for Newman to affirm that there was no incompatibility between the two characters. His countrymen believed him on his word. Lord Morley of Blackburn, a very competent judge, writes: "Newman raised his Church to what would, not so long before, have seemed a strange and incredible rank in the mind of Protestant England" (Miscellanies, Fourth Series, p. 161).

Herbert Vaughan, who succeeded Cardinal Manning in the See of Westminster, ruled the diocese as archbishop, and the province as metropolitan for nearly eleven years. It was reserved for him to take up a work which his predecessor had put aside—the erection of a cathedral for Westminster. The first public act which Manning had to perform after his nomination to the archbishopric—it was even before his consecration—was to preside over a meeting summoned to promote the building of a cathedral in memory of Cardinal Wiseman. He declared on that occasion: "It is a work which I will take up and will to the utmost of my power promote—when the work of the poor children in London is accomplished, and not till then." This work for the poor Catholic children of London—provision for their education in their religion—was Cardinal Manning's life-work; and before he passed away it was accomplished. The building of the cathedral he left, as he announced in 1874, to his successor. The magnificent fane conceived by the genius of John Francis Bentley may, in some sort, be considered as Cardinal Vaughan's monument, as being the outcome of his energy and zeal. It is a memorial of him, as well as of Cardinal Wiseman.

So much must suffice regarding the history of Catholicism in England from the so-called Reformation to the present day. We now proceed to give some account of the actual position of the Church in that country. We have already seen that in 1850 Pope Pius IX reconstituted the hierarchy, making England one ecclesiastical province under the metropolitan See of Westminster, with the twelve suffragan Sees of Southwark, Hexham and Newcastle, Beverley, Liverpool, Salford, Newport and Menevia, Clifton, Plymouth, Nottingham, Birmingham, and Northampton. In 1878 the Diocese of Beverley was divided into the Dioceses of Leeds and Middlesborough; in 1882 the Diocese of Southwark was divided into the Dioceses of Southwark and Portsmouth, and in 1895 Wales, excepting Glamorganshire, was separated from the Diocese of Newport and Menevia, and formed into the Vicariate Apostolic of Wales. Three years later this vicariate was erected into the Diocese of Menevia, so that the Archbishop of Westminster now has fifteen suffragans. Hitherto, since the Reformation, England had been regarded as a missionary country and had been immediately subject to the Congregation of Propaganda. But Pius X, by his Constitution, "Sapienti Consilio", transferred (1908) England from that state of tutelage to the common law of the Church.

The number of priests, secular and regular, in England, according to the most recent list, is three thousand five hundred and twenty-four, and the number of churches, chapels, and institutes, one thousand seven hundred and thirty-six. Of the regulars who are over a thousand in number, many are French exiles, and a considerable number of them are not engaged in parochial or missionary work. There are three hundred and eleven monasteries and seven hundred and eighty-three convents, a great increase during the half-century which has passed away since 1851, when there were only seventeen monasteries and fifty-three convents. During the same period many churches of imposing proportions, adorned with more or less magnificence, have been erected. Conspicuous among them is the cathedral of Westminster of which mention has been already made. It is in the Byzantine style and is certainly one of the noblest of modern religious edifices. Nearly two hundred and fifty thousand pounds have already been expended on it, and, although still unfinished, it has been open for daily use since Christmas, 1903.

Catholics in England are still subject to various legal disabilities. We have already seen that by the Bill of Rights (I Will. and Mary st. 2, c. 2) no member of the reigning house who is a Catholic, or has married a Catholic, can succeed to the throne, that the sovereign, on becoming a Catholic, or marrying a Catholic, thereby forfeits the crown, and that the Act of Settlement (12 and 13 Will. III, c. 2, s. 2), by which the succession was confined to the descendants of the Electress Sophia, being Protestants, confirms this article of the Constitution. This last-mentioned statute further enacts "that whosoever shall hereafter come to the possession of the Crown of England shall join in communion with the Church of England as by law established". The Emancipation Act (10 Geo. IV, c. 7), which was largely a disabling Act, provides that nothing contained in it "shall extend or be construed to enable any person otherwise than he is now by law entitled, to hold the office of Lord Chancellor of England or Lord Lieutenant of Ireland", and the common opinion is that Catholics cannot now fill these great positions, but this view appears questionable. The point is discussed at length in Lilly and Wallis's "Manual of the Law specially affecting Catholics", pp. 36-43. The Emancipation Act also contains sections imposing fresh disabilities upon "Jesuits and members of other religious orders, communities or Societies of the Church of Rome, bound by monastic or religious vows". These sections have never been put in force; still, as they remain on the statute book, they have the serious effect of disabling religious orders of men from holding property. An Act of 1860 (23 and 24 Viet., c. 134) has, however, somewhat mitigated this hardship, as also a like hardship regarding bequests for what are deemed superstitious uses, such as Masses for the dead. Such bequests are held by English law to be void, but the Irish courts do not follow the English on this point. It should be noted that up to the passing of the Emancipation Act, trusts for the promotion of Catholic charities were held to be illegal.