Page:Catholic Encyclopedia, volume 7.djvu/151

 HALLER

119

HALLER

community moved to Bristol, where several schools were placed under their charge, from there they went to Longton, the last of the pottery towns in Stafford- shire, where a large field of labour was opened to them.

In 1851 her congregation received papal appro- Imtion, and in 1S52 the foundation stone of St. Dominic's convent was laid at Stone, also in Stafford- shire, but not in the Black Country: this became the mother-house and novitiate, and to it the Longton community afterwards moved. This Stone convent at one time enjoyed the reputation of numbering some of the cleverest women in England among its subjects, of whom the late mother provincial, Theo- dosia Drane, was one. At Stone a church and a hospital for incurables were built: this latter was one of Mother Margaret's dearest schemes, and was begun on a small scale at Bristol. In 1857 she opened an- other convent at Stoke-on-Trent, a few miles from Stone, and the same year founded an orphanage at the latter place. In 1858 she went to Rome, to obtain the final confirmation of her constitutions, which was granted, and the congregation was placed under the jurisdiction of the master general of the Dominicans, who appoint-! a delegate, generally the bishop of the diocese, to act for him. New foundations were made at Bow, and at Marychurch, Torquay, before her death. She was a woman of great gifts, both natural and supernatural; she had marvellous faith and wonder- ful determination. She refused to accept government aid for any of her schools, or to place them under government inspection, but since her death her congregation has followed the custom of the country in these respects.

Life of Mother Margaret HaUahari by her religious children (London, 1869); Die Orden und Congregatirmen der katholischen Kirche. II (Paderborn, 1901): Steele, Convents of Great Brit- ain (London, 1902).

Francesca M. Steele.

Haller, Karl Ludwig von, professor of f onstitu- tional law; b. 1 August, 1768, at Berne; d. 21 May, 1854, at Solothurn, Switzerland. He was a grandson of the famous poet Albrechtvon Haller, and son of the statesman and historian Gottlieb Emmanuel von Haller. He did not, however, receive an education worthy of his station, but after some private lessons, and having passed through a few classes of the gymna- sium, he was forced at the age of fifteen to enter the chancery of the Republic of Berne. Being extremely talented, however, he studied by himself and so filled out the gaps in his education. He even considered himself fortunate in this respect, as circumstances compelled him to investigate, think, and prove things for himself. .\t the age of nineteen he was appointed to the important office of Kommissionsschreiber, or clerk of a pul)lic commission. In this capacity he obtained an insight into methods of government, prac- tical politics, and criminal procedure. As secretary of the Swiss diet held at Baden and Frauenfeld, he be- came familiar with the conditions of things in the Swiss Confederation. A journey to Paris in 1790 made him acquainted with the great ideas that were agita- ting the world at that time. As secretary of legation he served several important embassies, for instance, one to Geneva in 1792, about the Swiss troops stationed there; to Ulm in 1795, regarding the import of grain from southern Germany; to Lugano, Milan, and Paris in 1797, regarding the neutral attitude of Switzerland towards the warring powers. These journeys were very instructive and made him acquainted with the leading personalities of the day, including Bonaparte, Talleyrand, and others. When the old Swiss Con- federation was menaced he was dispatched to Rastatt to allay the storm. It was too late, however, and when he returned in February, 1798, the French army was already on Bernese territory. Even his pamph- let, '■ Projekt einer Constitution fiir die schweizerische Republik Bern ", was unable to stay the dissolution of

the old Swiss Republic. But he soon renounced the principles expressed in this pamphlet. Close acquain- tance with the new freedom made him an uncom- promising opponent of the Revolution. Thereupon he resigned the government office he had held under the revolutionary authorities and established a paper, the "Helvetisehe Annalen", in which he attacked their excesses and legislative schemes with such liitter sar- casm that the sheet was suppressed, and he himself had to flee to escape imprisonment. Henceforth, von Haller was a reactionary, and was more and more ex- alted by one party as the saviour of an almost forlorn hope, and hated and reviled by the other as a traitor to the rights and dignity of man. Nevertheless, both parties alike acknowledged the independence and forcefulness of his opinions, the fearless logic of his conclusions, and the wealth of his erudition.

After many wanderings, he came to Vienna, where he was court secretary of the coimcil of war, from 1801 till 1806. A revulsion of public opinion at home re- sulted in his being recalled by the Bernese Government in 1806, and appointed professor of political law at the newly foimdcd higher school of the academy. When the old aristocratic regime was reinstated, he became a member of the sovereign Great Council, and soon after also of the privy council of the Bernese RepubHc. But in 1821, when his return to the Catholic Church be- came known, he was unjustly dismissed. This change of religion caused the greatest sensation, and the let- ter he wrote to his family from Paris, explaining his reasons for the step he had taken, went through about fifty editions in a short time and was translated into nearly every modern language. Of course it called forth numerous rejoinders and apologies. In this document he made known his long-felt inclination to join the Catholic Church, exhibiting a keen analysis of his feelings and his growing conviction that he must bring his political opinions in harmony with his relig- ious views. His family soon followed him; with them he left Berne for ever antl took up his residence in Paris. There the Foreign Office invited him to assume the instruction of candidates for the diplomatic service in constitutional and international law. After the revolution of July he went to Solothurn and, from that time until the day of his death, was an industrious contributor to pohtical journals, including the " Neue preussische Zeitung" and the " Historisch-Politische Blatter ". In 1833 he was again elected to the Grand Council of Switzerland and exercised an important influence in ecclesiastical affairs which constituted the burning question of the hour. In connexion with his other work, Haller had propounded and defended his political opinions as early as 1808 in his " Handbuch der allgemeinen Staatenkunde, des darauf begriinde- ten allgemeinen Rechts und der allgemeinen Staats- klugheit nach den Gesetzen der Natur ". This was his most important work. It was this, moreover, that impelled Johann von Miiller to offer Haller the chair of constitutional law at the LTniversity of Gottingen. In spite of the great honour involved in this offer, he de- clined it.

Haller's magnum opus, however, was the "Restau- ration der Staatswissenschaft oder Theorie des natiir- lich-geselligen Zustandes, der Chimare des kUnstlich- biirgerlichen entgegengesetzt ". It was published at Winterthur in six volumes from 1816 to 1834. In this he uncompromisingly rejects the revolutionary conception of the State, and constructs a natural and juridical system of government, showing at the same time how a commonwealth can endure and prosper without being founded on the omnipotence of the state and official bureaucrac.y. The first volume, which appeared in 1816, contains the history and the refuta- tion of the older political theories, and also sets forth the general principles of his system of government. In the succeeding volumes he shows how these principles apply to different forms of government : in the second