Page:True and False Infallibility of Popes.pdf/372

Rh stituting contraries instead of contradictions to the condemned propositions.

Let us run down the list of condemnations, supposed to have been taken from the Syllabus, which are contained in pages 16 and 17 of the ex-Premier's celebrated pamphlet. In the very first on the list, he tells us, that the Pope has condemned the "liberty of the press," and again, in the third, that the Holy Father has consigned to everlasting damnation the "liberty of speech." This is coming out strong with a vengeance! What would have been the effect on his readers' nerves, if he had only added the "fearfully energetic epithets in which they were clothed," and which, he tells us, he has considerately omitted to avoid making either himself, or his friends, or his adversaries lose their temper.

Now, a more childish want of the elements of logic was never displayed, and the pamphleteer's talk about the "fearfully energetic epithets" suggests an apt illustration of the narrow line that separates the sublime from the ridiculous. The sentence contradictory to the condemned one might run in this or a similar form: "It is not a right belonging to every man, that he should have an uncontrollable license to utter any sentiments" how blasphemous, libellous, or immoral soever. But if we say instead: "The liberty of the press and the liberty of speech are unlawful," and make this out to have been defined by the Pope, either we can lay no claim to British truthfulness, or we do not understand the Pope's latin, (which is easy enough, in all conscience,) or we are in the case of Horace's schoolboy, sævo dictata reddentem magistro, saying our