20 JANUARY 1866, Page 2

The Czar has finally ended the independence of the Catholic

Church in Poland. By a resent decree he has seized the whole of the property, real and personal, of the monasteries and regular clergy, and forbidden the legal collection of arrears of tithe. The object of this last measure is to make the pay- ment of tithe voluntary, and so establish a grievance between the priests and peasantry. The clergy will henceforward be paid like other State officials, and of coarse a priest who is refractory will find his salary fall gently into arrear. This last deems will probably complete the breach between St. Petersburg and Rome, already so marked that at a recent audience the Pope ordered the Russian Envoy out of the room, for saying that " Catholicism in Russia meant revolution."