Mr. Robert Dell sends a very interesting letter to Thursday's
,• Times entitled" The Pope on Good Government." The Papal' attitude towards the French State is not, he declares, the result of the Anti-Clericalism of the present majority in France. "The political policy of the Pope is the Bathe everywhere; it is a deduction from fixed principles, the application of which would be as fatal to a Constitutional Monarchy as to a Republic, for they involve the destruction of political liberties and the control of the State by a theocracy." These principles the Pope has more than once exposed, but never quite so plainly as in the course of his address to the members of the Anti-Slavery Congress recently held at Rome. On that occasion Mr. Dell asserts that the Pope said :—" A Govern- ment, in order to govern well, must be despotic and tyrannical" "This remark was suppressed in the official report of the address, but its authenticity is vouched for by Signor Gnglielmo Quadratto and by others who were present and heard the words with their own ears to their profound astonishment." We do not doubt that this statement—granted it proves to be well founded—will be a source of great pain to the vast majority of Roman Catholics in this country. It is yet another sign of how rapidly the Papacy is drifting out of touch with the sounder and wiser elements in modem life.
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