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Show Conversations of ur Club . . . By Orestes A. Brownsoii J Conversation VIII. Continued. "So it comes out at last, that we must accept Mr. Seward's doctrine of the higher law," exclaimed O'Flana-gan, O'Flana-gan, "a doctrine which has excited a burst of indignation from one end of the Union to the other, and which is incompatible with the very existence of government." "No man who denies the higher law," replied Father John, "has or can have the right to open his mouth in favor of liberty, whether civil or religious. re-ligious. There is, if there be any truth in reason or revelation, a higher law than the will of the people, or the convention. Mr. Seward did not err, but uttered a great truth, when he boldly proclaimed it in his place in the senate. It is the only basis of liberty, lib-erty, whether civil or religious. The error of Mr. Seward was not in proclaiming pro-claiming the higner law, but in making each individual his own judge of what it enjoins, and in tacitly implying that the constitution of the United States requires one to do things against it. The constitution requires nothing of any one incompatible with the higher law, whether the natural law or the revealed law, and not the individual, but, in the civil order, the supreme court is the tribunal for interpreting, declaring, and applying it. The great danger to liberty in our own country, it cannot be too often repeated, is from the tendency to assert the absolute abso-lute supremacy of the state, and in not recognizing the fact, that no will or ordinance or-dinance even of the people in convention conven-tion assembled, and ratified by a popular popu-lar vote, is or can be law, or be rightly treated as law by the courts, if it contravenes con-travenes the law of justice. The existence exist-ence and well-being of society depend on the wise and prompt administration administra-tion of justice, which is anterior to the convention, and is its law. This justice is that higher law, which is created by no human convention or legislation, but is enacted by God himself, him-self, as the transcript of his own eternal eter-nal law. The tribunal for determining this law is not, as Mr. Seward would leave us to infer, the individual for himself, but the supreme judiciary. So understood, It involves nothing an-archial, an-archial, or restrictive of the just freedom free-dom and. authority of the political power." "But the supreme court is not infallible, infal-lible, and may err in its decision, as it is contended Chief Justice Taney actually actu-ally has done, in deciding in the Dred Scott case, against negro citizenship," rejoined O'Flanagan. "What security have we, then, that the courts will maintain justice, or that they will not make unjust decisions? If they do make unjust decisions, what Is the remedy? If the decisions of the court bind both the individual and the politic polit-ic power, what right will any one have to declaim against them, or to demand their reversal?" "The difficulty is theoretical rather than practical," answered Father John. "In practice, the courts, if pure and independent, will seldom err as to natural justice. Their decisions, furthermore, fur-thermore, bind only in the temporal order, and one is obliged to obey them only in his civil capacity, and is, consequently, con-sequently, free to criticise the decision, decis-ion, if he see cause to do so. Even the error of the court in the Dred Scott case, if err it did, was not In relation re-lation to the points actually before It for adjudication; and the criticisms which I should allow myself, are not on its decisions, but its obiter dicta, ythink the opinion wrong that denies negro citizenship, because I hold that the presumption under our system is in favor of equal rights, and negroes are citizens, the same as others, if not expressly excluded. But I do not think the presumption is in favor of negro suffrage, for suffrange is not a natural, but a conventional, ' right, and can never be presumed. The right to vote in elections is a trust positively conferred, and' must be strictly construed." . "The Supreme Court is the supreme su-preme tribunal in the civil order, but the civil order is not itself supreme," added Diefenbich; "and the Supreme court is itself bound to take the law of justice, as expounded by the supreme su-preme tribunal of the supreme or spiritual spir-itual order, which enlightens conscience con-science in regard to absolute justice, and interprets supremely for it the law of God. The Supreme court, after af-ter all, is a civil court, and within the civil order. It is a branch of the civil government, and its decisions, though civilly are not absolutely infallible, unless on the moral and spiritual relations re-lations of the case it borrows its light from the spiritual order, or the court which is instituted, not by man, but by God himself, to interpret, declare, and apply the higher law for conscience. con-science. This is wherefore political atheism Is necessarily hostile to true liberty, as not recognizing, and not being able to declare infallibly the law of natural justice, which is the basis nrr snnptfrm nf oil Tinman lom TVi. shows, also, wherefore Catholics cannot can-not mean what they say, when they assert that their religion has nothing to do' with their politics, as Mr O'Flanagan is so fond of saying." "Undoubtedly," replied Father John "the spiritual order is superior to the temporal, and thus the church interprets inter-prets the natural law for the state, and not the state for he church. But this she does by her ordinary teaching, teach-ing, not ordinarily by formal judicial decisions, by informing the mind and conscience of the judges and rulers as men and citizens. However, In a state that holds under the natural law, as with us, and is not by its constitution constitu-tion a Catholic state under special catnoiic oDiigations, natural justice suffice for the courts, and as that is in the natural order, the civil judges are competent to decide any questions arising under It, at least, with sufficient suffi-cient accuracy for all practical purposes. pur-poses. For myself, I should.be satisfied satis-fied with the civil courts, when properly prop-erly constituted, and suffered to be independent, in-dependent, as sufficient to maintain justice in all civil causes. The faults of their decisions do not arise from itheir ignorance of natural justice, or their inability to make just decisions, so much as from their dependence on the political power, and failure to assert as-sert their rights and prerogatives. The world has not subsisted six thousand thou-sand years, and two thousand years undejr the Christian dispensation without the natural law being known, the law which is incorporated into the very reason and nature of man. Practically, Prac-tically, at any rate, the higher law may be safely asserted, if it is asserted, assert-ed, and followed onlys declared and applied by the Supreme Court, safely followed, whether in relation to liberty, lib-erty, or in relation to power." Conversation IX. "I am at loss," remarked De Bonneville, Bon-neville, "to understand why the Cath: elics of this country so generally oppose op-pose the common schools, established and supported by the public. These schools seem to me to be founded on sound principles, and for the most part, to be very well conducted. "They are either godless schools, or sectarian schools," replied O'Flanagan; O'Flana-gan; "corrupt and corrupting; and under un-der their influence the American people, peo-ple, as several Catholic publicists have well asserted, are becoming a nation of unbelievers and swindlers." "That irreligion, vice, and crime are on the increase among the American people," said Diefenbach, "is an undeniable unde-niable fact; but perhaps it would be more reasonable to attribute it to your growing wealth and luxury, to the sweepings of European prisons and poor houses annually cast upon your shores, and to the swarms of anarchists, anarch-ists, revolutionists, rebels, traitors, infidels, in-fidels, rogues, cheats, swindlers, forgers forg-ers thieves robbers, burglars, murderers, mur-derers, assassins, who flock hither to carry on their trade or to escape the justice of the Old World, than to your common schools. If you will make your country a refuge for the depraved, ignorant, and criminal population pop-ulation of old Europe, you must expect a decrease of religion, and an increase of vice and crime." "We undoubtedly suffer from the immigration of the class to which Mr. Deifenbach alluded," remarked Wins-low. Wins-low. "The immigration of the honest and industrious Catholic peasantry, 1 laborers, and mechanics, of Germany and Ireland, is of great service to us; but with the immigration of the other oth-er class, we could very well dispense, for the home manufacture is quite sufficient for. all reasonable demands. Without attributing the increase of vice and crime to the public schools, I yet think it is chiefly owing to the want of schools in which our children can receive a proper moral and religious relig-ious education. The common "schools do not answer the principal purpose of education, the moral and religious training of the young. All education, divorced from religion and morality, is hurtful. These schools, when conducted con-ducted according to the law creating them, are godless, and in practice they are, for the most part, sectarian." sectar-ian." (To Be Continued.) |