EFFECTS OF ROMANISM AND PROTESTANTISM

ON CIVILIZATION.

“The prosperity of a country is founded upon the intelligence of its inhabitants. This intelligence is dependent upon an enlightened religious belief; for the highest civilization is the result of the purest Christianity.”

THREE centuries ago, the people of the continent of Europe became divided by the Reformation; those of the North embraced Protestantism, those of the South remained Romanist. The great powers sided with Rome; the second-rate embraced the new faith. The former held command over the most fruitful domains of the Old and New World, and swayed the sceptre of ocean. Literature, science, and the arts were theirs. The latter, in comparison, had received but little from Nature, and commerce and manufactures were scarcely known amongst them. Such was the position of affairs in the sixteenth century. Let us now examine the transformation which these respective countries have undergone.

At the period of the Reformation, Spain was the first among the nations of Europe. By comparing its former with its present state, we shall discover how much it has lost; and this loss is owing, if not entirely, at least in part, to its religious faith. Never was a nation so completely under the influence of Romanism as Spain. She presented a brilliant picture in the sixteenth century; for the conquest of Grenada had raised her to the pinnacle of wealth and prosperity. While the nobility gave themselves up to the profession of arms, the other classes enriched their country by assiduous labor. On all sides, irrigation, canals, and reservoirs distributed water over the remotest and most barren tracts. Agriculture was especially honored, whilst industry and commerce added to the general prosperity. The development of trade was equal to that of industry. A minister of Philip the Second, asserted, in an assembly of the Cortes, that at the fair of Medina del Campo, in 1563, business was transacted to the amount of one hundred and thirty-two millions five hundred thousand dollars. A multitude of trading vessels set sail every year from various ports, conveying to Italy, Asia Minor, Africa, and the East Indies, the products of the national industry. Sculpture, architecture, painting, and music were enshrined in her midst. The drama, epic and lyric poetry, and history found worthy interpreters, names which will live forever. The palaces of the Spanish ambassadors were in foreign countries the resort of the most elegant society; and France, Italy, England, and Germany sent their youth to Madrid to acquire Castilian manners and politeness.

Towards the close of the fifteenth century, Spain, victorious over the Moors, became the discoverer and mistress of the New World. What a magnificent present! What a glorious future! All peoples looked to her as first amongst the nations, and sovereigns trembled at her

power. What was the condition of England at the period of the Reformation ? One-half of the land was the property of the clergy; the remainder belonged to the nobility. Sixty-five thousand priests and monks supported immense establishments by the moneys levied on the people. The land was cultivated to a comparatively small extent, the gross agricultural product being under forty millions of dollars. Her trade was small, compared to that of many nations on the continent, and commerce was scarcely known in her ports. Manufactures were obtained from other countries, and education of the people had not yet commenced. Everywhere feudalism and priestcraft were triumphant, and divided the nation for their mutual benefit.

England, under the benign influences of the Reformation, from a fourth-rate power, soon took her station at the head of the nations of the earth; and peoples once her superiors became dependent upon her for protection and aid. Her ships whitened every sea, and her

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drum-beat greeted the rising sun around the world. Her capitalists have covered Europe with railroads, and she has made laws to millions in Asia. She has her colonies in Africa, America, and a rising empire in Australia. What the United States are effecting in the Western Hemisphere, she is accomplishing in the Old World.

Within eleven years, Spain effects the subjugation of Grenada, discovers and conquers America, and establishes THE INQUISITION ! At the summit of prosperity in the fifteenth century, behold her in the nineteenth! See that spectacle of agony which cannot come to an end; that all-pervading confusion to which no term can be assigned; the certain and progressive ruin of a nation that, for a whole century, dictated laws to Europe; that inhabits the richest and most fertile soil, perhaps, under heaven-but a nation so disheartened that it feels itself perish, and watches its own decline with the resignation of a fatalist!

The clergy possess nearly one-third of the entire surface of Spain. As a consequence, one-twelfth of the inhabitants earn a livelihood by smuggling, robbing, and begging; and it has been estimated that three million Spaniards wear no shirt from want of money to purchase one.

There are forty classes of vagrants, each class with a specific, recognized name. There is an assassination for every four thousand of the population. Education is scarcely known, and there is but one pupil to every three hundred and fifty inhabitants. Internal navigation, agriculture, and manufactures are at a stand-still. Such is modern Spain, once the first, now the last of nations! What is the cause of this ? what the origin of such utter misery and helplessness? Tyranny, answers the politician; Romanism, says the Protestant; the Inquisition, replies the historian. But these three are one. Tyranny and the Inquisition !- foul offspring of blighting Romanism !

During the past year, the Queen of Spain having presented to the Pope a magnificent tiara of diamonds, the Pontiff returns an allocution to the “Catholic Sovereign,” and the gift of the body of St. Felix! Thus has it ever been. Spain parts with her wealth to Rome,

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and receives in return bones, putrefaction, and rottenness! But Rome has borne sway there too long. The Spaniards are now rising against this frightful spiritual and civil tyranny; the dupes and tools of the priesthood have fled the country like malefactors, and the sovereign herself obeys the dictates of her subjects. Rome is no longer to hold Spain as her property, to farm and pillage it to benefit the Papal treasury. She has fattened on it too long, and has left it, poor, weak, uneducated, superstitious, low in civilization, the prey of countless factions. But Spain is ridding herself of the cause of her miserymay we not hope, forever?

We address to the reader's conscience this twofold question : First, is it not true that Spain, favored with the finest climate, placed at the head of Europe, enriched with a world, but remaining Romanist, has continued to decline and grow poorer, sinking at last into ignorance, misery, and immorality? Secondly, is it not true that England, with a sterile soil, a cloudy sky, and starting from the lowest rank among European nations, but having embraced Protestantism, is now prosperous, enlightened, moral, and at the head of the civilized world?

We find the relative influence of the two creeds fully developed in the Republic of Switzerland. The Protestant cantons are more populous than the Romanist, and carry on a far greater trade. The latter are obliged to keep many holidays besides Sundays, and thus agriculture is much neglected. The Cantons of Zurich, Basle, Geneva, Glaris, and Neufchatel, all Protestant, are distinguished above the rest for their industry and manufactures. The people are not so well educated in the Romish as in the other cantons. There are but twenty-two presses in the former to eighty in the latter. Ten Protestant journals are printed to three Romanist. In the Papist cantons, ignorance and misery go hand in hand, and distress the eyes of the traveller. The taste for processions, pilgrimages, and other acts of devotion introduced by the monks, has encouraged a spirit of idleness which is the bane of trade and agriculture, and augments the numbers of the poor. In the cantons where the peasants bow the

neck to the yoke of the clergy, men have lost all their energy, all elevation of mind. Servile and taciturn as slaves, they have forgotten their rights, and know nothing beyond the performance of a mechanical and unreasoning obedience. The Canton du Valais is celebrated throughout Europe for its filth, superstition, and wretchedness. “Mangè pas les puces et les Prêtres" (caten up by lice and priests), is the proverb applied to its inhabitants throughout Europe. The population is behind the other cantons even in regard to agricultural operations and the management of cattle. They are inferior in education, knowledge, and science; and are specially idle, negligent, and dirty. In the villages, at every door are seen horrible crétins, sickly, wretched, languishing, with an enormous head, lost in an immense goître, their faces swollen and livid, the eyes sunk under the thick and heavy lids; the flabby cheeks, the half-opened lips, with the tongue hanging out, and a filthy saliva round it. Some, scarcely covered with rags, lie warming their limbs in the sun; others, seated on the laps of halfcrétinized old women, resign their beards and heads to their inspection, or moodily count their beads, muttering Aves and Pater Nosters. Medical men are decided that the causes of this deformed idiocy, crétinism, are moral as well as physical ; the neglect of education leads to their imbecility.* Children are left to themselves, and exist like beasts. They wallow in the mire, seizing and devouring all they find there. In winter they pass whole days stretched in a room warmed by a stove. Drunkenness is the prevailing vice, and the population is universally superstitious, insensible to their own interests, intractable and obstinate.

Romanism had a hard battle to fight in Germany at the time of the Reformation. The North, represented by Prussia, became Protestant; the South, under the influence of Austria, remained Romanist. In the latter, two powers, the government and the clergy, have united in working the nation to their mutual advantage. The clergy, at first, strove to govern both the people and the nobles; but