THE CHURCH A POLITICAL POWER. The Jesuit party was extending and strengthening an organization all over Germany, based on the principle that state legislation in ecclesiastical matters is not binding. Here was an act of open insurrection. Could the government allow itself to be intimidated? The Bishop of Ermeland declared that he would not obey the laws of the state if they touched the Church. The government stopped the payment of his salary; and, perceiving that there could be no peace so long as the Jesuits were permitted to remain in the country, their expulsion was resolved on, and carried into effect. At the close of 1872 his Holiness delivered an allocution, in which he touched on the "persecution of the Church in the German Empire," and asserted that the Church alone has a right to fix the limits between its domain and that of the state--a dangerous and inadmissible principle, since under the term morals the Church comprises all the relations of men to each other, and asserts that whatever does not assist her oppresses her. Hereupon, a few days subsequently (January 9, 1873), four laws were brought forward by the government: 1. Regulating the means by which a person might sever his connection with the Church; 2. Restricting the Church in the exercise of ecclesiastical punishments; 3. Regulating the ecclesiastical power of discipline, forbidding bodily chastisement, regulating fines and banishments granting the privilege of an appeal to the Royal Court of Justice for Ecclesiastical Affairs, the decision of which is final; 4. Ordaining the preliminary education and appointment of priests. They must have had a satisfactory education, passed a public examination conducted by the state, and have a knowledge of philosophy, history, and German literature. Institutions refusing to be superintended by the state are to be closed. These laws demonstrate that Germany is resolved that she will no longer be dictated to nor embarrassed by a few Italian noble families; that she will be master of her own house. She sees in the conflict, not an affair of religion or of conscience, but a struggle between the sovereignty of state legislation and the sovereignty of the Church. She treats the papacy not in the aspect of a religious, but of a political power, and is resolved that the declaration of the Prussian Constitution shall be maintained, that "the exercise of religious freedom must not interfere with the duties of a citizen toward the community and the state."