Cardinal Rauscher has written, or got written, a treatise on the Infallibility question in German, which is now being translated into Latin, and which does not merely oppose the dogma as inopportune, but attacks the whole principle and, as I am assured, on fundamental grounds. But it cannot be printed here, where the Roman censorship is constantly growing stricter. It will be printed in Vienna, and copies will then have to be sent here under cover to the Austrian Embassy. To the representations of the German and French Bishops against the oppressiveness and injustice to the minority of the order of business, the Pope has not seen fit to make any reply. _Væ victis!_ Woe to them who do not belong to the faithful and devoted majority! This is what resounds here, morning, noon and night. Meanwhile the Papal Committee of the Council has devised a new means for paralysing the minority, and cutting short discussions which might easily become inconvenient. It is directed that all objections or proposals for modifications of the _Schemata_ are first to be handed over in writing to the Presidents and referred by them to the Commission _de Fide_, which rejects or admits them at its pleasure. If the authors of the proposals appeal against the decision of the Commission, the whole Council decides, of course by simple majority of votes. If this arrangement were really to be introduced, the minority—_i.e._, the German and French Bishops—would be deprived of all possibility of exerting any influence on the composition of the decrees or warding off any decree they considered injurious; they would always be outvoted, and the Council would more and more take the form of a mere machine for outvoting them. The Bishops would soon learn to spare themselves the useless trouble of proposing changes, and a much closer approach would be effected to the great object of making new articles of faith and decrees by a mere majority of votes. The only question is what the French and Germans intend to put up with from the Italians and Spaniards, for it is clear that here again the question of nationalities turns up in the background, and the Brennus sword of the Southern and Latin majority is always ready to be thrown into the scale. EIGHTEENTH LETTER.