“The Council of Trent arranged the order of business for itself. In this case just the contrary has been done: everything was pre-arranged and imposed on the Council by the Pope, and even the secretaries and scrutators were named beforehand. No initiative is allowed to the Bishops; the Commission for examining motions is formed of the hottest Infallibilists and members of the _Curia_, but the final decision is reserved to the Pope. The proposers of a motion are not even allowed to explain and defend it, so that the freedom nominally conceded to the Bishops of proposing measures is rendered purely illusory. By the composition of the four Commissions, elected from Roman lists of names, all work of critical importance is kept in the hands of the few Infallibilists chosen for the purpose by the _Curia_, to the exclusion of 700 Bishops, among whom are all the German Bishops who signed the Fulda Letter to the Pope, and the most influential French Prelates. In short, all Bishops not known to be thorough-going Infallibilists have been systematically excluded from the Commissions. Very different was it at Trent, where all the Fathers, divided into four Congregations, took a real part in the work. We must add the monstrous disproportion of national representation—the enormous and overwhelming preponderance of the Italians, still further strengthened by the host of Vicars-Apostolic, who can at any moment be deposed by the Propaganda without any legal formality. Thus the Italian Bishops alone outnumber all the French, German, Hungarian and North American together, though these last represent a population nearly three times as large. The weakness of the two French Cardinals, Bonnechose and Mathieu, who ought to have taken the lead, has frustrated the attempt to unite the French Bishops in a national group. Bonnechose consulted Antonelli, who said the French must not assemble in larger bodies than fifteen or at most twenty together. The evil consequences were at once shown in the elections.