The Opposition resolved to protest against the order of business. The Protest is said to have been drawn up by skilful French hands, and was subscribed on March 4 by thirty-four French Bishops, and another, signed by almost the same number of German Bishops, was presented to the Legates two days later. A very high estimate is formed of its importance here. According to the Roman view the majority of the Council has no better right than the minority to proclaim a new dogma, for the right belongs to the Pope alone, who can just as well elevate the teaching of the minority as of the majority into a dogma. And therefore, in maintaining that no dogma can be defined without the universal consent—the moral unanimity—of the Episcopate, and that a Council which receives a dogma without that consent is liable to be rejected as not free and Œcumenical, the Bishops are not only protesting against the threatened encroachments of the majority, but just as much against the claim of the Pope to define dogmas by his own authority. I have lately cited the words of Pius IV. on that point. In putting forward and defending their right and qualification to be witnesses of the faith and representatives of their Churches, the Bishops are not only vindicating a position very difficult to assail, but at the same time shaking the principal foundation of the present Council. In the first place the minority represent relatively far greater numbers of Catholics than their adversaries, and in the next place the bulk of the majority is artificially swelled by a crowd of prelates who really represent no Churches and only bear witness for themselves. That many of them have been simply created to give their services at this Council, is notorious. According to the official Roman register, fifty-one Bishops _in partibus_ were named between June 1866 and August 1869. By every one of these creations the Pope has neutralized by his own plenary power the vote of an Archbishop of Paris or Vienna; in other words, he has put some favourite Roman monsignore on an equality, as regards the decisions of the Council, with a venerable Church containing more than a million of souls. The presence of such elements in the assembly gives grounds for doubting whether it can be regarded as a real representation of the whole Church, and so this declaration of the Bishops is like knocking a nail in the coffin of the Œcumenical Council.