the remark that this was the more important to insist upon in the case of the Vatican Council, where so many Bishops were admitted to vote, whose claim to vote by divine right was doubtful.(99) This historical consideration has since been urged with great effect by Kenrick, whose decisive weight in fixing the value of the Vatican Council will only be known later. It was universally believed that Ketteler had co-operated in getting this passage inserted in the German Protest, and so one is not surprised that he should have taken a leading part in the last move of the Opposition. To-day a declaration, signed by 77 Fathers, has been presented to the Presidents, protesting energetically against the inversion of the established order in the interests of infallibility. It contains the severe remark that they well know no answer can be expected, but they are unwilling to let any doubts be cast on the freedom of the Council, and to have the Bishops made a public laughing-stock. They cannot take much by this move. The arguments against inverting the purely arbitrary order of business, previously introduced, are weak in comparison with the objections to the definition on principle, and to insist on them is simply beating the air. The majority only see proofs of their weakness and grounds for increased confidence in the obstinate holding aloof of the Opposition from the main question, and in the fact that men who are not real assailants of the dogma play a prominent part in its proceedings. Wherever there has been any talk of hesitation, it has been only in the Vatican and the Commission _de Fide_, never among the mass of the party. Pius may for a moment have shared the scruples suggested to him by two of the Legates, and the Deputation may have believed that the dogma could be established without any violent precipitation, and regretted the indecent zeal of the French, but the ardent infallibilists—French, English, Belgian, Swiss, etc.—have never slackened in their confidence or their assiduity. They still affirm, as they ever have done, that infallibility has no real opponents or hardly any, and that the leading members of the Opposition privately hold the view or at least have never openly rejected it; there are but few even among the _Animadversiones_ which deny the admissibility of the definition. So they think that there is a bait for every one of these troublers of peace, and that they can all either be won over by concessions or frightened into submission. The example of the Prince Bishop of Breslau, who is known to have suspended a priest for attacking the doctrines of the Syllabus, is very interesting in this point of view. If the Pope were to issue a Bull condemning the opponents of his infallibility, and to deal in the same way or—as he easily might—more solemnly and harshly with other doctrines than the Encyclical of 1864, Prince Bishop Förster would at least punish all malcontents as severely as