The members of the Court of Rome vie with one another in assurances that perfect freedom will be left to the Bishops in the grand question of the proclamation of the new dogma of Papal Infallibility. This is confidently asserted by those Germans who are more deeply initiated into the views of the _Curia_, such as the Jesuits Franzelin, Schrader, and Kleutgen. And above all, Bishop Fessler, the Secretary of the Council and favourite of the _Curia_, who was the first among the Bishops to declare that it was the main business of the Council to formulate and proclaim the new dogma, takes especial pains to convince the Bishops that the Pope has no intention of bringing the subject before them himself. He admits that the preparatory Commission has discussed this most important and comprehensive of all doctrines, and has almost unanimously decided it to be both true and opportune; and that their reporter has shown conclusively, that considering the boundless devotion to Rome of the present episcopate (at least the majority of them), no more favourable moment could be chosen for enriching the Church with this new and fundamental article of faith. This is now their watchword. All the initiated repeat it, and some episcopal optimists try to persuade themselves and others that the danger is really past, and the scheme abandoned for this time. But the truth is this: the authorities know well enough that the absolutists among the Bishops—all those who hope to strengthen their dominion and extend it over secular matters by means of Papal Infallibility—are both numerous and organized, and only await the intimation that the right moment has arrived to come forward themselves with a motion powerfully supported. To begin with the Germans, there is the Bishop of Paderborn, whose Jesuit theologian, Roh, says that, precisely because Papal Infallibility is called in question by Bishops like Dupanloup and Maret, the Council must define it, to make any repetition of this atrocity impossible for the future. Then there are the Bishops of Regensburg, Würzburg, St. Pölten, and Gratz, the Belgian and English Prelates, and those of French Switzerland, among whom Mermillod rivals Manning in his fanatical zeal for the new dogma; the Spanish Prelates—men selected for promotion by Queen Isabella and the nuncio at Madrid, simply for their thorough-paced ultramontanism—pure absolutists in Church and State, who would gladly see the new dogma ready-made at once, but have to be restrained for a while. To these must be added such French Prelates as Plantier of Nîmes, Pie of Poitiers, the Bishops of Laval and Montauban, and others. One knows least of the votes of the Italian and United States Bishops, who, like the Irish, will probably be divided. In any case the Court party can count on a considerable majority in favour of the new dogma.