It is exceedingly convenient to have to deal with a majority of 600 Prelates, who are simply your creatures, obedient to every hint, and admirably disciplined. Three hundred of them are still further bound to Pius IX. by a special tie, for they are indebted to him, as the _Civiltà_ of January 1 reminded them, for both food and lodging, “sono da lui alloggiati e sostentati e assistiti in tutto il bisognevole alla vita.” Nor does that journal fail to point to the extreme poverty of many of the Bishops or Vicars-Apostolic, drawn hither from Asia, Africa, and Australia; even among the European Bishops it calls many “poverissimi.” Who has paid their travelling expenses, it says not. The _Civiltà_ may be easy; none of them will swell the ranks of the Opposition, or attack the _Schema_, or refuse their votes and acclamations to the infallibility of their benefactor. And then the _Civiltà_ has another powerful factor to rely upon; it says, and confirms what it says by the words used by the Pope at the Centenary, June 27, 1867, that from the tomb of St. Peter issues a secret force, which inspires the Bishops with a bold and enterprising spirit and great-hearted decisions. If I rightly understand the _Civiltà_, it means that for many Bishops it is a risk, and requires a lofty courage, to vote for Papal Infallibility here in Rome, while the clergy and laity of their own dioceses, excepting a few old women of either sex, never hitherto knew, or wished to know, anything of this Infallibility, and the prevalent belief has always been that the business of Bishops at a Council was only to bear witness to the faith and tradition of their Churches, not to construct new dogmas strange to the minds of their flocks. “Nous avons changé tout cela,” thinks the Roman journal, and therefore is the Council held in St. Peter’s, and not in the Lateran, that the “secret force” may take full effect. Certainly there is no lack of secret forces here, They are in full activity; there is an address being hawked about, praying the Pope to take up the Infallibility question at once, and put the Council in a position to vote upon it. This time the movement originated with two German Bishops, Martin of Paderborn and Senestrey of Regensburg. Slender causes and great effects! When the pond is full, a couple of moles can produce a flood by working their way through the dam. Both of these men have become perceptibly impatient at the obstinate and rebellious disposition of their German and Austrian colleagues, and are seeking to hasten the day, when, with the new dogma in their hands, they may triumph as willing believers over the forced belief of their brethren, only converted at the last moment. The address seems to have flashed suddenly upon the world, for—so said Mermillod and the rest of the initiated—its very existence was hardly known of; and it had 500 signatures. It was not shown to Bishops of notoriously anti-Infallibilist