Archbishop Hughes, in a late speech attempted an exposition of the relations between the Roman Catholic Church and Liberty, with special reference to the position assumed by him and other prelates, that the Roman Catholics are, not less than Protestants, upholders of freedom in opinion and in discussion. The interesting brochure of his Grace will be better appreciated by our readers, perhaps, if we mention a few recent facts illustrative of the subject, as it affects "authors and books." The French Roman Catholic Bishop of Lucan has a pastoral in the _Univers_ condemning Walter Scott’s works, without exception. He does the same by Chateaubriand, and the _Arabian Nights_, and _Don Quixote_—the first as Protestant, the second as insufficiently Catholic, the third as no Christian, the fourth as of no religion at all. One unhappy writer of school-books is condemned because he cites Guizot and Thierry; another because he blames the massacres of Saint Bartholomew, and thinks they were caused by "religious fanaticism." But first of all, and more than all, the bishop condemns "that irreligious" Parisian journal, _La Presse_. "The number of its subscribers is deplorable; but they are becoming and shall become less; no priest must subscribe to it. No priest must be seen with it. No priest must ’ordinarily’ read it." This is all very proper, according to antecedents, but we should not like it if Bishop Hughes deprived us of the _Tribune_, the _Herald_, or the _Journal of Commerce_, all of which are as bad, in the same way, as the _Presse_. Another example of the prohibition of books, we add from the cyclic letter just issued by Cardinal Lambruschini, condemning Professor Nuytz’s works on ecclesiastical law: