A Witty and Candid Answer.
FROM the New York Observer we clip the following quotation and comments:— "The Philadelphia Press of March 21 has something right to the point. The remark could not be better if it were made for the occasion:— "That Boanerges of Romanist polemics, the late Louis Veuillot, when charged with impudent inconsistency in demanding toleration at the hands of the French Republic, replied: 'Certainly; we demand it when you are in power, because it is your principle; when we are in power we refuse it, because intolerance is our principle.' The response has become historic, because it was candid, as well as because it was witty. It discloses the attitude of that church in every age and in every country. In full accord with this attitude are the measures now before the New York Legislature, of which what is known as the Gibbs Bill, amended and progressed Thursday in the State Senate, will probably be the residuum that will go to the Assembly and then prove one of the 'features' of the session.' "That is precisely what we have so often illustrated by examples in the history of the Romish church. It demands favors, never gives them. It expels Protestant worship from Rome, demands admission into private institutions with its own forms of worship. It asks toleration because Protestants believe in it; it denies toleration because intolerance is its own principle. "Now this is an intolerable assumption. The one thing that must not be tolerated is intolerance. And when it comes to pass that the intolerant church seeks to force its forms upon those who do not want them, we must assert the principle that intolerance is not to be tolerated."