Reaping the Benefit.—However the Philippines may go, the Roman Catholic Church is enough to guard her interests. A despatch from Rome, printed in the Examiner of August 8, has this to say:—
“ROME, August 7.—The pope has sent instructions to Mgr. Martinelli, representative of the Holy See in the United States, and to Archbishop Ireland, concerning representations to the American Government, with a view to obtaining respect for existing privileges of the Roman Catholic Church and clergy in Cuba and Porto Rico. The pope will personally address a letter to President McKinley. He has already congratulated the queen regent of Spain upon having followed pacific counsels. The encyclical of the Vatican to the Spanish bishops will soon be published. It will be followed by another to the hierarchy of the United States.”
When it is remembered that nearly all the trouble in the Philippines has been caused by the overreaching, grasping, tyrannical rule of the priests, it would seem that if the United States accedes to the wishes of the pope, the guilty will escape, while the civil government of Spain will suffer. But there is coming a time when justice will be done, not by nations of earth, but by the Judge of all. For that time we wait.