Note 4 — CONCLUSION

The main danger appears to lie in Catholic countries, and from the action of the Catholic hierarchy. The common people everywhere, save in the most backward countries, are increasingly disinclined to persecution. In Ireland there is much less of that spirit among the Catholic population than among that of Protestant Ulster. But the infamous execution of Francisco Ferrer in Spain, in 1909, which aroused passionate reprobation in every civilized country, was defended in England and elsewhere with extravagant baseness by Catholic littérateurs, who, with their reactionary priests, are the last to learn the lesson of tolerance. The indignation everywhere excited by the judicial murder4 of Ferrer, however, gives promise that even the most zealous fanatics of the Catholic Church will hesitate again to rouse the wrath of the nations by such a reversion to the methods of the eras of religious rule.